Transcript WORD AND SACRAMENT

WORD AND SACRAMENT
CALVIN AND BARTH
“THE HOLY BANQUET”
CHRISTIANITY AS SACRAMENTAL
• A SACRAMENT MAKES THE WORD CONCRETE
John 1:14
• CREATION & REDEMPTION
• INCARNATION, CROSS AND RESURRECTION
• THE “BODY OF CHRIST”
• THE BODY: HUMAN SEXUALITY
• SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT/ JUSTICE
THE EUCHARIST
A SOURCE OF CONFLICT
• ZWINGLI
• LUTHER
• BUCER
• CALVIN
• TRENT
CALVIN AND THE ANABAPTISTS
• The debate about baptism
• The covenant of grace
• The response of faith & discipleship
• Discipline and the third use of the law
ZWINGLI
• The Eucharist was a replica of the Supper
shared by the disciples with their Lord on the
night before he was crucified. He was
present, not in the way he had been then, but
through his Spirit, and became known yet
again through the “breaking of the bread.”
THE HOLY BANQUET
• BUCER’S INFLUENCE ON CALVIN
• CALVIN’S GENEVAN LITURGY
• ALWAYS WORD AND SACRAMENT
• CALVIN’S EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGY
CALVIN
“We loudly proclaim the communion of flesh and blood,
which is exhibited to believers in the Supper; and we
distinctly show that that flesh is truly meat, and that
blood truly drink – that the soul not contented with an
imaginary conception enjoys them in very truth. That
presence of Christ, by which we are ingrafted in him,
we by no means exclude from the Supper, nor shroud in
darkness, though we hold that there must be no local
limitation, that the glorious body of Christ must not be
degraded to earthly elements; that there must be no
fiction of transubstantiating the bread into Christ, and
afterward worshipping it as Christ. “
THE REAL PRESENCE
• The critical issue for all, whether Catholic, Lutheran, Zwinglian or Calvinist,
was how we understand the presence of Christ in the Eucharist specifically
in relation to the consecrated bread and wine.
• Calvin believed that Zwingli had rightly objected to the idea that the Mass
was a means of salvation and the danger of superstition. Zwingli was
correct in gong back to the New Testament and early church practice in
reforming the Eucharist as a real meal or what he called a “holy banquet.”
• “The trouble was, in Calvin’s eyes, that Zwingli reduced the sacraments to
acts by which we attest our faith, whereas they are first and foremost acts
of God to strengthen our faith.” The Eucharist, along with Baptism, is a
sacrament, and as such a means of grace not just a confession of faith.
• In eating the bread and drinking the wine we receive the “body and blood
of Christ” which was offered once-for-all on the cross. For Zwingli this was
unacceptable, largely because for him the bodily presence could never be
confused with the spiritual presence of Christ.
• The Spirit and faith
A MYSTERY
• Thus we draw life from his flesh and blood, so
that they are not undeservedly called our
“food.” How it happens, I confess, is far above
the measure of my intelligence. Hence I adore
the mystery rather than labour to understand
it. John Calvin
In a letter to the reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli,
* August 1555,
REACTIONS TO CALVIN
• Many later Calvinists thought Calvin’s language was far too
close to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass and
preferred Zwingli’s position.
• But neither the Lutherans nor the Catholics felt that
Calvin’s position was adequate.
• At stake was the objectivity of Christ’s presence in the
bread and wine. For Calvin this came about not through
priestly action, but solely through the Word of promise and
the action of the Spirit awakening faith in the believer to
whom the bread and wine thereby became the body and
blood of Christ.
GRACE and GRATITUDE
• Eucharist as means of grace
• The response of gratitude/responsibility
The living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2)
• Christian/congregational formation
– In the image of the incarnate, crucified and risen
Christ (Bonhoeffer)
CHRISTIAN LITURGY
• A common life of prayer, scripture
reading and teaching, breaking bread
together. (cf. Acts 2:42; Romans 12:1-2)
• Remembering , celebrating, anticipating
• A prelude to and preparation for mission
The structure of the liturgy
• THE SYNAGOGUE AND THE UPPER ROOM
• THE LITURGY OF THE WORD
• THE LITURGY OF THE SUPPER
• MISSION
CALVIN’S GENEVAN LITURGY
• The basic structure and some elements of the
Mass were retained in simplified form,
• The congregation was not made up of observers
watching the Mass but a community actively
engaged in the service through appropriate
responses and psalm singing.
• The preaching of the Word was sacramental, that
is, a means of grace
• The celebration of the Lord’s Supper was equally
important because it had been instituted by
Jesus himself.
Calvin writes:“the Communion of the Holy Supper
of Jesus Christ” should, “as a rule” be held “every
Sunday”. He continues: “it was not instituted by
Jesus for making a commemoration two or three
times a year, but for a frequent exercise of our
faith and charity, of which the congregation of
Christians should make use as often as they be
assembled…”
Articles Concerning the Organization of the Church
and of Worship at Geneva (1537)
BARTH ON THE EUCHARIST
• Reformed churches no “longer even realise that a
service without sacraments is one which is outwardly
incomplete. As a rule we hold such outwardly
incomplete services as if it were perfectly natural to do
so.”
• “Why do the numerous movements and attempts to
bring the liturgy of the Reformed church up to date …
prove without exception so unfruitful? Is it not just
because they do not fix their attention on this
fundamental defect, the incompleteness of our usual
service, i.e. the lack of sacraments?”
A EUCHARISTIC COMMUNITY
• It is a fact that in remarkable and
instructive tension with the spiritual
and even otherworldly character of
Calvin’s Christianity his community in
its original conception is so expressly
a eucharistic community. Karl Barth
LITURGICAL RENEWAL
• The renewal of Reformed worship will not come about
by an uncritical borrowing of liturgical elements from
other traditions.
• The Reformed tradition has a liturgical integrity that is
worth affirming both for our own sake and for the sake
of enriching the ecumenical church as a whole.
• The liturgy it is primarily God who acts in Word and
Sacrament, and we who respond in faith, thanksgiving
and mission.
• But there is no reason we should not learn from other
liturgical traditions and practices within the framework
of what we regard as important.
CONTEXTUAL LITURGY
• The Reformed tradition has always recognised the
importance of the historical context within which the
church exists.
• There is a particular need for the churches of the
Reformed tradition within the South African contextto
recognise that the renewal of liturgical life cannot be
considered apart from our multi-cultural diversity
• An opportunity for liturgical renewal, and a challenge
to recognise that such renewal is not unrelated to the
struggles for justice and reconciliation in the world.
LITURGY & AESTHETICS
• The awakening of an aesthetic sensibility within the
church which is able to appreciate form texture and
colour, to appreciate beauty with all our, senses
• “The artistic impoverishment and aesthetic starkness
of Reformed liturgy is a natural consequence” of the
separation of the Word from the Sacrament.
• “By contrast,” where proclamation is not allowed to
overwhelm the liturgy, where the dimension of
worship is given its rightful place, there the richness of
life will put in its appearance. There colour and gesture
and movement and peace and sound will enter in as
vehicles of praise and gratitude. Wolterstorff