Kyle's Response

Note: Kyle graciously responded to my earlier post on Apostolic Succession and Validity in the comment section. I post it here for easier reading and reflection.

I also won't be able to make adequate response for a few days as I am off a daughter's college graduation out of town. Blessed Pentecost to all, even those with ecclesial communities of questionable pedigree! ;-)

From Captain Sacrament:
Okay, it's taken some work, but let's see if I'm following you.

You agree that a mechanistic notion of apostolic succession that is looking toward "sacramental validity" is problematic for a number of reasons. I think I see you moving the question way from that into something more foundational: what are the requirements for a Christian community to be a Christian community?

It is important to understand the eschatological action of the Eucharist - and we know that I have long since struck camp there - but what you're telling me is that eschatology only makes sense within a history. I think I understand. It really isn't about conjuring God by pulling all the right levers, but whether it makes sense for us to understand ourselves as the community that God is bringing to completion through that eschatological action. Are we the Church that God in Christ has promised to heal and judge?

When the question is put that way, we might shy away from our pronouncements on other Christian communions, and rather ask how we are and how we can be in continuity with the Church of the ancient martyrs, and with Christ himself. As you say, just like Jesus gathered up Israel into himself and reconstituted it as he received baptism and the descent of the Spirit, and the incarnation was the beginning of New Creation in continuity with the first one, so we must find that place of continuity.

My answer is, as you might suppose, shaped by the work of Hauerwas, Cavanaugh and Williams.

On a related note, I find it interesting that even as Paul "excommunicates" the Corinthians - bans the celebration of the agape feast - there is not a question about whether the Reigning King is present. If any Eucharist would be invalid, it would be the one that shames the poor by highlighting the divisions across the Body of Christ. And yet it is taken entirely for granted that Christ is present, judging and healing. As Cavanaugh says, the Eucharist is performing the Church - it's an instrument of Christ's eschatological transformation of those in communion with Himself who live in the continuity of the story and of that new creation.

In one of his essays in Why Study the Past, RoWill argues that a Christian church that is in continuity with that of ancient, broader faith is one in which the stories of the ancient martyrs make sense. Would those martyrs still die for the faith that we profess and practice? If their deaths are insensible through the lens of our faith, and our faith is insensible through the lens of their deaths, we lack that continuity - we are nto the same church.

I think it's a storied continuity. Do we tell the same stories? Do we understand ourselves to be characters in the same divine drama that our fathers and mothers were? If it's a different story, it's a different religion.

I joke about pomo anglo-catholicism, but I'm getting at something very real. the only chance we have of standing in such a continuity is to make the attempt, to will to receive it even as we beg the Lord for it. I want to preach and practice a faith that is intellible to people to were killed 1800 years ago. I think they - and the Lord - stand in judgment of me if I do not.

Succession, Character, and Validity

The discussion that Kyle and I have been having on issues of Eucharist, Apostolic Succession, and sacramental validity came up this morning in our Wednesday morning Bible Study as we discussed Luke 8:1-3.

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others [other women: πολλαι], who provided for them out of their resources.

In summation of the debate, while both of us are nonplussed by a mechanical view of the historic episcopate as some pipeline of sacramental validity, I still see the central importance, if not necessity, of the church in Apostolic Succession meaning the chronic persistence of covenantal history as the proper object of the eschatological descent of the Holy Spirit. If I may be so bold to anticipate Kyle’s focus, he is more concerned that the congregation invoking the presence of the Spirit is a community of character. Legitimacy as Church is tied more to the extent the congregation is formed by the Christian narrative.

I would submit that both foci are necessary for ecclesial existence. The creedal marks of the Church include not only apostolicity but, lest we forget, holiness. The church that rests on Apostolic Orders and neglects its sanctification presumes upon the grace of God, which, in turn, will end in the removal of its lamp stand.

What we discussed in the Bible Study today is how we find both of these aspects of the Church’s creedal life reflected in this passage, covenantal continuity and covenantal character. In terms of character we see this in Luke’s focus upon the women who are a part of this new Kingdom community around Jesus. As Tom Wright points out in his remarks on this pericope in Luke for Everyone, the focus is upon a new community formed in Christ bursting through social conventions relating to women that would inhibit the Kingdom being wrought through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And in the reference to the generosity of the women and their participation in the community Luke anticipates the new community he describes more completely in Acts of the Apostles:

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2: 43-47)

But we also need to recognize that the context of this covenantal character is the covenantal continuity represented by the reference to the twelve in the passage from Luke 8. In choosing twelve disciples Jesus is reconstituting spiritually exiled Israel for a new exodus through the Paschal Mystery. As with the choice of Daughter Zion, the Virgin Mary, in Luke 2, the new work of restoring creation is not ex nihilo in either an absolute sense, or in a political one in God choosing a new people instead of Israel. (This has some interesting implications for Jewish-Christian relations, but that is obviously another post.) Jesus constitutes the new messianic Israel in actual and organic continuity with the people of covenantal history going back to Abraham, and not from some “spiritual” or “metaphorical” continuity.

