This was very well written, and I enjoyed the quotations from the fathers, but unfortunately your scholarship of Luther was very misleading. Luther believed that the Eucharist delivered the once and for all sacrifice of God's very body and blood. He disputed that it was an 'active' sacrifice that the priest 'enacts.' Lutherans believe that the Eucharist is God's very body and blood sacrificed for us. It is the presentation of the paschal sacrifice. We make a distinction that it is not a new sacrifice every time we partake, which you even see in the quote you used. Luther says that the only sacrifice in the New Testament is that of the Cross. The Eucharist, according to Luther, gives us the body and blood that was on the sacrifice of the cross. But that does not make the liturgy of the mass an act of sacrifice, but rather an act of being 'served' the 'benefits' of the sacrifice. There's still plenty to disagree on between traditions here, but please do not use quotes from the fathers that Luther and Lutherans fully agree with in a context that makes us look like we don't believe in the actual, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Again, there's plenty to disagree still, but don't misrepresent the Lutheran side.
I was about to say! Although I love that Lewis is, as Ive been closely seeing, very patristic in the way he thinks and this is mentioned here, it did annoy me the straw man. I really try to understand why Orthodox and Catholic onliners do this, because I become very annoyed when people do the same with both the Catholic and Orthodox, and yet oftentimes it is never done EO to us..
I don't see any part of the article which claimed that Luther did not believe in real presence. The article was addressing the issue of whether the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ (a function of His ascending mediation) which Luther explicitly rejected.
Just to clarify this point, the Catholic Church does not teach that "it is a new sacrifice every time we partake." Instead, per the Roman Catechism, "We therefore confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same Sacrifice as that of the cross, for the victim is one and the same, namely, Christ our Lord, who offered Himself, once only, a bloody Sacrifice on the altar of the cross. The bloody and unbloody victim are not two, but one victim only, whose Sacrifice is daily renewed in the Eucharist, in obedience to the command of our Lord: Do this for a commemoration of me."
I think the issue is that the distinction is much finer than the article presents at a glance. To say as you put it that the Eucharist "is the sacrifice of Christ" is a bit different than to say that it is its own sacrifice, or a "renewal." As I understand it, Luther's denial of the sacrifice of the Mass was not a denial in totum of the sacrificial reality of the Eucharist, but rather a denial that the Eucharist constitutes any kind of addition to the sacrifice of Calvary. Everything meritorious about the Eucharist is found on Calvary.
As is always the case, theology can't be separated from the time and context in which it was articulated. Luther was very specifically addressing the Eucharist's use in medieval Roman Catholicism, which entailed some decidedly non-patristic ideas about each instantiation of the Eucharistic sacrifice meriting something anew, as if some quantum of grace is measurably inherent in the Mass as an occurrence distinct from Calvary.
That's probably a poor way of putting it. I'm admittedly not an expert on either side of the debate. My point is that Luther seems to deny that the Mass is a "presentation" of "a sacrifice" but not that it is a "participation" in "the sacrifice," which is, again, a much finer distinction. If Christ is really present then obviously the Mass must in some manner be identified with the Passion, so it is simply the manner that is disputed rather than the identification itself.
Of course both sides would agree that the passion and death of Christ is in some sense present in the Eucharist. The difference is, as you said, in the manner and function. I can't speak for every late medieval writer, but dogmatically, Trent teaches that the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass is the means whereby the fruit of Calvary (the bloody sacrifice) is applied. This is in Session 22, if you don't believe me. The word "renewal" somewhat betrays this; if the Mass were something additional to Calvary, in that it merited something new or made new satisfaction, then it would be more of a separate act than a *renewal*, properly speaking, of what was already consummated.
I think the clearest way the difference between Luther and the Catholic Church can be explained is this: what is the meaning of the word Commemoration? (or memorial, or remembrance, if you prefer those translations). Is the commemoration primarily something made before man, or something made before God?
