Reformed Spirituality and God’s Mission: Piety and Eucharist

The Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is true faith?” The answer the catechumen is to answer is that true faith “is not only a certain knowledge by which I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word, but also a wholehearted trust which the Holy Spirit create in me through the gospel, that, not only to others, but to me also God has given the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation, out of sheer grace solely for the sake of Christ’s saving work.”[1]

Thunderdome

The key point in Reformed Christian spirituality or piety is the interdependent role of knowledge with trust, the ordinary with the extra-ordinary. As Howard Rice points out in Reformed Spirituality, Reformed Christians, with our ancient mothers and fathers of the faith, are shaped by our faith in not only a sovereign God, but also a God that is willing to break the rules of nature and become incarnated, take on the earthiness of creation. Rice notes that those who use the word, spirituality, sometimes believe that life can be divided into two separate and independent arenas, which often compete.[2] Many times we put our lives and souls into the steel-cage jousting arena of Mad Max’s Thunderdome.

Popular spirituality, much of it rooted in Medieval, as well as Gnostic, theological concepts, think being spiritual is to be above the ordinary struggles, ambiguity, and depravity of humanity. Spirituality is not a tool or a self-help program to succeed in life, to get above the fray, to purchase out of devotional works the heaven we dream of where we are on the throne of life. Rather, spirituality or piety from a Reformed Christian perspective is simply a pattern of living our daily, ordinary lives in response to our experience of God as a very real presence in our midst.[3] As Rice writes,

Within the Reformed tradition, the word that has been used more commonly to mean spirituality is “piety”… Piety sounds narrowly judgmental and self-righteous. It often has the overtones of a form of religion that is afraid of finding joy in the created order, opting instead for a stern and grim, dutiful determination to keep rigid rules. But piety is nothing more than the pattern by which we shape our lives before God in grateful obedience to what God has done for us. Calvin’s definition of piety is helpful in understanding its scope: “I call ‘piety’ that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of [God’s] benefits induces.[4]

We exercise our freedom of life Christ gave us by being attentive to the way we pattern and cultivate grace and responsibility, thus discovering all of life is part of worship. This then leads us back to the ancient saying of the Church universal, “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi,” which means “how we worship reflects what we believe and determines how we will live.”[5]

The institution of the Eucharist has been a key theme in the depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art, as in this 19th century Bouveret painting.

The Reformed tradition, when it is on its game and remembers its deeply rooted identity and the faith-filled teachings we have received, reminds us that our whole lives, body, mind and strength, are to give thanks (εὐχαριστία, eucharistia) for all of God’s creation. Furthermore, we are called to remember God’s presence and the story of faith we have received and our role within it right now. It is also in thanksgiving we rejoice in this earthy life, lifting up to God the gifts of creation to be consecrated, including not only the joys but also the pains, so all of it may be blessed and utilized by God to reconcile all of creation to God’s very self (Col 1.20; 2 Cor 5.18).

Therefore, as individuals and as the church, we are called to be suspicious and resistant to anything that looks like a spirituality or expression of Christianity which:

• promotes a class bias or prejudice based on faith practices or marks of the Holy Spirit,
• teaches that by right practices and formulas will get God to do our will (do ut des),
• encourages any form of privatized religion which shuns or belittles the role of communion and community in the dimension of discipleship, and asks people to withdrawal from the concerns of the world and other people,
• over emphasizes sentimentality and does not engage people intellectually, and
• advocates for a spiritual life over and against a life of faithfulness lived with responsibilities for work, family, and community, or vice-versa.[6]

Next post: the Gifts of Reformed Spirituality to help us stay focused on God’s mission.

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[1] Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Book of Confessions, vol. I, Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2007), 4.021.

[2] Howard L. Rice, Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers, 1st ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 45.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 46. Cf. Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John Thomas McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.2.1, p. 41.

[5] Cf.  Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390 – c. 455), a Christian writer and disciple of Augustine of Hippo, Patrologia Latina 51:209-210. Ibid., 4.13.6; 4.19.4, 13; 4.10.27-32.

[6] Rice, Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers, 48-61.

Some thoughts on Forms of Church: Monastic & Chapel Communities

“Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Church catholic.” The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans.[1] 

St Ignatius of Antioch

St. Ignatius gave me pause today, especially as I understand the Presbyterian Church’s form of Government and ecclesiology to be based on the Antioch model… Antioch, one of three ancient and reverend Patriarchates of the Church universal (next to Rome and Alexandria), and home of one of the major monastic traditions (Syrian).[2] Add to that my readings from the Serbian Orthodox Church on the relationship between the Orthodox East with the Church in Gaul,[3] I have started to wonder about the historic interplay of monastic with diocesan forms of church. Is there two forms of “church” and what happens if one is suppressed or one is over emphasized? How does that shape the people of God and their participation in God’s mission?

