Tag Archives: Lord’s Supper

Richard Sibbes, Sermons on Canticles, Sermon 1.5 (The Spirit Conveys Christ)

01 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in John Calvin, Richard Sibbes, Song of Solomon, Uncategorized

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We come to a second section of the sermon:

II. Christ’s invitation by the church to come into his garden, with the end thereof, ‘to eat his pleasant fruits.’

The principle idea here is:

Wheresoever grace is truly begun and stirred up, there is still a further desire of Christ’s presence; and approaching daily more and more near to the soul, the church, thinks him never near enough to her until she be in heaven with him.

What then causes this desire? Here Sibbes gives his understanding of the presence of Christ wrought by the Spirit. In doing this, he follows Calvin for the proposition that the Spirit conveys the presence of Christ:

Even though it seems unbelievable that Christ’s flesh, separated from us by such great distance, penetrates to us, so that it becomes our food, let us remember how far the secret power of the Holy Spirit towers above all our senses, and how foolish it is to wish to measure his immeasurableness by our measure. What, then, our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive: that the Spirit truly unites things separated in space

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1370.

He gives two interrelated explains for this process. He first says that grace begets a desire for grace:

First, because grace helps to see our need of Christ, and so helps us to prize him the more; which high esteem breeds a hungering, earnest desire after him, and a desire of further likeness and suitableness to him.

This is the work of the Spirit to cause of see our unworthiness, our need of Christ. But that sight is not a sight of despair. Rather, a sight of need for Christ compels to seek him.

How then is this wrought? By the work of the Spirit:

the church well knows that when Christ comes to the soul he comes not alone, but with his Spirit, and his Spirit with abundance of peace and comfort. 

What conclusion can we draw from Spirit compelling us to Christ for comfort? Only those who desire the presence of Christ are those who do not know Christ. In particular, Sibbes singles out “the presence of Christ in his ordinances”. If we do not think carefully, we may think Sibbes is being a sacramentalist and holding to some sort of transubstantiation; but that would incorrect. Calvin holds to a real presence of Christ in the ordinances. 

For unless a man means to call God a deceiver, he would never dare assert that an empty symbol is set forth by him. Therefore, if the Lord truly represents the participation in his body through the breaking of bread, there ought not to be the least doubt that he truly presents and shows his body. And the godly ought by all means to keep this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For why should the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, except to assure you of a true participation in it? But if it is true that a visible sign is given us to seal the gift of a thing invisible, when we have received the symbol of the body, let us no less surely trust that the body itself is also given to us.

 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1371.

This presence of Christ causes us to desire Christ:

He was now in a sort present; but the church, after it is once blown upon, is not satisfied without a further presence. It is from the Spirit that we desire more of the Spirit, and from the presence of Christ that we desire a further presence and communion with him. 

James Denney: Moral Impossibilities

27 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in James Denney, Lord's Supper, The Lord's Supper, Uncategorized

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This sermon is based upon 1 Corinthians 10:21, Ye cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the cup of the devils.

The sermon has two points of particular interest: (1) what is the nature of the elements in the Lord’s Supper: particularly what is work in a symbol. (2) What does it mean for a modern Christian to take the cup of the devils?

As for symbol, Denney makes an important corrective to the concept of symbol: a symbol is not meant to put something at a distance, but rather to bring that thing close:

Perhaps it was under a deep sense of what it signified, perhaps with a sort of perplexity in our minds that in a spiritual religion like ours such a place should have been claimed by a material rite. It is certain that many church members have no clear convictions about the sacraments, and are uncomfortable in the celebration of them. They may think in some indistinct fashion that they are symbolical, but they use even the idea of symbol in a wrong way.

A symbol in their thoughts is something to be distinguished from reality; just because it is a symbol, it keeps them, one might say, at arm’s length from the thing symbolized. But the true use of a symbol is to bring the reality near; it is to give us a grasp of it such as we could not otherwise obtain.

A Christian spirit does not play off the reality in the sacrament, and the symbol, against each other; it grasps the reality through the symbol; it does not answer to its experience to say that in the communion it partakes of the symbols of Christ’s body and blood; it has Jesus Christ Himself in all the reality of his incarnation and passion as its meat and drink. It is nothing less than the cup of the Lord which we drink, nothing less than the table of the Lord of which we partake.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 230–231. The “symbols” of the supper are not to create a distance, but rather to bring about a relationship which could not obtain otherwise. The best of symbols make us understand better; help us relate better.

As for the second issue: what now is the cup of the devils? Denney says, Well, we don’t see idol worship or overt devilry nowadays. On this first point, things have changed greatly. There are a substantial number of people who self-identify as Wiccan, “In 2014 Pew Research Center estimated that 0.4 percent of Americans, about 1 to 1.5 million people, identify as Wiccan or Pagan.” There are any number of things quite common today which would have been unthinkable in such numbers in the late 19th century (although since the First World War, such things have certainly grown).