In the traditional view, the word commemoration (Greek anamnesis) is read in the sense of covenant renewal. This is how the word was often used in the Septuagint. The Eucharist places Our Lord before God in the symbolism of blood separated from body, and thus calls to mind, analogically speaking, the covenant which was sealed in His blood. It is the sacramental way of pleading Christ's death, of saying "remember your covenant with your people for the sake of this body which was offered up and this blood which was shed for us". Thus it is truly propitiatory, because we believe God is moved to forgive our sins and the sins of many through the mystical commemoration. In this view, it is the consecration itself, the Eucharistic prayer, that is primarily for the purpose of the forgiveness of sins, while the Communion is primarily for the purpose of union with Christ. The Eucharist is called a commemoration first and foremost because it "commemorates", or makes an anamnesis, of Christ's sacrifice before God. It is only a commemoration before man in the secondary sense. Again, this lines up with the way the Septuagint uses the word.
In Luther's view, however, the Eucharist is primarily (or even exclusively) a commemoration before the laity. Luther did not believe the Mass benefitted anyone but the communicants, and he also held that the primary purpose of Communion is the forgiveness of sins, because he collapsed the consecration and communion into one movement. This is why he replaced the Eucharistic prayer with a bare recitation of the words of consecration (even instructing the laity to eat the bread before the wine was consecrated!) and also why he preferred that the minister face the people rather than the East. For Luther, the Eucharist is entirely a function of Christ's descending mediation. Any sense of sacrifice is identified only with the people's eating the Body and Blood; "commemoration" means little more than remembering Christ's sacrifice while doing so. This was more nuanced by some other Protestant theologians, especially the Anglicans, but there is a constant and very unfortunate refrain in Reformation polemics that goes "it isn't a propitiatory sacrifice but a remembrance."
Thanks for responding. I'm still pretty new to this topic and you've given me a lot to think about.
I appreciate your explanation of covenantal renewal, I think that makes sense to me. My confusion on the Roman Catholic view is still largely to do with the forensic dimension of the "truly propitiatory" aspect. Perhaps it's more useful to boil down what I'd said previously to a concern about whether the Eucharist is an application of the once-for-all atonement on Calvary or if it is itself an "additional" atonement. Or maybe that dichotomy doesn't strictly fit the Roman Catholic paradigm. I know this discussion starts to dip into some core disagreements on justification and grace.
I can entertain the possibility that the fact of application vicariously makes atonement predicable of the Eucharist, according to similar logic that "Mary saves" is proper because Christ saves and Mary is instrumental in the Incarnation of Christ, or "the cross saves" for its instrumentality in the Passion, but it remains that salvation is not located in or original to Mary or the cross any more than the atoning aspect of the Eucharist can be other than derivative. This would, to my mind, put the emphasis back on participation rather than presentation.
Thanks again for your response, it's helped me (hopefully) articulate my difficulty a little more clearly.
"An application of the once-for-all atonement on Calvary" is a fairly accurate paraphrase of what Trent says of the Mass.
According to the opening of Session 22, Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper in order that the "bloody sacrifice, once to be accomplished on the cross, might be represented, and the memory thereof remain even unto the end of the world, and its salutary virtue be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit."
I get that people tend to get hung up on the words "truly propitiatory", but all that the word propitiatory technically refers to is something that renders someone propitious to oneself. If the Mass truly appeases God and obtains mercy from Him by the application of the virtue of Christ's passion, then it is indeed propitiatory. Being propitiatory doesn't necessite adding on top of what was merited on Calvary--a concept which would make little sense considering that in Catholic theology, the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is already of infinite value. Trent is careful to clarify this in the very chapter on the Mass's propitiatory nature: "For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits indeed of which oblation, of that bloody one to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far is this (latter) from derogating in any way from that (former oblation)."
