Nielsen’s Nook

I have a feature in my blog engine that alerts me when people cite a post I have written. While that sounds like a cool feature, it was quite strange when I saw today for the first time a citation of an article I wrote, entitled “A Reformed Liturgical Diet,” from October 2006. The article itself is an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which was aimed to show that Reformed churches have historically had a much higher view of the Sacraments than present day instances.

As one who deeply loves, cherishes and practices expository preaching, you can imagine my shock when the name of the post citing “A Reformed Liturgical Diet” was entitled “Expository Preaching under attack.” I would have appreciated the opportunity to interact with the post 2 years ago; however, since I didn’t then, I will do so now. So before you go any further, please take a moment to do the following:

1. Read my original post A Reformed Liturgical Diet
2. Read Expository Preaching under attack at the Two-Edged Sword blog including the comments.

A Two-Edged False Dichotomy

First, for the record, I believe deeply that expository preaching is crucial in the churches of Jesus Christ. So I take exception to the way I have been misrepresented. Preaching is “Christian storytelling” and it is every bit as sacramental as the Lord’s Table. God, after all, is not words of any language. He certainly transcends the confines of vocabulary and exegesis. Nevertheless, the Church has been picked up and carried throughout history through the Spirit’s attending to the preaching of the Word of God. In fact, I would say that to the extent we unfold the Word of God to the people is the extent to which God empowers the sermon. The point of my article is to urge readers back toward the balanced liturgical diet given us in the Scripture of Word and Sacrament. To pit the preaching of the Word over against the Sacraments is a false dichotomy, at least in the Christian economy.

Second, historically speaking the Reformers were fighting for an increased frequency of the Lord’s Table in worship. At the time of Luther the Eucharist was celebrated only once a year and then the laity only received the cup. Calvin is fairly clear that he would have preferred a weekly communion but had to settle for quarterly with the council at Geneva. So it is a bit strange to me, historically speaking, to hear modern-day Reformed so dismissive of sacraments for which our tradition gives instances of those who were once willing to give even their lives for them. Calvin’s seminary graduates had a life expectancy post graduation of about six months. Influences on Calvin, perhaps we should call them teachers, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli in turn had great impact on Thomas Cranmer such that the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is dedicated to Vermigli.

Third, when “Mr. Baggins” comments that “These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. They are attacking preaching itself,” I am compelled to remind us all that my piece was an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism on the subject of the Lord’s Table itself. I have spent a bit of time in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, in particular to study the nature of the Sacraments in the life of the Reformed churches. I do not want to impute such lack of engagement to Lee at Two-Edged Sword; however, Mr. Baggins makes assertions without even hobbit sized amounts of substantive argumentation. Consequently, it is hard to see how he is not dismissing the Westminster Confession and significant influences on its development like John Calvin and other Magisterial Reformers all in one broad stroke.

In short, I would expect that Lee and I have different universes of discourse in approaching the question of the role of the sacraments in the life of the Church. John Chrysostom would never have gone for preaching apart from the sacraments and yet he is held up as substantiating Mr. Baggins assertions. What I leave you is not a gauntlet (for I have no desire to engage in polemics here); but, instead an exhortation to consider how Chrysostom, himself a huge influence on Calvin and other reformers, would approach the balance that has historically always existed between Word and Sacrament.

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

“That is,” writes Farley, “they are to manifest the Lord’s life on earth, as His Body.” ¹ I remember one of the extremely helpful and paradigmatic books I read in seminary by Benjamin B. Warfield. In this little booklet that he wrote to incoming students to Princeton Seminary, he encouraged us that there is never a time that we would turn from worshiping the Lord to our books or from the study of our books to the worship of the Lord (to paraphrase). ²

Warfield, Farley and St. Paul all resonate symphonically together here. The strange thing about truth is that it transcends all kinds of boundaries, traditions, cultures, and time. Colossians 3:17 underscores union with Christ the paradigmatic element of Christian theology and life. This union is in fact a participation in the divine energies (workings, ενεργη) and is most profoundly proclaimed at the Lord’s Table, where Christians by faith receive the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus—where God gives us himself and we give Him ourselves. And so we say during the consecration of the Bread and Wine:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. ³

This is of course a continuation of the theme we find in John 15, where Christ makes plain his desire that we abide in Him and He in us, as He—the Second Person of the Trinity—abides in His Father. In this way Christians graciously participate in the divine life given to us in Christ Jesus. “[Our] life is His life. [Our] existence is to be one continuous outpouring of thanksgiving to God in His Name. The Christian calling is to be a eucharistic man.” ⁴

__________

¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 186.