But even without overt paganism, Denney speaks of a certainly “liberty” which has one taking in ideas and culture which are contrary to Christ. The cup of devils is far more dangerous to us than we understand. Paul is warning them of a very real danger:

No matter how sure a man’s hold may be of the Christian principle that an idol is nothing in the world and therefore can do nothing to harm any enlightened person; if he takes part in such a transaction as I have described, then its atmosphere, its circumstances, its spirit, will prevail against him; he will be brought in spite of himself into the great communion of heathen life again. Let him say what he will, it is another world than that in which we live at the Lord’s table; it is spiritual influence of another quality which tells there upon the soul: and the two are irreconcilable. “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons”.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 235–236.

Here is how Denney describes the effect of such liberty:

Probably the cup of devils is drunk most frequently still under the sign of liberty. Even a Christian man says to himself that everything in human life ought to be of interest to him. It belongs to his intelligence to concern itself with all the experiences of his kind, and the most attractive way to look at these experiences is in literature. This is the mirror in which life is reflected, and it cannot be wrong to gaze into it. It is indeed the mark of a large and liberal intelligence to have the amplest toleration here; to allow the mind to familiarize itself with all that has been said and thought by human beings; to cultivate breadth, appreciation, geniality; to avoid a censorious and puritanic temper. The world that is good enough for God should be good enough for us, and we should not be too good to take it as it is.

It is by pleas like these, or in a mood like this, that men and women who have drunk the cup of the Lord allow themselves to drink the cup of devils. They deliberately breathe a poisoned spiritual air as if it could do them no harm. But it does do harm. I do not believe there is anything in which people are so ready to take liberties which does so much harm. There are bad books in the world, just as there are bad men, and a Christian cannot afford to take either the one or the other into his bosom. There are books, and books of genius too, which should not be read, because they should never have been written. The first imagination and conception of them was sin, and the sin is revived when they are conceived again in the mind even of a Christian reader. It is revived with all the deadly power that belongs to sin. We cannot give our minds over to it with impunity. It confuses, it stains, it debilitates, it kills. It is the cup of devils, and we cannot drink it and drink the cup of the Lord.

 James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 237–238.

And, “All things are not lawful for us if we wish to remain in the Lord’s company and to share in His life.”

Orthodox Paradoxes, Concerning Ordinances

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in The Lord's Supper, Uncategorized

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XIV Concerning the Lord’s Supper and Baptism

97. He believes that they who are baptized may be not be members of Christ, and yet he believes that they who are baptized may be members of the church.
98. He finds no express warrant or the baptizing of any infants, and yet he finds it warrantable that some should be baptized.
99. He believes that believers are much better for baptism, and yet he believes that the washing of what does them no good.
100. He eats Christ’s flesh and drinks the blood of Christ, and lives by it; and yet he never takes the flesh and blood of Christ into his mouth.
101. He believes that the bread and wine are not the body and blood of Christ, nor that Christ in them nor under them; and yet when he takes them he partakes of Christ.

Intinction

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by in Lord's Supper

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Intinction is the practice of dipping the bread into the wine.  The history of the practice in the Christian Church and theological reception of that practice within the Protestant Church is fully discussed here:

 http://theaquilareport.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/IntinctionPaper.pdf

Smith, in Desiring the Kingdom explains that the practice of the Eucharist forms the shape of the human being who partakes:

This intensity is suggested in the very words of institution of the Eucharist: “This is my body.”

Jesus didn’t look around the room or out the window and abstractly announce, “Behold, the goodness of all creation. Look, remember, believe. These are the gifts of God for the people of God.” Such a statement would be perfectly true; creation is just such a mediation of God’s presence. But in addition to that truth, we also need to note that Jesus takes up particular things from creation and endues them with a sense of special presence, an especially intense presence. In this way Jesus seems to establish particular hot spots of sacramentality within a good creation, while also ordaining particularly packed practices. This selective intensity suggests that the affirmation that all the world is a sacrament is not meant to thereby level “the sacraments.”

In the same way, the affirmation that all of life is worship— that all things can be done to the glory of God— should not level the particular intensity of worship as the “work of the people” that especially praises God and forms us in unique, particularly intense ways. If one temptation is to level the sacraments in the name of the sacramentality of the world, a second is the temptation to naturalize the liturgy as just an embodied practice like any other (another kind of leveling). [38]

Sometimes our emphasis on liturgy as a formative, embodied practice that shapes us runs the risk of construing this as a wholly natural or immanent process— as if the formation of disciples in Christian worship operates in much the same way as the formation of Manny Ramirez as an excellent hitter through bodily rituals of batting practice. While worship is entirely embodied, it is not only material; and though worship is wholly natural, it is never only natural. Christian worship is nothing less than an invitation to participate in the life of the triune God. In short, the centrality of embodiment should not be understood as a “naturalizing” of worship that would deny the dynamic presence of the Spirit; to the contrary, the Spirit meets, nourishes, transforms, and empowers us just through and in such material practices.

