Salvation, Time, Trinity, and Sacrament

Flesh and blood is given to you as bread and wine. It’s usually crackers and grape juice. The other day we used Saltines and Powerade (Trademarks Reserved…). In all of my interaction with evangelicalism, the weighty imperative to partake of the elements has long far been outweighed by the distracting fact that they are presented as signposts. Detached from actual reality, having their actuality stripped from them as Christ’s flesh was stripped from his bones when he was flogged. I hope to present an alternative to the transubstantial/consubstantial/transignificational trichotomy and instead offer a Trinitarian triptych, which will hopefully create within those reading this blog who are united with Christ a harmony with the Spirit inside of them, resulting in a resounding hunger and thirst for the body and blood of Christ.

First, Israel did not simply celebrate Passover. They reenacted it (Ex. 12:11). Each family slaughtered lambs…again…and again…each year. But reenactment is a weak word when understanding what it meant to those participating in it. The Passover reenactment was not done by Israel simply “in remembrance” of those God interacted with in the exodus narrative. When explaining the Passover to children, the parents would say, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who…spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.” (Ex. 12:27) God spared our homes. It is not so much that we remember them, but that we remember that we are them. The exodus narrative was the central and controlling narrative of Israel’s theology and identity (Ex. 12:41; Josh. 2:10; 9:9; 1 Kings 8:53) Our identity is a participation in the salvific act of the Father.

Second, during the celebration of this very festival, Jesus says, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me…This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Here Jesus redefines the entire festival, not simply reenacting, but also furthering the story with a new Israel, but with the same God, namely, “me”. This festival which was “celebrated…to the LORD” does not change in its object, but redefined and fully revealed in “me”. To speak analogously, as we always do, the Lord’s supper functions rudimentarily in our relationship with God in the same way that his word does. Consider this, brothers and sisters: drinking the blood and eating the body as actions are acts of participation in Christ’s blood—death—and body—which is resurrected (1 Cor. 10:16). And not only so, but the supper acts as a standard for righteous living (1 Cor. 10:18-22). Our sanctification is a participation in the salvific act of the Son.

In what way then does the Eucharistic sacrament function that scripture itself does not? The very Word who made flesh (John 1:2) and became flesh (John 1:14) testifies about himself, saying, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” in response to the very question that all who hear the disconcerting dictation want to ask next, namely, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:53, 52) Another rapid response I have is to play my “sola-scriptura” sanction and assume that by “feed,” Jesus means something like “believe,” even though when talking about belief as a separate event 6 verses earlier, he uses “belief” language.

Third, to warrant Jesus’ further appropriation of his thought, saying, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56), I must assume that he is setting forth a foundation for the physical union between my body and his, not implying that communion is necessary for salvation, but that it perpetuates my union (or “participation”—as Paul says in 1 Cor. 10) with Christ. This union is not only the hope of believers, but the hope of all of creation for its redemption (Rom. 8:19-22), for it is “in this hope that we are saved.” The foundation for the relevance this truth in the life of a believer, however, is being among those “who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,” (Rom. 8:23), which is to be among the saints for whom “the Spirit intercedes.” Our hope is a participation in the salvific acts of the Spirit.

A closing narrative. Remember with me now when Israel was waiting to enter the Promised Land. God had promised them that they would occupy the land as an agent of his redemptive plan of global recreation (Psalm 104:30). But before God began fulfilling his promises, Israel sent spies into the land. You know this story. They came back and reported, “We went into the land to which you sent us…Here is its fruit.” (Num. 13:27) Israel ate the fruit of the future promise of God still yet to be fulfilled, but which was in a sense more real and present than ever in the eating of that fruit. The future promise was literally present among them, and they ate it.

When you eat Christ’s flesh and blood, do not simply remember. Rather, acknowledge the fact that your identity, sanctification, and hope are being oriented heavenward as the past, present, and future collapse on you through the active participation of the Father, Son, and Spirit in your body. I will, as I try to grasp the (only by grace) believable truth that the one who knows the thoughts I have about him when I think them (Psalm 139:2) has flesh as corporeal and concrete as the loaf which I hold with my fleshly phalanges. I am subject to the world which is in bondage to decay, and praise be to him who destroyed the power of this bondage in humility (Rom. 8:21) by becoming subject to creation as well (Phil. 2:6-8). I am subject, and so is Christ.

