1

Defining the Terms

Since our focus is particularly on the sacramentality of the word ofGod and its interplay with the pastoral act of preaching two wordsare critical to our investigation and need to be explored in furtherdetail before proceeding word and sacrament While I will not offernew definitions here as previous definitions are sufficient for thetask I do provide an historical examination of the ways in which theclassic definitions of both word and sacrament have narrowed fromtheir original meanings and uses Additionally I provide relevantreasons for this theological shift I then describe what has classicallyconstituted the sacramental in three of the major Western Christiantraditions the Roman Catholic Lutheran and CalvinistReformedThen I pose this question Can the word function sacramentallyIn answer I offer some prosaic examples of how the word writtenand preached might once again be considered sacramental andmoreover how it might find commonality not distinction withthe more recognized sacraments of the churchmdashprecisely in that itdelivers the fullness of the one behind the gift Jesus Christ

1

Word

The word of God has been defined in Christian history as the sacredScriptures particularly those books confessed by Christians to havebeen authored under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit While theparticular mode and extent of that inspiration is debated by some itis clear that those sacred books subsequently listed in the Christiancanon serve as authoritative to some degree for both the churchand the faithful1 In their various confessional documents nearlyall strands of historic Protestant Christianity have held to theaforementioned understanding of the word of God2

In particular the Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod (hereafterLCMS) subscribes to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book

1 The canon in definitive form can be traced to 367 ce (see Justo L Gonzalez A History ofChristian Thought Vol I From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon [Nashville Abingdon1987] 150) See also Carter Lindberg A Brief History of Christianity (Malden Blackwell 2006)15 ldquoThe oldest witness to a complete New Testament as it now stands is Athanasius (c296ndash373) the bishop of Alexandria In 367 in his annual pastoral letter to the churches of Egypt he listed the books to be accepted as canonical literaturerdquo Admittedly there was a canonalbeit in unofficial form well before that time which included some books that did not make itinto the canon observed by Protestants today One example of such a book was Ecclesiasticuswhose name literally meant ldquothe churchrsquos bookrdquo signifying a certain level of acceptance amongChristians at the time

2 While Lutherans are grouped with Protestantism by way of illustration they often do notconsider themselves ldquoProtestantrdquo both in terms of motive at the time of the Reformation andtheology both then and now For a contemporary examination of this trend from a broadperspective however one might consider the work of James White a leading Protestantliturgical scholar who moves the AnglicanEpiscopal tradition to the right of Lutheranismin the twentieth century and beyond signifying a shift in both traditions with Lutheranismbecoming more Protestant than ever before (see James F White Introduction to ChristianWorship [Nashville Abingdon 2000] 38 diagram 3) For prominent examples from the variousProtestant confessional documents of Scotland (The Scottish Confession of Faith [1560])England (The Thirty-Nine Articles [1563]) and France (The Calvinistic Confession of Faith[1571]) see the following respectively ldquoThe Scotch Confession of Faithrdquo article 18 in TheCreeds of Christendom vol 3 ed Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids Baker 2007) 462ndash63 ldquoTheThirty-Nine Articles of the Church of Englandrdquo article 6 in Schaff The Creeds of Christendomvol 3 489ndash90 (hereafter 39 Articles) ldquoConfession de Foyrdquo article 1 number 5 inBekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche ed WilhelmNiesel (Zuumlrich Evangelischer Verlag 1938) 67 lines 18ndash21

VIVA VOX

2

of Concord of 1580 Those confessions describe the Lutheran positionon the word of God this way

We believe teach and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writingsof the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm accordingto which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judgedas it is written in Ps 119105 ldquoThy word is a lamp to my feet and a lightto my pathrdquo And St Paul says in Gal 18 ldquoEven if an angel from heavenshould preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached toyou let him be accursedrdquo

Other writings of ancient and modern teachers whatever their namesshould not be put on a par with Holy Scripture Every single one ofthem should be subordinated to the Scriptures and should be received inno other way and no further than as witnesses to the fashion in whichthe doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved in post-apostolictimes

All doctrines should conform to the standards set forth above Whateveris contrary to them should be rejected and condemned as opposed to theunanimous declaration of our faith

In this way the distinction between the Holy Scripture of the Oldand New Testaments and all other writings is maintained and HolyScripture remains the only judge rule and norm according to whichas the only touchstone all doctrines should and must be understood andjudged as good or evil right or wrong3

From this it becomes clear that one of the wordrsquos primary virtues atleast since the time of the Protestant Reformation is that it containsthe teaching (doctrine) necessary for salvation Moreover ifsomething cannot be proved therein it is unnecessary (and evenunlawful) for the faithful to believe it and practice it What thissuggests is that unlike some of the other prominent world religions

3 Formula of Concord Epitome Summary 1ndash2 6ndash7 (hereafter FC Epitome)

DEFINING THE TERMS

3

(for example Judaism which is marked by practice rather thandoctrine and Islam which is marked by the Five Pillars) forProtestant churches as seen in their various confessional documentsdoctrinemdashand the judgment thereofmdashis as important as (if not moreimportant than) the practice of the Christian faith

Consequently the narrowing of both the definition and use of theword of God to the inspired books of the Christian canon whichby virtue of inspiration contain the body of doctrine necessary forsalvation and the metric for judging truth has led to the assumptionthat Scripture is a body of information4 Scripture in this way sets theparameters for what the faithful can and cannot believe and practice

While this may have been an inevitable outcome especially giventhe dogmatic strife at the time of the Reformation (where a norm fordoctrinal information was needed to debate critique and eventuallyseparate from the Roman Catholic Church) along with the inventionof the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century (that sameinformation was suddenly capable of being spread rapidly) one mustwonder if this has permanently shifted primacy toward doctrine andaway from Christ In other words we must ask Has the faith asexpressed in Holy Scripture become cerebral rather than a livingreality5 In some sense it seems as though it has However if thechurch no longer expects to hear Christ speaking in Holy Scripturethen it would appear that the Scriptures are ldquonot very Christiananymorerdquo6

4 The same might be said of the Roman Catholic Church where faith became associated with theassent of the mind instead of trust in the promise of God To that end when assent is faithrsquos firstword then the word of God takes on an informational character which informs a rational faith(see Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition [Washington DC United States CatholicConference 1997] 156 [hereafter CCC])

5 Pierre Babin The New Era in Religious Communication (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1991) 996 Elizabeth Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo in Reclaiming the Bible for

the Church ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1995) 120

VIVA VOX

4

Yet for the early Fathers of the church the word of God containedin Holy Scripture was understood rather differently Certainly theFathers did not deny the informational aspect of Scripture meaningthat as the inspired word of God it was a standard for Christiandoctrine7 However the Fathers focused upon the Word made fleshwho by the power of his Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth andhand of the biblical authors the materiality of this created worldIn turn the emphasis was not placed primarily upon the doctrinalcontent of the Scriptures so much as it was upon the one who gavethe content Jesus Christ the Word made flesh Therefore for theFathers the biblical logos (word) took on a broader meaning thanmerely a collection of information on a page As Hilary of Poitiersasserted ldquoYour plea that the Word is the sound of a voice theutterance of a thought falls to the ground The Word is a reality nota sound a Being not a speech God not a nonentityrdquo8

Consequently for the early church Holy Scripture in writtenspoken and illustrative forms was the standard for divinecommunication not simply divine information for it was the livingGod himself who was to be found dwelling and therefore speakingin the word9 In turn Scripture took on a tangible incarnational andeven sacramental character

A few examples might be helpful here Theophilus of Antioch(second century ce) in writing about the authorship of the Old

7 See John R Willis The Teachings of the Church Fathers (San Francisco Ignatius 2002) 82 Willisnotes that the confession of Scripturersquos inspiration can be traced as far back as the end of thefirst century Moreover it is clear from the history of the church that Scripture was used in themidst of dogmatic strife

8 Hilary of Poitiers On the Trinity 2159 As far as icons are concerned see for instance St John of Damascus On the Divine Images

Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images trans David Anderson (CrestwoodNY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 2000) 19 ldquoAn image is of like character with its prototyperdquoHence like Scripture icons are written not painted

DEFINING THE TERMS

5

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

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6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Word

The word of God has been defined in Christian history as the sacredScriptures particularly those books confessed by Christians to havebeen authored under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit While theparticular mode and extent of that inspiration is debated by some itis clear that those sacred books subsequently listed in the Christiancanon serve as authoritative to some degree for both the churchand the faithful1 In their various confessional documents nearlyall strands of historic Protestant Christianity have held to theaforementioned understanding of the word of God2

In particular the Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod (hereafterLCMS) subscribes to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book

1 The canon in definitive form can be traced to 367 ce (see Justo L Gonzalez A History ofChristian Thought Vol I From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon [Nashville Abingdon1987] 150) See also Carter Lindberg A Brief History of Christianity (Malden Blackwell 2006)15 ldquoThe oldest witness to a complete New Testament as it now stands is Athanasius (c296ndash373) the bishop of Alexandria In 367 in his annual pastoral letter to the churches of Egypt he listed the books to be accepted as canonical literaturerdquo Admittedly there was a canonalbeit in unofficial form well before that time which included some books that did not make itinto the canon observed by Protestants today One example of such a book was Ecclesiasticuswhose name literally meant ldquothe churchrsquos bookrdquo signifying a certain level of acceptance amongChristians at the time

2 While Lutherans are grouped with Protestantism by way of illustration they often do notconsider themselves ldquoProtestantrdquo both in terms of motive at the time of the Reformation andtheology both then and now For a contemporary examination of this trend from a broadperspective however one might consider the work of James White a leading Protestantliturgical scholar who moves the AnglicanEpiscopal tradition to the right of Lutheranismin the twentieth century and beyond signifying a shift in both traditions with Lutheranismbecoming more Protestant than ever before (see James F White Introduction to ChristianWorship [Nashville Abingdon 2000] 38 diagram 3) For prominent examples from the variousProtestant confessional documents of Scotland (The Scottish Confession of Faith [1560])England (The Thirty-Nine Articles [1563]) and France (The Calvinistic Confession of Faith[1571]) see the following respectively ldquoThe Scotch Confession of Faithrdquo article 18 in TheCreeds of Christendom vol 3 ed Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids Baker 2007) 462ndash63 ldquoTheThirty-Nine Articles of the Church of Englandrdquo article 6 in Schaff The Creeds of Christendomvol 3 489ndash90 (hereafter 39 Articles) ldquoConfession de Foyrdquo article 1 number 5 inBekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche ed WilhelmNiesel (Zuumlrich Evangelischer Verlag 1938) 67 lines 18ndash21

VIVA VOX

2

of Concord of 1580 Those confessions describe the Lutheran positionon the word of God this way

We believe teach and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writingsof the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm accordingto which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judgedas it is written in Ps 119105 ldquoThy word is a lamp to my feet and a lightto my pathrdquo And St Paul says in Gal 18 ldquoEven if an angel from heavenshould preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached toyou let him be accursedrdquo

Other writings of ancient and modern teachers whatever their namesshould not be put on a par with Holy Scripture Every single one ofthem should be subordinated to the Scriptures and should be received inno other way and no further than as witnesses to the fashion in whichthe doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved in post-apostolictimes

All doctrines should conform to the standards set forth above Whateveris contrary to them should be rejected and condemned as opposed to theunanimous declaration of our faith

In this way the distinction between the Holy Scripture of the Oldand New Testaments and all other writings is maintained and HolyScripture remains the only judge rule and norm according to whichas the only touchstone all doctrines should and must be understood andjudged as good or evil right or wrong3

From this it becomes clear that one of the wordrsquos primary virtues atleast since the time of the Protestant Reformation is that it containsthe teaching (doctrine) necessary for salvation Moreover ifsomething cannot be proved therein it is unnecessary (and evenunlawful) for the faithful to believe it and practice it What thissuggests is that unlike some of the other prominent world religions

3 Formula of Concord Epitome Summary 1ndash2 6ndash7 (hereafter FC Epitome)

DEFINING THE TERMS

3

(for example Judaism which is marked by practice rather thandoctrine and Islam which is marked by the Five Pillars) forProtestant churches as seen in their various confessional documentsdoctrinemdashand the judgment thereofmdashis as important as (if not moreimportant than) the practice of the Christian faith

Consequently the narrowing of both the definition and use of theword of God to the inspired books of the Christian canon whichby virtue of inspiration contain the body of doctrine necessary forsalvation and the metric for judging truth has led to the assumptionthat Scripture is a body of information4 Scripture in this way sets theparameters for what the faithful can and cannot believe and practice

While this may have been an inevitable outcome especially giventhe dogmatic strife at the time of the Reformation (where a norm fordoctrinal information was needed to debate critique and eventuallyseparate from the Roman Catholic Church) along with the inventionof the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century (that sameinformation was suddenly capable of being spread rapidly) one mustwonder if this has permanently shifted primacy toward doctrine andaway from Christ In other words we must ask Has the faith asexpressed in Holy Scripture become cerebral rather than a livingreality5 In some sense it seems as though it has However if thechurch no longer expects to hear Christ speaking in Holy Scripturethen it would appear that the Scriptures are ldquonot very Christiananymorerdquo6

4 The same might be said of the Roman Catholic Church where faith became associated with theassent of the mind instead of trust in the promise of God To that end when assent is faithrsquos firstword then the word of God takes on an informational character which informs a rational faith(see Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition [Washington DC United States CatholicConference 1997] 156 [hereafter CCC])

5 Pierre Babin The New Era in Religious Communication (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1991) 996 Elizabeth Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo in Reclaiming the Bible for

the Church ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1995) 120

VIVA VOX

4

Yet for the early Fathers of the church the word of God containedin Holy Scripture was understood rather differently Certainly theFathers did not deny the informational aspect of Scripture meaningthat as the inspired word of God it was a standard for Christiandoctrine7 However the Fathers focused upon the Word made fleshwho by the power of his Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth andhand of the biblical authors the materiality of this created worldIn turn the emphasis was not placed primarily upon the doctrinalcontent of the Scriptures so much as it was upon the one who gavethe content Jesus Christ the Word made flesh Therefore for theFathers the biblical logos (word) took on a broader meaning thanmerely a collection of information on a page As Hilary of Poitiersasserted ldquoYour plea that the Word is the sound of a voice theutterance of a thought falls to the ground The Word is a reality nota sound a Being not a speech God not a nonentityrdquo8