The church’s worship is a uniquely intense site of the Spirit’s transformative presence. We must never lose sight of the charged nature of these practices. [39] These are not just rituals that are unique because they are aimed at a different telos; they are also unique because they are practices that bring us face-to-face with the living God.

Smith, James K. A. (2009-08-01). Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (pp. 149-150). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

As we change the practice, we change its meaning — we change what happens in the heart. When we both remove the cup as a separate element, remove the words of institution, or partake on our own schedule, we fundamentally transform our goal and its effects. Is that wise?

Pilgrim’s Progress Study Guide 5

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Humility, John Bunyan

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The prior study guide may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/pilgrims-progress-study-guide-4/

Pilgrim’s Progress, Study Guide 5:

Christian and the Valley of Humiliation

In this section of the trip, Christian descends first in the Valley of Humiliation

Background: Christian has been refreshed and encouraged in Palace Beautiful. He has eaten of the Lord’s Supper. He has known fellowship with the Church, spoken of the wonders of Christ and God’s work with his people. Then before he leaves, Christian is brought to the armoury where he is outfitted for battle, “lest perhaps he should meet with assaults in the way.”

Christian’s Departure.

  1. Notice that Palace Beautiful is at the top of a hill. One must go up the Hill of Difficulty and go down into the Valley of Humiliation. Why is that?

Continue reading →

Edward Taylor’s Meditation Upon Isaiah 63:1

09 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in 1 Peter, Edward Taylor, Isaiah, Jonathan Edwards, Love, Meditation, Praise, Puritan, Samuel Rutherford, Song of Solomon

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Isaiah 63:1–2 (ESV)

63 Who is this who comes from Edom,

in crimsoned garments from Bozrah,

                        he who is splendid in his apparel,

marching in the greatness of his strength?

                        “It is I, speaking in righteousness,

mighty to save.”

            2           Why is your apparel red,

and your garments like his who treads in the winepress?

 

Edward Taylor looked and marveled.  He sees Christ, “all glorious in apparel” – his robes stained with blood in the glory of having conquered his enemies.  The glory of Christ is such that the sky “blanced with sunlight” is “black as sackcloth” when compared to Christ.  He brings image upon image, this language failing in its attempts to describe a beauty beyond words:

One shining sun gilding the skies with light
Benights all candles with their flaming blaze
So doth the glory of this robe benight 

Ten thousand suns at once ten thousand ways. 


This beauty overwhelms Taylor’s sense.  Now plainly Taylor has not had an actual vision of Christ; rather Taylor has taken a description of the conquering Christ and drawn out the beauty.

By the conquering Christ, Taylor would have understood this as a reference to his death upon the cross. We can know this by looking to contemporary uses of this passage.  John Meriton in his sermon on Christ’s Humiliation wrote:

III. Upon what grounds Christ thus humbled himself to death; what cogent necessity was upon him.—For we may not conceive that Christ thus humbled himself to death upon trivial and impertinent considerations. As David said once of Abner, “Died Christ as a fool dieth?” (2 Sam. 3:33.) No, sure! It was upon these six weighty grounds:—

1. That scripture-prophecies and predictions might be accomplished.—All which represent him as coming in “dyed garments from Bozrah.” (Isai. 63:1.) The first scripture that ever mentions Christ, shows him a bleeding and crucified Saviour. (Gen. 3:15.). Now Christ was to make good to a tittle every thing that had been before written of him.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, Volume 5 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 223. Richard Steele in his sermon, “The Right of Every Believer to the Blessed Cup in the Lord’s Supper” likewise ties Bozrah to Christ’s victory on the cross:

When this blessed cup is poured out, let thy eyes pour down a flood of tears mixed of grief and joy: to see such a person pouring out his life by thy procurement,—this should melt thee with grief: to see the price paid by that blood for thee, should lift thee up into a trance of joy. When thou takest that cup of salvation, think, “ ‘What shall I render to the Lord for this his benefit to me?’ (Psalm 116:12.) ‘Who is this that comes with dyed garments from Bozrah? how glorious is he in his apparel!’ (Isai. 63:1.) How bitter was his passion! how sweet his compassion to poor sinners! ‘Be ye lift up, O my everlasting doors, and let the King of glory come in.’ ” (Psalm 24:7.) Bring him into thy soul, and there feed upon him by faith, and let his fruit be savoury to thy taste. (Canticles 2:3.) Inward communion is the crown of an ordinance; it is “the cup of the new testament in Christ’s blood, which was shed for you;” (Luke 22:20;) receive it with reverence, receive it with thankfulness, receive it with application: remember his death, remember his love more than wine. (Canticles 1:2.)