This covenantal continuity is reinforced in the first chapter of Acts as Matthias is chosen to replace Judas among the twelve Apostles. Organic and actual continuity is still the norm, now with the added aspect of being apart of the Kingdom community formed by Jesus and being a witness to his Resurrection. It is within the context of the apostolic band that the Spirit descends on Pentecost (another parallel to the pattern we have noticed in the Annunciation).

When we turn to the question of sacramental “validity” (we need to think about better terminology here), I would affirm that the normative community that both invokes the Spirit and is recipient of sacramental grace. I think this is suggested in the most complete and earliest discussion of the Eucharist in the New Testament, I Corinthians 10 and 11. Paul begins with a typological interpretation of the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist as the fulfillment of the Exodus experience, manna in the wilderness and water from the rock. The people who receive the sacraments of the new covenant live in continuity with the people of the Exodus. That Paul is thinking organically and realistically rather than metaphorically is evident in his language in Romans about the Gentiles being grafted into the covenant tree of Israel. (Another avenue for inquiry would be to ask if the strictly metaphorical reading of these themes were read back into the New Testament by Protestant theologians to justify the sixteenth century breach with 1500 years of understanding the church in terms of historical continuity, including Apostolic Succession.)

Now, we have seemed to have moved away from the significance of the community of covenantal character. But we do see these two aspects of ecclesial existence come together in the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians. I have already suggested above that Paul affirms the continuity of the Church with the covenant history of Israel in chapter 10. Here at the end of chapter 11 Paul speaks of how the character of the community figures into the reception of the Eucharist:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (I Corinthians 11:27-32)

By virtue of apostolic continuity the congregation is the recipient of the One invoked in the epiclesis. But the deformed character of the people receives the sacramental presence of the Lord not as grace but as judgment. Apostolic Succession and the holiness of community are necessary correlates. (A broader conversation should also bring unity and catholicity as marks of the Church into perspective as well, but we will leave that for another day.)

We cannot pit the marks of the Church as they have been received in Holy Tradition against one another. In the end I think both Kyle’s concerns and mine must coincide.

Kyle Potter: "Anglicans Gone Wild"

Kyle offers us another must read with his peceptive reflections on the recent news from Lambeth on who did and didn't get invited to Rowan's slumber party next summer.

A snippet:

No, really. These dudes are off the freakin' chain.

Rowan Williams announced that he's sent the invitations to Lambeth 2008, the big gathering of diocesan bishops of the Anglican Communion. This will be important because at that conference, all the conservative and liberal bishops are going to have a big cage fight to determine which side gets the Anglican trademark, and whether the center of gravity in the AC is going to be officially Canterbury or Abuja.

I don't care what you say, that's totally what's going to happen.

Williams' spokesman has announced that neither Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire (he's the one married to another dude) nor Minns of CANA (the Convocation of Anglicans in North America) will be invited to the big party - which means +VGR will not have the opportunity to use his patented sleeper hold, and the conservatives will not benefit from Minns' Tai Kwan Do.

As Kendall would say, read the whole thing.

As for me, what keeps coming to mind is the old addage, "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."

Which in a strange way puts me in mind of the last words uttered by the Doctor in Bridge on the River Kwai. Hmmm... Rowan as Alec Guiness with the shock of realization before falling on the detonator: "What have I done?"

Response to Kyle Potter on Eucharist, "Validity", and Apostolic Succession

In a recent post Kyle Potter over at “Vindicated” argues against those, including an Episcopalian bishop, who dismiss the efficacy of the Eucharist as celebrated by the Vine and Branches Community as they do not possess holy orders with Apostolic Succession. I have complete sympathy with his impatience with the opinions of Episcopalians, who trot out the necessity of the Historic Episcopate in a way that suggests the most crass theology of sacramental “validity” as mere historical mechanism, while simultaneously holding incoherent and incommensurate ecclesiologies that render the issue of Succession meaningless. Is the episcopate of the esse, plene esse, or bene esse of the Church, for instance? And if this is so gosh darn important, why have we entered into inter-communion with the ELCA?

But my purpose here is not to support him in his fully justified irritation toward those who are so facilely dismissive of the integrity of the Eucharist at Vine and Branches. Rather it is to respond to what I would consider a rather one sided view of the Eucharist that tends, albeit unintentionally, toward a gnostification of sacramental theology.

Let me begin by quoting him at length:

I do not believe that "legitimacy" is passed down through a mechanical "apostolic succession" down two thousand years of history, such that God can be invoked by some priests and bishops but not others. When I hear an argument that I find convincing, trust me, you'll know.

Here's the thing: remember our little discussion on what sacraments are? The bottom line is that we beg for the healing presence of Jesus that has been promised. I think that the triune God would have a really big and obvious reason for denying our entreaties for the crumbs from his table, and I'm not terribly sure what that would be.

When we start talking about the rules and special circumstances by which God will mediate his presence or not, it seems to me that we move out of the categories of promise and gift, and of begging and humbly receiving, that make Christian sense of the whole thing. Discussions about who has whose ducks all in a row get silly very quickly.

