The Eucharist makes the Church: reading Sam Norton (Pt. 2)

Last week I posted the first part of my conversation with Sam Norton’s book Let us be Human . Today I want to take a look at the two chapters which begin the second part of the book. In chapters 5 The New Covenant and 6 Hocus Pocus, Sam outlines his argument that the church needs to rediscover how to be truly eucharistic.

There are some key planks he lays down in chapter 5 for the church to stand on. Worship has to be central to how the church orientates itself, and truly Christian worship discloses the nature of reality, and is the sine qua non of actually forming disciples by replacing the idolatries we are exposed to all around us by the worship of the one true God. The Eucharist – fulfilling the Passover and Temple rituals of the first covenant – displays Christianity as a praxis, of living by the self-giving of God in Jesus, of being the body of Christ, reconciled to God, liberated by God, and now trying to live lives which put reconciliation and liberation into practice all around us.

It is the Eucharist that empowers the prophetic witness of a church community; it is the Eucharist that empowers the Church to stand out against the world; it is the Eucharist that empowers the Church to be in the world but not of the world. (p 69)

For Sam, one of the important things is that the Eucharist eludes full understanding or complete rational explication. As for the followers who turned away in St John’s bread of life discourse because the teaching was too hard for them, so a (excuse the phrase) full-blooded belief in the Eucharist remains a scandal today. The Eucharist demands that the affective and relational are equal partners with the rational in doing theology, and a eucharistic Church will never give the academy control of theology, but insist its home is in the worshipping community. This is where the church learns how to confront the world’s “poisonous asophism” (p 74).

He then proceeds to diagnose where in his view the church’s eucharistic understanding has gone wrong. I presume that in placing the blame on Duns Scotus and William of Ockham he is at least influenced by the Radical Orthodoxy movement, but the catastrophe for him has two significant aspects. The first is that theology begins its long journey out of the cloister and into the academy, until we reach what he sees as today’s parlous state that,

the way in which clergy are trained in the Church of England (and also in many other denominations) is through the academic study of texts. This is why faith and spirituality in the Church of England has withered, and why the Church is dying (p77 – his italics).

For him the feast of Corpus Christi (and its accompanying “notorious doctrine of transubstantiation” – p80) represents all that went wrong with the patristic tradition of eucharistic celebration in the high Middle Ages. It swaps round) the mystical body (Eucharistic action) and the true body (the church) of Christ, so that the Church becomes a static mystical body, the host becomes the true body and the eucharistic action becomes a spectator sport. It turns the Eucharist from a communal celebration into a magical action.

“Now there is a profound continuity in the intellectual expression of magic and the intellectual expression of science. Both are rooted in a desire for intellectual dominance over the creation, and the spiritual roots of both involve not surrendering to the Creator.” (p81)

Here (in a statement many will have serious issues with) the separation of church and academy, the rise of a rationalist science divorced from human emotional life, and the alteration of the Eucharist from the energy of a living community to a vehicle for priestly control are all interlinked as a fall from patristic grace to today’s multiple divorce of that which God, patristic theology and monastic community had joined together.

I hope that represents a fair summary of the main thrust of his argument. And I have to say that I would also want to argue like him for a church whose eucharistic practice is central, definitive and holistic. Similarly I agree wholeheartedly with his vision for unifying the affective, the rational and the relational in what is (I think we would both say) essentially a renewed Christian humanism. And I have found it fascinating to follow the paths he goes down in exploring these key goals.

At the same time, it was in these two chapters that I most found myself missing even a light academic apparatus. I wanted to know sometimes if my argument was with Sam or his sources. For example, although I’ve a fairly limited acquaintance with the discipline of systematics, I’m fairly sure de Lubac, who as far as I could see didn’t even get a name check, is the originator of the key saying Sam quotes repeatedly that “The Eucharist makes the Church.” I think it is his summary of patristic theology, and not actually a quote from any of the fathers. Likewise, it is de Lubac, I believe, who originated the analysis that for the Fathers the Church was the true body of Christ, and the Eucharist his mystical body, whereas in the Middle Ages these were swapped over. Of course, as a fairly traditional Catholic, de Lubac is hardly likely to agree with Sam that this analysis shows how awful a doctrine transubstantiation is!