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, Volume 6 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 503.  Indeed, Steele’s usage is particularly appropriate to understand Taylor’s usage, in that Taylor was contemplating the Lord’s Supper in his poem. The coming of coming is a coming encounter with Christ.

Now what is it that Taylor sees, when he looks at this coming Christ? A Christ who comes for his bride:

[Christ]

Comes glorious in’s aparel forth to woo. 

 Oh! if his glory ever kiss thine eye,
Thy love will soon enchanted be thereby. 

 

In making such usage, Taylor is moving within the existing use of his fellows. Samuel Rutherford in his sermon “The Church Seeking Her Lord” writes:

Fair things delight us much, and perfect white and perfect red make a beautiful person. Beauty be a great conqueror of love, and will take a castle in the heart. We love fair things, as fair sun, fair moon, fair roses, lilies, men, women, &c. But put out all the beauty of the creatures in one; they are all but caff1 and sand to fair-faced Jesus. I had far rather have one look of fair-faced Jesus as have all the world, and ten worlds, with sevenfold more beauty than they have. See Isa. 63:1: “Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength?” The Kirk, wondering at Christ’s beauty to see Him go so manly-like, says, “O, who is yon goes so manly and so sonsy-like? [Prosperous, happy] He is a lucky-like person.” It would rejoice one’s heart to see Him go in the greatness of His strength. Is not yon fair, glorious Jesus, in red scarlet, having all His clothes dyed in blood?

 

Samuel Rutherford, Quaint Sermons of Samuel Rutherford (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1885), 147.

Jonathan Edwards, whose father was friends with Edward Taylor, likewise sees the image of Christ coming from Bozrah as one of love and delight:

Christ and the true Christian have desires after each other. Canticles 7:10, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is towards me.”7 And the desire of the Christian’s soul is after Christ. Canticles 3:1–2, “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets and broad ways. I will seek him whom my soul loveth.” The true Christian has an admiration of Jesus Christ; he admires his excellencies. Isaiah 63:1, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with died garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?” And so Christ is represented as admiring the excellency and beauty of the churCanticles 6:10, “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”

Christ and the believer do glory in each other. The believer glories in Christ. Canticles 5:16, “This is my beloved, and this is my friend.” Canticles 6:3, “I am [my] beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” Christ glories in his people: he looks on them as his armor and his crown. Isaiah 62:3, “Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.” Zechariah 9:16, “And they shall be as the stones of a crown”.

Edwards, Collected Works, vol. 19, Sermons and Discourses, “The Sweet Harmony of Christ”, p. 442 (edwards.yale.edu).

Thus, in coming to communion, Taylor sees Christ coming to him mystically, if you will, in beauty seeking to woo his bride – the entire church. The combination of elements, the conquering hero coming in love is not so far disparate – even for us. The one who overcomes the enemies and rescues the beloved is a common image in movies and stories.

How here is the trouble: Such beauty should overwhelm Taylor and draw him out in love; but, Taylor finds his soul too small to swell with such love as is right:

Then grieve, my soul, thy vessel is so small

And holds no more for such a lovely he.

That strength’s so little, love scarce acts at all.

 

At this point, Taylor expresses the gravest sorrow of the Christian.  When we consider the love and unbending courage and grace of Christ – whose love was “strong as death” (Canticles 8:6) – it should engender a love as profound and deep within our hearts.  To see the love of Christ should conform us utterly to his image and glory:

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9–10 (ESV)

When Christ comes from Bozrah, when he comes to woo, he comes to one who deserves no mercy. Indeed, as the quotation from Hosea (found in  1 Peter 2:10) shows, we are actively enemies of God. Indeed, Hosea portrays the people of God as prostitutes who have strayed from the marriage vow.

It is in this place that Christ comes. Taylor knows this  — and knows that it is his purpose and joy to “proclaim the excellencies” of Christ – the one who by his death drew us out of darkness.   Notice also, a point well developed by Taylor, that the “marvelous light” is not beyond Christ is Christ, “his marvelous light”.

It is into this place that Taylor knows despair – none of our love and praise approximates that which is deserved.

Think of a wedding day.  The bride comes down the aisle, resplendent in her youth and beauty. Her husband to be looks at her and says, “Hey not bad!” After a few moments of looking, he turns to his friends and starts in a videogame on his phone.

Such is the gravity of our flesh, that even after conversion, even when we know the magnificence of Christ, it drags us down.

