Zooming in on the Lord’s Supper? Some reflections… Part 1

This has become a sprawling debate. I have tried to capture the major arguments here without naming lots of names. Of course no-one is making all these arguments; I’ve just found it helpful to spread out the pieces and try and organise them a little…

By way of a headline, I don’t think we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper until we physically gather again as God’s people. But I want to acknowledge the breadth and quality of many arguments for a different conclusion. There are some biblical arguments that need addressing and there are very tricky questions around what it means to be “present” online. Could it not be said that the church has gathered in a Zoom chat room?

Let’s begin with some basic convictions about the Lord’s Supper, widely recognised:

1. The Lord’s Supper is the sign of a sacrifice for sins offered once for all. The loss of the Lord’s Supper would be much, much worse if we believed it atones for sins. 

2. The Lord’s Supper is a sign for the new covenant community.

a.       It signifies the unity of God’s people. There is one loaf, one body, one cup. Indeed, it constitutes us as one. We who are many are one “because there is one loaf.” (1 Cor 10:17)

b.      It is to be celebrated as the gathered church. Paul’s instructions on the Lord’s Supper are given along with other aspects of corporate worship under the category of things to do “when you come together” (1 Cor 11:18, 20, 14:23, 26).

c.       It is closely related to church discipline. To excommunicate someone is to ex-communion them, to deny them the right to eat at the family table. 1 Corinthians 5-6 speaks of those who should be excluded from table fellowship because of their sinful conduct as an act of discipline.[1] Likewise Matt 18:17 speaks of ending fellowship as the climax of a process of discipline.

This responsibility to “judge those inside” the church falls to the whole church community in 1 Cor 5:12-13 and the unrepentant sinner’s case is brought before the whole church in Matt 18:17. That said, there is a clear need for mature believers to be engaged in the process (Gal 6:1) and it is the responsibility of leaders in particular to refute error, rebuke, correct, and restore, as the Pastoral Epistles demonstrate.

Protestant churches have developed a number of ways of administering the Lord’s Supper which will raise some more specific issues, beyond the need to observe the basic contours on the Lord’s Supper. In some traditions, it is only the ordained ministers of the gospel or elders of the church who may preside. In others, the bread and wine must be consecrated by an ordained minister and any surplus reverently consumed.[2] To the extent that these are felt to be important, they will feed into our decision about what is permissible or advisable in this season.

But, to return to those broader convictions about the Lord’s Supper, the basic question emerges clearly enough: if the church can’t meet together, then how can it celebrate the Lord’s Supper?

The next few posts looks at a number of recent arguments arguing it can...

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[1] In the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism Question 173: “May any who profess his faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s Supper, be kept from it?” Answer: “Such as are found to be ignorant or scandalous, notwithstanding their profession of the faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s Supper, may and ought to be kept from that sacrament, by the power which Christ hath left in his church, until they receive instruction and manifest their reformation.

[2] What is meant by consecration varies; it can mean that bread and wine are accompanied by words which proclaim their significance (thereby keeping word and sacrament together). See Calvin Institutes 4.17.39 on this); it can also include the prayer that the Spirit would enable the people to feed in Christ in the Supper.

Who the man?

Some notes from Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man (London: Penguin, 2017).

 “Men are constantly performing for an invisible authority, the Department of Masculinity. We never know when we are being observed, so we constantly keep watch on ourselves and each other; we guard the boundaries of the role. We are all the authority figure and the prisoner. I often look at men and they seem to be victims of this drive to perform their gender. What are they afraid of? Why do they play the man so extremely, whether with muscles or knowledge or wit?” p54.

