Via Media Podcast, Episode 12 Sacrifice and Christian Worship Matthew Olver May 23, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2019/sacrifice-and-christian-worship The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: Welcome to Via Media. Our guest today is Matthew Olver, the assistant professor of Liturgics and Pastoral Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin. Dr. Olver earned his PHD at Marquette University after receiving an MDiv at Duke University Divinity School and a Bachelor’s Degree at Wheaton College. He has served for a good number of years on the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the United States. ARCUSA as it’s been called by some, the official dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He’s published articles in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Nova et Vetera, Antiphon, and the Anglican Theological Review. Matt, welcome to Via Media. Olver: Thank you. It’s great to be here. McDermott: Matt, you know you gave a talk in 2017 at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago in which you spoke of what Protestants have lost in worship. And you suggest that what Protestants have lost, Anglicans still misunderstand or at least have misunderstood. But you also suggest in this talk that they can reclaim what was lost with the help of Joseph Ratzinger. So you make a series of very interesting, albeit complicated, turns in your argument. So let’s start with loss. What have Protestants lost? Olver: Well, first, I think I probably want to clarify and say that I don’t think necessarily all Protestants have. But I think you certainly see a tendency among a lot of the reformers and the reformed traditions, including - we can see this in Anglicanism - a question about what exactly is the nature of Christian worship, and what’s its purpose. And I think I might hone in on the question of ritual specifically that, is the center of Christian worship a ritual action by which we engage and offer proper worship to God, or is proper worship centered primarily in the disposition in the sort of internal orientation of the Christian that happens corporately, you know, because we should gather? But that’s how I would center it, that it’s on this question of ritual. To put it differently, Irenaeus in Against Heresies in Book Four talks about that the kind of fact of the cultic life has not changed for Christians. That is there’s continuity. There’s cultic continuity between Christians and Jews, and that the differences there is the nature of - and he uses the word specifically - “species” of what is being offered. But that there’s actually continuity with Judaism here on this question. And I think that that’s a place where you would see probably most of the Protestant reformers and those traditions that follow them having real hesitancy about that. McDermott: So could you say, Matt, that broadly speaking, as a generalization - and of course there are always exceptions to a generalization - but broadly speaking, Protestants think of worship in terms of what I feel and think on the inside and what I say to God on the inside, whereas the Catholic - and here I’ll say small c catholic, the undivided church certainly of the first millennium, sees, saw, sees worship as something that we do, as something that we do as a corporate body of Christians in ceremony and cult and, as the word you use, ritual? Olver: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Is the question is: Is it an action that is more than just words and the sort of inner orientation of the heart? I think that’s where I’d center the question. McDermott: Right. Now then you go on in this fascinating talk, which has been printed, and I believe it’s on its way to publication? Olver: Yes, the volume is coming out, I think, later this year. McDermott: Okay. You go on to talk in that about two conflicting Anglican theologies of the Eucharist. Can you tell our listeners what those are? Olver: Sure. So one of the things I have my students do in the liturgical history class is I love liturgical parallels. So I love having them put two or more texts next to each other, so you can see ... especially when there’s a clear reliance on an earlier text. So you can see what kind of edits are made and try to begin to ask what sort of theological ... what are the theological issues at stake here? And you certainly see that when you put the Prayer for the Whole State and the 1549 Eucharist prayer next to the Roman Canon. You can see Cranmer’s reliance. Words, phrases, even whole paragraphs, he’s relying on it there. So a couple things that we see that Cranmer consciously changes: one of them is that there is hesitancy to talk about any kind of change to the bread and wine. And that’s not a surprise to anyone. The other, and this one is more significant especially with the Roman Canon, and this is that there’s no active offering. So there’s no active offering the bread and the wine. The Roman Canon among Eucharistic prayers was pretty unique, because you have repeated acts of offering four or five, depending on how you count them, compared to what you see in eastern prayers, where there’s usually just one. So the absence of a clear request for change, the absence