Baptist Commuion

I see the sacramental theology of the Eucharist as secondary to the rite itself. The Eucharist has always been for Christians what the Hajj always has been for Muslims: as a public sign of universal communion, it has to be done in a certain way, i.e., one that fulfills specific criteria, or it is neither obeying the command which instituted it nor fulfilling the purpose for which it was instituted. A so-called "Lord's Supper" which uses shortbread and grape juice is not the Eucharist, and it is hardly a sign of Christian unity if one's particular group claiming nevertheless to be performing it does so completely differently from everyone else.

 

I agree, it is not the Eucharist (and they don't claim that it is). For them it is "communion," a substantially different rite. Yet both are, or can be, an anamnesis of our Lord's death for our redemption; therein lies the unity of all redeemed believers.

 

Please note that when I say “it is not the Eucharist”, I am saying that it does not fulfill the Lord’s command and example as to how it should be done. What we call it is secondary to the rite itself.

 

Memorialism is a man made up rite. It is outside of the church and has no place in the church.

 

It cannot be a true anamnesis unless it follows the Lord’s command and example for how it should be done. It cannot be a sign of Christian unity if they’re doing it differently from everyone else.

I guess that depends on what is meant by “memorialism”. (I agree with you about the Baptist/low church evangelical version of it.) The Lord’s command was to “do this in remembrance of me”. If we adhere to the properly Semitic understanding of a ‘memorial’, it has a mystical connotation that involves returning spiritually to the moment of the rite’s institution. Partaking of communion makes us all present at the Last Supper in a mystical fashion, just as observant Jews believe all Jews are present at the first Passover when it is celebrated. And by recalling his death, Jesus has a real presence in our will, motivating us toward repentance and moral union with God.

 

I am going with the common understand of the Baptist communion memorialism

 

Perhaps you could expand on that and explain what you mean by "following the Lord's command and example for how it should be done." He took the bread and spoke over it, then he took the cup and spoke over it. How precise does a "true anamnesis" need to be? If we say that the contents of the cup need to be fermented, then do we also say that the ingredients of the bread need to be the same as that which Jesus spoke over? Do we say that the bread must be unleavened, just as that bread was? Does the cup need to be of the same metal composition as the one Jesus passed around? Does the table need to be a certain height? Do we need to recline about the table as the disciples did? In other words, where do you want to draw the line and why, and how is that line not arbitrary?

 

I would advise against that. Attending is one thing, but receiving signifies that one believes in something different to one's "bread" and beliefs. In other words, it could be scandalous.

Just simply smile and pass along the collection plate if you don't want to give anything.

What did your parent's or Sunday school teacher's teach you? Perhaps do some reading as well?

 

I'm bringing back this old thread to highlight what Tiffy rightly stated: "All sacraments are symbolic. That is the meaning of the word sacrament. The Communion is symbolic of the communion the believer has obtained with God through regeneration and circumcision of heart and the infusing of new life in Christ through repentance and faith in God's Saving Grace." I'd like to expand upon that thought.

The Latin sacramentum is not found in Scripture. The Latin fathers, while looking for a way to better explain the nature of the Eucharist, chose this word for good reason. In the Roman world, a sacramentum took place when a soldier entered the army: the soldier made an oath of allegiance to the state and its laws. Another Roman sacramentum was the bond put up by two parties in a civil suit.

How do these concepts apply to the Eucharist, you ask? When we come to the railing, we publicly identify ourselves as Christians (followers of, and belonging to, Christ), and we show outwardly our reaffirmation that we pledge our allegiance to God. When we receive the elements, we receive God's 'bond' which pledges and reaffirms to us that He has extended His grace and His righteousness to us and that He accepts us as His own children, brothers and sisters with Christ. In the Eucharist we are receiving a sign that the grace God gave us when we came to faith, and the good will and right-standing God extended to us when we became His, still dwell richly in our hearts.

Article 25 verifies this two-pronged concept: "Sacraments ordained of Christ are not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they are certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God's good will towards us, by which He works invisibly in us, and not only quickens, but also strengthens and confirms, our faith in Him." It is important, though, to recognize that the clause "by which He works invisibly in us..." refers not to the sign (the elements) but to "God's good will" of which the Sacrament is a sign. The Sacrament itself is a sign of the grace by which God works in us, and it is a sign of God's good will toward us by which He works invisibly in us. Picture, if you will, being handed a document with God's official seal upon it, and the document says, "I hereby put you in remembrance that I, Jesus, gave my mortal life for you, and have not forgotten you; seeing as you have not turned away but are yet professing your faith in Me, I renew this day my pledge to keep you, to sustain you, and to preserve you as a member of My household." Receiving the Eucharist symbolically involves this sort of renewal (or reminder) of bonds or pledges between the communicant and God.