Consequently for the early church Holy Scripture in writtenspoken and illustrative forms was the standard for divinecommunication not simply divine information for it was the livingGod himself who was to be found dwelling and therefore speakingin the word9 In turn Scripture took on a tangible incarnational andeven sacramental character

A few examples might be helpful here Theophilus of Antioch(second century ce) in writing about the authorship of the Old

7 See John R Willis The Teachings of the Church Fathers (San Francisco Ignatius 2002) 82 Willisnotes that the confession of Scripturersquos inspiration can be traced as far back as the end of thefirst century Moreover it is clear from the history of the church that Scripture was used in themidst of dogmatic strife

8 Hilary of Poitiers On the Trinity 2159 As far as icons are concerned see for instance St John of Damascus On the Divine Images

Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images trans David Anderson (CrestwoodNY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 2000) 19 ldquoAn image is of like character with its prototyperdquoHence like Scripture icons are written not painted

DEFINING THE TERMS

5

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

VIVA VOX

6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

of Concord of 1580 Those confessions describe the Lutheran positionon the word of God this way

We believe teach and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writingsof the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm accordingto which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judgedas it is written in Ps 119105 ldquoThy word is a lamp to my feet and a lightto my pathrdquo And St Paul says in Gal 18 ldquoEven if an angel from heavenshould preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached toyou let him be accursedrdquo

Other writings of ancient and modern teachers whatever their namesshould not be put on a par with Holy Scripture Every single one ofthem should be subordinated to the Scriptures and should be received inno other way and no further than as witnesses to the fashion in whichthe doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved in post-apostolictimes

All doctrines should conform to the standards set forth above Whateveris contrary to them should be rejected and condemned as opposed to theunanimous declaration of our faith

In this way the distinction between the Holy Scripture of the Oldand New Testaments and all other writings is maintained and HolyScripture remains the only judge rule and norm according to whichas the only touchstone all doctrines should and must be understood andjudged as good or evil right or wrong3

From this it becomes clear that one of the wordrsquos primary virtues atleast since the time of the Protestant Reformation is that it containsthe teaching (doctrine) necessary for salvation Moreover ifsomething cannot be proved therein it is unnecessary (and evenunlawful) for the faithful to believe it and practice it What thissuggests is that unlike some of the other prominent world religions

3 Formula of Concord Epitome Summary 1ndash2 6ndash7 (hereafter FC Epitome)

DEFINING THE TERMS

3

(for example Judaism which is marked by practice rather thandoctrine and Islam which is marked by the Five Pillars) forProtestant churches as seen in their various confessional documentsdoctrinemdashand the judgment thereofmdashis as important as (if not moreimportant than) the practice of the Christian faith

Consequently the narrowing of both the definition and use of theword of God to the inspired books of the Christian canon whichby virtue of inspiration contain the body of doctrine necessary forsalvation and the metric for judging truth has led to the assumptionthat Scripture is a body of information4 Scripture in this way sets theparameters for what the faithful can and cannot believe and practice

While this may have been an inevitable outcome especially giventhe dogmatic strife at the time of the Reformation (where a norm fordoctrinal information was needed to debate critique and eventuallyseparate from the Roman Catholic Church) along with the inventionof the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century (that sameinformation was suddenly capable of being spread rapidly) one mustwonder if this has permanently shifted primacy toward doctrine andaway from Christ In other words we must ask Has the faith asexpressed in Holy Scripture become cerebral rather than a livingreality5 In some sense it seems as though it has However if thechurch no longer expects to hear Christ speaking in Holy Scripturethen it would appear that the Scriptures are ldquonot very Christiananymorerdquo6

4 The same might be said of the Roman Catholic Church where faith became associated with theassent of the mind instead of trust in the promise of God To that end when assent is faithrsquos firstword then the word of God takes on an informational character which informs a rational faith(see Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition [Washington DC United States CatholicConference 1997] 156 [hereafter CCC])

5 Pierre Babin The New Era in Religious Communication (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1991) 996 Elizabeth Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo in Reclaiming the Bible for

the Church ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1995) 120

VIVA VOX

4

Yet for the early Fathers of the church the word of God containedin Holy Scripture was understood rather differently Certainly theFathers did not deny the informational aspect of Scripture meaningthat as the inspired word of God it was a standard for Christiandoctrine7 However the Fathers focused upon the Word made fleshwho by the power of his Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth andhand of the biblical authors the materiality of this created worldIn turn the emphasis was not placed primarily upon the doctrinalcontent of the Scriptures so much as it was upon the one who gavethe content Jesus Christ the Word made flesh Therefore for theFathers the biblical logos (word) took on a broader meaning thanmerely a collection of information on a page As Hilary of Poitiersasserted ldquoYour plea that the Word is the sound of a voice theutterance of a thought falls to the ground The Word is a reality nota sound a Being not a speech God not a nonentityrdquo8

Consequently for the early church Holy Scripture in writtenspoken and illustrative forms was the standard for divinecommunication not simply divine information for it was the livingGod himself who was to be found dwelling and therefore speakingin the word9 In turn Scripture took on a tangible incarnational andeven sacramental character

A few examples might be helpful here Theophilus of Antioch(second century ce) in writing about the authorship of the Old

7 See John R Willis The Teachings of the Church Fathers (San Francisco Ignatius 2002) 82 Willisnotes that the confession of Scripturersquos inspiration can be traced as far back as the end of thefirst century Moreover it is clear from the history of the church that Scripture was used in themidst of dogmatic strife

8 Hilary of Poitiers On the Trinity 2159 As far as icons are concerned see for instance St John of Damascus On the Divine Images

Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images trans David Anderson (CrestwoodNY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 2000) 19 ldquoAn image is of like character with its prototyperdquoHence like Scripture icons are written not painted

DEFINING THE TERMS

5

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

VIVA VOX

6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

(for example Judaism which is marked by practice rather thandoctrine and Islam which is marked by the Five Pillars) forProtestant churches as seen in their various confessional documentsdoctrinemdashand the judgment thereofmdashis as important as (if not moreimportant than) the practice of the Christian faith

Consequently the narrowing of both the definition and use of theword of God to the inspired books of the Christian canon whichby virtue of inspiration contain the body of doctrine necessary forsalvation and the metric for judging truth has led to the assumptionthat Scripture is a body of information4 Scripture in this way sets theparameters for what the faithful can and cannot believe and practice

While this may have been an inevitable outcome especially giventhe dogmatic strife at the time of the Reformation (where a norm fordoctrinal information was needed to debate critique and eventuallyseparate from the Roman Catholic Church) along with the inventionof the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century (that sameinformation was suddenly capable of being spread rapidly) one mustwonder if this has permanently shifted primacy toward doctrine andaway from Christ In other words we must ask Has the faith asexpressed in Holy Scripture become cerebral rather than a livingreality5 In some sense it seems as though it has However if thechurch no longer expects to hear Christ speaking in Holy Scripturethen it would appear that the Scriptures are ldquonot very Christiananymorerdquo6

4 The same might be said of the Roman Catholic Church where faith became associated with theassent of the mind instead of trust in the promise of God To that end when assent is faithrsquos firstword then the word of God takes on an informational character which informs a rational faith(see Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition [Washington DC United States CatholicConference 1997] 156 [hereafter CCC])

5 Pierre Babin The New Era in Religious Communication (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1991) 996 Elizabeth Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo in Reclaiming the Bible for

the Church ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1995) 120

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4

Yet for the early Fathers of the church the word of God containedin Holy Scripture was understood rather differently Certainly theFathers did not deny the informational aspect of Scripture meaningthat as the inspired word of God it was a standard for Christiandoctrine7 However the Fathers focused upon the Word made fleshwho by the power of his Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth andhand of the biblical authors the materiality of this created worldIn turn the emphasis was not placed primarily upon the doctrinalcontent of the Scriptures so much as it was upon the one who gavethe content Jesus Christ the Word made flesh Therefore for theFathers the biblical logos (word) took on a broader meaning thanmerely a collection of information on a page As Hilary of Poitiersasserted ldquoYour plea that the Word is the sound of a voice theutterance of a thought falls to the ground The Word is a reality nota sound a Being not a speech God not a nonentityrdquo8

Consequently for the early church Holy Scripture in writtenspoken and illustrative forms was the standard for divinecommunication not simply divine information for it was the livingGod himself who was to be found dwelling and therefore speakingin the word9 In turn Scripture took on a tangible incarnational andeven sacramental character

A few examples might be helpful here Theophilus of Antioch(second century ce) in writing about the authorship of the Old

7 See John R Willis The Teachings of the Church Fathers (San Francisco Ignatius 2002) 82 Willisnotes that the confession of Scripturersquos inspiration can be traced as far back as the end of thefirst century Moreover it is clear from the history of the church that Scripture was used in themidst of dogmatic strife

8 Hilary of Poitiers On the Trinity 2159 As far as icons are concerned see for instance St John of Damascus On the Divine Images

Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images trans David Anderson (CrestwoodNY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 2000) 19 ldquoAn image is of like character with its prototyperdquoHence like Scripture icons are written not painted

DEFINING THE TERMS

5

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

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6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Yet for the early Fathers of the church the word of God containedin Holy Scripture was understood rather differently Certainly theFathers did not deny the informational aspect of Scripture meaningthat as the inspired word of God it was a standard for Christiandoctrine7 However the Fathers focused upon the Word made fleshwho by the power of his Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth andhand of the biblical authors the materiality of this created worldIn turn the emphasis was not placed primarily upon the doctrinalcontent of the Scriptures so much as it was upon the one who gavethe content Jesus Christ the Word made flesh Therefore for theFathers the biblical logos (word) took on a broader meaning thanmerely a collection of information on a page As Hilary of Poitiersasserted ldquoYour plea that the Word is the sound of a voice theutterance of a thought falls to the ground The Word is a reality nota sound a Being not a speech God not a nonentityrdquo8

Consequently for the early church Holy Scripture in writtenspoken and illustrative forms was the standard for divinecommunication not simply divine information for it was the livingGod himself who was to be found dwelling and therefore speakingin the word9 In turn Scripture took on a tangible incarnational andeven sacramental character

A few examples might be helpful here Theophilus of Antioch(second century ce) in writing about the authorship of the Old

7 See John R Willis The Teachings of the Church Fathers (San Francisco Ignatius 2002) 82 Willisnotes that the confession of Scripturersquos inspiration can be traced as far back as the end of thefirst century Moreover it is clear from the history of the church that Scripture was used in themidst of dogmatic strife

8 Hilary of Poitiers On the Trinity 2159 As far as icons are concerned see for instance St John of Damascus On the Divine Images

Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images trans David Anderson (CrestwoodNY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 2000) 19 ldquoAn image is of like character with its prototyperdquoHence like Scripture icons are written not painted

DEFINING THE TERMS

5

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

VIVA VOX

6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Testament described the interplay between the writer and the wordin the following way

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence butthe wisdom of God which was in Him and His holy Word which wasalways present with Him And Moses who lived many years beforeSolomon or rather the Word of God by him as by an instrument saysldquoIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earthrdquo (Gen 11)10

Hippolytus (third century) wrote of the prophetsrsquo union with theword this way

And just as it is with instruments of music so had they the Word alwayslike the plectrum in union with them and when moved by Him theprophets announced what God willed For they spake not of their ownpower (let there be no mistake as to that) neither did they declare whatpleased themselves11

Thus far one notices an established tangibility to the word of God inthe prophets as in Theophilus and Hippolytus but that word remainsmore instrumental than personal In other words while it is clear thatthe word was uttered through people there is no mention yet of itentering into its hearers One will need Jerome and Irenaeus for that

Jerome (mid-fourth century to early fifth century) brought out theaural character of the word this way

You are reading No Your betrothed is talking to you It is yourbetrothed that is Christ who is united with you He tears you awayfrom the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home saying toyou ldquoEnter into the joy of your Lordrdquo12

And Irenaeus (early to mid-second century to early third century)wrote of our consumption of that word this way

10 Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus book 2 chapter 1011 Hippolytus On Christ and Antichrist chapter 212 Drinking from the Hidden Fountain A Patristic Breviary ed Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo MI

Cistercian Publications 1994) 16

VIVA VOX

6

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Therefore like giving milk to infants the perfect Bread of the Fatherrevealed himself to us on earth in human form so that we might benourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees becomestrong enough to digest the whole Word of God13

Clearly therefore there was a fleshly christological realitysubtending the early churchrsquos confession of the word of God Verysimply ldquoGod did not stop speaking when his book went to pressrdquo14

For the Fathers of the church Scripture was something that possessedlife it was something that spoke to the church and the faithful andit was ultimately intended by the Lord to be taken in through theear and digested as food for the soul as Anselm of Canterbury (mid-eleventh century to early twelfth century) has written

Taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew his words as a honey-comb suck out their flavor which is sweeter than honey swallow theirhealth-giving sweetness Chew by thinking suck by understandingswallow by loving and rejoicing Rejoice in chewing be glad insucking delight in swallowing15

In short for the early church Jesus Christ was the unifying principleof Holy Scripture He was both the ldquoendpoint and fullnessrdquo of HolyScripture16 And a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture came to discoverthat Jesus was disclosed tangibly as the Word within the text

Given its expanding definition in the patristic period the biblicalword for ldquowordrdquomdashlogosmdashdid not ldquojust mean lsquowordrsquo in a literal or evenin a lively metaphorical senserdquo17 Instead it was considered by the

13 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 46214 Achtemeier ldquoThe Canon as the Voice of the Living Godrdquo 122 citing the Lutheran preacher

Paul Scherer (emphasis mine)15 Opening of ldquoA Meditation on Human Redemptionrdquo in Anselm of Canterbury ed Jasper

Hopkins and Herbert W Richardson (London SCM 1974) 13716 Henri de Lubac Medieval Exegesis vol 1 The Four Senses of Scripture trans Mark Sebanc

(Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1998) 23717 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson ldquoPlato Was Wrongrdquo Christian Century 12126 (December 28 2004)

16

DEFINING THE TERMS

7

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Fathers to be ldquothe underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric the warpand weft by which all things hang togetherrdquo18 And that underlyingcosmic reality the Logos which existed before the world beganeventually came to be expressed in the spoken word And when itcame to be uttered in the spoken word it had the ability to bringcreation into existence Finally and most importantly this Logosaccording to the Gospel of John actually took on flesh and dweltamong his creation as its creator19 And because the Logos took onflesh there is an innate visibility to the relationship between God andhumanity based upon the Word