I will largely pass over the continuing influence (as I think) of Margaret Barker, but it seems to me that just because images of Passover, the Day of Atonement, and possibly the mercy seat, can be found as metaphors in the NT for the event of Calvary, that does not mean they have agglutinated into a single sacrificial blend which can be read into an early Jewish Christian understanding of the Eucharist.

However, I must point out against the argument on p68, that there are several uses of the word anamnesis in the Bible: apart from the Pauline usage (1 Cor 11:24) echoing or being echoed by the Jesus tradition as given in Luke 22:19, it is used rather differently in the NT in Hebrews 10:3. In the Greek Bible it is used in Lev 24:7, Num 10:10, the title lines of Psalms 37 and 69, and in Wisdom 16:6. That usage does not on its own justify including the idea of “re-enactment” within the core meaning of the word.

I don’t know if I am right to detect the influence of Radical Orthodoxy on Sam’s analysis of where it all started to go wrong with Duns Scotus, compared to Aquinas “creative and faithful” thinking (p76). But an unwary reader could go away not realising that not only did the big bad feast of Corpus Christi antedate Duns Scotus’ theology, but Aquinas made some significant contributions to the liturgy of Corpus Christi, including the great hymns Pange Lingua and Verbum Supernum.

It’s not just that I doubt Sam’s analysis of the feast: if I remember rightly (I don’t have a copy to hand) John Bossy’s admittedly Catholic revisionist history Christianity in the West 1400-1700 makes a convincing case for both the Eucharist and the Corpus Christi “carnival” procession being a communal celebration of the social body as constituted by Christ. More to the point, one of my real arguments with Radical Orthodoxy is the idea that there is a moment of “intellectual fall” which all the ills of theological flesh are heir to. I think it smacks of romantic “golden age” utopianism, and prevents a more sober analysis which incorporates gains as well as losses and is ready to live with the imperfectability of life this side of the eschaton.

It’s in that vein that I want to enter a plea for a greater overt recognition of the achievements of the Western intellectual tradition alongside its faults. Indeed, Sam’s book is situated in this tradition of analysis, and one of the strengths of this tradition is that it so often forms people who can generate some powerful self-aware critiques of what has shaped them. Indeed, the debt this book owes to the modernist paradigm is nowhere more ironically self-evident than in a statement near the end of the sixth chapter:

The church has a much better sense of history now. In particular, it has a much better sense of what scripture teaches than at any time since the Apostles. We have a much better understanding of the texts and what the New Testament is teaching than the Reformers did, for example. … we can go right back, ad fontes, to the source and spring (p86)

It is rather astonishing to find such an example of high modernist confidence towards the close of a passionate argument against the imperialism of reason at the expense of lived out and affective faith, and against the dominance of the academy over theology at the expense of its roots in ecclesial practice.

I agree with Sam entirely that theology finds both its fount and ultimate horizon in the blend of prayer and practice which spring together from eucharistic community. But it seems to me that last quotation illustrates precisely how much more we need to integrate the Western tradition of intellectual reason within it as an ally and not an enemy. After all, as Sam argues, in the Eucharistic body we practice reconciliation.

Let us be Human: Sam Norton’s vision for today’s church (1)

First of all I’d like to thank Sam Norton very much for sending me a copy of his book Let us be Human. It has been provoking me to much thought, which I’m sure he’ll be glad to know. Not all those thoughts are necessarily ones of which he would approve!

The first thing that strikes me, I think by design, is that this is intended as a prophetic book: a word to today’s church summoning it to change, so that how it lives its life and teaches God’s word is truly a gospel – good news – for a world in one hell of a predicament. Sam begins by drawing some significant inspiration from Jeremiah, although I’m sure he hopes for better reviews than the prophet. In what I say I shall necessarily be selective, since in many respects, to grasp the whole of Sam’s argument, you need to read the whole of his book. I hope, if I have accidentally misrepresented his thinking, he will pop up in the comments to correct my misunderstanding.