Jewel's Treatise on the Sacraments expands upon the concept of Eucharistic symbolism. Jewel wrote, "A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign, whereby God sealeth up His grace in our hearts to the confirmation of our faith." If we were to stop reading right there, we might be forced to ask the question: does he mean that God imparts His grace to our hearts in the Sacrament? But that is not what he says. Rather, he says that God "sealeth up" (or places a seal upon) the "grace in our hearts." Leaning upon our knowledge from Scripture that we become a child of God and are sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit from the very moment when we came to Christ, we can conclude that the "grace in our hearts" has in all likelihood been deposited there long before we came to the railing and that our Lord is once again placing His "seal" upon it to reassure us that He has not forgotten or abandoned us.

Picking up right where we left off in the Treatise, Jewel next quotes Augustine: "St. Augustine saith, “A Sacrament is a visible sign of grace invisible". And that we may the better understand him, he telleth us what thing we should call a sign: “A sign is a thing, that besides the sight itself, which it offereth to the senses, causeth of itself some other certain thing to come to knowledge.” In Baptism, the water is the sign, and the thing signified is the grace of God. We see the water; but the grace of God is invisible, we cannot see it. Moreover he saith, “Signs, when they are applied to godly things, are
called Sacraments".”

In the Eucharist, the sign we see and receive into our bodies is the bread and wine. The "thing signified" is the mortal body of Christ which was put to death on the cross, and the the precious blood of Christ shed on that cross. But more to the point, those elements signify the redemptive nature of Christ's sacrifice, and the saving grace He made available to us-- the same grace which we received by believing (trusting) in Christ and His redemption. This grace dwells richly in the heart of each believer/disciple of Jesus Christ; the Eucharist is God's tangible (touchable) reminder of that grace and of what He has done/is doing/will do for us.

So, Article 25 teaches that the Eucharist is (1) a badge or token of our own profession of faith, and (2) a sign and witness of the grace and favor God has blessed us with. It is by that grace and favor (not by the sign itself) that God continually quickens us (gives us life), strengthens our faith, and works invisibly in us by the Holy Spirit. The sign is a reminder of what God is doing in us and for us. Strictly speaking, the Article does not teach that the Eucharist is a 'vehicle' or 'conveyance' of God's grace, but many Anglicans have interpreted it as a support for such a concept. I think such an interpretation of Article 25 is neither necessary nor warranted.

Jewel's Treatise goes on to state, by use of another quote from Augustine: “"If Sacraments had not a certain likeness and representation of the things whereof they are Sacraments, then indeed they were no Sacraments". And because of this likeness which they have with the things they represent, they are oftentimes termed by the names of the things themselves." Jewel says it is quite appropriate and understandable that we call the elements "the Body and Blood of Christ," because of the "likeness" between the Sacrament (the sign) and "the things they represent" (Christ's body and blood on the cross, which we are commanded to remember when we partake: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. I wouldn't stop there, though; I would add that whenever we receive the Sacrament we not only proclaim Christ's death for the forgiveness of our sins, but we also aver that we have become partakers of His death and resurrection.

At this juncture it is good to read a pertinent section of Article 28: "The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves, one to another, but rather it is [also] a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death: to those who rightly, worthily, and with faith receive it, the bread that we break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ...The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means by which the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith." Notice how the Article says that the Eucharist is a sacrament (i.e., an outward and visible sign, per Jewel and Art. 25) "of our redemption by Christ's death." It does not say the Eucharist is a sign that we are receiving a new or additional impartation of grace, or even that we are receiving our redemption by partaking of the sacrament; rather, by the sacrament we receive a sign of something that has already taken place: the redemption won by (or through) Christ's death on the cross two millennia ago. The Article goes on to state that we do (with full legitimacy) call the elements "the body" and "the blood" of Christ, but notice how it says communicants receive Christ's body and blood: they are received in a "heavenly" or "spiritual" manner by means of faith (as opposed to physicality; take note of the repudiation of transubstantiation). Thus, putting together what Jewel brings from Augustine and what the Article states, it is quite reasonable to conclude that we may regard the Eucharistic elements as Christ's body and blood for the reason, not that they are changed, but that they represent and bear witness to the thing which they signify: i.e, the broken body and shed blood of Jesus upon the cross. This is what Christ intended to represent and bear witness to through the bread and wine at the Last Supper, too.