It is here that Taylor’s poem shines. For rather than resolve to merely bear his dullness, he strives for something still more:

My lovely one, I fain would love thee much
But all my love is none at all I see,
Oh! let thy beauty give a glorious touch
Upon my heart, and melt to love all me.
Lord melt me all up into love for thee
Whose loveliness excels what love can be. 

Now to some, Taylor may seem grim and sour, for he sees plainly the inability of the human being. Yet, when we think of him fairly, there is no sour despair.  In seeing his need for grace and glory from Christ, he exhibits the grandest hope. It is a strange sort of “optimism” which settles for little. No one who knows human beings well can think that we – even at our best – live up to what we know as best. This is a statement which can be made even by one who denies Christ.

No for the Christian, who sees the end of humanity in the greatest possible manner, it is unquestionable that we are far sort of what we were created to be. In fact, we know human beings to be such a grand thing that nothing in the universe will suffice for us. Only the Creator of the universe is a grand enough object for our love. Yet, when we recognize this, we know also that we fall sort (Romans 3:23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). We know this falling short to be sin.

Hence, we know our trouble lie with our sin: sin is an infection, a foreign strain, an abnormality that trails along death and misery. Thus, to fit us for our true greatness, Christ conquers sin and then woos our soul. It is this misery and rescue which Taylor sees. He knows Christ to be more magnificent than all the world; precisely what Taylor has always hoped would be. And it is at this point that knows his love falls short.

 

But also notice the faith and hope which drive Taylor on. He does not think to settle for an insufficient love. Christ is such a great husband that he cannot merely engender love but he can create love.

1857

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Church History, Lord's Supper, Union With Christ

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How we think about the past often tells us more about present that it does about history. For example, Greek mythology spoke of a past “golden age”:

(ll. 109-120) First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.


Hesiod Works and Days. Yet we wiser moderns know that history goes in one direction; that the past was primitive, but due to the power of progress, things have constantly become better.  We are wiser, better, stronger than our ancestors. Such thinking owes more to people like Herbert Spencer. The Wikipedia summarizes Spencer as follows:

Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. He was “an enthusiastic exponent of evolution” and even “wrote about evolution before Darwin did.”[1] As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, biology, sociology, and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia. “The only other English philosopher to have achieved anything like such widespread popularity was Bertrand Russell, and that was in the 20th century.”[2] Spencer was “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century”[3][4]

Yet, a Stanford professor of genetics recently held that our Greek ancestors (or any of our ancestors from the time of Hesiod) would be more intellectually powerful than Spencer (who thought himself at the top of the progressive heap):

Our Fragile Intellect

Gerald R. Crabtree

David Korn Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology

Beckman Center, B211

279 Campus Drive, Stanford University crabtree@stanford.edu

 

I would be willing to wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions. We would be surprised by our time-visitor’s memory, broad range of ideas and clear-sighted view of important issues. I would also guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I do not mean to imply something special about this time in history or the location, but would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago. I mean to say simply that we Homo sapiens may have changed as a species in the past several thousand years and will use 3000 years to emphasize the potential rapidity of change and to provide a basis for calculations, although dates between 2,000 and 6,000 years ago might suffice equally well. The argument that I will make is that new developments in genetics, anthropology and neurobiology make a clear prediction about our historical past as a species and our possible intellectual fate. The message is simple: our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprising fragile.

 

http://bmi205.stanford.edu/_media/crabtree-2.pdf

One way in which consider ourselves to be advanced is in matters of “race”. Now “race” is a nonsense concept. There is only one “race”, the human race. Of course human beings have organized ourselves into various groups which use common language and culture; but that is a cultural club, not a “race”. Anyway, we pride ourselves in outgrowing notions of race – which make us much better people than our forbearers.

Yet, racism is far more “modern” than we might admit. An incident in 1857 at least points in the opposite direction:

A watershed point in this history occurred in 1857 when the General Assembly of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) received from some white members a request for permission to celebrate the Lord’s Supper separated from black members of the church. The request was clearly against the Reformed polity of the DRC ….(Indeed, an earlier request for separate communion had been rejected by the Dutch Reformed Church, for the Lord’s Supper was to be administered “without distinction of colour”). Moreover, the 1857 Synod found no biblical grouns for the separation of communion based upon race. However, the assembly, wanting to avoid being conservative, doctrinaire, and rigid gave pastoral accommodation that “due to the weakness of some,” communion and worship could be organized into separate celebrations  based on race. (The “weaker” one referred to were the white members who made the request for separate communion.)

J. Todd Billings, Union With Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church, 98-99.

Fortunately, in many places – particularly within the Christian church – such modern racism has been rejected: but, not on the basis of “progress” but rather to conform to what the church already believed and held and practiced. If nothing else, this story cautions us to be more careful of what we “know to be true.”