At first I thought the book took something from the template of a traditional evangelistic sermon. Its first half is entitled “When we were still far off”, and its second “You met us in your Son” – borrowing the language of David Frost’s ASB (and now Common Worship) post-communion prayer based on the parable of the Prodigal Son. And indeed it seems to start off with Sam trying to persuade us how much and in which ways the world is in dire straits and in need of salvation so that we might be receptive to his answers. It’s not quite that simple, since the proclamation of judgement persists into the second half of the book in more complex ways, and the question of what salvation looks like wanders in and out of the argument. However, the proclamation of wrath, while also analysing today’s church and society does seem to be preparing the reader to receive the gospel according to Sam.

In this post I shall try to deal with part one, in a subsequent post with the eucharistic chapters which begin part two, and then probably a third part dealing with Sam’s vision for renewing the earth and the human – and eucharistic – community. Although this is a thin book in terms of page numbers, there’s a lot in it in terms of ideas and passion.

Here, then, I shall do my best to summarise Sam’s initial overview of the human predicament. Predicament is his deliberately chosen way of expressing it. It is not a problem to be solved by human ingenuity, but a predicament from which we need rescuing.

That predicament is well illustrated in his view by (the somewhat controverted concept of) Peak Oil (chapter 1), particularly as a very good example of understanding our life as lived with finite resources in the face of exponential population growth (chapter 2). This latter is considered mainly as an economic and migratory crisis, not as potential for future military conflict. The various strategies of an ostrich, a Mr Micawber or even a (wonderful image of Douglas Adams) a Someone Else’s Problem field, which are among the most commonly adopted are labelled bluntly by Sam as anti-Christian. I did find myself wondering whether there was room for a broader range of issues here. Peak Oil (however much it is an area where Sam is something of an expert) doesn’t seem to me to be so unassailable as to be anything other than a useful illustration of finite resources. There may be other economic questions which might cumulatively support his thesis better. The more wide-ranging the illustrations the stronger (but also more nuanced) the case might become.

He then takes his analysis further using both Alasdair MacIntyre and an author I’ve not come across – Antonio Damasio – to argue (in his own coinage) that we have become an “asophic society” (Chapter 3) lacking in practical and ethical wisdom. He likes the Aristotelian term phronesis to describe this capacity for wise practical judgement (p44). Following Damasio he argues that emotions are an essential component of the processes “by which we evaluate information and make decisions.” (p43) He further suggests that whilst science needs to use what he calls (in another neologism) an “apathistic stance” – putting desire aside so as to investigate the world as it is – as a tool, it has in actuality made the split between emotion and reason an end in itself. “True wisdom depends upon a reintegration of our emotional lives and our rational intellect” (p45) “Science has nothing to say about wisdom.” (p47) You will see that he does not shy away from controversial statements, and like many a prophet before him believes that you can’t nuance wrath or judgement!  

This theme – and especially the sundering of rational and emotional decision making – will return again later. Unfortunately so does the vocabulary of asophic, anti-phronetic, and apathistic society, and in this reader’s opinion, at least, the neologisms irritate. Broadly I am in sympathy with it, although I think that some of the criticisms he makes of science are really of technology, and he is in danger of perpetuating a divide between intellectual and emotional knowing when he dismisses science quite so roundly. I found myself wondering whether a more positive appraisal of the patristic treatment of apatheia as a spiritual virtue might have allowed a more rounded appreciation of science’s “apathistic” methodology. The indivisible unity of truth – which seems an essential affirmation about the relation of God and the world – points to the integration of scientific enquiry and human emotion within in a more relational epistemology.

In the following chapter Sam tries quite hard (and bravely) to maintain and reinterpret the unfashionable concept of “wrath” for today, exploring and contrasting pagan and Christian ideas of sacrifice, and arguing passionately for reframing a hierarchy of values with the concept of idolatry – “Idolatry occurs when we make something more important than it really is.” (p49) He is intriguing where he uses Rene Girard and his disciple James Alison to develop a powerful argument about scapegoating as a real human and modern problem. In my view he rather undermines the power of that argument by following the idiosyncrasies of Margaret Barker’s reconstruction of Temple ritual and theology, the evidence for which seems to me to lie mainly in her imagination.