This is a wonderful, meditative piece. As a lifelong Catholic, but one who, hopefully, has grown in his knowledge and understanding over the years (I know many who have rejected the Catholicism they learned in infant school - hardly surprising as they didn't bother to continue educating themselves in religious matters as one does with every other subject), it's very nourishing to read about subjects from the Orthodox point of view, backed by references to the Church Fathers. To me, one of the curious historical aspects of the Reformation was that the Reformers such as Luther or even Henry VIII - although I think power and money were main issues in his case - thought that they were separating from the Catholic Church and its beliefs, but in reality they were separating from the all the churches which trace their origins back to the Apostles i.e. the Orthodox churches, the Syriac church, the Coptic church etc. Though there are different traditions within these churches and the Latin tradition, fundamentally the core beliefs are the same. The differences are more like squabbles between brothers. Many Orthodox Patriarchs and Popes of recent years have acknowledged this. It's an entirely different case with Protestant churches which to some extent threw out the baby with the bathwater, not only in the case of the Eucharist, but also with other sacraments, Mary, the Theotokos or Mother of God as we recently celebrated with the anniversary of the Council of Nicea. Cardinal Newman became a Catholic, largely though his study of early church history. While I am a great admirer of C.S.Lewis (as was his friend Tolkien) I have always been puzzled by his inability to see the difference between what I call the 'original churches' and Protestant churches which felt they had to reinvent the wheel - which some would say is a very wobbly one. Although the Anglican Church did not welcome Leo XIII's declaration that Anglican orders are 'absolutely null and utterly void', it certainly made them think. After all, how would C.S. Lewis differentiate between the Eucharist in an Anglican Church where the officiating minster believes in the real presence and another where he believes its still just a piece of bread? As a Catholic friend of mine once rather naughtily whispered to me when we attended midnight mass in an Anglican Church, 'The lights are on, but no one's home'. Personally I love the Eastern churches as much as the Latin church. They are the real thing. I think it's sad and somewhat absurd that Catholics acknowledge the validity of orders, sacraments etc. of Orthodox and other Eastern churches but some Orthodox churches apparently think that all orders and sacraments apart from theirs are invalid.
This was very well written, and I enjoyed the quotations from the fathers, but unfortunately your scholarship of Luther was very misleading. Luther believed that the Eucharist delivered the once and for all sacrifice of God's very body and blood. He disputed that it was an 'active' sacrifice that the priest 'enacts.' Lutherans believe that the Eucharist is God's very body and blood sacrificed for us. It is the presentation of the paschal sacrifice. We make a distinction that it is not a new sacrifice every time we partake, which you even see in the quote you used. Luther says that the only sacrifice in the New Testament is that of the Cross. The Eucharist, according to Luther, gives us the body and blood that was on the sacrifice of the cross. But that does not make the liturgy of the mass an act of sacrifice, but rather an act of being 'served' the 'benefits' of the sacrifice. There's still plenty to disagree on between traditions here, but please do not use quotes from the fathers that Luther and Lutherans fully agree with in a context that makes us look like we don't believe in the actual, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Again, there's plenty to disagree still, but don't misrepresent the Lutheran side.
I was about to say! Although I love that Lewis is, as Ive been closely seeing, very patristic in the way he thinks and this is mentioned here, it did annoy me the straw man. I really try to understand why Orthodox and Catholic onliners do this, because I become very annoyed when people do the same with both the Catholic and Orthodox, and yet oftentimes it is never done EO to us..
I don't see any part of the article which claimed that Luther did not believe in real presence. The article was addressing the issue of whether the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ (a function of His ascending mediation) which Luther explicitly rejected.
Just to clarify this point, the Catholic Church does not teach that "it is a new sacrifice every time we partake." Instead, per the Roman Catechism, "We therefore confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same Sacrifice as that of the cross, for the victim is one and the same, namely, Christ our Lord, who offered Himself, once only, a bloody Sacrifice on the altar of the cross. The bloody and unbloody victim are not two, but one victim only, whose Sacrifice is daily renewed in the Eucharist, in obedience to the command of our Lord: Do this for a commemoration of me."
