Church? What do You Mean?
There is an interesting conversation going on at Dom's blog. It covers a wide range of subjects, not the least of which is the question of the Church, and what it's good for. A part my contribution follows:
The Orthodox and the Catholics have a relationship with God that is personal, in the most intimate sense. God himself is present in the sacraments. ...trying to form communion with God in cultural isolation is like forming a relationship with your wife exclusively through email. You may develop a profound relationship, but you’re never sure who is on the other side of the screen, so to speak, and your relationship cannot be consummated. Through the sacraments, we consummate the relationship we have with God. It is not an alternative to prayer, it is the fulfillment of prayer; a prayer of the highest kind. It is God’s will that he stepped out of the prophylactic smoke surrounding the Holy Mountain, and revealed himself to us in material, in flesh, in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And God’s will to reveal himself to us, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, in material is manifest in his instituting the sacraments. Humans are cultural beings, and meaning is mediated to us through cultural products. At the heart of CULTure is cult. At the heart of the Christian cult are the sacraments. At the periphery of the Christian cult are sacramentals, signs and symbols that foster our prayerful reception of grace in the sacraments.
Many contemporary Protestant communities have forsaken the culture of the Church, and have, as a consequence, renounced the cult at the same time. The Bible remains - an object of Christian culture through which most of what they know of Christ may be derived - and so they are able to maintain a relationship with the Lord with some degree of orthodoxy. Also, many have Baptism, though recent conversations in this blog have revealed that many reject even that. The consequence is that many of these communities are not Church, but devotional associations. I believe that you can know God, and that you may even be saved from it. But it is a scraping after the minimums. It is accepting Christ as spouse, while rejecting the feast. It is elevating the relationship of words, while forgetting the joy of sacramental union, communion, courtship and consummation.
The Orthodox and the Catholics have a relationship with God that is personal, in the most intimate sense. God himself is present in the sacraments. ...trying to form communion with God in cultural isolation is like forming a relationship with your wife exclusively through email. You may develop a profound relationship, but you’re never sure who is on the other side of the screen, so to speak, and your relationship cannot be consummated. Through the sacraments, we consummate the relationship we have with God. It is not an alternative to prayer, it is the fulfillment of prayer; a prayer of the highest kind. It is God’s will that he stepped out of the prophylactic smoke surrounding the Holy Mountain, and revealed himself to us in material, in flesh, in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And God’s will to reveal himself to us, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, in material is manifest in his instituting the sacraments. Humans are cultural beings, and meaning is mediated to us through cultural products. At the heart of CULTure is cult. At the heart of the Christian cult are the sacraments. At the periphery of the Christian cult are sacramentals, signs and symbols that foster our prayerful reception of grace in the sacraments.
Many contemporary Protestant communities have forsaken the culture of the Church, and have, as a consequence, renounced the cult at the same time. The Bible remains - an object of Christian culture through which most of what they know of Christ may be derived - and so they are able to maintain a relationship with the Lord with some degree of orthodoxy. Also, many have Baptism, though recent conversations in this blog have revealed that many reject even that. The consequence is that many of these communities are not Church, but devotional associations. I believe that you can know God, and that you may even be saved from it. But it is a scraping after the minimums. It is accepting Christ as spouse, while rejecting the feast. It is elevating the relationship of words, while forgetting the joy of sacramental union, communion, courtship and consummation.
posted by Eric at 7:56 PM
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