² Warfield, Benjamin B. The Religious Life of Theological Students.

³ Book of Common Prayer, 336.

⁴ Farley, 187.

Whether I kneel or stand or sit in prayer
I am not caught in time nor held in space,
But, thrust beyond this posture, I am where
Time and eternity are face to face;
Infinity and space meet in this place
Where crossbar and upright hold the One
In agony and in all Love’s embrace.
The power in helplessness which was begun
When all the brilliance of the flaming sun
Contained itself in the small confines of a child
Now comes to me in this strange action done
In mystery. Break time, break space, O wild
And lovely power. Break me: thus am I dead,
Am resurrected now in wine and bread.
Madeleine L’Engle
as found in the book A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation

HT: Mike & Rachel Vendsel

Dr. Craig Higgins, Pastor of Trinity Church in Rye, New York wrote an article in the Journal of Biblical Counseling, “Spiritual Formation and the Lord’s Supper: Remembering, Receiving, Sharing,” which I mentioned yesterday when I shared a Robert Bruce quote from the article. I have put together a reflection on the article that largely agrees with it, focusing on elements of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) and its Shorter Catechism (SC). The goal here is not in any way to project that this is the only way to read the WCF or SC but it is a way that I find is both plausible and has historical precedent.[1]

WCF 21.5. The reading of the Scriptures with godly fear, the sound preaching and conscionable hearing of the Word, in obedience unto God, with understanding, faith and reverence, singing of psalms with grace in the heart; as also, the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God: beside religious oaths, vows, solemn fastings, and thanksgivings upon special occasions, which are, in their several times and seasons, to be used in an holy and religious manner.[2] (emphasis added)

I read this section of the WCF chapter entitled “Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day” and see that there is a list given of liturgical elements that are at the very least assumed to be part of “ordinary religious worship.” I take “ordinary religious worship” to mean at least Sunday Worship but conceivably more often. [3] The list is essentially 1) Word preached to obedient hearts, 2) singing, and 3) sacraments.

Section 5 comes in the context of 21.1) Worship must be scriptural, 21.2) Triune, and 21.3-4) lawfully prayerful. So, the implication from my reading of the WCF seems to be clear. If we lack the preaching of the word in our corporate worship is that not un-ordinary? If we did quarterly sermons, would that not be un-ordinary? The same with singing. Interestingly, prayer seems to be assumed as the atmosphere but not listed out as one of these “parts of the ordinary religious worship of God.”

My point about the Eucharist in light of the WCF is furthered when we take in to consideration the list that follows the phrase “are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God.” There we see things that appear most obvious to be the sorts of things that would be appropriate in Corporate Worship but unnecessary. Hence, even the explicit “upon special occasions” and “several times and seasons” is given.

In elucidating the vital role that Word, Sacraments and Prayer play in the spiritual health of a believer, the Shorter Catechism Questions 85 - 96 answer the question “What does God require of us to escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin?” Answer: Faith, Repentance and the diligent use of all the outward means where by Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption. (Dr. Higgins points this out in his article). Those outward means are of course defined as the Word, Sacraments and Prayer - all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation (Q88). The sacraments are those sensible signs which Christ has blessed and in which the Spirit works to give us Christ and the benefits of the New Covenant (Q92).

Dr. Higgins also made mention of Q92 in the paper. Frankly, the language of representing and sealing can obfuscate the matter (at least to contemporary ears). Either Christ is given or he is not. Certainly he is represented; we would expect that if Christ is given in something instrumentally or otherwise. Whatever the case, we have established it is Christ who is given and in giving himself in the Eucharist we are “made partakers of his body and blood” to our “spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.”