I think the issue is that the distinction is much finer than the article presents at a glance. To say as you put it that the Eucharist "is the sacrifice of Christ" is a bit different than to say that it is its own sacrifice, or a "renewal." As I understand it, Luther's denial of the sacrifice of the Mass was not a denial in totum of the sacrificial reality of the Eucharist, but rather a denial that the Eucharist constitutes any kind of addition to the sacrifice of Calvary. Everything meritorious about the Eucharist is found on Calvary.
As is always the case, theology can't be separated from the time and context in which it was articulated. Luther was very specifically addressing the Eucharist's use in medieval Roman Catholicism, which entailed some decidedly non-patristic ideas about each instantiation of the Eucharistic sacrifice meriting something anew, as if some quantum of grace is measurably inherent in the Mass as an occurrence distinct from Calvary.
That's probably a poor way of putting it. I'm admittedly not an expert on either side of the debate. My point is that Luther seems to deny that the Mass is a "presentation" of "a sacrifice" but not that it is a "participation" in "the sacrifice," which is, again, a much finer distinction. If Christ is really present then obviously the Mass must in some manner be identified with the Passion, so it is simply the manner that is disputed rather than the identification itself.
Of course both sides would agree that the passion and death of Christ is in some sense present in the Eucharist. The difference is, as you said, in the manner and function. I can't speak for every late medieval writer, but dogmatically, Trent teaches that the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass is the means whereby the fruit of Calvary (the bloody sacrifice) is applied. This is in Session 22, if you don't believe me. The word "renewal" somewhat betrays this; if the Mass were something additional to Calvary, in that it merited something new or made new satisfaction, then it would be more of a separate act than a *renewal*, properly speaking, of what was already consummated.
I think the clearest way the difference between Luther and the Catholic Church can be explained is this: what is the meaning of the word Commemoration? (or memorial, or remembrance, if you prefer those translations). Is the commemoration primarily something made before man, or something made before God?
In the traditional view, the word commemoration (Greek anamnesis) is read in the sense of covenant renewal. This is how the word was often used in the Septuagint. The Eucharist places Our Lord before God in the symbolism of blood separated from body, and thus calls to mind, analogically speaking, the covenant which was sealed in His blood. It is the sacramental way of pleading Christ's death, of saying "remember your covenant with your people for the sake of this body which was offered up and this blood which was shed for us". Thus it is truly propitiatory, because we believe God is moved to forgive our sins and the sins of many through the mystical commemoration. In this view, it is the consecration itself, the Eucharistic prayer, that is primarily for the purpose of the forgiveness of sins, while the Communion is primarily for the purpose of union with Christ. The Eucharist is called a commemoration first and foremost because it "commemorates", or makes an anamnesis, of Christ's sacrifice before God. It is only a commemoration before man in the secondary sense. Again, this lines up with the way the Septuagint uses the word.
In Luther's view, however, the Eucharist is primarily (or even exclusively) a commemoration before the laity. Luther did not believe the Mass benefitted anyone but the communicants, and he also held that the primary purpose of Communion is the forgiveness of sins, because he collapsed the consecration and communion into one movement. This is why he replaced the Eucharistic prayer with a bare recitation of the words of consecration (even instructing the laity to eat the bread before the wine was consecrated!) and also why he preferred that the minister face the people rather than the East. For Luther, the Eucharist is entirely a function of Christ's descending mediation. Any sense of sacrifice is identified only with the people's eating the Body and Blood; "commemoration" means little more than remembering Christ's sacrifice while doing so. This was more nuanced by some other Protestant theologians, especially the Anglicans, but there is a constant and very unfortunate refrain in Reformation polemics that goes "it isn't a propitiatory sacrifice but a remembrance."
Thanks for responding. I'm still pretty new to this topic and you've given me a lot to think about.