In the Fathers the relationship of the Logos to the created orderproceeded this way from mind (prior to creation) to mouth (atcreation) to flesh (at incarnation) However the Reformationreversed this relationship from flesh to mouth to mindConsequently at the Reformation the word of God served primarilyto aid in the task of producing and comprehending divineinformation thereby shifting the emphasis away from the auralconsumption of a tangible presence through divine communicationThis informational character of the word of God as will bediscovered continues to negatively affect the preaching of theLutheran Church today

Sacrament

While the word narrowed in definition and use from athoroughgoing christological reality meant to be consumed to abody of information meant to delineate doctrine and judge teachingone would not expect the same to be true for the definition of asacrament Sacraments intrinsically have a more concrete tangible

18 Ibid19 See John 114

VIVA VOX

8

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

character particularly among more sacramental Christians Like theword of God however it is important to examine the evolution ofthe term sacrament to see how it too might affect the ultimate goalof this work the sacramentality of the word particularly within thepastoral act of preaching

μυστήριον

While the cultic rites of mystery were originally intended to gainfrom the gods a good harvest in the ancient world (seventh centurybce to fourth century ce)20 they were eventually broadened tosuch a degree as to give participants a share in the destiny of the godsthemselves21 Yet in order for one to be fit to share in this ldquodivinepotencyrdquo one first had to be initiated22 those who were not initiatedwere ldquodenied both access to the sacred actions and knowledge ofthemrdquo23 While the distinction between the actual mystery rite andthe rites of initiation was often blurred it was important that theone who was to partake of the mystery had undergone a prior actof initiation In the mind of the ancients the cultic rites of mysterydelivered the life of the god behind the mystery thereby granting theparticipant salvation24

In the biblical corpus particularly the writings of St Paulldquoμυστήριον is firmly connected with the kerygma of Christrdquo25 Why

20 For this discussion of the term sacrament and the development of definition thereof I will beginby briefly examining the more ancient of terms employed μυστήριον

21 Gerhard Kittel Geoffrey W Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich eds Theological Dictionary of theNew Testament (Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans 1964ndash) 4803 (hereafter TDNT) For a brief yetstunning overview of the ancient mystery cults see Edward Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Ritesof Initiation The Origins of the RCIA (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 1994) 59ndash66

22 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6623 TDNT 480424 Ibid 4803ndash5 See also Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 6625 Ibid 4819

DEFINING THE TERMS

9

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Precisely because Jesus himself is the very mystery of God and whenthat mystery is delivered kerygmatically the very same Christ themystery takes up residence in the hearer thereby bringing to fruitionthe words of Paul ldquoTo them God chose to make known how greatamong the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery whichis Christ in you the hope of gloryrdquo (Col 127)26

Distinct in some sense from the ancient mystery cults (especiallythe gnostic mysteries) the thrust behind μυστήριον in the Christiantradition was not primarily on the hiddenness of a god behind thecultrsquos mystery27 In the ancient mystery cults only the initiated knewthe most sacred secrets of a given cult These sacred secrets wereldquooral tradition passed down from hierophant to hierophant andnever written down Furthermore there were severe civil penaltiesif initiates into the religion ever spoke about or revealed what theywitnessed at the Mysteriesrdquo28 Yet the god behind the cultrsquos mysteryoften remained unknown to those participating in the mysteryitself29 This unfamiliarity and secrecy became the primary point ofdivergence between the ancient mystery cults and the mysteries ofthe Christian tradition30

With the dawn of Christianity μυστήριον took on a newmeaning referring specifically to the revelation of Jesus (theμυστήριον of God) who was delivered through proclamation the

26 See also Col 2227 TDNT 4811ndash12 The Greek word μυστήριον is derived from the verb μύω which means to

walk about with onersquos eyes closed (See John W Kleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo [AdelaideAustralian Lutheran College 2004] 1)

28 Steven D Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy (Cambridge MIT Press 2006)70 See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary Third Edition ed Simon Hornblower and AntonySpawforth (Oxford Oxford University Press 1996) 706

29 David Brown God and Mystery in Words (Oxford Oxford University Press 2008) 2230 Undoubtedly within the Christian tradition there still remained a sense of the unknown

particularly within the early churchrsquos rites associated with initiation As Yarnold has notedldquoAlthough the Christian practice of secrecy goes back to the gospels it seems likely that in thefourth century the desire to rival the pagan mysteries led to an elaboration of the practice ofsecrecyrdquo (The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 57)

VIVA VOX

10

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

kerygma It is important to note that ldquothe mystery is not itselfrevelation it is the object of revelation It is not as though themystery were a presupposition of revelation which is set aside when ittakes place Rather revelation discloses the mystery as suchrdquo31 Jesusthe mystery is disclosed within the kerygmatic revelation Howeverthis disclosing of the mystery does not result in full comprehensionsomething of the mystery remains unknown This is not meant toimply that a mystery is equivalent to a secret as has often been thecase when translating μυστήριον into English32 A mystery differsdramatically from a secret a secret once it is discovered ceases tobe a secret A mystery on the other hand remains a mystery and infact increases in its mysteriousness the more one comes in contactwith it33 The mysteries of the early church not only highlighted theexperiential but also were thought to invoke a sense of reverence forand attraction to that which was behind them34

It is noteworthy that while the use of the term μυστήριον is rarein the Apostolic Fathers (those who wrote just after the apostles)it became more frequent in the apologetic period (third century)as the church struggled against the gnostic notion that there was adualism between spirit and matter In gnostic thought the formerwas holy and the latter was unholy Consequently God as spirit wasconsidered in some sense hidden or separate from material creation35

He was a mystery

31 TDNT 4820ndash2132 For example in the New International Version of Holy Scripture ldquomysteryrdquo is often translated

as ldquosecretrdquo See for instance the following Matt 1311 Mark 411 Luke 810 2 Thess 27 (SeeKleinig ldquoThe Mystery of Christrdquo 1)

33 John W Kleinig Grace Upon Grace Spirituality for Today (St Louis Concordia 2008) 5734 Yarnold The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation 5735 TDNT 4825 Kittel noted that the term μυστήριον was used both in reference to the mystery

cults of the time and the mysteries of the Christian faith specifically those from the life ofJesus and the OT types prefiguring those mysteries The use of μυστήριον became especiallyapparent with Clement of Alexandria (150ndash215) and the Alexandrian School ldquowho appliedgnostic-neoplatonic terminology to the truths of the Christian religionrdquo (William A Van RooThe Christian Sacrament [Rome Pontificia Universita Gregoriana 1992] 33)

DEFINING THE TERMS

11

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Given the prevalence of gnostic thought especially as it permeatedthe church even Christian doctrine fell under the category ofmysterymdashit was believed that one could never fully mine the richesof the churchrsquos doctrinal teaching36 Yet as Kittel notes ldquoa dubiousresult of this conception of dogma [as mystery] is the separation ofthe mystery from the kerygmardquo37 By the fourth century thereforemystery was no longer exclusively associated with the churchrsquosrevelatory proclamation of Christ but it became associated with thechurchrsquos task of handing on the doctrinal principles of the faithand particularly the quest for theological inquiry38 In other wordsthe informational began to supersede the pastoral as doctrine notliturgical preaching became the milieu for mystery

This observation that the informational superseded the pastoral isinteresting in light of the similar observation above regarding theword of God While these occurred at different times in Christianhistory it appears that both the word and the sacrament whenthe latter is understood as mystery underwent heavy pressure tobe associated with divine information and not with the divinecommunication of the person of Christ

Sacramentum

From the first century bce sacramentum was used by the Romansfor the initiatory rites of the army specifically referring to the oathgiven by a soldier39 As Bohec notes

36 Ibid 4826 For instance consider the impossible task of understanding the Trinitarianteaching of the church

37 Ibid38 See for example John Chrysostom ldquoHomilies on First Corinthians 72rdquo in J P Migne

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca 61 56 (Paris Migne 1862) (hereafter PG) andGustav Anrich Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum (GoumlttingenVandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1894) 150

VIVA VOX

12

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

The mobilization of an army was marked by a ceremony of swearing anoath (sacramentum) binding the soldier to the general and the Emperorin the presence of the gods In the early years of the Empire thisrite underwent a degree of secularization (the sacramentum became aiusiurandum) but reverted to a religious nature in the third century40

The emphasis of sacramentum therefore was placed upon the actualact of initiation whereby the oath (sacramentum) brought one intofull participation with the Roman army binding one thereto inldquoloyalty and obediencerdquo41 Consequently those who had not swornan oath were not permitted to serve they were considered outside thenatural bounds of the army having not been previously initiated

One of the earliest uses of sacramentum in reference to Christianitywas by Pliny the Younger in a letter to Emperor Trajan (early secondcentury) Pliny wrote

But they confirmed this to have been the principal matter either oftheir guilt or of their error that they had been accustomed to assembleregularly before light on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as ifto a god and to pledge among themselves by a sacrament (sacramento)not unto any crime but that they might not commit fraud robbery oradultery that they might not break faith that they might not refuse torepay a deposit After these things had been accomplished they had thehabit of departing to their homes and of meeting again in order to takea common and harmless meal although they had ceased to do thisafter my edict by which according to your command I had forbiddenfraternities to exist42

39 See Daniel G Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentum Historical SketchesrdquoAntiphon 113 (2007) 246ndash47 TDNT 4827 and Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctify The Scholastic Contribution to Understanding Sacramentsrdquo Assembly A Journal ofLiturgical Theology 344 (2008) 51

40 Yann Le Bohec The Imperial Roman Army trans Raphael Bate (London Routledge 2000)239

41 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 36 Cf David Brown God and Enchantment of PlaceReclaiming Human Experience (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004) 26 where he advocatedan understanding of sacramentum that highlights the secret entailed within the rite (more in theway of μυστήριον) as opposed to an oath of allegiance as described above

DEFINING THE TERMS

13

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

While sacramentum had no direct connection with the true characterof the ancient mystery cults themselves the understanding thatsacramentum was an oath or a pledge (particularly as noted by Plinya pledge to do good and not evil) naturally caused it to becomeassociated with the Greek word μυστήριον as the rites of the ancientmystery cults ldquoalso entailed an oathrdquo43 Furthermore this indirectconnection between sacramentum and μυστήριον caused at timesa conflation of the terms as is especially apparent in Augustiniansacramental theology As Mathai Kadavil has noted

He [Augustine] used sacramentum and mysterium without a properdistinction Unlike the Greek patristic term mysterion which dependsupon a play of hidden and manifest albeit emphasizing the hiddenAugustinersquos sacramentum mysterium figura and other related words havean obscure meaning That is for him sacraments are signs and his emphasisis on understanding them Thus under the influence of Platonic andneo-Platonic philosophy he taught that the sacrament is a visible sign ofa sacred thing or a visible form of an invisible grace44

For Augustine a clear distinction between sacramentum andμυστήριον was not as evident as it was for example in Ambrosewho understood sacramentum as a sign or rite and μυστήριον as thereality behind the sacramentum (ie the μυστήριον was salvationwhich came by way of the sacramentum)45 However while a

42 Pliny the Younger ldquoLetters to the Emperor Trajanrdquo 1096 trans in Van Slyke ldquoThe ChangingMeaning of sacramentumrdquo 249

43 TDNT 4827 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 37 who noted another use ofsacramentum specifically ldquothe money to be deposited in a sacred place by the litigantsrdquo in acivil case As for the lack of a direct connection between sacramentum and μυστήριον see VanSlyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 251 There Van Slyke noted that Tertullianand other Latin Christian authors preferred sacramentum over μυστήριον for the sole reason thatsacramentum lacked a connection with the mystery cults

44 Mathai Kadavil The World as Sacrament (Leuven Peeters 2005) 4545 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 As for Ambrosersquos distinction see Enrico Mazza

Mystagogy A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age trans Matthew J OrsquoConnell (New YorkPueblo 1989) 21ndash25

VIVA VOX

14

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

conflation in terms may have caused an obscurity of meaning inthe terms employed in the Augustinian construction the emphasisfor Augustine was not on the obscurity ldquobut on the meaningrdquo ofthe sign itself while yet retaining a ldquohidden characteristicrdquo46 Thisconflation in search of meaning was most evident in his homilyon Jacobrsquos wrestling with God where Augustine proclaimedldquoTherefore it is a mystery therefore it is a sacrament therefore itis a prophecy therefore it is a figure therefore let us understandrdquo47

What this reveals however is that as David Brown has notedldquoa tension exists in almost all forms of religionrdquo particularly atension ldquobetween explanation and mystery between the convictionthat something has been communicated by the divine (revelation)and the feeling that none the less God is infinitely beyond all ourimaginingsrdquo48

Here it must be noted that Augustinersquos emphasis on understandingthe intelligible reality behind the sign the res carried with it thelatent risk of narrowing the whole of his sacramental theology as infact may be observed in later Latin theology (see the discussion inthe following section ldquoConstituting the Sacramentalrdquo) Not only didthis subsequent emphasis begin to define sacraments more explicitlybut when understanding became the goal the informational aspecteffectively came to supersede the communicative aspect49

46 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 39 and Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning ofsacramentumrdquo 259 respectively

47 Augustine Sermo 12233 in J-P Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (ParisMigne 1854) 38682 (hereafter PL emphasis mine) See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament39

48 The two foregoing citations are from Brown God and Mystery in Words 2249 Lewis Ayres (see for example his ldquoAugustinersquos Trinitarian Theologyrdquo in Augustine and His

Critics Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner ed Robert Dodaro and George Lawless [NewYork Routledge 2000] 51ndash76) would argue that according to Augustine development andpurification of the intellect occurred by way of the person of Christ whose function it was ldquotolead our intelligence beyond an obsession with the material to imagine the immaterial realityof the divine as the source of our material worldrdquo (69) Consequently he suggests it was notthe case that Augustine dismissed understanding rather for him understanding must be placed

DEFINING THE TERMS

15

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

There is similarity in Jerome who in his Latin Vulgate famouslytranslated the ldquomysteryrdquo of Eph 532 as sacramentum providing for nodistinction in terms For Jerome this latter word was charged ldquowiththe value of a signmdashhidden yet revealedrdquo50 For Jerome Christ wasof course the ultimate revelation behind the sign though Christrsquoshiddenness implied that the revelation was not particularly clear tothe receivers In other words revelation did not equate with clarityThat something had been revealed did not guarantee that it waseasily perceptible or understandable Hence the sacramentum seemedinextricably bound to mystery

