Healings

Suppose someone prays in memory or at the shrine of someone—potentially a heretic or otherwise. They get manifestly miraculously healed. They even interpret this as a vindication of the message given by the person whose memorial/shrine it is. What do the fathers think of this?

St. Augustine

In On the Unity of the Church, St. Augustine says:

XIX, 49. Once these snares of delays have been laid aside let him show that the Church should be preserved in Africa alone with so many other nations lost or that it should be repaired and fulfilled among all nations from Africa. Let him show this that he not say, “it is true because I say this or because my colleague has said this or some colleagues of mine or our bishops or clergy or laity or it is true for this reason that Donatus or Pontius or somebody else has performed these or those miracles or that men pray to the memory of our dead or that these or those facts are relevant here or that our brother or sister has had some vision while awake or has dreamed some vision while asleep.” Let these fictions of lying men or omens of treacherous spirits be removed. Or is it not true what is said, if some miracles of the heretics were performed we should be very cautious, because the Lord said that certain men would be deceitful who by performing some signs would deceive the elect, if that were possible. He adds vehemently, take note, I have told you beforehand (Mt 24:25). The Apostle also warns about this now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons (1Tim 4:1). Moreover, if anyone praying in memory of heretics is heard, not by merit of the location but by merit of his desire does he receive good or ill. Thus it is written the spirit of the Lord has filled the world (Wis 1:7) and a jealous ear hears all things (Wis 1:10). Many are heard by an angry God of whom the Apostle says God gave them up to the lust of their hearts (Rom 1:24) and to many a favorable God does not bestow what they wish that he might bestow what is useful. The Apostle said the same thing about the goad of his flesh, the angel of Satan, which he said was given to him to box him lest he become insolent from the greatness of his revelation three times I appealed to the Lord about this that it would leave me, and he said to me “My grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect in weakness” (2Cor. 12:8-9). Do we not read that some are heard by the Lord God on the peaks of the mountains of Judea, which heights nevertheless were displeasing to God so that the kings who didn’t overturn them were found with fault and those who overturned them were praised? From this it is understood that the condition of the petitioner is stronger than the place of the petition. Concerning false visions let them read what was written that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of the light (2Cor 11:14) and that dreams have deceived many (Sir. 34:7). Let them also hear what the pagans say was miraculously done or seen from their temples and yet the gods of the peoples are demons but the Lord made the heavens (Ps 96:5). Therefore, many are heard and in many ways, not just catholic Christians but also pagans and Jews and heretics given over to various errors and superstitions. They are however heard either by deceiving spirits who nevertheless do nothing unless they are allowed, God judging ineffably from on high what should be bestowed to each person, whether by God himself either for the punishment of wickedness or for the consolation of misery or for a warning to seek eternal salvation. No one arrives at that salvation and eternal life unless he have Christ as his head. No one can have Christ as his head unless he be in his body, which is the Church, which we ought to acknowledge just as the head itself in the Holy canonical Scriptures, and not seek in the various murmurs, opinions, deeds, words, and visions of men.

XIX, 50. … But they may not show whether they adhere to the Church unless from the canonical books of the divine Scriptures since we do not say that it should be believed of us that we are in the Church of Christ on this account that Optatus of Milevis or Ambrose of Milan or countless other bishops in communion with us commended that Church to which we adhere or that this Church was preached by the councils of our colleagues or that throughout the whole world, in the holy places that our communion frequents, so many miracles either of answered prayers or of healings are performed that the bodies of martyrs that lay hidden for so many years were revealed to Ambrose because they could hear many petitioners and a man blind for many years who was well known in the city of Milan received his sight at those bodies or since this one saw in a dream and that one heard in an ecstasy either that he should not go to Donatus’ sect or that he should abandon Donatus’ sect. Whatever such things happened in the catholic Church should therefore be approved of. Because they happen in the catholic Church, the Church is not therefore shown to be catholic, just because these things happen in it. The Lord Jesus himself, when he rose from the dead, offered his body to be seen by the eyes of his disciples and touched with their hands in case they nevertheless think they experienced some trick. He considered them more strengthened by the evidence of the law, the prophets, and the psalms, showing what was predicted earlier was fulfilled in him. So he commends his Church, saying that repentance and the forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. He asserted that this was written in the law, the prophets, and the psalms; we adhere to this commended by his own mouth. This is the evidence of our case, this the foundation, this the support.