I appreciate your explanation of covenantal renewal, I think that makes sense to me. My confusion on the Roman Catholic view is still largely to do with the forensic dimension of the "truly propitiatory" aspect. Perhaps it's more useful to boil down what I'd said previously to a concern about whether the Eucharist is an application of the once-for-all atonement on Calvary or if it is itself an "additional" atonement. Or maybe that dichotomy doesn't strictly fit the Roman Catholic paradigm. I know this discussion starts to dip into some core disagreements on justification and grace.
I can entertain the possibility that the fact of application vicariously makes atonement predicable of the Eucharist, according to similar logic that "Mary saves" is proper because Christ saves and Mary is instrumental in the Incarnation of Christ, or "the cross saves" for its instrumentality in the Passion, but it remains that salvation is not located in or original to Mary or the cross any more than the atoning aspect of the Eucharist can be other than derivative. This would, to my mind, put the emphasis back on participation rather than presentation.
Thanks again for your response, it's helped me (hopefully) articulate my difficulty a little more clearly.
"An application of the once-for-all atonement on Calvary" is a fairly accurate paraphrase of what Trent says of the Mass.
According to the opening of Session 22, Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper in order that the "bloody sacrifice, once to be accomplished on the cross, might be represented, and the memory thereof remain even unto the end of the world, and its salutary virtue be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit."
I get that people tend to get hung up on the words "truly propitiatory", but all that the word propitiatory technically refers to is something that renders someone propitious to oneself. If the Mass truly appeases God and obtains mercy from Him by the application of the virtue of Christ's passion, then it is indeed propitiatory. Being propitiatory doesn't necessite adding on top of what was merited on Calvary--a concept which would make little sense considering that in Catholic theology, the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is already of infinite value. Trent is careful to clarify this in the very chapter on the Mass's propitiatory nature: "For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits indeed of which oblation, of that bloody one to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far is this (latter) from derogating in any way from that (former oblation)."
This is a wonderful, meditative piece. As a lifelong Catholic, but one who, hopefully, has grown in his knowledge and understanding over the years (I know many who have rejected the Catholicism they learned in infant school - hardly surprising as they didn't bother to continue educating themselves in religious matters as one does with every other subject), it's very nourishing to read about subjects from the Orthodox point of view, backed by references to the Church Fathers. To me, one of the curious historical aspects of the Reformation was that the Reformers such as Luther or even Henry VIII - although I think power and money were main issues in his case - thought that they were separating from the Catholic Church and its beliefs, but in reality they were separating from the all the churches which trace their origins back to the Apostles i.e. the Orthodox churches, the Syriac church, the Coptic church etc. Though there are different traditions within these churches and the Latin tradition, fundamentally the core beliefs are the same. The differences are more like squabbles between brothers. Many Orthodox Patriarchs and Popes of recent years have acknowledged this. It's an entirely different case with Protestant churches which to some extent threw out the baby with the bathwater, not only in the case of the Eucharist, but also with other sacraments, Mary, the Theotokos or Mother of God as we recently celebrated with the anniversary of the Council of Nicea. Cardinal Newman became a Catholic, largely though his study of early church history. While I am a great admirer of C.S.Lewis (as was his friend Tolkien) I have always been puzzled by his inability to see the difference between what I call the 'original churches' and Protestant churches which felt they had to reinvent the wheel - which some would say is a very wobbly one. Although the Anglican Church did not welcome Leo XIII's declaration that Anglican orders are 'absolutely null and utterly void', it certainly made them think. After all, how would C.S. Lewis differentiate between the Eucharist in an Anglican Church where the officiating minster believes in the real presence and another where he believes its still just a piece of bread? As a Catholic friend of mine once rather naughtily whispered to me when we attended midnight mass in an Anglican Church, 'The lights are on, but no one's home'. Personally I love the Eastern churches as much as the Latin church. They are the real thing. I think it's sad and somewhat absurd that Catholics acknowledge the validity of orders, sacraments etc. of Orthodox and other Eastern churches but some Orthodox churches apparently think that all orders and sacraments apart from theirs are invalid.
I feel you, man. All sides deserve to be represented well. We just have to stick to it and hope that by being charitable others will follow suite