Jerome is especially important because his Vulgate ldquograduallysuperseded the numerous versions of Scripture that circulated inthe first centuries of Latin Christianityrdquo51 In turn the theologicalimport that Jerome placed on sacramentum ldquopermanently influencedChristian vocabularyrdquo52 Because Jerome chose to translate μυστήριονas sacramentum almost every translation available today considersthese two terms to be equal in definition

It was this equating of μυστήριον with sacramentum that mayhave led to the wide use of the latter term in much of the firstmillennium For example Augustine gave the title of ldquosacramentrdquo tothe following the font of baptism the giving of salt during baptismthe ashes at baptism the Lordrsquos Prayer and the Feast of Easter53 Thefunction of these rather unexpected sacraments was summarized wellby Hugh of St Victor (late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century)ldquoThere are some sacraments in the Church in which even if salvation

in its proper christological context Nevertheless this purified intellect still retained a conceptualaspect which is the very point that concerns us here

50 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 25951 Ibid 25552 Ibid53 Derek A Rivard Blessing the World Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC

Catholic University of America Press 2009) 39

VIVA VOX

16

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

does not consist principally salvation is increased insofar as devotionis exercisedrdquo54

Constituting the Sacramental

Taking into account the evolution in terms referring to sacramentin the ancient world and especially how both μυστήριον andsacramentum each in its own way underwent a narrowing insacramental definition (the former because of its connection todoctrine the latter because of its emphasis on understanding andboth because of their seeming conflation in definition) at this pointit might be helpful to explore what constitutes a ldquosacramentrdquo in thevarious western Christian traditions today It would particularly behelpful to see whether the word of God fits within that categoryWhen discussing this sacramental constitution however thesacrament of the Eucharist will be used by way of example as it is asacrament common to all Western traditions

Roman Catholic

According to Roman Catholic teaching

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ andentrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us Thevisible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and makepresent the graces proper to each sacrament They bear fruit in thosewho receive them with the required dispositions55

54 Hugh of St Victor De Minoribus Sacramentis et Sacris in PL 176471 While these are no longerconsidered sacraments in the narrow sense of the term they are considered sacramentals orldquoliturgical actions with a basically epicletic structure (or a structure made up of anamnesis andepiclesis)rdquo (Herbert Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology trans Linda M Maloney [CollegevilleMN Liturgical Press 1992] 318)

55 CCC 1131

DEFINING THE TERMS

17

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Within the sacramental realities of the Roman Catholic Church theemphasis is clearly placed upon the ldquovisible riterdquo by which grace ismade present though that grace is described as ldquofree and undeservedhelp that God gives us to respond to his call to become children ofGodrdquo and which is ldquoinfused into our soul to heal it of sin and tosanctify itrdquo56

To better understand the particular doctrinal position of Rome andthe history of sacramental thought however it might be helpful totake a cursory look at the history of what constituted a sacrament inthe universal catholic tradition before discussing the position of theRoman Catholic Church today57 First in opposition to the gnosticsof his day Tertullian confessed that the material (for example waterbread wine hands and so on) brought about divine healing when hewrote

I should thereby teach all the more fully that it is not to be doubted thatGod has made the material substance which He has disposed throughoutall His products and works obey Him also in His own peculiarsacraments that the material substance which governs terrestrial life actsas agent likewise in the celestial58

In short earthly matter when coupled with the sanctification of theSpirit is capable of bearing the divine59

Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) likewise emphasized thesanctification of the material object but did so by way of the spoken

word thereby narrowing the focus of the word sacrament from theentire ldquoaction to objectrdquo60 In the Eucharist for example the

56 Ibid 1996 and 1999 respectively57 A small ldquocrdquo is intentionally used here as a reference not to the Roman Catholic Church but

to the one holy catholic and apostolic church In this discussion the article by Patrick Regan(ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 51ndash56) proved most helpful

58 Tertullian On Baptism III (emphasis original) See also Patrick Regan ldquoSigns that Signify andSanctifyrdquo 51

59 Tertullian On Baptism IV

VIVA VOX

18

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

ldquosanctification of the bread and wine changes them into the body andblood of Christrdquo thereby confecting a sacrament61 Cyril wrote of thisin his catechetical lecture on the mysteries

For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of theHoly and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine while after theinvocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ and the Wine theBlood of Christ so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp ofSatan become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit62

Note well the slight narrowing in definition that has begun alreadyin the fourth century with Cyril delineating as ldquosacramentrdquo thatparticular bread and wine that has received the spoken word ofinvocation Interestingly however the particular set of words to bespoken by the priest as a guarantor of sacramental presence anda delineator of the precise moment of consecration has yet to bedetermined63

60 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 See also David Brown God and Mystery in Words40 n 48 who helpfully directed his readers to the Didache chapters 9ndash10 as an example of theliturgy as a whole serving to bring about the sacramental Interestingly in the Didache one findsa eucharistic prayer but no actual recitation of the words of institution

61 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5262 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19763 See for example Louis Bouyer (Eucharist Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer

trans Charles Underhill Quinn [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1968])who describes the fact that while there were certainly early eucharistic formularies presenttheir function was ldquoas examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur formulasrdquo (137)In a similar vein Frank C Senn (Christian Liturgy Catholic and Evangelical [MinneapolisFortress Press 1997]) makes the helpful point that while some of the early Fathers mayhave referred to the words of Christ in relation to the consecration of the bread and wineinto the body and blood ldquowhat is not clear is whether [they are] referring to the words ofChrist once spoken and recorded in the institution narratives of the New Testament or tothe recitation of these words by the bishop or priest in the eucharistic riterdquo (245) See alsoGregory Dix The Shape of the Liturgy (New York Seabury 1982) 238ndash40 along with theliturgies mentioned by him On the other hand Josef A Jungmann (The Early Liturgy Tothe Time of Gregory the Great [Notre Dame IN University of Notre Dame Press 1959]68ndash69) disagrees with Dixrsquos assessment of the liturgy of Addai and Mari However Jungmannrsquosperspective has been proven false at least from a Roman Catholic perspective given theVaticanrsquos recognition of the validity of the Eucharist in the liturgy of Addai and Mari whichlacks the words of institution (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Guidelinesfor Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the

DEFINING THE TERMS

19

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

While Ambrose (fourth century) provided an initial distinctionbetween sacramentum and μυστήριον with the former taking onthe character of a sign and the latter emphasizing the divine realitydelivered by way of the former it was Augustine (mid-fourth centuryto early fifth century) who took ldquoa decisive step forward in thetheology of sacraments by placing them in the general categoryof signrdquo64 This sacramental theology might have furthered the gapbetween what was seen (sign) and what was unseen (thing signified)as earlier proposed by Ambrose delineating matter and their spiritualeffects more sharply65 This delineation however is understandablegiven Augustinersquos context of the Donatist controversy66

Nevertheless as Van Roo has noted

The basic distinction underlying Augustinersquos notion of sign is that ofthing and sign Some things are not used to signify anything others areIn the latter case the sign makes something else come to thought andthat something else is the res which technically is correlative with the signit is the thing made known the thing learned through the sign67

Augustine described it this way Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis

sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est68

However while the gap between sign and thing signified mayappear to have been furthered by Augustine the intention of hissign and thing construction was precisely the opposite to highlightthe revelation of the something else namely the thing signified andparticularly our understanding of and union with that intelligible

East [Rome Vatican 2001] httpwwwvaticanvaroman_curiapontifical_councilschrstunidocumentsrc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_enhtml)

64 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 52 For an example from Ambrose see De Mysteriis12 in PL 16389

65 Ibid 52ndash53 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 38ndash4366 See for example Edward J Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West History and Theology

(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2004) 2967 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 4168 Augustine De Civitate Dei 105 in PL 41282

VIVA VOX

20

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

reality69 In other words while the Greek patristic μυστήριον borethe weight to a certain extent of that which was unknown andconsidered (albeit inaccurately) a secret the Latin sacramentum wasbased precisely upon the meaning that the ldquosacred signrdquo was intendedto deliver through revelation and the understanding that therevelation was intended to produce in the recipient both spirituallyand conceptually70

Nevertheless whatever definitions had been offered up to thispoint in Christian history they paled in comparison to the work ofthe Scholastics who assumed the task of defining a general conceptof sacrament that would apply to all of the regularly celebratedsacraments of the church71 Early Scholastics like Hugh of St Victor(late eleventh century to mid-twelfth century) seeking to makesacramental theology ldquologically coherentrdquo took a turn fromAugustinersquos thinking by proposing that sacraments were not merelysignification (this concept appears to have been too broad and abstractfor the Scholastics) but also contained within them the grace thatwas signified therein by virtue of the consecratory act72 As onecommentator has noted for the Scholastics grace ldquowas containedin the sacrament like medicine in a bottlerdquo73 This theologicalperspective stood in opposition to the notion that grace was merelythe thing signified for the sign and thing signified came togetherfor the Scholastics in what Vorgrimler has labeled the ldquointernalsacramentrdquo or ldquores et sacramentumrdquo74

69 Kilmartin The Eucharist in the West 2570 Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 34 3971 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 4572 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5373 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5174 See Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 53 and Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 54

respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

21

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

It should be noted however that while the Scholastics appearto have narrowed the gap between sign and thing signified theirtheological work actually created a more dramatic narrowing indefinition than what was earlier observed in Cyril of Jerusalem whomoved from ldquoaction to objectrdquo This narrowing caused a shift infocus from the totality of the words spoken to the narrowness ofthe words of consecration which in their minds brought aboutthe fundamental distinction between sign and sacrament In shortthe consecration was the constitutive element in their sacramentalreality75 Therefore according to Hugh of St Victor it was theinstitution of Christ that brought signification and the consecrationthat brought sanctification and made a thing a sacrament76

Moreover while signs can merely signify sacraments can alsoconfermdashor to use Hughrsquos terminology sacraments are efficacious77

Given the foregoing Hugh proposed a more specific definition ofsacrament than that of the modified Augustinian formula (sacrae rei

signummdashsign of a sacred thing) in the following manner ldquoAsacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senseswithout representing by similitude and signifying by institution andcontaining by sanctification some invisible and spiritual gracerdquo78 Atthis point in Christian history sacraments were those things that hadreceived the consecratory words of the priest and thereby containedan invisible grace

Significantly as the leading figure in Scholastic thought ThomasAquinas (thirteenth century) ldquoaccepts Augustinersquos definition that asacrament is a sign of a sacred reality but only insofar as it

75 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5176 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5377 Hugh of St Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith 1 9 in Hugh of Saint Victor on the

Sacraments of the Christian Faith trans Roy J Deferrari (Cambridge MA Medieval Academy ofAmerica 1951) 155 See also Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 52

78 Ibid

VIVA VOX

22

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

sanctifies human beingsrdquo79 As Aquinas wrote ldquosignum rei sacrae

inquantum est sanctificans hominesrdquo80 Yet Aquinas took Augustine astep further by specifying the necessity of a particular set of wordsfor the consecratory act the words of institution81 For Aquinas thedriving force behind the sacrament was the use of Christrsquos words bya priest which functioned as the determinative factor of sacramentaltheology82 This was clearly attested to in Aquinasrsquos famous hymn forthe Feast of Corpus Christi Pange Lingua

Verbum caro panem verum

verbo carnem efficit83

As a result Regan helpfully asserted ldquoIn modern times what isremembered most of all is that sacraments are efficacious because ofthe formula spoken by the priest giving the impression that thesacrament is a thingrdquo84 Pope Benedict XVI then Joseph Ratzinger

79 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 5480 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiaelig trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New

York Benzinger Brothers 1948) 3 question 60 article 2 All citations from Aquinasrsquos SummaTheologiaelig can be accessed online at httpwwwccelorgccelaquinassummahtml

81 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 See also Brown God and Mystery in Words 3982 Ibid 3 question 60 article 7 ldquoin sacramentis verba se habent per modum formaeligrdquo See also

Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 and Louis-Marie Chauvet The Sacraments TheWord of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2001) xiv Inthe latter Chauvet asserted that the idea of sacramental cause and effect has one significantdisadvantagemdashnamely that it suggested ldquothe idea of quasi automatic production as long as theinstrument is properly utilized by the ministerrdquo

83 Hugh Henry ldquoPange Lingua Gloriosirdquo in The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 11 (New York RobertAppleton 1911) httpwwwnewadventorgcathen11441chtm

84 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 See also Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 51where Reganrsquos point is reiterated when he cites the following ldquoOnly a literally correctexpression [of the words of institution] guaranteed validityrdquo For an extreme example of theefficaciousness of the words of institution see the Council of Florence session 8 (November22 1439) ldquoA priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament For in virtue ofthose words the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substanceof wine into his bloodrdquo (the complete English text of the Council can be accessed online athttpwwwewtncomlibrarycouncilsflorencehtm)

DEFINING THE TERMS

23

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

detected a similar problem in modern sacramental theology whichtook its cue from Scholastic thought He wrote

For a certain kind of text-book theology what mattered in thesacraments and likewise in the Eucharist was essentially their validityand therefore the moment of consecration Everything else wasbeing considered as beautiful ceremonies interesting but not as thereality in which the Eucharist has its concrete existence It was thusnecessary to discover anew that the Liturgy is not just a collectionof ceremonies which aim to give length and solemnity to theconsecration85

While the language of matter form and effect was precise inhighlighting the consecratory words spoken by the priest the ideaof mystery was all but lost particularly mystery as it was embodiedin the totality of the liturgical celebration86 As Vorgrimler observedldquoThe sacraments were transformed from symbolic liturgical actionsand life-events to extremely brief punctual gesturesrdquo87 Thereforesacramental theology proceeded ldquonot from the concrete liturgicaltradition but from its own a priori and abstract categories anddefinitionsrdquo88 In other words sacramental definitions wereformulated and liturgical rites were tested to see whether they fitwithin those definitions and not vice versa What was lost in all ofthis was the role of the totality of the rite itself and as David Brownhas noted ldquothe way in which words so far from functioning merelyas a test for divine action could actually themselves help mediate the

85 Joseph Ratzinger ldquoAssessment and Future Prospectsrdquo in Looking Again at the Question of theLiturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger ed Alcuin Reid (Farnborough UK Saint Michaelrsquos Abbey2003) 146

86 See Brown God and Mystery in Words 3987 Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 5488 Alexander Schmemann The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom trans Paul Kachur