“Nearly every masculine garment is coded to associate the wearer with dramatic versions of their gender role. Every extraneous buttonhole, pocket and patch is not really about real function but is as decorative as a lacy frill.” p66

“Whenever I talk about masculinity, about its behaviours, feelings and aesthetics, it often feels historical. A trait that Fight Club and much of the rhetoric around manhood seems to exhibit is nostalgia. Feminism has always been forward looking. Women’s rights will come, a woman’s role will change and expand, she is working for a better, a more just future… Men, though, always seem to be harking back to some mythical golden age (for men), when men were ‘men.’ A time of hunting (dangerous, thrilling), a time of war (dangerous, thrilling and boring), a time of heavy industry (dangerous, boring), times when all the vintage men’s equipment – anger, violence, physical strength – could be put through its paces.” p91.

“I'm not entirely convinced by the power of celebrity male role model. They are exotic distant beasts. For the role modelling to work, I think boys need the reliable constant drip-drip of day-to-day contact and attention from a good man probably his father. A boy needs to have his mentor’s sensibility rub off on him and reinforced frequently and casually, not just read about him on some gossip website or see him on some chat show... 

I find few focused examples of what men could or should be in a gender-equal world…The problem is that because they are new there is no compelling back catalogue … of role models… I can see the need for a new male archetype, but is he sexy and thrilling? He’s practical and convenient, like a washing machine. Men need a vision of masculinity that is not just predicated on the thrilling highlights of an outdated romantic narrative - it needs to celebrate the true everyday happiness that comes from stable intimate relationships and a meaningful role in the here and now.” p104-5.

“Every so often in a bar I notice a man - often all muscles or joshing with a raucous group of mates - who seems to have an unnamed fear in his eyes and a nervous laugh. He seems to be showing fear and discomfort at where he has found himself, as if he is trapped, playing out a role that does not fit. This man emits anxiety, as though for a brief moment he has managed to glimpse around the edge of the mask and realised that all the Investment he has made in being a man is suddenly worth nothing. All the laughing at offensive jokes, all the pumping iron, all the drinking, competing, all the suppressed pain and hiding of sadness, all the colluding and sexist office politics, all the coping alone, all the diseases diagnosed too late, all the hours of boredom talking about sport, all of it, all of it, all of it, for what? To keep up the act - to be a footsoldier for an imaginary leader that sits in the top corner office of our subconscious. That imaginary man is of course the CEO of the Department of Masculinity. This idealized self, this boss, is hegemonic masculinity... the archetypal bully all men carry around in their heads tutting, sighing, and sniping when they don't come up to scratch.”  p118

George Orwell on "modern English of the worst sort"

 George Orwell (Why I Write, pp110-113):

“I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

The first sentence contains 49 words but only 60 syllables and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it only gives a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first.

Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of the meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by somebody else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier - even quicker, once you have the habit - to say in my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.”

If one attraction is that it’s easier, another must be that it sounds clever, or learned.

And Orwell’s prescription:

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions: what am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is the image fresh enough to have an effect? and he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”

Romans reading

I've had a couple of recent requests for info on what's recent and worth reading on Romans.

Here's an email reply...

Hi Philip,

Lovely to hear from you and apologies for a slow response!

depends what you're after of course. Tom Schreiner and Doug Moo are both about to publish the second editions of their commentaries which will substantially update those very strong works. Both due end of this year I think which may come too late for you.

Will Timmins has published his PhD on Romans 7 - it'll be a key part of the debate for decades I suspect -  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Romans-Christian-Identity-Testament-Monograph/dp/1107197090

John Barclay's Paul and the Gift has some very stimulating material on Romans and is well worth engaging with.

On the Greek text, John Harvey's volume in the EGGNT series is very helpful for keeping Greek fresh ;)

David Peterson's commentary (Holman - Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation series) looks good though I've not dug deep yet.

David Starling has a super article in Themelios - 'For Your Sake We Are Being Killed All Day Long': Romans 8:36 and the Hermeneutics of Unexplained Suffering.

Sigurd Grindheim is also a writer I've always enjoyed and I notice he's written a couple of journal articles on Romans lately:

 “A Theology of Glory: Paul’s Use of Δόξα Terminology in Romans,” Journal of Biblical Literature 136.2 (2017): 451–65;

 “The Kingdom of God in Romans,” Biblica 98.1 (2017): 72–90.  If they are of interest it's always worth seeking an author out on Academia.edu /social media and asking for a PDF...

