Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Google Searches to our Site
It is interesting to look at our eXTeMe Tracking stats. There are at least two searches a day where someone out there searches for "Lutheran Confessions" or a close variation. Glad you found your way to us! There's got to be a virtual pot of coffee always on at our blog for you.
Sacraments by Rowan Williams
Badges of Profession: Sacraments and Archbishop Rowan Williams
Clint usually respects my job by refusing to suggest books for me to read. He literally did cry out in protest when he recently found out that I have not read anything by Rowan Williams. At least not that I can remember. So he laid the imperative on me quickly to do so. And, I do what I'm told.
So I picked up his On Christian Theology and looked at some of the essays on the sacraments. One of them approaches the sacraments anthropologically, from the perspective of human community and communication. He compares the sacraments as signs (using traditional western language) to human sign giving and making. This enterprise, he argues, is fundamentally religious. He then says, of course, Isreal had signs that constitute their community. The Torah functions in all sorts of ways and so on. The same thing happens in the church and in Jesus.
He draws upon the identification of Jesus as the unique sacrament of God. This then leads to some excellent comments on the sacramentality of the church and some proposals to stem off the questions of human and divine action in the sacraments.
I have to say that despite some excellent insights, Williams fails to presuade me that I should care all that much about the church's signs or the sign community. He interprets the churches signs wholly in a way that he does not argue for how they differ from the general human creation of signs. That he does not need to do if he is presupposing this and then utilizing the ritual descriptions to enliven his sacramentology. But there is not a hint of this. I am too pursuaded by the crisis in theology provoked or indicated in 1919 by the Romans commentary of Barth (as well prepared for by previous theologians in his heritage, such as Ritschl, even Schleiermacher) to so readily grant this basic continuity between human sign making and sacramental sign making. God's action in all human and creaturely things is of course there. God works life and death and all in all. But that God's work is hidden becuase it is the work of God who actively hides himself from us.
Of course, it God speaks to the creature through the creature, as Oswald Bayer quotes Johann Georg Hamman. Williams is of course on to this fact. But his discussion requirs more at this specific point to show the transition from our mode of observation of human communicative action and its sign-character to the invocation of God's action. Indeed, from what I can glean from just this essay, Williams is very wooly about that point of speaking through the creature. That God speaks to us, he wishes to say. But to identify this action or its relation to human action, Williams' essay seems to think that in the discussion of sacraments, it may be quietly passed over. He does get at it somewhat in the end in claiming that all human sign making is enabled by God's primordial act of love. I'll have to think more on this.
At any rate, I am grateful for the suggestion, Clint. Now just dont' suggest anything more until September.
Clint usually respects my job by refusing to suggest books for me to read. He literally did cry out in protest when he recently found out that I have not read anything by Rowan Williams. At least not that I can remember. So he laid the imperative on me quickly to do so. And, I do what I'm told.
So I picked up his On Christian Theology and looked at some of the essays on the sacraments. One of them approaches the sacraments anthropologically, from the perspective of human community and communication. He compares the sacraments as signs (using traditional western language) to human sign giving and making. This enterprise, he argues, is fundamentally religious. He then says, of course, Isreal had signs that constitute their community. The Torah functions in all sorts of ways and so on. The same thing happens in the church and in Jesus.
He draws upon the identification of Jesus as the unique sacrament of God. This then leads to some excellent comments on the sacramentality of the church and some proposals to stem off the questions of human and divine action in the sacraments.
I have to say that despite some excellent insights, Williams fails to presuade me that I should care all that much about the church's signs or the sign community. He interprets the churches signs wholly in a way that he does not argue for how they differ from the general human creation of signs. That he does not need to do if he is presupposing this and then utilizing the ritual descriptions to enliven his sacramentology. But there is not a hint of this. I am too pursuaded by the crisis in theology provoked or indicated in 1919 by the Romans commentary of Barth (as well prepared for by previous theologians in his heritage, such as Ritschl, even Schleiermacher) to so readily grant this basic continuity between human sign making and sacramental sign making. God's action in all human and creaturely things is of course there. God works life and death and all in all. But that God's work is hidden becuase it is the work of God who actively hides himself from us.
Of course, it God speaks to the creature through the creature, as Oswald Bayer quotes Johann Georg Hamman. Williams is of course on to this fact. But his discussion requirs more at this specific point to show the transition from our mode of observation of human communicative action and its sign-character to the invocation of God's action. Indeed, from what I can glean from just this essay, Williams is very wooly about that point of speaking through the creature. That God speaks to us, he wishes to say. But to identify this action or its relation to human action, Williams' essay seems to think that in the discussion of sacraments, it may be quietly passed over. He does get at it somewhat in the end in claiming that all human sign making is enabled by God's primordial act of love. I'll have to think more on this.
At any rate, I am grateful for the suggestion, Clint. Now just dont' suggest anything more until September.
Institution and Freedom
Institution and Freedom
Clint strikingly suggests that we should replace discussion of the hidden/revealed curch but in terms of the Spirit's advent. The prophets speak of a "drought of the world of the Lord" and there of course is the withdrawl of the Spirit feared by the Psalmist. One would need to say more than Clint does. The rub of this is that the Catholics and Orthodox that follow Clint's line can insist on the pneumatoloigcal freedom to pour out but it is that on which the Spirit broods that matters. Both of course insist on the Christological institution of the episcopal hierarchy as well as the the insitutiton of the sacraments by Christ. Are you thinking along Volf's lines here? The antecedent institution or gathered bunch of folks surely depends upon the coming of the Spirit but does the Spirit create that institution or free it?