Scripture teaches at least this about the Eucharist and it is, after all, our confessional document returning us to the tradition of our fathers which is the milieu in which we both interpret scripture and execute its practice. We submit ourselves to scripture in the context of tradition that we may not be impaled upon the pike of private interpretation, dislocated from the Church that has handed down to us the faith that we hold dear.

That being said, let me ask a question that is intended to provoke discussion, but not wrath or divisiveness. Does any minister or church body have the prerogative to withhold the very means of grace given to us by Christ from His sheep at any point of Ordinary Religious Worship especially when our own Presbyterian tradition has said that the Eucharist is part of the “ordinary religious worship of God?”

[1] I am writing to a Presbyterian audience, but I hope that any Christian would be able to engage this article.

[2] Thanks to Matt Bradley for pointing these distinctions of the WCF out to me.

[3] In other words, it would be quite un-ordinary if churches decided to meet only monthly to engage in corporate worship.

In light of the post a few days back on The Role of the Eucharist in the Sanctification of the Christian, I found a great article by Dr. Craig Higgins, Sr Pastor of Trinity Church PCA in Rye, New York. I commend the article, Spiritual Formation and the Lord’s Supper: Remembering, Receiving, Sharing (Summer 2006, Vol 24, No 3, pp 71-78), to you and wanted to share an insightful quote from Robert Bruce, the Scottish Reformation era pastor on the nature of Christ received in the Eucharist:

It is certainly true that we get no new thing in the Sacrament; we get no other thing in the Sacrament, than we get in the Word. For what more would you ask that really to receive the Son of God himself? Your heart can neither desire nor imagine a greater gift than the Son of God, who is King of heaven and earth…. Why then is the Sacrament appointed? Not that you may get any new thing, but that you may get the same thing better than you had it in the Word. (Robert Bruce)

HT: Paul Buckley at Words, Words, Words for directing me to this article and to Pastor Craig for writing it.

One of the things post-modernism has exposed for us is the bankruptcy of modernism. However, in doing so post-modernism, at least in its most consistent and extreme forms becomes self-referentially incoherent. That is, in making the assertion that we cannot know anything certainly the post-modern asserts that he may know that much at least certainly.

As I have recently written here, most of the Evangelical expression of Christianity, in particular those groups that have fought modernism (”I think therefore I am”) have become theological modernists (”I think therefore I believe”), continuing to reduce the Christian faith to pithier and pithier propositions. OF COURSE this does not mean that I think the rational has no place in Christian faith (give me some charity here), but it is to speak to the anemia that from at least my vantage is of pandemic proportions in the theology and practice of the aspect of Christendom that we would describe with the adjective Evangelical.

In so far as “evangelical” means Gospel centered as it was handed down to us in the scriptures by those who came - and died - before us and as long as that Gospel centeredness is not merely propositions about a person and a history, but is focused on the adoration of the Person who makes history possible and gives history it purpose, then I consider myself evangelical and care very deeply about things evangelical. My wife, who blogs at per caritatem, recently turned me on to a thought provoking article by James K. A. Smith, a professor at Calvin College. Dr. Smith wrote this article entitled, “Is the Future Catholic?” (which I commend to you for contemplation) on a blog sponsored by Baker Academic called the church and postmodern culture: conversation.

In “Is the Future Catholic?” Smith asserts that post-modernism is just as singularly rationalistic as modernism, just with different skin on. The problem as he sees it is not modernism or post-modernism but the lack of holistic worship. In other words, both post-modern and modern worship is reductionistic (anemic). The solution then is not novelty, according to Smith, but culling pre-modern worship for those aspects of liturgy that would return contemporary worship to its God-given holistic (fully human) form.

At the very least, Smith’s article is worth pondering. Even in recent church history of the last 150-200 years we have seen the fall-out of the church defining herself over against something.  Foucault reminds us that in doing such things we inevitably take the “other” on, becoming like it uniquely.  Rather, the Church must regain her first love, defining herself solely by the one she was created to adore wholly. Christ alone must define his people.  I think there is much that can be learned and applied to our contemporary worship in myriad ways.