(Crestwood NY St Vladimirrsquos Seminary Press 1988) 13

VIVA VOX

24

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

divinerdquo89 Words became the information needed for an efficacioussacrament90

In recent years there has been a push to expand once more thenotion of sacrament particularly by theologians such as EdwardSchillebeeckx Karl Rahner and Otto Semmelroth who taught thatChrist was the primordial sacrament and that when one came incontact with him one came in contact with something that wastruly called ldquosacramentrdquo91 This move while contemporary actuallyappears to be quite ancient for this theological move understandsChrist as the sacrament in the same way that the Fathers including theapostle Paul understood Christ as the μυστήριον of God

Schillebeeckx described that primordial sacrament this way

Because the saving acts of the man Jesus are performed by a divineperson they have a divine power to save but because this divine powerto save appears to us in visible form the saving activity of Jesus issacramental For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in anoutwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest abestowal of salvation in historical visibility The man Jesus as thepersonal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption is thesacrament the primordial sacrament because this man the Son of Godhimself is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way tothe actuality of redemption92

89 Brown God and Mystery in Words 2390 See ibid 56ndash57 This is not to say however that some objective standard for the presence

of Christ in the sacraments is unnecessary At a bare minimum there must be some metricfor determining Christrsquos presence in his sacramental gifts particularly the Eucharist If therewere not the faithful would have no assurance of a comforting presence Nevertheless bareminimums can never be the final word on the matter Instead once the church has movedbeyond merely recognizing his presence in the Eucharist would it not be helpful to explore allthe additional possibilities by which Christ might be present corporeally in and for his creation

91 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 55 The first use of the term ldquoprimordial sacramentrdquoas noted by Vorgrimler (Sacramental Theology 32) was by Carl Feckes in 1934 (Ursakrament)

92 Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham MD Sheed andWard 1963) 15

DEFINING THE TERMS

25

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

For Schillebeeckx a sacrament is any material element (ldquooutwardlyperceptible formrdquo) through which the divine is conveyed Theprimordial example of such a sacrament is of course the person ofJesus Christ a point that is not original to Schillebeeckx but wasmade clear in the Ambrosian Missal the writings of St Augustine andSt Thomas Aquinas and if somewhat indirectly Luther

For example the Ambrosian Missalrsquos ldquoPreface for the First Sundayin Adventrdquo reads ldquomanifestans plebi tuae Unigeniti tui sacramentumrdquo(ldquomanifesting to your people the sacrament of your Only-begotten[Son]rdquo)93 Likewise Augustine wrote that ldquonon est enim aliud Dei

mysterium nisi Christusrdquo (ldquothere is no other mystery of God butChristrdquo)94 Aquinas wrote that Jesus was ldquothe fundamental sacramentinsofar as his human nature as the instrument of divinity effectssalvationrdquo95 And Luther too wrote ldquoUnum solum habent sacrae literae

sacramentum quod est ipse Christus Dominusrdquo (ldquoSacred Scripture hasonly one sacrament that is Christ the Lordrdquo)96 Together theseindicate that the understanding of Christ as the primordial sacramentor mystery of God was present well before the work of the SecondVatican Council even if these ideas were largely confined until thento academic circles and moreover even if these ideas were not fullydeveloped by and integrated into the theological thought of thosewho issued them97

93 Cited in Van Roo The Christian Sacrament 79 n 3894 Augustine Epist 187 no 34 in PL 3884595 Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles IV art 41 trans in Vorgrimler Sacramental Theology 3196 Martin Luther D Martin Luthers Werke 120 vols (Weimar H Boumlhlau 1883ndash2009) 686

(hereafter WA) When an English translation is offered it will be from Lutherrsquos Works AmericanEdition 55 vols ed Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T Lehmann (St Louis Concordia vols 1ndash30and Philadelphia Fortress Press vols 31ndash55 1958ndash1986) (hereafter AE)

97 Admittedly both Rahner and Semmelroth took Schillebeeckx further than he probably wantedto be taken In fact both Rahner and Semmelroth began to narrow the definition of thisprimordial sacrament by either a) making distinctions between the sign and thing signifiedwithin the person of Christ (see Karl Rahner The Church and the Sacraments trans W J OrsquoHara[New York Herder and Herder 1963] 16) or b) speaking of Christ as merely analogous to asacrament (see Otto Semmelroth ldquoDie Kirche als Sakrament des Heilsrdquo in Mysterium Salutis 4

VIVA VOX

26

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

So while this appeared to be a new approach to sacramentaltheology appropriately labeled Nouvelle Theacuteologie it was in actualitya return to a more ancient way of understanding the nature ofa ldquosacramentrdquo in opposition to the medieval limitation of thesacraments to seven sacred actions98 Very simply while the onus wasat times put on the church and the faithful to determine what wasand what was not properly called a sacrament Schillebeeckx RahnerSemmelroth and other Nouvelle theologians put the onus back onChrist In other words whatever was assumed in Christrsquos sacred fleshand received his christological touch was considered to be in somesense sacramental Consequently one senses that the intention of thisressourcement (or return to the primary biblical patristic and liturgicalsources) was to allow the incarnate Christ to again have his way withthe church as opposed to allowing the church to continue to haveits way with Christ Why Precisely because ldquoa theology worthy ofthe name should have a sacramental theology consistent with itsChristologyrdquo99 And who is Christ He is ldquoin his humanity thesacrament of Godrdquo100

Kenan Osborne discussed the influence of these three theologiansin the following way

Jesus in his humanity as the primordial sacrament and the churchas the foundational sacrament became a point of departure for manyCatholic theologians once the writings of Semmelroth Rahner andSchillebeeckx became popular This provided a much-needed balanceto sacramental theology since it moved away from a ldquotwo-and-two-only sacramentrdquo approach on the one hand and from a ldquoseven-and-

1 320 trans in Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World A Theology for the ThirdMillennium [Mahwah NJ Paulist 1999] 91)

98 For an excellent survey of the movement see Hans Boersma Nouvelle Theacuteologie amp SacramentalOntology A Return to Mystery (Oxford Oxford University Press 2009)

99 Louis-Marie Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existencetrans Madeleine M Beaumont and Patrick Madigan (Collegeville MN Pueblo 1995) 538

100 Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church trans Michael Mason (San Francisco Ignatius2006) 202

DEFINING THE TERMS

27

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

seven-only sacramentrdquo approach on the other Reaching beyond bothscholasticism and neo-scholasticism to the patristic period of both Eastand West these authors presented an approach to Christiansacramentality that was old and yet new Sacramentality was seen bythese authors as a more profound aspect of the Christian Church witha primordial base in the Incarnation itself Sacramental thought wasmore closely tied to Jesus since in the limited two or seven views ofsacraments the tie to Jesus was basically that sacraments were institutedby Christ An intrinsic connection to the very Incarnation was neverinvolved101

It is clear therefore that this push for a broader definition ofsacrament by Schillebeeckx Rahner and Semmelroth in turn hasmade the sacrament inclusive not merely of ldquoconsecrated breadrdquo butactually of the entire ldquouttered eventrdquo within the liturgical action ofthe church102 In other words the sacramental rites of the churchwere no longer the exclusive place in which one could come incontact with God Instead any contact with God was inclusive of thesacramental and considered as such103 As Osborne noted

One of the most helpful turning points in contemporary theology hasbeen the abandonment of a reductionistic view of sacrament and ahealthy broadening of what sacrament is all about No longer does theterm sacrament refer merely to seven or two particular liturgical rites inthe Christian churches but rather a sacramental aspect undergirds theentire theological fabric of both Christology and ecclesiology104

Moreover if something was caught up in the realm of this broadersacramentality it was at the same time caught up in the realm of theincarnation for that is where the sacramental received its primordial

101 Kenan B Osborne Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World 47102 Regan ldquoSigns that Signify and Sanctifyrdquo 54 and 56 respectively103 See Robert W Bertram ldquoReview of Edward Schillebeeckx Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter

with Godrdquo Journal of Religion 45 (1965) 260ndash61104 Kenan B Osborne ldquoJesus as Human Expression of the Divine Presence Toward a New

Incarnation of the Sacramentsrdquo in The Sacraments Godrsquos Love and Mercy Actualized ed FrancisA Eigo (Villanova PA Villanova University Press 1979) 29

VIVA VOX

28

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

character in the assumption of flesh and blood in the womb of theVirgin Mary Any encounter with Jesus the primordial sacramenttherefore is both a sacramental and an incarnational encounter105

So both Christ and the church have been rediscovered in termsof their inherent sacramental character a truth that can be seen veryclearly in the Missals of the Roman Church published in the wake ofthe Second Vatican Council106 For example the Missale Romanum

editio typica tertia the third Latin version since Vatican II used theword sacramentum 252 times This same word appeared only 131times in the Missal published in the same year as the start of theCouncil 1962107 ldquoThe wordrsquos liturgical import thenrdquo Van Slykenotes ldquohas practically doubled in the years following the SecondVatican Councilrdquo108

It is clear therefore that within the Roman Catholic Churchthere has been an evolution of sacramental understanding In somesense the church has come full circle from Tertullianrsquos emphasison materiality to Schillebeeckxrsquos proposal for a broader notion ofsacrament that finds its origin in the materiality of the person ofChrist It has yet to be seen however whether this development willhave a lasting impact on the Roman Catholic Church

It is clear from the churchrsquos history that heresies and disputesforce confessions confessions bring critique and critique causessharpening rethinking and at times even reformulation The

105 The incarnation is of particular importance as that is the direction in which we are headedtoward the sacramentality of the word both written and preached with the annunciation toMary serving as the icon of such sacramental activity

106 Admittedly one of the dangers associated with this hyper-sacramental understanding is thatit runs the risk of making everything sacramentalmdashand when everything is sacramental thennothing is sacramental This danger however is most prominent in the more sacramentaltraditions particularly the Roman Catholic Church Yet for the sake of this work and thepresupposed low sacramental understanding in the Lutheran Church this perspective comes asa welcome gift

107 Van Slyke ldquoThe Changing Meaning of sacramentumrdquo 245108 Ibid

DEFINING THE TERMS

29

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Lutheran Church therefore by the very fact that it is a youngerdenomination and one that was never intended to break away fromthe Roman Catholic Church has not been forced to struggle on itsown through some of the same theological battles once faced by thecommon Fathers of the church As Lutherans are ldquoCatholics in exilerdquothe Roman Catholic forefathers delineated much of their sacramentaltheology for them thus a number of overlaps will naturally beexpected and will most certainly be present109

Lutheran

According to confessional Lutheran teaching as delineated withinthe Book of Concord sacraments are ldquorites which have the commandof God and to which the promise of grace has been addedrdquo110 Gracein particular is that which delivers the forgiveness of sins by wayof means However since the confessional period of Lutheranism(particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) there has beena continual narrowing in sacramental definition The full extent ofthis narrowing is especially clear in the ldquoExplanation of the SmallCatechismrdquo a document written by the LCMS and placed at the endof Lutherrsquos Small Catechism That text proposes that a sacrament is asacred act that is instituted by the Lord containing a visible element andby which the Lord delivers the forgiveness of sins111 While this mayseem insignificant the additional requirement of a visible element

109 C E Braaten ldquoConfessional Lutheranism in an Ecumenical Worldrdquo Concordia TheologicalQuarterly 7134 (JulyOctober 2007) 223 The same catholic heritage can be seen in otherecclesial ldquochildrenrdquo of the Reformation particularly Anglicanism and Calvinism

110 Apology of the Augsburg Confession article 133 (hereafter ApAC) The aforementionedcitation was Melanchthonrsquos own definition from his Loci of 1521 (see n 4 in Tappert 211)It is striking however that no mention of Christ was made there In some sense therefore itappears that the sacraments were thought of as an abstraction Where there is abstraction thereis usually a lack of tangibility

111 Lutherrsquos Small Catechism with Explanation (St Louis Concordia 1986) 197 (emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

30

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

has succeeded in narrowing the number of sacraments from three totwo removing Absolution (that is PenanceReconciliation) from theaccepted sacramental actions as it does not contain a material elementlike the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist112

More important however is the fact that the Explanation was notpart of Lutherrsquos original Small Catechism and consequently is notpart of the list of confessional documents to which a Lutheran pastormust subscribe Most Lutherans however are ignorant of theaforementioned fact and consider the Explanation to be authoritativeand binding

While Luther did not limit the definition of sacrament as the latereditions of his Small Catechism did he did have a rather Scholasticunderstanding of what determines the sacramental presence of Christin the Eucharist He wrote ldquoThere the words make the bread to beChristrsquos body given for us Therefore it is no more just bread butChristrsquos body wears the breadrdquo113 According to Luther it was verynarrowly the words of consecration that made Christ present in theEucharist Moreover to ensure that as little time as possible elapsedbetween the consecration and the reception Luther proposed thatthe priest deliver the consecrated host before consecrating the chalicewith the verba114 This suggests that in Lutherrsquos thinking there wasas was the case with the Scholastics a special power available in thewords of institution which alone were capable of bringing aboutsacramental efficacy

It is notable however that the Lutheran confessors acknowledgedthat a common sacramental understanding existed betweenthemselves and the Roman Catholic Church at least with regard to

112 For the original number of sacraments according to the Lutheran tradition see ApAC article134

113 WA 30153 See also AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999114 AE 5330 WA 12214 AE 5381 WA 1999

DEFINING THE TERMS

31

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

the sacramentsrsquo capability to engender faith They wrote ldquoIn ArticleXIII our opponents approve the statement that the sacraments areno mere marks of profession among men as some imagine but arerather signs and testimonies of Godrsquos will toward us through whichhe moves menrsquos hearts to believerdquo115

Along with a relatively common sacramental understanding it isquite clear that there is little distinction with regard to the meansby which the sacramental realities are made present within both theLutheran and Roman Catholic traditions Luther wrote

If a layman should perform all the outward functions of a priestcelebrating Mass confirming absolving administering the sacramentsdedicating altars churches vestments vessels etc it is certain that theseactions in all respects would be similar to those of a true priest infact they might be performed more reverently and properly than thereal ones But because he has not been consecrated and ordained andsanctified he performs nothing at all but is only playing church anddeceiving himself and his followers116

Without a properly ordained steward it is difficult even impossiblefor the sacramental mysteries to be conveyed However when aproperly ordained steward is present and speaks the words ofinstitution given by Christ the sacrament is present too117

The distinction between the Lutheran Church and the RomanCatholic Church on this matter becomes clear when one discoverswhat particularly is conveyed in the sacramental realities accordingto Roman Catholicism As mentioned the Roman Catholic Churchwould propose that graces are conveyed in the sacraments whichprovide aid to the receiver thereby enabling the receiver to respond to