of an oblation of the gifts - though of course Cranmer introduces the self-oblation, which is some ways maybe his most Catholic contribution to liturgical praying. I think it’s implicit in all historical Eucharistic praying but is never actually said explicitly. And he uses that great language from Romans 12:1. The third place where Cranmer makes some really significant edits to the western tradition is around the question of sacrifice. So we certainly do see language of sacrifice in the prayer, but sacrifice is focused on the sacrifice of Christ, which is once for all, which is obviously drawing on the language from Hebrews. And any sacrifice that we have is ... and he uses the language “a sacrifice of praise” or a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” which is biblical, but is there the Roman Canon. He’s adopting that. But he’s interpreting it, I think, in probably the exact opposite way that it’s used in the Roman Canon. There it’s used as a shorthand for the whole Eucharistic action, the whole offering. I think it’s pretty clear that Cranmer, in the tradition that follows him, interprets it in the opposite way, in a non-material way. That is the sacrifice of praise is what we offer with our lips and in our disposition but not physically in the offering of bread and wine or anything material. So those three things mark changes in the Eucharistic liturgy under Cranmer. What happens in the Scottish tradition, and we don’t need to go into the history here. But basically there’s freedom for them to begin to experiment. And as they’re doing that, some of the eastern liturgies, especially the liturgy of Saint James and Apostolic constitutions become available pretty easily. People are able to have access to them. And they read them, and they’re thinking, “Wow, our Eucharistic prayer feels and is ... there’s some significant theological distance between these.” So the Scottish tradition restores a number of things that disappeared all the way back, including 1549. So the Scottish tradition restores an Epiclesis for change. So “by thy word and Holy Spirit that it may become the body and blood of Christ.” They also introduce an explicit oblation. And it’s interesting. I assume we’ll talk about this in a sec, maybe about the new ACNA prayer book. But the Anglican standard text in there reverts back to the English tradition here. So “We, your humble servants do celebrate and make here before your divine majesty with these your holy gifts.” The Scots introduced the phrase “which we now offer unto you the memorials your son hath commanded us to make.” So they restore an explicit oblation of the bread and wine. Now what’s interesting, I think, is that, of these two traditions here ... and it’s worth noting, too, that the Scots had even more, we might say Catholic or extreme versions, where they would just adopt whole parts of Apostolic constitutions, including the introduction of sacrifice language. One of the rites had a prayer just before the sursum corda, that was just taken straight from [inaudible 00:10:39] constitution, that “Thanks God that he has made us worthy to stand and offer sacrifice before him.” So they’re wanting to restore this sense of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist as well. So I think what’s interesting is that these differences would be, for other traditions, communion dividing. So I think from the Catholic churches’ place, for instance, to not request change, to not make an offering, would be to them a fatal flaw. And yet both of these traditions have coexisted within Anglicanism once the Scottish book becomes official. And it sort of allowed both to remain. And so it’s interesting that ... People sometimes talk about all the breadth that’s allowed in Anglicanism, and I think that’s sometimes overblown. But I think this is a place where that difference is pretty significant, and that tension is allowed to remain. McDermott: So the two conflicting Anglican theologies of the Eucharist are the Cranmerian tradition, or theology of the Eucharist primarily or solely in England perhaps … primarily in England. And the Scottish theology of the Eucharist, which then passes over into the American prayer books, yes? Olver: That’s right. That’s right. With just one change, the Epiclesis becomes oblique rather than explicit. So instead of, “With your word and Holy Spirit changing them that they may become the body and blood of Christ,” you revert back to Cranmer’s original Epiclesis in 1549, which can be read in a receptionist way. And this is the version that’s in the Anglican standard text in the new ACNA prayer book. And I’ll just read it from there. “So now, oh, Merciful Father, in your great goodness, we ask you to bless and sanctify with your word and Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and wine, that we receiving them, according to your son, our Savior Jesus Christ, holy institution, etc, may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood.” Now that’s not necessarily receptionist, but it can be interpreted both ways. So depending on your position, the text doesn’t have to contradict your position. McDermott: Well, what about the element of offering? Is that in one of the two ACNA texts? Olver: Interestingly, it