 

Just last week Christine, who has moved to the same parish and independent living community as I have been in for the past three years was pulled aside by one of our church wardens and informed that a parisioner, (who remains anonymous) has accused her of "Not believing in transubstantiation". This 'accusation' was presumed to have been based upon something she had said at a Lent Study Group held this year, though the accuser will not say what they actually objected to.

Christine had offered her services as an ordained and experienced retired prist to our priest here when she moved in to the parish, at his invitation, and has been given permission to officiate by our Bishop, anywhere in the diocese. The parish is Anglo-'Catholic' to the extent that it was marginally by a majority of ONE apparently, anti women's ministry and actually Roman Catholic in much of it's doctrine and some of its praxis. (The priest, who is retiring in January next year has expressed regret that if the Roman Catholic Church will not have women in the priesthood then neither should the Church he presides over, consequently he won't let her celebrate communion, nor would he let the Bishop who is also a woman, or a previous female curate in training here, celebrate communion in his church).

My point here is though, that it just goes to show how many (High Church) - 'Anglicans' - are not really Anglican in either praxis or doctrine, but are actually Roman Catholics in disguise, importing their own Popish errors and distinctive superstitions into a Church of England parish church and trying to control and rule the roost there.

P.S. I liked your latest post in this thread so much that I may use some of it in my defense if I am accused myself here of "Not believing in transubstatiation" or "Not believing the person celebrating the Eucharist is actually Jesus's 'stand in', conjuring his own physical body and blood down onto the altar."
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Catholic Anglicanism made me.

We wanted to be part of the larger church.

One of the lost hopes of the '60s was that all the high churches almost got back together. Vatican II gave all of Anglicanism a nod and the Pope gave the Archbishop of Canterbury one of his bishop's rings.

Then bam, it was all taken away. That was my introduction to women's ordination.

For me it's not hostility to Christine nor anyone else.

I know, "then convert." I did what I had to do.

 

We know what part of Article 28 the parishioner does not understand! Perhaps someone would be so thoughtful as to hand the person a copy of that particular Article, with clause #2 brightly highlighted.

Thank you kindly. I seriously doubt anyone on this forum would accuse you of such, but obviously you might encounter that issue locally!

 

My comment was not aimed at Anglo-Catholicism or it's doctrines. Neither was it aimed at Roman Catholic doctrines, which are a matter for itself. It was about bigots in the Anglican Church who promote doctrines that are not Anglican but which are accepted and promoted in the Roman Catholic denomination, surreptitiously trying to use those doctrines as justification for their misogynistic tendencies by attacking and accusing Anglican female ordained clergy, in the hope of opposing their ministry in the church and effectively trying to silence them. Corinth all over again.
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@Tiffy, I know my place as a guest on a Protestant board.

It seems to me that "aiming at Anglo-Catholicism or its doctrines" and "aiming at Roman Catholic doctrines," which you say you're not doing, are really saying the same thing as aiming at "doctrines that are not Anglican but which are accepted and promoted in the Roman Catholic denomination," which you say you're doing.

Doctrines that are not really Anglican = Anglo-Catholic doctrines = Roman Catholic doctrines.

I say this as a writer and editor for 25 years; I proofread from home now and love it. A nice thing about my field is that no matter your bosses' ideology, the rules of grammar and logic in writing are universal.

 

The Anglican Denomination is not a Protestant denomination. It is still Catholic but Reformed. I don't think this board would describe itself as 'Protestant' by any stretch of the imagination either. And you are more than just a guest and your opinions are considered valuable.

The Anglican Communion's view of the doctrine of transubstantiation is that it is not a doctrine of the Anglican communion. I can't see any way round that for Anglo 'Catholics'.
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Methinks Tiffy doth not Protest enough! I disagree with you on this point; the Anglican Church came about as a pushback against RC excesses and doctrinal errors, and this was every bit as much in protest against those problems as was Luther's theses. Just because no one nailed the Anglicans' 39 Articles to a door doesn't mean Anglicans were not protesting the RC "control freak" tendencies of that period. Besides, labeling Anglicanism as "Reformed" obviously hooks it to the Protestant Reformation. It is a matter of historical record that many of the pivotal Anglicans of the 16th and 17th Centuries were heavily influenced by the writings of reformers on the continent.

Anglicans are not Catholic. Anglican are catholic.

PS-- about your mention of "bigots," would the opposite of bigotry be.... monogatry?

 

Ok, that made me LOL! Very clever!

 

Is 'monogatry' a word in the USA? Am I suffering a wave of lexicological 'fomo' in my ignorance of Americanisms?
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It’s just a witty pun, no more, no less.