Edward Taylor: What Feast is This.1

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Isaiah, Lord's Supper, Meditation, Puritan

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What Feast is This?

Isaiah 25 is a poem of praise to God for reversing the power of sin and death. The power of wicked who use violence to crush the poor and powerless will be undone and also the power of death which animates the oppression will itself be destroyed (the poem is written in a “prophetic perfect” — that is, it represents a future state, but speaks of it in past time: it is a thing so sure as to be counted complete before it happens in time).

In place of death, God will raise a feast; rather than a funeral, there will be a marriage celebration:

6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. 7 And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

This image of a feast replacing death is used by Jesus to speak of the coming world (Matthew 8:11 & 25:1-13). The Bible ends with the invitation to a marriage feast (Revelation 19:9). Thus, the Bible opens (Genesis 2:24) and closes with a marriage. Death has intervened (Genesis 3), but God has overcome death in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Taylor takes this imagery of the feast in celebration of death being overcome and uses it to contemplate the Lord’s Supper (communion):

A Deity of Love incorporate
My Lord, lies in thy flesh, in dishes stable
Ten thousand times more rich than golden plate
In golden service on thy table,
To feast thy people with. What feast is this!
Where richest love lies cooked in e’ry dish?

Deity of love incorporate: The Son of God incarnate: John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. John 3:16, “For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
1 John 4:9-10: 9 “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Dishes stable/Where richest love lies cooked in e’ry dish: This is a reference to the communion service (the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper):

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

In short, Taylor sees himself before the Lord’s Table (another name for communion), where the feast is the Lord whose death overcomes death. By means this meditation, he is seeking to see “spiritually” (if you will) — to see the truth of thing, itself; and bring his heart to a state to relish it rightly.

Stable/table: The second lines contains 11 syllables, the fourth, 9.

My Lord, lies in thy flesh: the accent should fall on “lies” & “flesh” -“–`-`-`-

Stupendous Love

04 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ante-Nicene, Edward Taylor, John, Lord's Supper, Meditation, Puritan

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Edward Taylor

Stupendous Love[1]

Stupendous Love! All saints‘astonishment.!

Bright angels are black motes in this sun‘s light.

Heav’n‘s canopy the paintice[2] to God‘s tent

Can’t cover’t neither with its breadth, nor height.

Its glory doth all glory else out run,

Beams of bright glory to’t are motes i’th’sun.

 

My soule had caught an ague[3], and like Hell

Her thirst did burn: she to each spring did fly,

But this bright blazing love[4] did spring a well

Of aqua-vitae[5] in the deity,

Which on the top of Heav’ns high hill out burst

And down came running thence t’allay my thirst.

 

But how it came, amazeth all communion[6].

God’s only Son doth hug humanity[7],

Into his very person. By which union

His human veins its golden gutters lie.

And rather than my soul should die by thirst,

These golden pipes, to give me drink, did burst[8].

 

This liquor[9] brew’d, thy sparkling art divine

Lord, in thy crystal vessels did up tun[10],

(Thine ordinances[11],) which all Earth o’re shine

Set in thy rich wine cellars out to run[12].

Lord, make thy butler draw, and fill with speed

My beaker full: for this is drink indeed[13].

 

Whole buts[14] of this blessed nectar shining stand

Locked up with saph’rine taps, whose splendid flame

Too bright do shine for brightest angels’s hands

To touch, my Lord[15]. Do thou untap the same.

Oh! make thy crystal buts of red wine bleed

Into my crystal glass this drink-indeed.

 

How shall I praise thee then? My blottings jar

And wrack my rhymes to pieces in thy praise.

Thou breath’st thy vein still in my pottinger[16]

To lay my thirst, and fainting spirits raise.

Thou makest glory’s chiefest grape[17] to bleed

Into my cup: And this is drink-indeed.

 

Nay, though I make no pay for this red wine[18],

And scarce do say I thank-ye-for’t; strange thing!

Yet were thy silver skies my beer bowl fine

I find my Lord, would fill it to the brim.

Then make my life, Lord, to thy praise proceed

For thy rich blood, which is my drink-indeed.

Incidentally, the practice of communion is recorded in Justin Martyr’s first apology:

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, [8 highlights] and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss.3 There is then brought to the president of the brethren4 bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; [8 highlights] and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to γένοιτο [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

CHAP. LXVI.—OF THE EUCHARIST.

And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία5 [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, [11 highlights] and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh[19].  For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done.  For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.

Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin” In , in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I: The Apostolic Fathers With Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 185.