115 ApAC article 131116 AE 25234ndash35117 While Luther would shudder at being compared with the Scholastics his understanding of

sacramental presence is not significantly different from theirs What makes the sacrament asacrament is a recitation of the words of Christ by a priest For its part however the RomanCatholic Church would not acknowledge the validity of Lutheran orders

VIVA VOX

32

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

the call of God and grow in sanctification118 For while ldquono one canmerit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversionrdquo one canldquomoved by the Holy Spirit merit all the graces needed to attaineternal life as well as necessary temporal goodsrdquo119 Grace for Romeas contained and delivered within the sacramental realities is directedprimarily toward the sanctification of the sinner Therefore by thevery fact that sanctification does not come all at once sacramentalgrace is bestowed through repetitionmdashagain and againmdashnourishingthe Christian toward a life of full sanctification

For a Lutheran however grace is directed primarily towardjustification ldquoTo be justifiedrdquo wrote the confessors ldquodoes not meanthat a wicked man is made righteousrdquo precisely because to be maderighteous is the equivalent to being sanctified120 In other wordsgrace is what forgives in forgiving grace justifies Therefore graceis not given incrementally but always in totality and always forthe justification of the sinner This does not necessarily suggest adifference between the two traditions regarding the nature of graceitself but rather a distinction in how each understands the end forwhich grace is given for justification or sanctification

Moreover in terms of how the sacraments function Rome teachesthat the sacraments work ex opere operato121 In its most basic sensethis confession was meant to protect the faithful from the abuse of anunworthy or even an unbelieving priest Put simply even a bad priestcould say a good mass Luther would agree

For our faith and the sacrament must not be based on the personwhether he is godly or evil consecrated or unconsecrated called or animpostor whether he is the devil or his mother but upon Christ uponhis word upon his office upon his command and ordinance where

118 CCC 1996119 CCC 2027120 ApAC article 4252121 CCC 1128 This of course refers first to the priest and only secondarily to the recipient

DEFINING THE TERMS

33

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

these are in force there everything will be carried out properly nomatter who or what the person might happen to be122

At times however ex opere operato has been transferred from thepriest to the realm of the believer What this suggests in the believeris that regardless of his or her disposition grace waits In particulargrace waits for the sinner to turn away from himself or herself andback toward the Lord who wishes to deliver his grace-filled giftsat the proper time when the believer is ready to receive them123

Contrarily the Apology of the Augsburg Confession shed light onthis issue when it declared ldquoIt is much more necessary to knowhow to use the sacraments Here we condemn the whole crowd ofscholastic doctors who teach that unless there is some obstacle thesacraments confer grace ex opere operato without a good dispositionin the one using themrdquo124 This perspective may well stem from theearlier memorandum of Luther that he presented to Cardinal Cajetanduring a meeting in Augsburg In it Luther insisted that faith aboveall else was necessary for a proper reception of the sacramentalgiftsmdashfaith receives the gifts unbelief rejects the gifts and the gifts donot wait125

In sum therefore though Lutheran theology would not likelycontradict traditional Roman Catholic teaching on the means bywhich the sacraments are made present (the speaking of the dominicalwords of institution done by the one ordained into the office) thetwo traditions would likely disagree on how one properly receives thegifts of the sacraments (Is faith necessary) and precisely what those

122 AE 38200ndash201 WA 38241123 CCC 1128124 ApAC article 1318125 AE 31253ndash92 WA 213ndash14 See also David S Yeago ldquoThe Catholic Lutherrdquo in The Catholicity

of the Reformation ed Carl E Braaten and Robert W Jenson (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1996)24ndash26

VIVA VOX

34

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

gifts are intended to accomplish (Grace as justifying gift or as divineaid)

As of late however it appears that the Roman Catholic andLutheran traditions have come together more than they have driftedapart In particular with the signing of the Joint Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification (hereafter JDDJ) on October 31 1999 theLutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church cameto a consensus ldquoin basic truths of the doctrine of justificationrdquo126

In signing this document therefore both Lutherans and RomanCatholics essentially declared that their respective condemnations ofone another particularly relating to the doctrine of justification andthe delivery of divine grace were henceforth null and void127 It isnoteworthy however that the LCMS is not a part of the LutheranWorld Federation and therefore did not sign the JDDJ Moreoverthe LCMS continues to assert in response to JDDJ that the definitionand understanding of grace contained therein is still an ldquounresolvedissuerdquo128 Thus this serves only to further the sacramental gap betweenthese two traditions

CalvinistReformed

Distinct from both Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology theCalvinist understanding of the sacraments revolves around theunderstanding that the sacraments are ldquoeffectual signs of gracerdquo129 thatldquorepresent Christ and His benefitsrdquo130 though that ldquograce embraces

126 ldquoJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationrdquo 540 in Joint Declaration on the Doctrineof Justification The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2000) 25ndash26

127 Ibid 541128 The Lutheran ChurchmdashMissouri Synod Commission on Theology and Church Relations

ldquoThe Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspectiverdquo(St Louis Concordia 1999) 8

129 39 Articles article 25502ndash3 (emphasis mine)

DEFINING THE TERMS

35

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

only the electrdquo131 Calvin asserted the following in his catechism of1538 ldquoA sacrament is therefore an outward sign by which the Lordrepresents and attests to us his good will toward us in order to sustainthe weakness of our faithrdquo132 As an ldquooutward signrdquo the sacramentsrepresent Christ precisely because Christ is not corporeally presentwithin them According to Calvin ldquoChristrsquos body is limited by thegeneral characteristics common to all human bodies and is containedin heaven (where it was once for all received)rdquo133

It is clear that from a Calvinist perspective the driving forcein theology was not the sacraments but the word of God Thesacraments became secondary for in their representation of Christand his gifts the sacraments ldquoseal the promise given in the Word andmake it more vivid and surerdquo134 These sacraments because theylacked an intrinsic salvific character did not and indeed could notsubsist in and of themselves When they are separated from the wordof God they become ldquonothing in themselves just as seals of a diplomaor a public deed are nothing in themselves and would be affixed tono purpose if nothing was written on the parchmentrdquo135

Yet while the sacraments come to life in the word of God forCalvin and the Calvinist tradition the word of God comes to life inthe spoken word particularly that of the sermon As Wallace notes

When he [Calvin] insists on the sacraments being accompanied by theWord Calvin means us to understand by his use of the term ldquowordrdquonot a ldquosort of enchantmentrdquo or ldquomagical incantationrdquo muttered in a

130 The Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WC) chapter 271 in The Creeds ofChristendom 3660 (emphasis mine)

131 D P Scaer Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace (St Louis The Luther Academy 2009) 109132 John Calvin Catechism of 1538 trans Ford Lewis Battles in I John Hesselink Calvinrsquos First

Catechism A Commentary (Louisville Westminster John Knox 1997) 34 (emphasis mine)133 John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 41712 (hereafter Institutes) See also ibid

21614 and 41730134 Ronald S Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1957)

133 (emphasis mine)135 Institutes 4144

VIVA VOX

36

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

scarcely audible voice and in an unknown tongue over the elementsldquoas if it were addressed to dead matter and not to menrdquo but one whichldquoproclaimed aloud by the minister leads the people by the hand to thatwhich the sign tends and directs us By the word is here meant thepromise which explains the power and use of the signsrdquo Theseconditions can best be fulfilled through the preaching of a sermon andthus it is that Calvin urges that the sacrament if it is to be properlyadministered should be preceded by preaching136

It appears that for Calvin the sacraments were primarily understoodas preached actions or actions accompanied by the inherentlysacramental act of preaching for it was the sermon that led ldquothepeople by the hand to that which the sign [sacrament] tends anddirects usrdquo The sharp distinction of word of God and sacramentdid not therefore exist for Calvin in the same way that it did inother more sacramental traditions For Calvin there existed theword of God and the subsequent preached actions While the wordof God could stand alone the sacraments could not137 And since thesacraments could not stand alone they lacked independent existenceThe word of God was the only thing that truly was ldquothus preaching[was] a sacramentrdquo138

136 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 136ndash37137 Ibid 135 citing Calvin

Separated from the spoken word the human action in the sacrament has no spiritual efficacythe sacrament remaining a ldquolifeless and bare phantomrdquo with all its power gone and containingnothing sound and nothing pure Indeed Calvin calls the sacraments without the Word of Godldquoidle and unmeaning shadowsrdquo ldquopure corruptionsrdquo and ldquodelusive signsrdquo

138 R A Ward Royal Sacrament (London Marshall Morgan amp Scott 1958) 22 This particularunderstanding of the relationship between word and sacrament seems to do two things Firstit appears to run as a halfway point between Roman Catholicism and the rest of Protestantism(cf Randall C Zachman Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin [Notre Dame INUniversity of Notre Dame Press 2007] 21) Therefore this halfway understanding actuallyconflates the word and the sacrament into a single action Second this particular Calvinistunderstanding seems to further the gap between the sign and the thing signified first realizedwith significance in Augustine The main point of emphasis in Calvinrsquos understanding of theword of God was that the word signified the sign which signified something greater Or tosay it another way the word of God in preached form signified and explained the sacramentwhich consequently signified Godrsquos grace and promise (see Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 137)

DEFINING THE TERMS

37

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Consequently Calvin naturally interpreted ldquoreal presencerdquo as arepresentation of Christrsquos body and blood to and for the communicantAs Calvin wrote

The present distribution of the body and blood of the Lord wouldnot greatly benefit us unless they had once for all been given for ourredemption and salvation They [body and blood] are thereforerepresented under bread and wine so that we may learn not only that theyare ours but that they have been destined as food for our spiritual life139

Yet one must ask Is there a connection between the outward signand the living Christ Or as the apostle Paul asked ldquoThe cup ofblessing that we bless is it not a participation (κοινωνία orcommunicatio) in the blood of Christ The bread that we break is itnot a participation (κοινωνία or participatio) in the body of Christrdquo(1 Cor 1016) Is it merely a sign that seals as Calvin asserted Oris it a sacrament that grants union with Christ corporeally as Paulasserted

If it is as Calvin believed particularly that the sacraments are mererepresentations or signs of Christ and his grace then the unionthat occurs between Christ and the Christian within the sacramentalaction of the church is a spiritual union a union wrought by theHoly Spirit who serves ldquoas the mediator of communion betweenheaven and earthrdquo140 Calvin wrote ldquoThe Spirit truly unites thingsseparated by spacerdquo thus making the Eucharist for Calvin a ldquospiritual

banquetrdquo in which the spirit of the believer was united with Christby the power of the Holy Spirit141 The movement of the Holy Spirit

139 Institutes 4173140 George Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Break Toward a Chalcedonian Resolution of the

Eucharistic Controversiesrdquo The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 24 (2003) 250141 Institutes 41710 (emphasis mine) Calvin would confess that the sacraments are utterly ldquovoid

and fruitless without faith and the invisible grace ministered by the Holy Spiritrdquo This connotesa distinction between the work of the sacraments and the work of the Spirit with the lattercoming ldquoin secret testimonyrdquo to the elect leaving the non-elect with no hope of salvation(Institutes Introduction and 174 respectively) See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 169

VIVA VOX

38

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

therefore is a double movement it is intended to pull the Christianin an ldquoupward vectorrdquo as much if not more as it is intended tobring Christ down to the Eucharist (though not corporeally)142 Thisdouble movement in Calvinrsquos mind was successful in both affirmingChristrsquos presence in the Eucharist and concurrently affirming hislocal presence in heaven143 Consequently Calvin asserted that ldquowemust not dream of such a presence of Christ in the Sacrament asthe craftsmen of the Roman court have fashionedmdashas if the body ofChrist by local presence were put there to be touched by the handsto be chewed by the teeth and to be swallowed by the mouthrdquo144

It is important to note however that what Calvin rejected was nota substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist (when substantial isunderstood as real instead of imaginary) but rather the containmentof Christ corporeally in the elements of bread and wine In shortwhat Calvin rejected was a ldquonatural or carnalrdquo presence of Christand participation with that same mode of presence by thecommunicants145 On the other hand Calvin believed that ldquothe life-giving flesh of Christ and so Christ in person himself entered into

onersquos heart by faithrdquo146 For Calvin the union that takes place in theEucharist is an incorporeal one between Christ and the believerwhich occurs by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit ratherthan a corporeal one between Christ and the bread and wine (andconsequently the recipient)147

Therefore commendation is due Calvin because he reoriented thedoctrine of the Eucharist to a more Trinitarian context Neverthelesshis perspective denies the corporeal presence of Christ within the

142 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 250 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 206ndash10143 Ibid144 Institutes 41712 see also 41731145 Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 208146 Hunsinger ldquoThe Bread That We Breakrdquo 251 (emphasis mine)147 Ibid 253 See also Wallace Calvinrsquos Doctrine 197 and Institutes 41731

DEFINING THE TERMS

39

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Eucharist and furthermore makes the faith of the believer theguarantor of that incorporeal presence This could easily lead oneaway from the Christ who comes corporeally (and objectively) byway of the sacramental realities and toward a focus on oneselfasking ldquoHow is my faithrdquo In short Calvinrsquos perspective ultimatelygrounds the incorporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist in thebeliever not in God

During the twentieth century Karl Barth revisited sacramentaltheology from a Reformed perspective Moreover he engaged thetask with particularly pastoral concerns (that is to give comfort to theconsciences of Christians)148 Within his theological body of workhowever something of his Christology was revealed that necessarilyaffected his own sacramental theology149 Christologically speakingBarth posed the question ldquoWhat if God be so much God that withoutceasing to be God he can also be and is willing to be not God aswellrdquo150 Therefore one must wonder if Barth actually accepted thefull implications of the communicatio idiomatum151 Neal Anthony forexample believes Barth did not

Thus for Barth the communicatio idiomatummdashwith specific referenceto the genus maiestaticummdashwas not only an ldquoopen doorrdquo to the verytheology which once reduced Godrsquos revelation of Jesus Christaccording to the canon of ldquoabsolute manrdquo to a datum of inward

148 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I1 trans G W Bromiley (Edinburgh TampT Clark 1975) xvldquoThe community in and for which I have written it is that of the Church and not a communityof theological endeavourrdquo

149 For a tremendously helpful study of Barthrsquos Christology see Charles T Waldrop Karl BarthrsquosChristology Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin Walter de Gruyter 1984) See also KarlBarth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics Instruction in Christian Religion vol 1 ed Geoffrey WBromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1991) 138ndash39