is. So it’s absent from the Anglican standard text. But it’s present in the renewed ancient text. The phrasing is different, because this prayer relies on both prayers A and B in the ‘79 prayer book. But the language and the oblation is not like it is in either of them. Right after the Anamnesis, it begins, “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption of Father in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And we offer you these gifts,” which is kind of interesting, because it seems to be making an attempt to distinguish between the sacrifice of praise and the offering of these gifts, which is phrased differently, I think, in the ‘79 Prayer Book. There it’s, “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption of Father in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension. We offer you these gifts.” In prayer B, the connection between the sacrifice of praise and the offering of the gifts is unambiguous. And that’s, I think, intentional. “We offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, Oh, Lord of All, presenting to you from your creation this bread and this wine.” I’d say that’s certainly the most explicit of them. McDermott: Right. Now let’s focus on the word “sacrifice” that you suggest is essential to worship and has been muted, was muted in the Cranmerian prayer books. Why is it essential? So let’s step back a little bit from the prayer books and think more theologically as opposed to, at this point, liturgically. Olver: Yeah. McDermott: Why is sacrifice essential to worship? Olver: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one of the best explanations of this is the first chapter of Alexander Schmemann’s classic For the Life of the World, where he begins by offering a Christian anthropology that’s centered around sacrifice. He says that human beings were made first instead of homo sapiens ... homo adorans, that human beings are made to be priests. And what’s a priest do? Priests offer back to God what God has given to us. It’s the most fundamental and primordial way of acknowledging God as God. And this is obviously reflected in the whole history of at least pre-70 AD. Israel’s entire relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a whole series of offerings. Some of them are animals that are killed, but some of them are obviously other things, certainly the remembrance of the going into the Promise Land is the offering of first fruits, a practice you see actually continuing into the patristic church. You see evidence of blessing first fruits remaining in Sunday Eucharistic prayers for a long time. But I think that Schmemanns’s definition is really helpful, that sacrifice is not as we moderns tend to think of it, a sort of bloody primitive action of trying to appease some angry God. But sacrifice is fundamentally the offering back to God part of what God has first offered to us as a way of acknowledging God as God. Hence, the tithe. I mean, all these sorts of things, right? And the reformers obviously had a legitimate concern about the way in which the relationship between sacrifice and the accumulation of grace and merit were being understood in the late medieval church. And my read, at least, would be, in an attempt to try to address those things, they swung the pendulum too far and wanted to erase the idea of sacrifice altogether as part of what’s fundamental to what Christian worship consists in. Does that start to get at the answer? McDermott: I think so, Matt. And so is sacrifice been restored in this new 2019 ACNA prayer book, Eucharistic liturgy? Olver: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think that this current ACNA prayer book reflects the tension between the English and the Scottish traditions. And you can see the concerns of both of those parties - parties for lack of a better word - reflected in the text. So that you have one text that has a more explicit Epiclesis and oblation and the other text that doesn’t. You have, at the invitation to communion, the adoption of language which is biblical but is in this location, because it was in the Roman rite, “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world,” which is a pretty explicit claim for Eucharistic presence, especially if you’re holding up bread and wine and saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.” McDermott: Right. Olver: They also retain the language that was introduced in the ‘79 prayer book at the fraction: “Alleluia, Christ our Passover is sacrifice for us,” changing the sort of aorist tense from Paul in appropriating it liturgically and putting it in the present tense. But interestingly, of course, they make two options, one to reflect the concerns of the more English tradition. So they change the language to “Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed once for all upon cross,” I’m sure to reflect concerns about the idea that this could imply some repetition of Christ’s sacrifice or some new sacrifice. So I think the tension is actually ... this prayer book embodies that in a way that the ‘79 American prayer book ... you don’t see tension over that question. You might be able to find other kinds of theological tensions, but I don’t think over that question. McDermott: Well, lots of ink has been spilled on talking about Luther’s influence on Cranmer, right? And are you suggesting - I think you are - that Luther was wrong to strip his Eucharist, his Mass, his German Mass, of all reference to sacrifice except for the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving with the disposition and with the lips? Olver: Yeah, I think that was a mistake on his part. There were a couple of versions of the German Mass, and certainly by the end, it’s down to just the words of institution. I mean, that in itself is an interesting irony, I guess, in that, for the medieval west, the recitation of the words were seen as the consecratory formula. So it’s interesting that, not just Luther, but lots of the ... Luther and then other continental reform traditions will reduce the celebration of Holy Communion to simply the recitation of the words, obviously because they’re biblical. But it’s interesting that, as western Christians, how much of that is influenced by the understanding of those words having some sort of consecratory effect or power. I don’t know. It’d be interesting to try to trace that. McDermott: Right. Now, let me go back a little bit now, also to Cranmer and his wanting to follow Luther and getting rid of all trace of sacrifice other than the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and also trying to strip the liturgy for the most part ... Now Ashely Null disagrees here some. But for the most part of the sense of the real presence in, with, and under the bread and wine, Ashely Null has come upon some texts that ... One, two ... that suggest that Cranmer was not Zwinglian, but he didn’t quite go as far as Calvin did either. But, nevertheless, these attempts by Luther to get rid of the concept, the ancient concept of sacrifice, and Cranmer to downplay, if not eliminate, real presence from the Eucharist ... to what degree were these reformers influenced by nominalism? Olver: I think that’s a more difficult question to answer. Certainly there’s a train to be traced for Luther with Biel, and obviously Biel is significant in the introduction of what we would now call nominalism in the west. So that’s probably more undisputed. I don’t know about Cranmer, to be perfectly honest. I think that’s harder to answer. But I think it is clear that, say, back to your first question about what was lost. I wonder to what Cranmer thinks is going on ... Is there actually kind of ritual temple worship going on in Heaven, in which we’re participating? The introduction to the Sanctus would seem to indicate that he still does think that. But reading his other writing, like reading his treatise on it, it doesn’t seem like that’s the forefront in his mind. So I’m going to punt a little bit on this question and say, on Cranmer, I’m just not sure. McDermott: Okay, sure. So we’ve talked about the two conflicting theologies in Anglicanism, which you’re saying now - and it sounds quite plausible - can be seen in the new ACNA Eucharistic liturgies, intention with one another. At the end of your talk, and this was particularly interesting to me, you suggest that Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI emeritus, can help resolve the tension, can help non-Roman Catholics, Anglicans find our way through these difficulties. Can you tell us about that? Olver: Yeah. I think it’s really interesting in Ratzinger’s spirit of the liturgy how much he wants to ground his language in scripture and in scriptural language in forms of speech. And while no one would think of Ratzinger as somebody who’s regularly trying to kowtow to Protestants or something like that, the fact that he’s a German and grew up in a context knowing other Lutherans, there is certainly sensitivity to some of those Protestant concerns about the place of scripture. And certainly the Second Vatican Council reflects those concerns in many ways by its regular appeal in its documents - and I don’t think in a simplistic way - to scripture. And he does that a lot in spirit of the liturgy. Interestingly, he even wants to hand back the language of sacrifice of praise, I think, on the basis of some German scriptural scholarship, which is, I think, been called into question, about whether even for Jews is the sacrifice of praise, does that include a material sacrifice? And I think it does. But he wants to help swing the pendulum back, on the Catholic side, to not allow the emphasis on the Eucharist to be so cultic and sacrificial that its other aspects are lost, that is the aspect of worship and of adoration, aspects of prayer, personal prayer, the offering of the Word. And he interestingly uses the language “sacrifice of the Word” a number of times, which is not only the offering of our words of prayer, but it seems to be as well the offering of the words of God in scripture. And that is actually another aspect of sacrifice that is part of Eucharistic praying when Christians gather, that we don’t just read scripture but that the scripture is read in a context that it is divine speech, given to us, put on our lips that we even offer back to God. And that this is actually part of what the spiritual worship that Paul enjoins on Christians includes. He says something like this. He says, “The true