With respect to non-Christian miracles, St. Augustine says in City of God 10.16:

What angels, then, are we to believe in this matter of blessed and eternal life?— those who wish to be worshipped with religious rites and observances, and require that men sacrifice to them; or those who say that all this worship is due to one God, the Creator, and teach us to render it with true piety to Him, by the vision of whom they are themselves already blessed, and in whom they promise that we shall be so? For that vision of God is the beauty of a vision so great, and is so infinitely desirable, that Plotinus does not hesitate to say that he who enjoys all other blessings in abundance, and has not this, is supremely miserable. Since, therefore, miracles are wrought by some angels to induce us to worship this God, by others, to induce us to worship themselves; and since the former forbid us to worship these, while the latter dare not forbid us to worship God, which are we to listen to? Let the Platonists reply, or any philosophers, or the theurgists, or rather, periurgists, — for this name is good enough for those who practise such arts. In short, let all men answer — if, at least, there survives in them any spark of that natural perception which, as rational beings, they possess when created, — let them, I say, tell us whether we should sacrifice to the gods or angels who order us to sacrifice to them, or to that One to whom we are ordered to sacrifice by those who forbid us to worship either themselves or these others. If neither the one party nor the other had wrought miracles, but had merely uttered commands, the one to sacrifice to themselves, the other forbidding that, and ordering us to sacrifice to God, a godly mind would have been at no loss to discern which command proceeded from proud arrogance, and which from true religion. I will say more. If miracles had been wrought only by those who demand sacrifice for themselves, while those who forbade this, and enjoined sacrificing to the one God only, thought fit entirely to forego the use of visible miracles, the authority of the latter was to be preferred by all who would use, not their eyes only, but their reason. But since God, for the sake of commending to us the oracles of His truth, has, by means of these immortal messengers, who proclaim His majesty and not their own pride, wrought miracles of surpassing grandeur, certainty, and distinctness, in order that the weak among the godly might not be drawn away to false religion by those who require us to sacrifice to them and endeavor to convince us by stupendous appeals to our senses, who is so utterly unreasonable as not to choose and follow the truth, when he finds that it is heralded by even more striking evidences than falsehood?

As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the heathen — I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious, and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication with demons, and by their most deceitful craft — but I refer to these prodigies which manifestly enough are wrought by their power and force, as, that the household gods which Æneas carried from Troy in his flight moved from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a companion to Æsculapius on his voyage to Rome; that the ship in which the image of the Phrygian mother stood, and which could not be moved by a host of men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who attached her girdle to the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity; that a vestal, whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by carrying from the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it dropping: these, then, and the like, are by no means to be compared for greatness and virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among God’s people. How much less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of heathen nations prohibit and punish — I mean the magical and theurgic marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions practised upon the senses, as the drawing down of the moon,

that,

as Lucan says,

it may shed a stronger influence on the plants?

And if some of these do seem to equal those which are wrought by the godly, the end for which they are wrought distinguishes the two, and shows that ours are incomparably the more excellent. For those miracles commend the worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve worship the less the more they demand it; but these of ours commend the worship of the one God, who, both by the testimony of His own Scriptures, and by the eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves that He needs no such offerings. If, therefore, any angels demand sacrificefor themselves, we must prefer those who demand it, not for themselves, but for God, the Creator of all, whom they serve. For thus they prove how sincerely they love us, since they wish by sacrifice to subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to Him from whom they themselves have never strayed.

Origen

Origen seems to concede the possibility of spirits that can even heal since “healing is a thing indifferent”—even non-virtuous humans can heal, so can’t the same be said of spirits? He writes,

“Now, in order to grant that there did exist a healing spirit named Æsculapius, who used to cure the bodies of men, I would say to those who are astonished at such an occurrence, or at the prophetic knowledge of Apollo, that since the cure of bodies is a thing indifferent, and a matter within the reach not merely of the good, but also of the bad; and as the foreknowledge of the future is also a thing indifferent — for the possessor of foreknowledge does not necessarily manifest the possession of virtue — you must show that they who practise healing or who foretell the future are in no respect wicked, but exhibit a perfect pattern of virtue, and are not far from being regarded as gods.

But they will not be able to show that they are virtuous who practise the art of healing, or who are gifted with foreknowledge, seeing many who are not fit to live are related to have been healed; and these, too, persons whom, as leading improper lives, no wise physician would wish to heal.