Modern society, and much of the modern church, is (he claims) fundamentally idolatrous in its values, and destructively dehumanising in its behaviour towards both other people and the created order. As such it lies under the wrath of God, since to continue in such idolatry and dehumanisation carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Only the alternative vision of humanity, given, experienced and enabled through Jesus of Nazareth provides the way out of this predicament.

He makes the claim that “This is what Scripture sees as the pagan understanding of sacrifice: there is an angry god who has been offended and needs to be appeased” (p52) The wrath he is talking about is much more a “natural” consequence of living ethically and practically out of sync with reality (going against the natural order (p57), and it includes the way we treat one another as scapegoats and sacrifices, rather than as human brothers and sisters.

This analysis begs some mighty big questions about the treatment of sacrifice in scripture and Christian tradition, and perhaps gives a Girardian understanding of atonement the same dominance that evangelicals tend to award to penal substitution (which presumably also comes under Sam’s strictures of “pagan” understandings). It sits oddly with his attempts to preserve the concept of wrath as impersonal and natural consequence, whereas, however much one might disagree with it, penal substitution in many evangelical versions, or at least its Anselmian satisfaction precursor, is relational and personal in both the exercise of judgement and salvation from it.

Sam’s analysis in this opening part of his book is always provocative and challenging, and makes this reader think very hard not only about contemporary cultural and economic landscape, but about his own complicity in it. Much of the writing does show some of its origins in talks, and there are plenty of places where one feels it’s half of a discussion missing its Q & A session. It’s quite possible that some of my pushing back is simply trying to supply my own Q & A session for his talks, or it may just be a way of resisting some of his challenges! Nonetheless (and this will emerge again in my next post, I think) I am more positive about the modern world and the gains of the so-called Enlightenment than he is, more sceptical of grand narratives and apocalyptic visions, and perhaps more resistant to the prophetic vocation.

Getting more serious about photography

This summer’s challenge has been to explore how to do fully manual exposures instead of using automated or semi=automated modes on the camera. Unfortunately, not having had a summer has rather got in the way of that plan.

But today I found some time to work on last Friday’s photos from a brief trip to Clevedon before the rain set in.

The ones I like the most are here.

An apology for the education secretary

This is a public service announcement. Mr Gove was widely quoted today describing school governors’ meetings as:

Discussions that ramble on about peripheral issues, influenced by fads and anecdote, not facts and analysis.

Mr Gove was developing his education speech while also writing the section of his memoirs dealing with Cabinet meetings and accidentally misused the copy and paste function.

We would like to apologise for the education secretary.

Five conversations for a declining church

Since David Keen’s very pertinent post last week drawing attention to the statistical realities, I’ve been pondering a list of the big conversations the Church of England really ought to be having with itself, its friends and often the wider society.

I’m not wedded to any of these as essential or likely to provide easy answers. Nor have I signed on in blood to any particular solution. I’m more throwing out some ideas for big conversations with some illustrative points along the way. All of them have all sorts of ramifications and caveats that a more careful post on any would acknowledge and discuss.

Conversation 1 – Establishment
This is one of those questions where the time is probably never right, and the ramifications broader and deeper than they seem. However, creeping disestablishment can only get so far before what is left begins to seem strange if not absurd. Establishment was based on the never quite realised aspiration that the country was a theopolitical unity, and to be a subject of the monarch was to be an adherent to the monarch’s religion. It never quite worked, but as recent debates over the presence of bishops in the Lords have shown, it is now more delusion than aspiration. On the other hand, what seems odd at the level of national politics seems much more natural at the local level, where the same national unity gives rights of marriage and burial in the parish church by virtue of residence nor religion. It’s an exploration that needs to happen more generally, and not just the next time an apparent last ditch comes along.