spiritual worship is the mystery made known in the Mass. Why?” He says, “The body of Christ is sacrificed precisely as sacrifice is living.” So he wants to bring back together - or to not allow there to be a sharp demarcation - between the Christ present in the Eucharist and the Christ present in the gathered church. And he’s thinking here of Augustine, of course, in City of God, Book Ten, where Augustine says, “See yourself there on the alter offered to God, that the whole Christ is present here, the Christ who is at the right hand of the Father, is present sacramentally in the Ecclesial church gathered as the body of Christ, and that these together are united as one in an offering.” So it’s not a simple answer, but I think that he offers something quite arresting in his appeal to the scriptural language. McDermott: Well, I think that helps. Now, Matt, in closing, for the sake of all of our listeners who are not theologians and not liturgical specialists like you, how should Anglicans see the Eucharist as they come to the Eucharist this Sunday? Olver: Yeah, that’s a great question. My answer here ... I’m going to draw on a little slim volume that’s been republished by Wipf & Stock. It’s called Anglican Public Worship by Colin Dunlop, who was the Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, I think, in the fifties maybe. But he answers this question by doing a thought experiment about what the ascension means. What does the ascension tell us? And he says, “One of the things the ascension tells us, the ascension of Jesus, is that the worship that Jesus offered in his body on earth was so pleasing and acceptable to the Father that, not only did the Father raise him from the dead, but he brings him into Heaven, places him at his right hand, and puts all things under his feet.” And this Jesus who is Heaven is not simply there passively, but is there - as the New Testament tells us - always interceding on our behalf. And we might say, “Pleading his own one offering for our sakes to the Father.” So one way to think about what’s happening in the Eucharist is that we are coming, and we come to engage in the action that Christians have believed is the most praiseworthy thing that Christians can do corporately. And that is to make this offering in the Eucharist. And what are we offering? I think the answer is everything. I think we offer bread and wine as a sort of symbol of all of creation and our own engagement with creation. We offer our praise, verbally, and hopefully our hearts correspond to that praise that we offer with our lips. And then we also offer, as Cranmer’s language gives us, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable holy and living sacrifice to God. So what’s being offered is everything that we are and everything that we have received. We offer back in a ritual symbolic way, back to God, and God gives us back what we have offered as the thing we need the most, which is him. So he gives us the bread and the wine back as the body and blood of his son in order that we might be made more and more into that likeness that Christ desires for us. And I think the back and forth is really important. You have that wonderful patristic language, the wonderful exchange. And I think that the Eucharist is that. It’s a wonderful exchange. It’s not simply a static one-directional offering. But it’s a back and forth, where we engage, and God responds. And I think it’s a reminder, too, that the presence that comes to us in the Eucharist is not a static presence, a sort of now it’s suddenly here in a sort of ... You know, there wasn’t an apple in the room, and now there’s an apple. I mean, what’s present is not just a presence, but it is Christ himself actively offering himself to us as a person, to us as persons, that he’s engaging with us. He wants to engage with us personally in the Eucharist. McDermott: Now when, in the words of the liturgy, Matt, the priest says “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” do those words not suggest that Christ himself is offering himself to the Father, and of course we are in him? Olver: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it’s indicating that Christ’s one offering of himself is, as Chrysostom says in one of his sermons, inexhaustible and eternal, and that our offering, the Father by the spirit unites it to Christ’s one offering, so that they are one. So that the fruits of his passion, as Cranmer says, the forgiveness of sins and all other benefits of his passion, all that is offered to us, because Christ’s offering is eternally present and effective to us, most especially, I think, in the Eucharist. McDermott: Let me tell our listeners that, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast with Dr. Matthew Olver, you can enjoy himself also at our upcoming Beason Anglican Theology conference in September, September 24th and 25th. The topic is going to be “The Jewish Roots of Christianity,” and Dr. Olver is going to speak about the Jewish roots of Christian liturgy. Thank you for joining Via Media today. Announcer: You've been listening to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott, the director of The Institute of Anglican Study Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.