Clint strikingly suggests that we should replace discussion of the hidden/revealed curch but in terms of the Spirit's advent. The prophets speak of a "drought of the world of the Lord" and there of course is the withdrawl of the Spirit feared by the Psalmist. One would need to say more than Clint does. The rub of this is that the Catholics and Orthodox that follow Clint's line can insist on the pneumatoloigcal freedom to pour out but it is that on which the Spirit broods that matters. Both of course insist on the Christological institution of the episcopal hierarchy as well as the the insitutiton of the sacraments by Christ. Are you thinking along Volf's lines here? The antecedent institution or gathered bunch of folks surely depends upon the coming of the Spirit but does the Spirit create that institution or free it?
Monday, February 02, 2004
Article VII. Pneumatologically Speaking
Article VII. Pneumatologically Speaking
Could it be that part of our confusion regarding the hidden/revealed church stems from a lack of pneumatological reflection on this topic? The sacraments and the Word are in an important sense centered Christologically within the Lutheran tradition, but the word & sacraments are "in the Spirit" as well. We certainly can & must speak of Christ's "real presence" in the meal, and the presence of the Word in the preached word. This is the testament and revelation by which the church is established, but from a pneumatological perspective, we are called also to speak of the "institutions" and "charismata" of the church as well (categories traditionally lifted up by Catholic and Pentecostal theology respectivelY). In the Spirit, the ecclesiology of the church matters for the Spirit "institutes" the church in and through the Word. In the Spirit, the fruits made manifest by the Spirit matter as well, and these charismata have a life in the church, especially in their establishing ecstatic fellowship and participation.
In other words, we might say (correct my formulation if it is wrong-headed) the Spirit is the life of the church spoken through the Word by the Father.
So, rather than speaking of a hidden/revealed church, might we speak of the life of the church in the Spirit, not per revelation, but per the Trinitarian love and relationship between the Son and the Spirit- church not as hidden/revealed but rather as "not poured out/poured out"? For the institutions and charismata of the church are the outpourings of the Spirit that are spoken into the community through the right administration of the sacraments and proclamation. And given the reciprocal relationship of the Son and the Spirit, the Spirit too in the institutions and charismata it pours out also participates in right administration and true proclamation.
Responses?
An additional thought:
It seems to me that pneumatological reflections would also help us make the distinction between doctrine and proclamation more clear- in a similar way we would need to reflect on the epiclesis in the meal, the invoking of the Spirit at baptism, the laying on of hands at ordination, the perichoretic union as sacramentally manifested in marriage and monastic rites, unction before death. This pneumatological dimension would effect a rapprochement in the the sacramental views of Lutherans and Catholics, for the Lutherans have self-limited their sacramental breadth for the sake of a Christology that is not informed by the breadth of "catholic" (from both east and west) thought on the work of the Spirit in the sacramental life of the church. Boy, don't I sound Catholic?
Could it be that part of our confusion regarding the hidden/revealed church stems from a lack of pneumatological reflection on this topic? The sacraments and the Word are in an important sense centered Christologically within the Lutheran tradition, but the word & sacraments are "in the Spirit" as well. We certainly can & must speak of Christ's "real presence" in the meal, and the presence of the Word in the preached word. This is the testament and revelation by which the church is established, but from a pneumatological perspective, we are called also to speak of the "institutions" and "charismata" of the church as well (categories traditionally lifted up by Catholic and Pentecostal theology respectivelY). In the Spirit, the ecclesiology of the church matters for the Spirit "institutes" the church in and through the Word. In the Spirit, the fruits made manifest by the Spirit matter as well, and these charismata have a life in the church, especially in their establishing ecstatic fellowship and participation.
In other words, we might say (correct my formulation if it is wrong-headed) the Spirit is the life of the church spoken through the Word by the Father.
So, rather than speaking of a hidden/revealed church, might we speak of the life of the church in the Spirit, not per revelation, but per the Trinitarian love and relationship between the Son and the Spirit- church not as hidden/revealed but rather as "not poured out/poured out"? For the institutions and charismata of the church are the outpourings of the Spirit that are spoken into the community through the right administration of the sacraments and proclamation. And given the reciprocal relationship of the Son and the Spirit, the Spirit too in the institutions and charismata it pours out also participates in right administration and true proclamation.
Responses?
An additional thought:
It seems to me that pneumatological reflections would also help us make the distinction between doctrine and proclamation more clear- in a similar way we would need to reflect on the epiclesis in the meal, the invoking of the Spirit at baptism, the laying on of hands at ordination, the perichoretic union as sacramentally manifested in marriage and monastic rites, unction before death. This pneumatological dimension would effect a rapprochement in the the sacramental views of Lutherans and Catholics, for the Lutherans have self-limited their sacramental breadth for the sake of a Christology that is not informed by the breadth of "catholic" (from both east and west) thought on the work of the Spirit in the sacramental life of the church. Boy, don't I sound Catholic?
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