Conversation 2 – Buildings
It seems to me that for many parishes everything is driven out by the costs and energies absorbed by maintaining often very beautiful and ancient buildings. Having just spent two and half years going through the processes need to demolish an unused and dangerously dilapidated chapel of rest, I’m appalled by the cumbersome mechanisms involved. I’d like to see some serious discussion about new legislation allowing church buildings to be handed over to community trusts, and the church becoming one organisation that rents the buildings as required within in some kind of statutory framework which acknowledges their history and tradition appropriately. Then, if a community didn’t want to take ownership of a building the church no longer wanted or could afford to maintain, such a refusal would become prima facie evidence of “no pastoral need” allowing redundancy to be fast-tracked.

Conversation 3 – Clergy
The declining number of stipendiary clergy was at the heart of David’s post, and it seems that for a very long time this has been a problem where nearly everyone has colluded in pretending it’s not that bad. (PS – developing lay ministries is an ongoing conversation, not one that’s being avoided, so it’s not included here.) So, with monotonous regularity, one pastoral reorganisation succeeds another. Any energy left over from dealing with buildings is dissipated in trying to concoct schemes that persuade parishes that, while they are getting less of a share in a vicar than they were before, and paying more for the privilege, they are at least getting a fair share that is possibly slightly better than the one next door. There are now so few stipendiary clergy that it might be time to ask

1. whether we should plan for non-stipendiary ministry being the normal exercise of a priestly vocation and see stipendiary ministry as more strategic, focused on big churches (e.g. minsters, church-planting and mission centres and cathedrals) as area deans, as some specialist ministries and so on
2. whether that means seeing stipendiary and non-stipendiary ministries alike as something people can move in and out of (often from one to the other), and change the stipend to a salary which allows either the purchase of housing, or (as appropriate) the paying of rent for church owned property.

Conversation 4 – Education
It seems to me that there simply aren’t enough Christian teachers (not all of whom wish to work in church schools) to maintain a living and dynamic Christian ethos in most of our church schools that is organic, natural and life-changing rather than another curricular structure providing boxes to be ticked. Moreover, the vast majority of church primary (or first) school pupils don’t have church secondaries to go to. Dare I suggest that despite the good intentions of so many, the system always runs the risk of suggesting God is a good story for small children, but can be left behind as you learn more about the world?
Church schools are actually quite expensive for the church. Either we need to do better with fewer schools and look more like the Roman Catholic model, or decide to rethink the church’s involvement in education well beyond school ethos. Too much of the education system is justified by economic competition rather than human development, and Ofsted tick- boxes produce a examination sausage machine instead of the nurturing of individual ability, the love of learning or the pursuit of truth. Sticking a spiritual patina on that system and then speaking of the celebration of Christian values may not commend those values too well.

Conversation 5 – Vision and communication
Whatever else our language about God is saying, it is also articulating a vision of what it means to be human. I suspect that not only is the question “what does it mean to be human?” going to become more and more important for society, it’s going to become more contested. The danger is that – as in debates over sexuality – the church will be heard only saying “no” to debates that other people have started. I think we need to be much more active in developing our own vision, and starting our own debates, rather than simply responding to a narrow field of sex, abortion and euthanasia. It is interesting, isn’t it, that no-one questions the way a magazine called the “Economist” can address every area of life, but most would laugh at the pretensions of a similar style of magazine called the “Theologian”.
Sharing a vision for being human (and what it means to live wisely) as more than either academic luxury, or in-house conversation purely with ourselves, will, I think, demand the church to take all forms of media more seriously. I’m not suggesting a proliferation of PR people, but asking whether churches need to foster vocations to screen-writing and sharp documentary work, to new media networking and inventive programme making. In most respects the media is not just the Areopagus of the age, but the only public square we still share. If we have a real vision of humanity to share, could we talk about how to do it creatively, and not wait until someone else’s story puts us defensively on the spot.

I’ve no idea how much mileage there is in any of these, or how much I will have changed my mind by next week on any of them, but I think there’re at least one or two conversation starters in that ragbag selection of opinions.