Trust things are well at your end,

Yours in Christ,

David.

What to do with a downcast soul?

Seems to me something disturbing happens in discussions of psalms 42-43. 

Often these two psalms are thought to have been just one originally, given the repeated refrain ’Why are you downcast O my soul?’  (42:5, 42:11, 43:5) and other parallel language (e.g. Ps 42:9 and 43:2). That’s not the disturbing thing, mind you, just some context.

What’s disturbing is the way the psalms are regularly used to commend giving yourself a good talking to.  That the answer to a downcast soul is to take yourself in hand and engage in “self-talk.”

Tim Keller, for example, in My Rock and My Refuge reflects on Ps 42-43, saying “Change and hope come as we, in effect, argue with ourselves.”

Or James Montgomery Boice summarises the psalmist’s model to us under three headings. He:

1. takes himself in hand

2. he challenges himself to do what should be done

 3. he reminds himself of a great certainty.

Both of them, I suspect, are influenced by Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ famous Spiritual Depression, which presents Ps 42-43 as the crowning witness to spiritual depression and its cure: 

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’ – what business have you to be disquieted You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself ‘Hope thou in God’ – instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man, ‘I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.

So what’s disturbing about that? Well, the trouble with this approach to Ps42-43 is that it fails to notice what is the most significant speech. It is not, ultimately, what the psalmist says to himself, but what he says to God – that’s where hope lies. That’s where the psalmist’s longings get satisfied.

The desperate need is there at the beginning of psalm 42: the psalmist longs for God, longs to be near him, and is taunted by enemies who tell him God’s nowhere to be seen in all this: ‘Where is your God?’ 42:3, 10. The psalmist is in danger of agreeing, feeling forgotten (42:9) and rejected (43:2). The solution, though, clearly comes in 43:1 and 43:3 when God acts. It is not about the psalmist giving himself a good talking to, it is God sending his “light and faithful care” – “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my joy and my delight.”

So where does hope and change come from in Ps 42-43, it comes through the psalmist talking to God – calling on him to act. 

In the meantime, there is a place for talking to ourselves, of course. Even when we feel forgotten, we are to remember who God is. We are not to judge by appearances. The enemies see him stricken and think God is absent. The psalmist reminds himself that is not true– God is in the trials we face; note 42:7 “your waves and breakers have swept over me.” And he reminds himself of who God is, not least in 42:8 where he speaks of God as YHWH, the God of covenant love and faithfulness.

As Spurgeon says:

As though he were two men, the psalmist talks to himself. His faith reasons with his fears, his hope argues with his sorrows. These present troubles, are they to last forever? The rejoicings of my foes, are they more than empty talk? My absence from the solemn feasts, is that a perpetual exile? Why this deep depression, this faithless fainting, this chicken-hearted melancholy? As someone says, "David chides David out of the dumps; "and herein he is an example for all desponding ones.

But that cannot be the whole story. The danger is that we could end up functionally agreeing with the ones taunting the psalmist. We end up acting as if we are on our own and it’s down to us to talk ourselves out of these situations. 

Relatedly, there is a danger that we end up treating psalm 42-43 as a static model of self-talk, rather than a dynamic story that, in the case of the psalmist, awaits resolution, but in our case has found some resolution. God has sent his light and his faithful care. His Son. We have been brought into his presence. We have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. 

To be sure, we still await the arrival of the heavenly Jerusalem descending and being with the Lord face to face. And this interim phase includes many hardships that might cause us to be downcast. But these psalms do not teach us to look inward in those moments or seasons but to look upwards and call on God to act. 

On balance, I think I’d rather say that that is “the main art in the matter of spiritual living.”

The Crack in Everything

Notes from Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic, ch 2: 'The Crack in Everything'

p24 On the problem of trying to use biblical words when “our culture is smudged over with half-legible religious scribbling”:

p25 Sin for example, now “always refers to the pleasurable consumption of something”

“The other universal is that ‘sin’ always encodes a memory of ancient condemnation: but a distant memory, just enough of a memory to add a zing of conscious naughtiness to whatever the pleasure in question is.”