150 Barth The Goumlttingen Dogmatics 136151 See Richard A Muller A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally

from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids Baker 1985) 74 ldquoThe Reformed viewof the communicatio which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum approaches thecommunication more as a praedicatio verbalis or verbal communication of idiomata from bothnatures of the personrdquo

VIVA VOX

40

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

experience or piety but indeed a super-highway to a theology whichconducted a complete inversion of its proper subject matter a theologywhich not only divested its proclamation of the ability of renderingjudgment upon humanityrsquos attempt to ldquoabsolute-tionrdquo but indeedapotheosized that humanity in the process152

One must also wonder if Barthrsquos theological emphasis led him tosee an unfounded chasm between divinity and humanity betweenGod and creation And since it appears that it did in seeing thisldquopersistent dualism between the divine and the humanrdquo Barthbelieved that God and humanity were to a greater or lesser extent atodds with one another153 And when God and humanity are at oddsthe question is ldquoWhere [is] the emphasis to be placedrdquo154

Barth placed his emphasis on God in opposition to the liberaltheologians of his day who placed their emphasis on humanity withfatal consequences155 Admittedly therefore Barthrsquos emphasis was ahelpful one However because of his emphasis Barth believed thatwhile God was indeed present and active in his creation in the manJesus through the ldquoagency of the Spiritrdquo the mode of Jesusrsquo presencewas ldquonot general but specificrdquo156 This was the case for Barth preciselybecause of his christological unwillingness to accept the communicatio

idiomatum in full In other words the ldquomode of Godrsquos presence inthe world in incarnation and revelation is certainly not one whichrenders God as such available for inspection or apprehension byhuman knowers God enters the world and is present within it

152 Neal J Anthony Cross Narratives Martin Lutherrsquos Christology and the Location of Redemption(Eugene OR Pickwick 2010) 243

153 Trevor A Hart Regarding Karl Barth Toward a Reading of His Theology (Eugene OR Wipfand Stock 1999) 6

154 Gustaf Wingren The Living Word A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church (EugeneOR Wipf and Stock 1960) 31

155 Ibid See also Karl Barth The Humanity of God trans John Newton Thomas and ThomasWieser (Atlanta John Knox 1960) 40 where Barth described the troubles of his day that ledhim and others to formulate their particular theological perspective

156 Hart Regarding Karl Barth 9 and 11 respectively

DEFINING THE TERMS

41

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

hypostatically while yet remaining utterly distinct from it bynaturerdquo157 Yet the overemphasis of this confession (the divine at theexpense of the human) which seemed to create a chasm betweenGod and man at the level of nature led Barth to seemingly reject arobust sacramental theology particularly because he understood thesacraments to be in some sense the action of the church and not solelythe action of God human actions not divine158

While Barthrsquos Christology would appear to be conducive tosacramentality (when of course one understands the sacraments tobe the work of God) within the Barthian framework Godrsquos graceis the free and sovereign act of God alone This grace is in turnappropriated in the faith of the Christian a faith for which Godhimself is both object and subject159 Consequently for Barth gracedoes not and could not come by way of the concrete tangible ritesof the church in which humans had some level of participation160

Rather since God is by nature free and sovereign the delivery ofgrace and ultimately the election of the sinner is Godrsquos choice andGodrsquos choice alone Barth ultimately rejects anything that impingesupon God and divine freedom including the sacraments161

It should be noted however that near the end of his career Barthtook a decidedly different turn in his Christology even offeringa lecture entitled ldquoThe Humanity of Godrdquo162 In it he made thisstriking assertion ldquoIt is when we look at Jesus Christ that we knowdecisively that Godrsquos deity does not exclude but includes Hishumanityrdquo163 God declared Barth was infinitely concerned abouthumankind and displayed that concern most clearly and concretely

157 Ibid 15158 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538159 See Hart Regarding Karl Barth 16ndash17160 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538161 Ibid 539162 This lecture was given at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministersrsquo Association in Aarau

on September 25 1956

VIVA VOX

42

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

in his robust humanity164 Yet Barth did not stop with this newtheological assertion he also made what one might consider his mosthonest theological confession on this matter

In the knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriouslyaffirm and thankfully acknowledge Christendom the Church We musteach in his place take part in its life and join in its service It was apart of the exaggerations of which we were guilty in 1920 that we wereable to see the theological relevance of the Church only as a negativecounterpart to the Kingdom of God which we had then so happilyrediscovered We wanted to interpret the form of the Churchrsquos doctrineits worship its juridical order as ldquohuman all too humanrdquo as ldquonot soimportantrdquo We regarded all the earnestness or even zeal devoted tothem as superfluous or even injurious In all this we at least approached thetheory and practice of a spiritual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism165

This theological move not necessarily away from an emphasis onthe Lordrsquos deity but toward a more robust appreciation for Godrsquoshumanity as witnessed in the churchrsquos corporate life would appearto also influence Barthrsquos sacramental theology166 Unfortunately thisdiscovery confession and theological ldquochange of directionrdquo did notaffect Barthrsquos sacramental theology to the extent that we mightexpect though this may be due in part to the fact that he came to allof this late in his career

163 Barth The Humanity of God 49 Noted Barth scholar Bruce McCormack believes that Barthunderstood Godrsquos humanity in terms of enhypostasia In other words because the man Jesus hadhis being in the Logos his humanity can never be separated from the eternal existence of GodTherefore God is uniquely human (see Bruce L McCormack Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth [Grand Rapids Baker 2008] 246)

164 Ibid 46ndash52165 Ibid 62 (emphasis mine)166 Ibid 37 Barth described his shift in emphasis this way

What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanityof God as His deitymdasha God absolutely unique in His relation to man and the worldoverpoweringly lofty and distant strange yes even wholly other the humanity of God at thattime moved from the center to the periphery All this however well it may have been meantand however much it may have mattered was nevertheless said somewhat severely and brutallyand moreovermdashat least according to the other sidemdashin part heretically (ibid 38 43)

DEFINING THE TERMS

43

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Summary of the Various Sacramental Theologies

The Roman Catholic Church confesses seven sacraments all ofwhich are instituted by Christ and entrusted to his church andthrough which divine life is communicated to the recipient167

Lutheranism having a narrower definition of sacrament confessesonly three all of which are rites that have the command of Godand the promise of grace added to them168 Calvinism narrows evenfurther it eliminates the concrete corporeal reality contained withinthe sacraments of both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism andproposes a presence of Christ that is real but incorporeal coming tothe believerrsquos heart by faith while nonetheless bearing an externalsign that signifies grace and represents Christ and his gifts169 Mostextreme however was Barth who seems to reject the traditionaldefinition of sacrament as that through which grace is signified orimparted particularly because they appeared to him to encroach ondivine freedom and sovereign act170

167 CCC 1131168 ApAC article 133 When one begins with a definition and tries to backfill into it there is

inevitably a narrowing in number and use169 39 Articles article 25 502ndash3 and WC 660 respectively This Calvinist perspective should

not be confused with the Zwinglian perspective which emphasizes more robustly the ideaof the sacrament functioning as sign and seal In other words Zwingli ldquodwelt chiefly onthe negativerdquo while Calvin ldquoemphasize[d] the positiverdquo within the Eucharist (Philip SchaffHistory of the Christian Church Volume VII Modern Christianity The German Reformation[Grand Rapids Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1998] 535 httpwwwccelorgccelschaffhcc7pdf) Nevertheless as Schaff also notes in reality Zwingli came ldquoso near the Calvinisticview that it can hardly be distinguished from itrdquo (ibid 534) To prove his assertion Schaff citesZwingli as saying ldquoWe believe that Christ is truly present in the Lordrsquos Supper yea that thereis no communion without such presence We believe that the true body of Christ is eatenin the communion not in a gross and carnal manner but in a sacramental and spiritual mannerby the religious believing and pious heartrdquo (ibid citing Zwinglirsquos Confession to King FrancisI)

170 Chauvet Symbol and Sacrament 538 541

VIVA VOX

44

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Therefore not unlike the narrowing of the definition of word ofGod it appears that the definition of sacrament underwent its ownnarrowing particularly within historically sacramental traditions(Roman Catholic and Lutheran) It seems the definition moved fromthe broadness of sacred rites through which the divine was conveyedby way of matter to the narrowness of only those rites that wereinstituted by Christ (and made effective by his verba) contain avisible element and convey divine grace This seems however tobe a consequence of a more basic narrowing in definition of bothμυστήριον and sacramentum the former becoming associated withdoctrine and the latter becoming focused on understanding the res(Some traditions of course eliminated the sacramental rites or theimportance thereof altogether) Unfortunately however with thisnarrowing in definition came a narrowing in number signifying thatdivine institution became more important than divine action Butmust something be instituted in order for it to be sacramental Inother words might it be correct to say that when God acts materiallyand through that material action delivers himself the action isinherently sacramental171

Can the Word Function Sacramentally

Given the foregoing it might appear difficult for the word of Godto find a place amid the sacramental realities of the Catholic andLutheran traditions In fact it might appear to be slightly easier forthe word to find a place within the Calvinist sacramental system

171 Here I should like to make note of the fact that I have intentionally excluded Anglicanism fromthe sacramental discussion I have done this precisely because the broad range of possibilitiesassociated with Anglicanism given their deep connections to both the Roman Catholic andCalvinist traditions would make it nearly impossible to discuss them accurately and fairly in sofew pages Moreover what I have described above would certainly look familiar in some formor another to those of the Anglican tradition

DEFINING THE TERMS

45

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

where matter does not necessarily convey the divine but servesrather as a signifier that points to the divine Calvin held to a verysacramental understanding of preaching at times even defining theldquolsquomatterrsquo (res sacramenti) of the sermon as Jesus Christ and hisbenefitsrdquo172 Yet the Christ who was present in Calvinrsquos preaching wasreal but incorporeal Therefore in Calvinist understanding Christrsquosspiritual presence in preaching and sacrament makes available tobelievers the blessings of Christrsquos tangible presence that was ldquoremovedfrom the worldrdquo thereby joining those two realties (the Christian andChrist) in the Spirit173

From a uniquely Lutheran perspective is there a way in which theword of God can be seen as a sacramental reality which when itis preached actually delivers a tangible person Before providing ananswer to this question let me offer a few examples albeit somewhatprosaic of how words themselves might have the potential tofunction sacramentally in real time by mediating to us another reality

The Sacramentality of Words in Real Time

As seen above the word of God has at times functioned more asa means of conveying information than as the source of divinecommunication But can words especially when they are Godrsquoswords do more for us It is only when one reflects on the waysimple vulgar (here denoting common) words were often conveyedin generations prior to the digital age that one begins to understandthe true power of words both for those who read them and for thosewho hear them

172 Dawn DeVries ldquoCalvinrsquos Preachingrdquo in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin ed DonaldK McKim (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2004) 110

173 See Institutes 41712

VIVA VOX

46

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

One example might well be the act of receiving a handwrittenletter from a spouse or a friend Anyone who has received such a letterknows that when that letter is opened and read in addition to thepropagation of facts (such as an update on health job family andso on) a part of the one who composed the letter shines throughIndeed with words one will observe ldquowe not only communicateinformation (How long until dinner Where is the nearest gasstation) but we also communicate ourselves (I love you How may Ihelp)rdquo174 Words as the French Canadian theologian Reneacute Latourellehas written are ldquothe means through which two interiorities unveilthemselves to each other with a view towards reciprocal exchangerdquo175

Very simply written words have the ability to establish humanconnections and this is especially true when those two interioritiesare separated by place and time

Take for example the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and hisriveting account in Being and Nothingness of walking into a cafeacute andnot seeing his friend Pierre Contrary to what one might expect itwas in Sartrersquos not seeing Pierre that he actually saw him Everythingwas as Sartre wrote not Pierre176 In Pierrersquos absence Pierre wasactually present Catalano described this phenomenon of concretenonbeing in the following way

Sartre shows that negative judgments such as ldquoJohn is not hererdquo havea foundation in a nonbeing that is within being and further that thisnonbeing comes to being through the particular nonbeing that is thehuman consciousness or the for-itself177

174 Randall B Smith ldquoSay It Againrdquo Touchstone 235 (2010) 18175 Reneacute Latourelle Theology of Revelation (Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock 1966) 317176 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology trans Hazel E

Barnes (New York Citadel 1956) 9 For a similar example see Leonardo Boff Sacraments ofLife Life of the Sacraments trans John Drury (Washington DC The Pastoral Press 1987)

177 Joseph S Catalano A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartrersquos ldquoBeing and Nothingnessrdquo (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1980) 51

DEFINING THE TERMS

47

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

And Sartre was not alone It would seem that nearly every humanbeing has at one time experienced the presence of another evenin the absence of that other In the words of Dostoyevsky in The

Brothers Karamazov humans can with Alyosha see the faces of thoseno longer with us ldquoas though [they] stood living before [us]rdquo178

The things that conjure up these encounters of reality are alwaysdifferent Maybe it is a meal that reminds someone of the cookingof her now-deceased grandmother maybe it is the smell of a housethat reminds someone of his childhood home and all who filled it ormaybe it is the arrangement of household accoutrements that in itselfis representative of the one who did the arranging Whatever it maybe the fact remains that those who are absent are nevertheless presentwithin that absence

This prompts the question If we are capable of being present inour absence how much more are we capable of being present whenin our absence our words are present In the reading and hearing ofa letter the recipient is not pointed toward another far-off realityinstead the reality of the one who wrote the letter is present in theirvery midst speaking to the receiver as though they were present inthe flesh

Moreover this is not merely a spiritual presence of the author buta corporeal presence Certainly it is a presence that transcends thelaws of physics for the one who writes the letter is not ldquophysicallyrdquopresent However the presence of the one who writes the letter ismore than spiritual for at the very least the voice of the authorcan be ldquoheardrdquo and her facial expressions can be ldquoseenrdquo Thereforethese letters while not the same as a physical presence are more thanspiritual realities precisely because these letters serve not merely as

178 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov trans Constance Garnett (NewYork Macmillan 1922) 13

VIVA VOX

48

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

words on a page or information to be processed but as the means bywhich the author is mediated to the present context179

Relationship The Foundation of Communication

In order to understand fully how words can convey so concretelythe author who writes them one must first recognize that whenwords function thus it is clear that the sender and receiver have anestablished relationship Relationship between God and humanity and

humanity and humanity is primordial Yet if it is true that humanrelationship begins in the Garden of Eden then all relationships arebased upon speaking for our ldquoreality is linguistically constructedrdquo inthe creation of the world through the Logos180