[1] General argument of the poem: The poem itself is a pre-communion meditation. The poet’s soul thirsts “like Hell” due to the damage of sin. He compares sin to a fever which drives his soul to thirst. His thirst can be slaked only with the “wine” of Christ’s blood, shed for sinners (2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV),  For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus Christ] to be sin [a sin offering; in the Mosaic Law, a sacrifice made to atone for one’s sin] who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  1 Peter 2:21–25 (ESV) 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.) The balance of the poem is a praise and desire for the blood of Christ.

[2] I could not find the meaning of this word. It does not appear in the two volume OED, and it does not appear in the google ngram viewer.

[3] An illness. Here: sin: Sin has drained the poet dry of the water of life and hence bound for hell he thirsts like hell.

[4] John 3:16 (ESV)  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

[5] Water of life: John 4:13–14 (ESV) 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

[6] The Puritans understood the Incarnation as the greatest act of love and the most incomprehensible of miracles.  Thomas Watson, in A Body of Divinity, wrote, “Behold here a sacred riddle or paradox – ‘God manifest in the flesh.’ That man should be made in God’s image was a wonder, but that God should be made in man’s image is a greater wonder. That the Ancient of Days should be born, that he who thunders in the heavens should cry in the cradle; Qui tonitruat in caelis, clamat in cunabulis; qui regit sidera, sugit ubera; that he who rules the stars should suck the breast; that a virgin should conceive; that Christ should be made of a woman, and of that woman which himself made; that the branch should bear the vine; that the mother should be younger than the child she bare, and the child in the womb bigger than the mother; that the human nature should not be God, yet one with God; this was not only mirum but miraculum. Christ taking flesh is a mystery we shall never fully understand till we come to heaven, when our light shall be clear, as well as our love perfect.”

David Clarkson, in the Love of Christ, wrote,

These are large expressions of love indeed. But the proper act of love is union; love is ever accompanied with a strong inclination to unite with its object, which, by some secret and powerful virtue, as it were by the emission of some magnetical rays, attracts the lover with a restless solicitation, and never ceases till they meet and unite, as intimately as their nature will permit. The grossness of the matter in corporeal parts will not admit of such intimacy and penetration as love affects; but souls, they can mix, twine about each other, and twist into most strict oneness. We see this effect in Christ’s love. His affection moved him to union with us; and one degree of his union was the assuming our nature, by which Christ and we are one flesh. He may say to us as Adam, ‘Thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh’ Nay, we are not only one flesh, but one spirit: 2 Cor. 6:17, ‘He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’ O transcendent love! As if some man, out of love to a worm, should take upon him the form and nature of that irrational, contemptible creature. Hence David (in that a type of Christ) calls himself ‘a worm, and no man,’ Ps. 22. Yet Christ’s love, in being incarnate, is infinitely more; as the disproportion betwixt him and us is infinitely greater than between us and worms. This was greater love, greater honour, than ever he would vouchsafe to angels: ‘He took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.’ But the love of Christ would not rest here; he thinks us yet not near enough, and therefore holds forth a more intimate union in such resemblances as these: John 15:5, ‘I am the vine, ye are the branches.’ We are united as closely to Christ as the branches to the vine. More than this: Eph. 1:22, 23, ‘gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body.’ We are united to Christ, as the body to the head. Each of us may look upon ourselves as a part of Christ; so that whatever glory and happiness shines in our head, reflects upon us; and whatever dignity and injury is cast upon us, it reaches our head.

[7] That is, the Son of God became a human being: Romans 8:3 (ESV)

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

[8] The blood of Jesus Christ was given to slack the thirst brought on by sin.

[9] Liquor merely means something to drink.

[10] A tun is a large cask or barrel for wine, beer or ale. Incidentally, the Puritans did not forbid alcohol, despite the statements made by some at a much later date.

[11] Baptism and the Lord’s Supper/Communion – which Taylor has in view here.

[12] The wine which represents the Lord’s blood.

[13] In John 6, Jesus preaches that his body and blood must be taken to receive forgiveness. This, incidentally, is a point of contention between Roman Catholics and Protestants over the nature of the elements in communion.  The Roman Catholics hold to transubstantiation in which the elements become the actual body and blood of the Lord (in substance, not accident); while Protestants hold other positions (consubstantiation, real presence, symbolic memorial). The line alluded to by Taylor comes from  John 6:55 (AV)  For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

Incidentally, communion is one of the earliest elements of Christian worship recorded outside of the Bible. Justin Martyr wrote in his first apology:

[14] A container for the wine.

[15] Angels are not able nor worthy to drink nor give the blessing of Christ’s death. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:10-12:

10 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: 11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

And, Hebrews 1:14, “Are they [angels] not ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them, who shall be heirs of salvation?” [The heirs of salvation are human beings whom God redeems.]

[16] The OED states that a pottinger is a “porringer”, which is a small bowl, often with a handle, for soup, broth, porridge, etc.