Hence, p26, if I use the word sin “you will diagnose me as a Christian body-hater. You’ll corral me among the enemies of ordinary joy. You’ll class me with the life-haters... [p27] so I won’t do that. Because that isn’t at all what I mean. What I and most believers understand by the word I’m saying to you has got very little to do with yummy transgression. For us, it refers something much more like the human tendency, the human propensity, to f*@% up. Or let’s add one more word: the human propensity to f*@% things up [HPtFtU] because what we’re really talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It’s our active inclination to break stuff, ‘stuff’ here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well-being and other peoples, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch. Now, I hope, we’re on common ground. In the end, almost everyone recognises this as one of the truths about themselves.”

p29 “the HPtFtU is bad news, and like all bad news is not very welcome, especially if you let yourself take seriously the implication that we actually want the destructive things we do, that they are not just an accident that keeps happening to poor little us, but part of our nature... we would, on the whole, very much like this not to be true, and our culture conspires to help us avoid and defer and ignore the sting as much as possible. The purveyors of flattering images do their damnedest to keep us feeling that we can be as we wish ourselves to be. It would not be very cool or aspirational if we had to imagine our biographies being sculpted out of some awkward substance over which we had limited control... the [culture’s] advice amounts to a suggestion, really, that you should distract yourself. Keep yourself busy with stuff. Don’t look inside. Shop. Rent a DVD. Kill some zombies on your Xbox. Let the net’s unending flutter of opinions tickle you and keep you tickled.”

p32 “We are creatures who don’t get to decide what we are, whose natures are always partly hidden from our conscious understanding, who always pull several ways at once.”

p33 cf. Bill Hamilton’s “wonderful description of the human animal as ‘an ambassador sent forth by an unstable coalition.’”

“And this is a state of affairs in the face of which we are, for the most part, currently clueless, toolless, committed to alarmed denial rather than to any more useful or hopeful response.”

Witness for example to proliferation of serial killer novels and films; p34: “The rather severe limitation on the way the serial killer story does evil, though, is that it always offers it to us as, exactly, something out there, something far distant from us, which by bad luck descends growling and licking its lips in ordinary mole, innocent old us, who live in the nice normal middle of the normal curve. It is the predator, we are the prey. It is the doer or harm. We are the done unto. Which is superficially scary, and then very, very cosy.

But HPtFtU is in here, not out there. The bad news is bad news about us, not just about other people. And when the conviction of it settles in, when we reach one of those stages of our lives where the sorrow of our failure hangs in our chests like a weight, and waking up in the morning is painful because every time the memory of what’s wrong has to ooze back over the lovely blankness of the night - you’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever been there - then the idea that it would help to cling to a cosy sense of victimhood seems as silly as it would be to try and fight off flu by waving a toy lightsaber... if you don’t give the weight in your chest it’s true name you can’t even begin.”

p36 “‘Guilt’ though, gets a terrible press now: much worse than frothy, frivolous ‘sin.’ Our culture does take seriously but as a cause of unhappiness in itself, a wanton anxiety-generator. It’s as if the word ‘groundless’ always slid invisibly into place in our sentences next to it. As if it were always a false signal, a fuss being made about nothing... our usage assumes a world where we never do anything it would be appropriate to feel bad about.”

p42 But “no-one is incapable of wrongdoing, and we have to be allowed our capacity for HPtFtU if we are to have our full stature. Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than [p43] just being a flurry of events.”

p50 the essence of the experience I’m trying to talk about in this chapter is that it’s chaotic. You stop making sense to yourself. You find that you aren’t what you thought you were, but something much more multiple and mysterious and self-subverting”

p51 “I want to give chaos it’s due here, unmodified, unconsoled, not yet smoothed into a new status quo... because it is in that chaos, that true realisation of a true formlessness in yourself, that the need can begin which is one of the strong motives for belief...”