After going through a series of books on church history and monastic traditions, as well as refreshing my memory on Presbyterian heritage as I supervise the directed studies of some seminarians, I am coming to the belief that there is two main operative forms of “church” in modern western society: the monastic and ecclesial (or intentional vs chapel communities). These two forms of church community date back to the time of Constantine and the desert abbas and ammas as the Church began to organize and take on its more official and “institutional” mantel. During the magisterial reformation these two forms merged and were expressed through the newly formed protestant churches to various degrees during different times. Even today as we take a step back and look at our current models of being and doing “church” we find a living tension between a monastic or intentional Christians form of community with an ecclesial or chapel form of Christian community. This tension within the Protestant DNA can account somewhat for the ongoing emphasis on pietas among the ordered ministries, as well as issues around expectations of church growth and functions of congregations.

If we look back historically, both forms of church are necessary, express different charisms, incorporate the whole people of God (ordered as well as lay), and emphasize the two natures of the eternal one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church (transcendent and imminent), which from the time of the ancient Church Fathers has been called the Mother of Believers. Without these two forms working interdependently, the Church has a harder time birthing and nurturing believers for the mission they share through Christ. As we look at the nature and function of the two forms, they work toward the same goal, but start in different areas. One starts on the internal world, the other external.

Starting with the monastic, in its simplest expression, this form of church is a group of Christians who have come together to share a common life, like the first disciples and apostles in the Book of Acts. Their focus is on God alone (which monk and monastic means… mono, one focus) as they share in prayers, resources, and sacramental life. Their common life is governed by a rule or canon. Pietas, which is the love of God and goodness, with the other two classical virtues of duty (or obedience) and devotion, underlay the metrics of the common life as expressed in each member’s daily life. The spiritual exercises and participation in prayer, study, communal life, and ministry are what forms and reforms the internal world of each soul, and then like a brilliant light, it is expressed in the communal gathering, and then the world. This form is a very personal and intimate form of community. Evangelism in this form is very much tied to the Eastern tradition which invites people to personally come and live for a while with the intentional community before one makes a decision to live in Christ through this manner. In this form and expression of church, “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Church catholic.”

The other form is the ecclesial or chapel community. In its simplest form, it is what St. Ignatius wrote about to the Smyrnaean:

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Church catholic. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

The ecclesial (which means “assembly”) or chapel community is porous, people coming and going. The people gather around the bishop or pastor, are taught, feed by word and sacrament, are held to a form or order which shapes ecclesial disciple, and then are sent out. This form is a very public and social form of community rooted in the apostolicity of the Church catholic. Evangelism in this form is also tied to the Western tradition which requires people to publically profess their faith before they participate in the sacramental and common life of the ecclesial community.

Historically, as we look at this form of church take shape in the East and West, and the diocesan model taking precedence, each parish congregation was a chapel community of the Mother congregation or cathedral church. Each chapel community was served by a presbyter or ruling/canon elder licensed to teach, administer the sacraments (except ordination), and govern the local chapel community. What we also see is as the ecclesial communities are serving the public and social aspects of Church (including the social and public forms of mission), the bishops/pastors, presbyters, deacons, and laity are also becoming members of monastic or intentional Christian communities (and to this day, Orthodox bishops are required to be a celibate monastic… even St Bridgid of Kildare, one of the few recorded female bishops was also a monastic). At its best, this is when we see the effective interdependency of the abbey, academy, and parish life.[4]

When the magisterial reformation occurred, Lutherans, Reformed and Anglicans (in the beginning under Henry VIII, later restored via Oxford Movement) dissolved the monasteries. Based on the writing of Luther, Calvin, and other reformers, the thought was that for the church to be truly reformed, everyone who were members of the ecclesial community would need to become secular monastics in a sense… for instance, taking the charism of the Augustinian Canons, like mystic Thomas à Kempis and humanist Desiderius Erasmus, and using it to form the ecclesial polity and communal life metrics with the forced of civil law. The merging of the two distinct forms of church into one form is what I think is part of what Paul Tillich expressed when he wrote about the human anxiety involved in the ontological tension of life, especially as it is manifested in the social environment of modernity (with denominations being microcosms). The transcendent and imminent expression of God incarnated in the Church cannot exist in only one form. Hence, today, another possible layer of the onion of understanding the communal and organizational DNA of denominations and their struggle to adapt.

So as we look at a post-modern, emerging forms of church, what have we learned and what will the new-old forms look like and function? How will the emerging forms of church work interdepedently? Are there models already in play from which we may learn? How does this influence and reform theological education and the formation of church leaders?

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NOTES:

[1] See Chapter 8.  http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm. Accessed July 7, 2011.

[2] See “The Successor to Peter: A Paper for Discussion from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” Louisville, Kentucky. December 6-7, 2000. Accessed July 7, 2011.  http://oga.pcusa.org/ecumenicalrelations/images/peter.pdf Accessed July 7, 2011. Cf.. Wm. Henry Roberts. Manual for Church Officers and Members (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1916), 59-66, 313-316,323-326; Robert P. Kerr. The People’s History of Presbyterianism in All Ages(Richmond: Presyterian Committee of Publication, 1888), 9-31.

[3] See http://www.atlantaserbs.com/learnmore/history/Gauls.htm. Accessed July 7, 2011.

[4] This interdependent relationship is also the heart of ancient theological education. See Robert J. Banks, Reenvisioning Theological Education: Exploring a Missional Alternative to Current Models (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999). Cf. George G. Hunter, The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West– Again (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000).