Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/11/2007 2:25:06 PM (GMT-5)

Toll Houses: After Death Reality or Heresy?

Posted Sunday, September 30, 2007

Fr Thomas Hopko Dean Emeritus of St Vlad's Orthodox seminary addresses the controversial subject of "toll houses" in this highly animated one-half hour discussion with our co-hosts.

 

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/14/2007 7:49:45 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 10/14/2007 12:25:56 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/14/2007 10:42:09 AM (GMT-5)

I wrote what is below (hopefully giving credit for my plagerism...)

Monday, October 8, 2007

Dear _________,

Thank you for the care in chosing and saying your words yesterday, in the communion line. I think that you said: "Bruce, Christ died for you." It was thoughtful and memorable, and a bit different from what I remember being told many other times -- so it made me think. It was a statement of history. May I do a bit more reflective thinking about it, and that moment? I am grateful if I may.

I ussually hear said "the body/blood of Christ, broken/shed for you." But hearing the historical statement "died for you" echoed how the CRC liturgy says "...remember, and believe that...", and how the Epistle and the Gospels say: "do this in remembrance of me."

But part of what struck me about your phrase was how singularly past-tense it was. And my "sharing in the body/blood of Christ" is present, as the pastor's part of the liturgy declared. In fact it is eternal. To that end, we, as a congregation said, "The cup that we drink is our participation in the blood of Christ." Again, this is now--becoming one with the Body, and not merely recalling the history.

As to the word remembrance, two things come to mind: First, while remembering for me usually emphasizes time, from what I'm led to understand in Jesus' culture the emphasis is relational. For instance, for Jesus to remember the thief became a present reality bring that one into the kingdom that very day--remembering involved a relational action where thought and action are united, and not just a thought. Remembering was not something historically in the past--it was an ongoing present. The ancient Christian liturgy has a portion dedicated to this "anemnesis."

Second, even though we know that the medieval Catholics sometimes thought that Communion was a re-sacrifice of Christ, we don't have to be reactionary. History can help us: Once-upon-a-time, before one camp came to think of communion as a mere token with accompanying thoughts, and before it was considered a re-sacrifice by the other, the Eucharist was understood as something mystical -- which meant neither emotional or intellectual -- something participatory and real, even if beyond description. They knew that they really partook of Christ even as the Spirit also made them to really be the Body of Christ. Bread and wine remained bread and wine AND were also the body and blood when partaken in a worthy manner, making them together to be the one Body and Blood of Christ: approach(ing) the cup to taste and see that the Lord is good, receiving his body and blood – becoming his body – we entreat God ...we may dare, with boldness and without condemnation." (Behr) Communion is participation in what was once accomplished for all. That was the understanding of the Church until the medieval period.

For various reasons the laity got separated from the clergy, disengaging them from the liturgical remembrance of the total accomplishment of "the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming" -- all of which the Eucharist is a remembrance together as a whole, despite that the last one hasn't happened yet in history. A separated laity were left with only the historical fact of the cross, and left with only two possible ways to understand it: Either they had to reduce it to a historical token for personalistic contemplation, or they had to understand it as a repeating recurrence in history. That was Trent, and Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have been divided ever since. What has intrigued me about Calvin is how by recognizing the place of the Holy Spirit in the Body makes great strides towards preparing to repair medieval confusion.

The problem with mere contemplation of history is that it is remembered individually. But communion is not an individual reception of the bread and wine, but "corporate, by the Spirit, ... in unity entering into Christ's action, by the cooperation of all its various 'orders' (each having its own 'office', as St. Paul conceived it), and so in His action 'becoming what is eternally — His body'."

 

SEE........Source as to Protestant liturgical development (including an essay by Robert Webber), see… http://www.liturgica.com/html/litPLit.jsp?hostname=null

Zizioulas and the Church that is Communion

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/zizioulas-and-the-church-that-is-communion/

. . .

Zizioulas, following the teaching of St. Basil in particular, notes that in Orthodox Trinitarian teaching, it is common to begin by speaking of the three Persons of the Godhead and then moving to the One Essence, rather than by speaking of the One Essence and then proceeding to the three Persons. Without repeating the entirety of his magisterial work, he presses this work of St. Basil and concludes that God exists as an eternal act of communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. St. Basil had said that “person is prior to being” (not speaking temporally, but theologically). Thus it is that the very names of the Trinity reveal the truth of God. The Father is not a metaphor, but a name. He is Father and this implies “a begotten.” Christ as Son, again implies begotten. The Spirit (which means breath or wind) also implies another, a source. Thus there is no speaking of the Triune God that does not include this “relational” aspect.