First, let me say that, as I intimated above, that I too find the crass mechanical arguments made about “validity” unconvincing, to say the least. In the mouth of an Episcopalian it reveals how vacuous we have become. Coming from a Catholic it is an exhibition of a certain type of theological laziness that cites the Catechism and various promulgations and encyclicals as proof-texts, and avoiding the richness and nuance of Catholic thought.

No Catholic or Anglican is required to say that the communion as practiced in a congregation outside of Apostolic Orders is null and void of any grace or spiritual benefit to the worshippers. Benedict XVI said as much a year ago, I believe, in the midst of the recent Eucharistic Congress held in Rome. (Catholics, correct me here if I am wrong.) What the Catholic I think would be required to say is that he or she cannot with any assurance precisely what the nature of that grace. In fact, I am reminded of the saying hear from time to time from the Orthodox “We know where the Church is, we do not now where the Church is not.” Perhaps one way of reading some Catholic comments on validity of the Mass would be “we know where the sacrament is, we do not know where it is not.”

Of course, there are other issues here as well, but my main interest is in addressing Kyle’s sacramental theology of promise and gift. He pits “rules and special circumstances” over and against the sheer grace of the liturgical action of invoking the presence of Jesus. His focus is thus upon epiclesis. The Eucharist is primarily epicletic and eschatological. We invoke the Spirit to come upon the oblations to make them the body and blood of Christ. Jesus who is present is not only the one who was crucified and risen, but also the eschatological Lord who presides over the messianic banquet. (See John Zizioulas on “Apostolicity” in Being as Communion for more here.)

Kyle has retained an important aspect of Eucharistic theology often missed both by memorialists on the one hand and those more catholic minded sorts who spout facile ideas of mechanical “validity.” It is not, however, the entire story. If the Eucharist is eschatological epicletic event, then one unintended consequence might be that it renders the chronic continuance of the Church through history as insignificant. By this I mean that if the Church is constituted by the Eucharist, as we see so often in the Fathers from at least Ignatius of Antioch on (not to mention Paul in I Cor.), then the Church is an eschatological event with a problematic relationship with history. Who invokes the Eucharistic presence and their relationship to the diachronic catholicity of the church is immaterial. Does it matter who does the asking, and to whom the promise was made? Does this promise have any chronic continuance beyond the individual believer?

Kyle himself briefly mentions the issue of being a “legitimate church:”

This is bound up in the issue of what makes a legitimate church. (It won't surprise you that I believe it's possible for a congregation to be completely illegitimate as a church, but I have particular ideas about why that might be.)

Is an illegitimate church the recipient of the promise? And who (other than Stan Hauerwas of course) arbitrates what divides the legitimate from the illegitimate church? Are we not then in the same situation as far as sacramental validity that Kyle decries? The added problem here, however, is that we are now employing criteria for validity which are more obscure and capricious than recourse to Apostolic Succession. Can I with any certainty know that my congregation is legitimate enough to invoke the Spirit?

Perhaps it would be best to give a sense of what I would suggest as an alternative, or better a corrective, to this singular focus upon the epiclesis. Let me employ the image of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin as a veritable icon of the Eucharistic presence. Certainly of surpassing importance for the incarnation is the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is the same Spirit who hovered over the waters of the creatio originalis who begins the eschatological New Creation in the incarnation of the Word. As the fulfillment of the covenant promises of God this procession of the Spirit is akin to the epiclesis. But upon whom the Spirit descends is not insignificant. The New Creation is not ex nihilo but is a fulfillment of the covenantal history brought to its fullness in Daughter Zion, the one who by grace and assent became the Mother of God. The presence of Christ is both eschatological New Creation from the Spirit and the fulfillment of the diachronic covenantal history.

We can see this same dynamic of eschatological gift joined with historical continuity in several instances in the Gospels. In Jesus’ baptism the descent of the Spirit comes upon Jesus as he recapitulates the exodus in solidarity with the covenant people. In the resurrection, certainly an eschatological event, much importance is laid on the fact that it is the crucified one who became faithful Israel as covenant partner with God who is raised.

It will be the Docetists and Gnostics who will try to put a categorical wedge between history and eschatology. (Actually, when they are sundered eschatology ceases to be eschatological as it is no longer the end of history. Eschatology is emptied into ahistorical transcendence.) The patristic concept of Apostolic Succession was a response to this gnostification of Christian existence, and as the chronic persistence of covenantal history now recapitulated in Christ. The mechanization of Succession into some channel of sacramental validity is a debasement of the patristic concept.

Kyle is one of the brightest young theologians I have come across in some time. I look forward to his rejoinder in this.

Been under the weather

Had the worst bout of intestinal flu I can remember a couple of weeks ago, during which time I probably watched more Law and Order than is healthy. Still not 100%. Perhaps I'll post more in the future.

Helpful Explanation

Tinfoil hat tip to babybluecafe.blogspot.com