The Narrative Aspect of Art

When did art achieve this simplified state called “expression”? I think I have noticed this in different peoples’ art created for the explicit end of expression. To the contextually unconscious artist, the piece he sets forth flows with logic, aesthetic rhythm, and at the very least, purpose. Unfortunately, from the outside, said simply systematized “expression” is either hidden by the lines of my subjective eyes as it is reformatted into an alien system of interpretive imposition or is lost and seen as no more than a regurgitation of semiotic seeds onto rocky soil. For example, I recently jotted down some poems onto the back of a few returned quizzes from a class when drawing abstract shapes and dots and connecting them with lines became boring. From that experience grew a desire to read other poetry, but rather than stumbling upon meaning, there was only pictures and figures of speech that I could on the one hand understand, and on the other make no sense of. I saw the semantic meaning, but was blind to the existential purpose.

Expression alone is a selfish monologue. Expression as communication is conversation. Expression as one voice in a conversation is a communion. It’s community. What does community require? Contextual humility. Understood within the context of communication, my role as an artist is no longer simply to express myself, but to forge a lens through which a particular individual (or group of individuals) might see reality. Firstly, I must have an object in mind which I want to communicate. Secondly, I must understand the story and context which brought me to the object in such a way as to compel me to communicate it again. Thirdly, I must recapitulate that narrative in new categories, however familiar to the original story they may be, in order that I might invite a particular contextually dependent person to participate in a fresh perspective on life. A new worldview. This is true contextualization. An invitation, not to try to make sense of objective expression, but to become subject to a story which has a role for those to whom the story is told.

I am reading a book right now called The Triune God by William Placher. In it, he talks about the incarnation as the ultimate speech act by communicating the incommunicable to the perpetually perplexed. In his first chapter, he surveys a variety of philosophers and their proofs for the existence of God, including Aquinas’s five ways, Anselm’s ontological argument, Descartes’s Cartesian foundationalism, Kirkegaard’s argument from the contrary, and more, tearing them apart one at a time by showing them to be internally inconsistent. The union between God and man in Christ was not simply an expression of the love of God to man, but an invitation for those who would never in a million years rightly understand reality from any of their many perspectives to an eye in the midst of the communicative storm of the redemptive story of God. One could even make the case that the incarnation was the prototype for the very paradigm of communication itself. The very paradigm for art. For community. For love. And the apex of this communicative act is not simply for us to recognize his expression, but to accept his invitation to subject ourselves to the very story of Christ himself. I participate in the most expressive art that not only exists, but provides the possibility for existence, by one narrative aspect of my personhood. Namely, I am subject.

Subject to All

Every word on this page has a story. They are all historically and grammatically conditioned within each interpreter's narrative to be an effect and then a cause in the chain of meaning. Words can mean an infinite number of things because of the infinite number of possible contexts in which they could be spoken or heard. The first time somebody gave me this account for the phenomenon of misunderstanding, there was a feeling of betrayal. There was a sense in which everything that I had come to be so sure of through this whorish medium of communication called language was suddenly unveiled as a beautiful but artificial utopian world, and I was Truman. I had experienced my good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight with the myth of metaphysics. The fact that my ability to know to what degree my understanding participated in reality was so culturally conditioned and subjective refused to let me pass through the gates of dogmatic philosophy, assuring me that the red-lettered paper wizard had no more of an understanding of the way things really were than I did.

I was confused. I misunderstood, and subsequently experienced what some would call "enlightenment", and others "the event of understanding." I realized that I had completely objectified myself in relation to reality. I thought that since I knew that I had masterly crafted a correct understanding of the mechanism of truth, I could then look over the harvest fields of human minds entranced by the idea that truth could be known at all. I was changed by this thought: I am a subject, and I am subject. I am a subject in the grammatical sense, one who produces an act as an intention of will, who lays bare his existence to the world regardless of public scrutiny, and who communicates meaning from himself to another subject. Also, I am subject to language, culture, and time, which does not prohibit me from participation in real knowledge, but rather, allows for an infinite number of possible intersections between two horizons: my mind, and all of existence! I am subject to my surroundings, and if it were not so, I am not convinced that beauty would exist. If it were not so, I am not convinced that meaning would exist. If it were not so, I am not convinced that I would exist. My hope for this blog is to, just as Bon Iver seeks to do, not simply express a feeling, but communicate one. I hope to paint some great horizons. I am subject.