And in the responses of the Pythian oracle also you may find some injunctions which are not in accordance with reason, two of which we will adduce on the present occasion; viz., when it gave commandment that Cleomedes — the boxer, I suppose — should be honoured with divine honours, seeing some great importance or other attaching to his pugilistic skill, but did not confer either upon Pythagoras or upon Socrates the honours which it awarded to pugilism; and also when it called Archilochus the servant of the Muses — a man who employed his poetic powers upon topics of the most wicked and licentious nature, and whose public character was dissolute and impure — and entitled him pious, in respect of his being the servant of the Muses, who are deemed to be goddesses!

Now I am inclined to think that no one would assert that he was a pious man who was not adorned with all moderation and virtue, or that a decorous man would utter such expressions as are contained in the unseemly iambics of Archilochus. And if nothing that is divine in itself is shown to belong either to the healing skill of Æsculapius or the prophetic power of Apollo, how could any one, even were I to grant that the facts are as alleged, reasonably worship them as pure divinities? — and especially when the prophetic spirit of Apollo, pure from any body of earth, secretly enters through the private parts the person of her who is called the priestess, as she is seated at the mouth of the Pythian cave! Whereas regarding Jesus and His power we have no such notion; for the body which was born of the Virgin was composed of human material, and capable of receiving human wounds and death.” -Contra Celsum, 3.25

St. John Chrysostom

V

…Tell him that, as is the case with circumcision, so, too, the fasting of the Jews drives from heaven the man who observes the fast, even if he has ten thousand other good works to his credit. Tell him that we have the name of Christians because we believe in Christ and not because we run to those who are His foes.

(6) Suppose he uses the cures which the Jews effect as his excuse; suppose he says: “They promise to make me well, and so I go to them.” Then you must reveal the tricks they use, their incantations, their amulets, their charms and spells. This is the only way in which they have a reputation for healing; they do not effect genuine cures. Heaven forbid they should! Let me go so far as to say that even if they really do cure you, it is better to die than to run to God’s enemies and be cured that way. What use is it to have your body cured if you lose your soul? What profit is there that you find some relief from your pain in this world if you are going to be consigned to eternal fire?

(7) So that no Jew may say will cure you, listen to what God said: “If there arise among you a prophet or dreamer of dreams who gives you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he spoke come to pass, and if he says: ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’ do not listen to that prophet; for the Lord, your God, is testing you to see if you love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.”

(8) What God means is this. Suppose some prophet says to you: “I can raise a dead man to life or cure a blind man. But you must obey me when I say: ‘Let us worship demons, or let us offer sacrifice to idols.’” Then, suppose the man who said this can cure a blind man or raise a dead man to life. God said that you must not heed him because of these signs and wonders which he works. Why? Because God is testing you, he permitted that man to have this power. It is not that God does not know your thoughts but that he is giving you a chance to prove if you really love him. And there are men who are eager to drag us away from our Beloved. Even if they show dead men brought back to life, the man who truly loves God will not stand apart from God because he has seen such signs and wonders.

…

VI

…Therefore, let us not draw down such anger on ourselves. Even if the Jews seem to relieve your fever with their incantations, they are not relieving it. They are bringing down on your conscience another more dangerous fever. Every day you will feel the sting of remorse; every day your conscience will flog you. And what will your conscience say? “You sinned against God, you transgressed his Law, you violated your covenant with Christ. For an insignificant ailment you betrayed your faith. You are not the only one who has suffered this ailment, are you? Have not others been much more seriously ill than you? Still no one of them dared commit such a sin. But you were so soft and weak that you sacrificed your soul. What defense will you make to Christ? How will you ask for his help in your prayers? With what conscience will you set foot in the church? With what eyes will you look at the priest? With what hands will you touch the sacred banquet? With what ears will you listen to the reading of the scriptures there?”

VII

…Even if you recover your health after the incantation, the thought of the sin you committed leaves you worse off than those who are tossed with fever. And if you are the one who has the fever now, if you are the one who suffers ten thousand torments, you will be better off than any healthy man, because you have gotten rid of those foul sorcerers. Your reason will exult, your soul will rejoice and be glad, your conscience will praise you and voice its approval.

(3) And what will your conscience say? “Well done, well done, good man. You are the servant of Christ, you are the man of faith, the athlete of the godly life. You chose to die in torment rather than betray the life of godliness entrusted to your care. You will stand with the martyrs on that day. The martyrs chose to be flogged and torn on the rack that God might hold them in honor. So you chose this day to be flogged and racked with fever and wounds rather than submit to profane incantations and amulets. Because you nurture yourself with these hopes, you will not feel the torments which assail you.”