Zizioulas also applies this understanding of existence to human beings. Thus our biological existence, which is destined to return to the dust, is replaced, in Holy Baptistm, by what he calls “the ecclesial hypostasis” (I just love the term though it won’t preach). I existence given to us in Baptism is no longer defined by our biology, our individuality, but by our relationship to Christ (and thus to His Church).

He also removes the Church from crude institutional images and instead says its true nature is revealed and constituted in the Eucharist, in which not only the Bread and Wine become the Body and Blood, but in which also are revealed to be Christ’s Body. And just as the Body and Blood are “eschatological” in character (manifestations in time of the very End of things), so too our true existence is revealed as eschatological.

Zizioulas gets accused of having established a “pneumatological” understanding of the Church (i.e. an understanding that depends on the operation of the Spirit [pneuma] rather than on Christ - though I think such criticisms are unfair.

I will take us to a slightly different approach. The Body and Blood made manifest to us on the holy altar, which are there certainly eschatologically, and also as a gift of the Spirit [why else would be pray for the Holy Spirit to “change” the Bread and Wine] - but what is made manifest to us is nothing other than the Crucified Christ. It is, as the Fathers said, “a bloodless sacrifice,” but the sacrifice made present on the altar is indeed the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, as well as the “Lamb slain from the foundations of the earth.” The Church is revealed not only as Christ’s Body, but revealed as well as Christ Crucified, with whom we were united in Baptism (Baptized into his death and raised in the likeness of His resurrection). Thus the Eucharistic Community of which Zizioulas speaks cannot be merely “pneumatological” because what the Spirit reveals and makes manifest is profoundly Christological and even Cruciform.

Indeed, the Trinitarian aspects of Zizioulas’ teaching, can best be understood by going to Christ on the Cross. Though Zizioulas approaches these matters in a quasi-philosophical model (starting with the Cappadocian Fathers and the great Trinitarian debate) it is nonetheless true that it is Christ on the Cross who most perfectly reveals the character of God, and even the Trinity to us.

It is the self-emptying of Christ on the Cross, described best in Philippians 2 that goes to the heart of my point:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:  Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (5-11).

The self-emptying of Christ on the Cross is not to be confined to that one occasion. The entirety of Christ’s ministry is a self-emptying, from the Annunciation forward. The icons and feasts of the Church make it clear that the whole of Christ’s love for us is manifest in a life that has the very “shape” of Pascha. Indeed to say the “Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth,” is to acknowledge that this revelation contained in Pascha transcends the single event of Pascha and is revelatory of Who Christ is.

Nor can we simply point to the self-emptying of Christ and say that it is a “Christological” revelation. For the Father gave His only-begotten Son, and the Spirit speaks nothing of Himself but only of the Son. There is a mutual self-emptying in the Trinity as revealed to us in Scripture. Thus the God of whom St. John says, “God is love,” is true of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Communion is nothing other than the common life of God. And it is into this Communion that we are placed in the Holy Eucharist (’whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him” (John 6:56).

But it is also possible, having said all this, to make the mistake of “over-emphasizing” the Divine Liturgy itself, as though other actions of the Church were not “Eucharistic” themselves (this is the kind of mistake that has been common in the “liturgical movement”). The Eucharist not only reveals the Church in its proper self-emptying character of communion, but also reveals the character of every action we take in the Church. How is the sacrament of Confession not “self-emptying.” How is it not an act of communion with the Triune God? How is Baptism not a “self-emptying” (we are “put to death” in that sacrament)? How is Marriage not an act of mutual self-emptying? Why do we crown them with the crowns of martyrs? I could go on and on.

The simple question placed at Baptism: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?” Is itself an invitation to live the self-emptying Life of God. Everything we do in Church and as Christians is properly done when it is an act of self-emptying, an act of communion. There can be no communion of any sort without kenosis (emptying).

Thus although some have found fault with Zizioulas as too pneumatological (Spirit-centered) in his discussion of the Church, or too philosophical (having started with the Cappadocians rather than the Cross), I find him not guilty - if he is understood in the manner I have set forth here. Nothing in Chrisianity makes any sense apart from the Cross, for it is the Cross that shows forth the great mystery of Pascha which is indeed God’s revelation of Himself to the World. Pascha not only reveals God, but also answers the question, “What kind of God is He?” He is a good God who loves mankind.

Glory to God for all things!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under Faith, Fathers, Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox Doctrine, The Church, The Sacraments, Union with Christ, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/17/2007 7:15:44 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/18/2007 10:43:18 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/18/2007 1:26:39 PM (GMT-5)

The World And The Grail

Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Recycled molecules and atoms from the foundation of the world present a wonderful perspective on the shed blood of Christ.

http://audio.ancientfaith.com/frederica/grail.mp3

Cool, huh?

Post Edited (Epiklesis) : 10/18/2007 6:49:56 PM (GMT-5)