[17] Jesus.

[18] Salvation is a “free gift” (Rom. 5:16-18; Eph. 2:8).

[19] The editors of the translation provide this note,

 

This passage is claimed alike by Calvinists, Lutherans, and Romanists; and, indeed, the language is so inexact, that each party may plausibly maintain that their own opinion is advocated by it. [But the same might he said of the words of our Lord himself; and, if such widely separated Christians can all adopt this passage, who can be sorry?] The expression, “the prayer of His word,” or of the word we have from Him, seems to signify the prayer pronounced over the elements, in imitation of our Lord’s thanksgiving before breaking the bread. [I must dissent from the opinion that the language is “inexact:” he expresses himself naturally as one who believes it is bread, but yet not “common bread.” So Gelasius, Bishop of Rome (A.D. 490.), “By the sacraments we are made partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be in them,” etc. (See the original in Bingham’s Antiquities, book xv. cap. 5. See Chrysost., Epist. ad. Cæsarium, tom. iii. p. 753. Ed. Migne.) Those desirous to pursue this inquiry will find the Patristic authorities in Historia Transubstantionis Papalis, etc., Edidit F. Meyrick, Oxford, 1858. The famous tractate of Ratranin (A.D. 840) was published at Oxford, 1838, with the homily of ælfric (A.D. 960) in a cheap edition.]

 

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I: The Apostolic Fathers With Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885).

Edward Taylor: The Reflexion.1

20 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Church History, Confession, Edward Taylor, Lord's Supper, Prayer, Puritan, Song of Solomon

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The  Reflexion

Lord, art thou at the tablehead above

Meat, medicine, sweetness, sparkling beauties to

Enamor souls with flaming flakes of love,

And not my trencher[1], nor my cup o’erflow?

Be n’t I a bidden guest? Oh! sweat mine eye[2].

O’reflow with tears: Oh! draw thy fountains dry.

 

Shall I not smell thy sweet, Oh! Sharon’s Rose?[3]

            Shall not mine eye salute thy beauty? Why?[4]

Shall thy sweet leaves their beauteous sweet upclose?

As half ashamed my sight should on them lie?

Woe’s me! for this my sighs shall be in grain

Offer’d on Sorrow’s alter for the same.

 

Had not my soul’s  — thy conduit —  pipes stopped been

With mud, what ravishment would’st thou convey?

Let Grace’s golden spade dig till the spring

            Of tears arise, and clear this filth away.

            Lord, let thy spirit raise my sighings till

            These pipes — my soul — do with thy sweetness fill.

 

Earth was once paradise of Heaven below

            Till infected sin had it with poison stocked

And chassed this paradise away into

            Heav’n’s upmost loft, and it in glory locked.

            But thou, sweet Lord, hast with thy golden key

            Unlocked the door, and made a golden day.

 

Once at thy feast[5], I saw thee pearl-like stand

            ‘Tween Heaven and Earth where Heaven’s bright glory all

In streams fell on thee, as a floodgate and,

            Like sunbeams through thee on the world to fall.

            Oh! sugar sweet then! My dear sweet Lord, I see

            Saints’ heaven-lost happiness restored by thee.

 

Shall Heaven, and Earth’s bright glory all up lie

–Like sunbeams bundled in the sun — in thee?

Dost thou sit Rose[6] at table head, where I

            Do sit, and carv’st no morsel sweet for me?

            So much before, so little now! Sprindge[7], Lord

            Thy rosie leaves and me their glee afford.

 

Shall not thy rose my garden fresh perfume?

            Shall not thy beauty my dull heart assail?

Shall not thy golden gleams run through this gloom?

            Shall my black velvet mask thy fair face veil?

            Pass o’er my faults: shine forth, bright sun: arise

            Enthrone thy rosy-self within mine eyes.

[1] Trencher: c.1308, “wooden platter on which to cut meat,” from Anglo-Fr.trenchour, from O.N.Fr. trencheor “a trencher,” lit. “a cuttingplace,” from O.Fr. trenchier 

“to cut” 

trencher. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/trencher (accessed: September 20, 2012).

 

trencher

originally a thick slice of bread, used as a primitive form of platefor eating and for slicing meat (hence its derivation from“trancher”- to cut, or carve), but by the 14th century a square orcircular wooden plate of rough workmanship. There was usually asmall cavity for salt in the rim of the wooden plate, andsometimes the main section was so formed that it could beturned over and the other side used for a second course 

trencher. Dictionary.com. © Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/trencher (accessed: September 20, 2012).

[2]Weep.

[3] Song of Solomon 2:1

[4] Why not?

[5] The Lord’s Supper, Communion.

[6] Jesus, as the Rose of Sharon

[7] Sprinkle.