Wednesday, December 22, 2004 AD
The still-flowing blood of the risen Christ
Time magazine has been getting excited about this year's discovery that "Bloggers Get Scoops Too". And in case anyone needed proof of this, Josh reports on another "evangelical anti-Incarnationism" smoking gun: Prof FW Grosheide's assertion that "...the shed blood and the broken body of Christ do not exist anymore."
A few months ago, I thought about doing a series of posts on the theme, "I Was ATeenage Twentysomething Heretic". This was after I read the sections on Christology in the Formula of Concord and - my mind being suitably blown by what I read - realised just how feeble my understanding of the Person of Christ had been during my decade as an Anglican Evangelical. But the detailed analysis of the FoC which this would have required all seemed too much like hard work, so I never got round to it.
And anyway, perhaps "heretic" is overstating the point. It's not that I would have denied the teachings of Nicaea or Chalcedon, quite the contrary in fact: adherence to orthodox teaching was very important to me, and one of the main attractions of Lutheranism was its conscious desire to take seriously the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation. However, reading the Formula of Concord did make me realise how lame the understanding I had inherited was, compared with the richness and depth of Lutheran/Cyrillian Christology (the fact I would probably have at least half-agreed with Simon Manchester's comments on Christmas says it all).
But one thing that struck me when I was considering my Twentysomething Heretic series was how teachings I would previously have regarded as particularly obnoxious - such as the Real Presence - are in fact excellent defences against the sort of errors to which evangelicals can be vulnerable.
For example, the question came to mind one day during the summer, "Does the risen Christ have blood coursing through His veins?" (or, as Prof Grosheide might phrase it, "do the shed blood and the broken body of Christ still exist?"). To which the answer now seemed to be, "Well, yes, He must have, because otherwise how could His blood be present in, with and under the wine in the Sacrament of the Altar?"
It then struck me with some force that I had previously been working on the vague and unnoticed assumption that Christ no longer had blood circulating round His risen body.
Quite apart from this being directly contrary to our Lord's own description of His risen body, what this really revealed was that I had not truly believed in my heart that Christ was still "human", that He was still incarnate. I was conceiving of what St Paul describes as the "spiritual body" of the resurrected life as something less than material, rather than more solid, more real than our current level of material existence. (A bit like the point CS Lewis makes, that the reason our Lord could pass through walls after His resurrection was not because He was immaterial compared to them, but because the physical matter of our universe is now so immaterial compared to Him.)
But our confession of the Real Presence - or, to use the Pontificator's excellent phrase, "the Real Identification" - is a confession that Christ's blood is truly present in the cup at the Lord's Supper, which is a confession that our Lord still has blood, which in turn is a confession that our Lord is still truly incarnate, very God and very Man. To lose the first link in that chain of reasoning doesn't necessarily mean you lose the second and third links, but it does leave one much more vulnerable to the "Casper the Friendly Ghost" view of the resurrection body, and contributes to the downgrading of the Incarnation among many evangelicals.
If in fact I am now mistaken, have got the wrong end of the stick, and am falling into dire heresy, please tell me ASAP!
In the meantime, perhaps I should, after all, go on to look at how the "semper virgo" and "clauso utero" teachings (which are both at least assumed, even if not actually confessed, in the Book of Concord) can help guard against other Christological errors (for example, the danger of what one might call "creeping kenoticism"). But that's perhaps too hot a potato to start tossing around just before I go on my Christmas break...
A few months ago, I thought about doing a series of posts on the theme, "I Was A
And anyway, perhaps "heretic" is overstating the point. It's not that I would have denied the teachings of Nicaea or Chalcedon, quite the contrary in fact: adherence to orthodox teaching was very important to me, and one of the main attractions of Lutheranism was its conscious desire to take seriously the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation. However, reading the Formula of Concord did make me realise how lame the understanding I had inherited was, compared with the richness and depth of Lutheran/Cyrillian Christology (the fact I would probably have at least half-agreed with Simon Manchester's comments on Christmas says it all).
But one thing that struck me when I was considering my Twentysomething Heretic series was how teachings I would previously have regarded as particularly obnoxious - such as the Real Presence - are in fact excellent defences against the sort of errors to which evangelicals can be vulnerable.
For example, the question came to mind one day during the summer, "Does the risen Christ have blood coursing through His veins?" (or, as Prof Grosheide might phrase it, "do the shed blood and the broken body of Christ still exist?"). To which the answer now seemed to be, "Well, yes, He must have, because otherwise how could His blood be present in, with and under the wine in the Sacrament of the Altar?"
It then struck me with some force that I had previously been working on the vague and unnoticed assumption that Christ no longer had blood circulating round His risen body.
Quite apart from this being directly contrary to our Lord's own description of His risen body, what this really revealed was that I had not truly believed in my heart that Christ was still "human", that He was still incarnate. I was conceiving of what St Paul describes as the "spiritual body" of the resurrected life as something less than material, rather than more solid, more real than our current level of material existence. (A bit like the point CS Lewis makes, that the reason our Lord could pass through walls after His resurrection was not because He was immaterial compared to them, but because the physical matter of our universe is now so immaterial compared to Him.)
But our confession of the Real Presence - or, to use the Pontificator's excellent phrase, "the Real Identification" - is a confession that Christ's blood is truly present in the cup at the Lord's Supper, which is a confession that our Lord still has blood, which in turn is a confession that our Lord is still truly incarnate, very God and very Man. To lose the first link in that chain of reasoning doesn't necessarily mean you lose the second and third links, but it does leave one much more vulnerable to the "Casper the Friendly Ghost" view of the resurrection body, and contributes to the downgrading of the Incarnation among many evangelicals.
If in fact I am now mistaken, have got the wrong end of the stick, and am falling into dire heresy, please tell me ASAP!
In the meantime, perhaps I should, after all, go on to look at how the "semper virgo" and "clauso utero" teachings (which are both at least assumed, even if not actually confessed, in the Book of Concord) can help guard against other Christological errors (for example, the danger of what one might call "creeping kenoticism"). But that's perhaps too hot a potato to start tossing around just before I go on my Christmas break...