Allow me to explain There appear to be at least two significantpossibilities (though possibly more) for interpreting the openingwords of Genesis 1

1 The first possibility would be to confess that God did notactually ldquospeakrdquo as we think of speaking today With Augustineone would instead confess that God may have thought or willedcreation into existence but he did not use human words toconvey that divine reality181 This possibility however causes atleast one major question to emerge If the biblical account of the

179 Another helpful example might be the letters of family members to those serving in the militaryprecisely because the place those letters hold in a soldierrsquos life is unprecedented In a sensesoldiers can tolerate the loss of anything else except the letters they have received from thoseback home which in an almost miraculous way mediate another reality to them For anexample of how artwork can serve in similar fashion see Willard Francis Jabusch The SpokenChrist Reading and Preaching the Transforming Word (New York Crossroad 1990) ixndashx

180 William H Willimon Proclamation and Theology (Nashville Abingdon 2005) 12181 Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 519 in Fathers of the Church A New Translation

(Washington DC Catholic University of America Press 1991) 84156ndash57 This will beexplored further in chapter 3

DEFINING THE TERMS

49

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

creation records the fact that ldquoGod saidrdquo then why are we tosuppose that he did not actually say anything at all

2 The second possibility is that the Father did indeed speak withinthe creation event but he did not speak to the world as we knowit for the world as we know it came into existence through hisspeaking (but was not present prior to his speaking in order tobe a hearer of that living voice) Rather when the Father spokehe spoke to his Son the Logos And in speaking to his Son hedelivered that of which he spoke into his Sonrsquos possession Whenhe said for example ldquoLet there be lightrdquo instantly there waslight and that light belonged to the Son The account of thecreation therefore becomes a conversation between Father andSon where the Son took possession of the world while we thecreated ones who live as a created part of that cosmic gift aretoday invited to listen in on that holy conversation

If this second option is a possibility then it becomes clear thatldquolanguage is the primary way in which God worksrdquo182 Moreoverby speaking realities the Lord not only brought the cosmos intoexistence but he solidified the connection between words andrelationships Thus based upon this primordial act all human wordshave been transformed ldquointo a form of giving from one person to theotherrdquo they are the means of self-donation183

As those who live in the aftermath of creation the fundamentaloutcome of this reality for us is that those who write letters forexample while unable to speak with a human voice can in factsay what they would say if they were present in the flesh precisely

182 Eugene H Peterson Eat This Book A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand RapidsEerdmans 2006) 61

183 Latourelle Theology of Revelation 317 Sadly Latourelle avoids making the connectionbetween the creation of the world and divine revelation as he fails to see the creation event asthe place of a dialogue

VIVA VOX

50

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

because written words deliver oral words Moreover given theestablished relationship (one ldquolinguistically constructedrdquo) between allhumanity receivers can read what has been written and actuallybegin to hear the voice of the one who wrote as though he or shewere standing in their very midst

Yet this is not merely a secular phenomenon Biblically speakingall of the epistles seem to serve as written letters intended to conveythe living voice of the author What Martyn asserts of Paulrsquos letter tothe Galatians we can safely say of most letters today ldquoThe documentis a letter but it is also a substitute for the oral communicationthat would have taken place had Paul been able to travel again toGalatiardquo184 Written words stand in the stead and by the commandof oral words and deliver the fullness thereof So if writing is asubstitute at least biblically speaking for oral communication thendoes oral communication likewise deliver a tangible presence

Oral Communication and a Tangible Presence

In a study of young girls who had just struggled through a stressfulsituation researchers put them into one of three categories

bull The first group was hugged and soothed by their mother for 15minutes

bull the second group talked with their mothers on the telephone

bull the third group was allowed to watch a movie185

184 J Louis Martyn Galatians A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New YorkDoubleday 1997) 20

185 ldquoHealth amp Science Reach Out and Touchrdquo The Week 10465 (May 28 2010) 21

DEFINING THE TERMS

51

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

Upon completion of the study these researchers concluded that stresslevels ldquodropped an equal amount for girls whorsquod interacted with theirmothers either in person or on the phonerdquo186

Although this study is rather unsophisticated it appears to indicatethat a voice is potentially equal in effect to a presence and perhapsmore than we realize This is the case because every human voicecomes with a certain amount of power which is expressed in thespoken word

In a sermon at St Salvatorrsquos Chapel in St Andrews Jeremy Begbieexplained the significance and power of a voice and words this way

What are you going to say next to the person beside you or tosomeone else in Chapel What words will you next use when you speakto somebody When the last hymn has faded when the blessingrsquos beengiven the organist has launched into virtuosity and the procession hasleft at some stage wersquore going to turn to someone look them in the eyeand open your mouths to speak What then What will you say

Itrsquos a moment of awesome potential Full of promise and risk Forwersquore about to use the most powerful instrument we possess the mostwonderful and the most dangerous tool wersquoll ever use the human word and words can make and break The moment before speech ispotentially a make-or-break moment

It can be what we might call a ldquoSimon Cowell momentrdquo On The XFactor the televised singing competition itrsquos the moment when thethree judges have to make a decision Louis has said ldquoyesrdquo and Sharonrsquossaid ldquonordquo and itrsquos all up to Simon the future of that quivering teenagerwith the vast ambition and the karaoke voice Everything hangs in thebalance in the synapse of silence as she waits for the words that willmake or break

Words Only a few puffs of air minute inflexions of the tongue thetiniest movement of the lips but capable of building up and tearing

186 Ibid

VIVA VOX

52

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

down healing and harming making and breaking Tony Blairdelivers a speech and wins over even his worst enemies the Popedelivers a speech and loses even his closest friends You propose to yourbeloved with well-chosen words on St Andrews pier and head intolifelong union you let out the cruel words in a clumsy moment and itrsquosall over

The promise and risk of words It figures highly in Paulrsquos letter to theEphesians Out of all the things he could write about to these fledglingChristian groups in Asia Minor he writes about speech more thananything else Over and over again he comes back to it Speech therapy seems high on his agenda Why Because he knows words can makeand break And down here in these Churches theyrsquore breaking theyrsquorebreaking relationships breaking the bonds that tie people together

Yes Paul knows about the power of words to make to mend to bindto pull people together but he also knows the power of words to breakto split apart fracture and fissure

Words can break the bonds between us but they can also makethem187

Indeed wordsmdashespecially spoken wordsmdashhave tremendous powerWords do something to us They can make our blood move ourheart race and our breathing speed up They can also calm uscomfort us and welcome us Words very simply make us feel andthink differently188 In the case of the young girls above the soothingvoice of a mother even when separated caused the stress levels inthose girls to drop precisely because the soothing mother behind thevoice was mediated to the present context in her speaking So the

187 Jeremy Begbie ldquoWords that Break and Words that Makerdquo (St Andrews St Salvatorrsquos ChapelOctober 1 2006) httpwwwst-andrewsacukaboutuniversitychapelspreachers2006-2007jeremybegbie See also Michael J Quicke 360-Degree Preaching Hearing Speaking and Livingthe Word (Grand Rapids Baker Academic 2003) 54ndash55

188 Henri J M Nouwen With Burning Hearts A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll NYOrbis 2005) 58

DEFINING THE TERMS

53

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

question is now Can the foregoing show us anything about the wordof Godmdashwritten and preached

Word and Sacrament Commonality or Distinction

Prior to the Reformation there was a strong distinction betweenthe word of God and the sacraments with the latter functioningas superior to the former189 In other words ldquomedieval doctrinedescribed the sacraments as the actual events of lsquogracersquo of Godrsquosaffirmative presence to us and regarded preaching teaching and thelike as the communication of information about themrdquo190 One couldmake the case that to a certain extent this theological construct is stillpresent today in the Roman Catholic Church However in the wakeof Vatican II the tide is turning ever so slightly (at least in theory)especially with the promulgation of the fourfold presence of Christin the liturgy in Eucharist priest community of the faithful and theword191

With the dawn of the Reformation there was a dramatic shift inemphasis In an effort to reject the aforementioned pre-Reformationtheological construct many but not all of the Reformers (alongwith the present-day church bodies that are representative of theirtheologies) simply reversed it192 They attempted to ldquopraise the word

189 Eric W Gritsch and Robert W Jenson Lutheranism The Theological Movement and ItsConfessional Writings (Philadelphia Fortress Press 1976) 81

190 Ibid (emphasis original)191 Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium no 7 in Vatican Council II Constitutions

Decrees Declarations ed Austin Flannery (Northport NY Costello 1996) 120ndash21 One workthat does an excellent job of exploring preaching from the perspective of Vatican II is PaulJanowiak The Holy Preaching The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly(Collegeville MN Liturgical Press 2000) This book will be explored in further detail inchapter 7

192 In the words of Pannenberg ldquoTraditional Protestant piety was more or less non-sacramentalrdquo(Wolfhart Pannenberg ldquoBaptism as Remembered lsquoEcstaticrsquo Identityrdquo in Christ The SacramentalWord ed David Brown and Ann Loades [London SPCK 1996] 77)

VIVA VOX

54

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

as the real event of grace and devalue sacraments to the level ofaccompanying ceremonies or gestures of responserdquo and that hasremained a popular theological move193 This post-ReformationProtestant theological framework can even be seen in some Lutheranservices today in which the Eucharist is celebrated before the sermonis preached so as to give primacy to the word as the location of Godrsquospresence over and against the sacraments194

Yet neither the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic emphasis northe post-Reformation Protestant emphasis should serve as theLutheran perspective on the relationship between the word and thesacraments Instead Lutheranism has the potential for a robustsacramentology of the word precisely because for Lutherans ldquolsquowordrsquoand lsquosacramentrsquo are fundamentally but two inseparable aspects ofthe one eventrdquo which Lutheran theology has typically called ldquolsquothe

Wordrsquordquo195 Luther described it this way ldquoThe body which you receive[in the Lordrsquos Supper] the Word which you hear [in the preachingof the gospel] are the body and Word of him who holds the wholeworld in his hand and who inhabits it from beginning to endrdquo196

The Word therefore comes in both spoken and visible formsmdashtheword of God and the sacraments Both forms deliver the Wordmade flesh Jesus Christ himself the sacraments do so visibly and thespoken word does so orally Both however deliver Jesus concretelytangibly sacramentally and completely The fullness of Christ andtherefore the fullness of the Godhead is delivered in the visible

193 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 81 See also John Macquarrie ldquoIncarnation as Root of theSacramental Principlerdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 30 ldquoIn Protestantism generally theWord and the activity of preaching are exalted as the primary functions of the Church to theneglect of the sacramentsrdquo

194 While this is not the official practice of the Lutheran Church as contained within the rites andrubrics of the liturgy it is the improvised practice of some particularly those who withoutquestion value the word over and against the sacrament In these instances the sermon takescenter stage in the Divine Service with the Eucharist preceding it

195 Gritsch and Jenson Lutheranism 80 (emphasis original)196 AE 36298 WA 11450

DEFINING THE TERMS

55

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

and spoken word the single Word197 The Lutheran Confessionsdescribed the reality this way

As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart so the rite itselfenters through the eyes to move the heart Therefore both have thesame effect198

The Word one is visible one is oral but both deliver the same Christand consequently ldquoboth have the same effectrdquomdashthe salvation andedification of sinners The reason they share the same effect is becausethey share the same Jesus who is present corporeally in both thevisible rite and the spoken word Luther may have described it bestwhen he spoke of Baptism199

Therefore it is not simply a natural water but a divine heavenly holyand blessed watermdashpraise it in any other terms you canmdashall by virtueof the Word which is a heavenly holy Word which no one cansufficiently extol for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God200

The word therefore is utterly sacramental and the sacraments areutterly verbal

In Lutheran theology as mentioned the potential for theaforementioned confession is present but sadly Lutherans have oftennot elevated and articulated clearly this confession Nevertheless itremains that just as it is with handwritten letters in the Lordrsquos loveletter to his creation (the word of God) the author is mediated to thepresent context For ldquothe word of God is God in action for God isnot a lecturer but the God who is lsquoworking stillrsquo as Jesus said of HisFather and of Himself the Son (Jn 517)rdquo201 The Lord does his work

197 See Col 29198 ApAC article 135 To that end for example the Lutheran Confessions call baptism ldquonothing

else than the Word of God in waterrdquo (Smalcald Articles part 3 article 51 [hereafter SA])199 Interestingly Baptism seems to encounter the same problem that words do precisely because it

is a more invisible way of connecting the recipient personally and tangibly with Christ200 Large Catechism Fourth Part Baptism 17 (hereafter LC emphasis mine)

VIVA VOX

56

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

by his speaking He says what he does and does what he says alwaysuttering realities The word of God does not simply convey divineinformation in such a way as to implant knowledge in the hearer(it does do that but it is not primary) Rather in his speaking theLord employing all the tools of rhetoric (here meaning what is mostsuitable for his audience) delivers the fullness of himself to the heareras a gift just as the Father did for his Son at creation202

This would indicate therefore that words (generally) and theword of God (specifically) can be understood sacramentally andnot merely when they speak of the sacraments Rather they canbe understood sacramentally precisely because they have the abilityto mediate the life and being of the speaker Jesus Christ withparticularity to those who need him in their own unique way and attheir own unique time For ldquothe words like the flesh itself functionsacramentally in both pointing to a divine reality beyond themselveswhile at the same time mediating however inadequately somethingof that realityrdquo203

Conclusion

We have thus far explored both word and sacrament and observedrespectively their narrowing in definition We have also examinedalbeit briefly the renewed possibility for the sacramentality of wordsparticularly as they bear an intrinsic power and in turn deliverthe presence of the person behind the message In the chapter that

201 Martin H Franzmann The Word of the Lord Grows An Introduction to the Origin Purpose andMeaning of the New Testament (St Louis Concordia 1961) 1

202 For an insightful discussion of Palestinian culture and the way in which Jesus engaged itthrough his speaking particularly his parables see Kenneth E Bailey Poet amp Peasant andThrough Peasant Eyes Combined Edition (Grand Rapids Eerdmans 1983) especially Poet ampPeasant 27ndash43

203 D Brown and A Loades ldquoIntroduction The Divine Poetrdquo in Christ The Sacramental Word 6

DEFINING THE TERMS

57

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58

follows I will set forth some of the practical implications of thesacramentality of the word of God and preaching (or lack thereof)by exploring the often turbulent discussions in my own theologicaltradition the LCMS

VIVA VOX

58