(4) If this fever does not carry you off, another one surely will; if we do not die now, we are sure to die later. It is our lot to have a body doomed to die. But we do not have this body so that we may heed its passions and take to ourselves a life of godlessness, but that we may use its passions for the godly life. If we live the sober life, this corruption, this same mortal body will become the basis for our honor and will give us great confidence not only on that day but also in the present life.

(5) So, go ahead and insult those sorcerers roundly and drive them from your house. Everybody who hears of it will praise you and marvel at you. People will say one to the other: “So and so was sick and in pain. Time and time again people came to him and urged him, and advised him to subject himself to magic incantations. He did not give in but said: ‘It is better to die the way I am than to betray my faith and the godly life.’” Those who hear these words will applaud him long and loud; they will be astounded and give glory to God.

Tertullian

“From dwelling in the air, their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds, they have means of knowing the preparatory processes going on in these upper regions and thus can foretell the rains which they already perceive. Very kind, too, no doubt, they are in regard to the healing of diseases. For, first of all, they make you ill; then, to get a miracle out of it, they command the application of remedies either altogether new or contrary to those in use; and, straightway withdrawing their hurtful influence, they are supposed to have wrought a cure. What need, then, is there to speak of their other artifices, or further of the deceptive power they possess as spirits: of these Castor apparitions, of water carried in a sieve, of a ship drawn along by a girdle, and of a beard reddened by a touch—all done with the one object of leading men to believe in the divinity of stones and not to seek after the one true God?” -Apology XXII, Tertullian

Cyprian

“These spirits, therefore, lurk beneath statues and consecrated images. They inspire the breasts of their prophets with their influence, animate the fibers of entrails, direct the flights of birds, govern lots, and give efficacy to oracles. Yet they are always mingling falsehood with truth, for they are both deceived and deceivers. They disturb men’s lives, disquiet their sleep, and, creeping secretly into their bodies, terrify their minds, distort their limbs, impair their health, and provoke diseases in order to compel them to worship them. Then, having been glutted with the smoke of altars and the sacrifices of cattle, they loosen what they had bound and thus appear to have effected a cure.”

Prophecy

St. Augustine, On the Divination of Demons:

3.7 The nature of demons is such that, by virtue of the sense-perception of an aerial body, they easily surpass the sense-perception of earthly bodies. In swiftness also, on account of the superior mobility of the same aerial body, they prevail without compare not just over the running of any men or beasts you might happen to name, but even the flying of birds. Endowed with these two things—that is, sharpness of sense-perception and swiftness of movement, so far as pertains to an aerial body—they may foretell (or rather, report) things perceived long before, which men marvel at in proportion to the slowness of their earthly sense-perception. The demons have also gained, through the long span through which their life is extended, a far greater experience of events than humans can attain, since their lives are brief.

Through these capacities, which the nature of an aerial body is allotted, the demons not only predict many things to come, but also do many wonders. Since men cannot say and do these things, some judge them worthy of their service and the bestowal of divine honors, especially under the impulsion of the vice of curiosity, on account of their love of false felicity and of earthly, temporal excellence. Those, however, who purify themselves from these desires and do not permit themselves to be carried along and seized by them, but seek after and love something that always exists in the same way, by participation in which they may be blessed, first consider that the demons are not therefore to be preferred to themselves because they surpass them in sharper sense-perception of the body—I mean an aerial body, that is, one consisting of a subtler element—because they do not think that, even among earthly bodies, the beasts are to be preferred to themselves, which have a sharper perception, in advance, of many things.

…

That third power of demons, however—that they have learned by experience of events how to know and report many things in advance—those who have taken vigilant care to distinguish these things from the truth of the truest light scorn in the same way that upright young men neither deem evil old men, who are much experienced and on this account (so to speak) more learned, therefore to surpass themselves, nor think that doctors or sailors or farmers, whom they have seen to be of corrupt will and wicked desires, are to be preferred to themselves because those people report in advance many things about medical conditions, storms, and varieties of tree and crop in such a way that they seem to one inexperienced in these matters to be engaging in divination.

See also the Origen quote above for this line of reasoning.

Tertullian:

Every spirit is possessed of wings. This is a common property of both angels and demons. So they are everywhere in a single moment; the whole world is as one place to them; all that is done over the whole extent of it, it is as easy for them to know as to report. Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown. Thus they would have themselves thought sometimes the authors of the things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal His divinations. But the skill with which their responses are shaped to meet events, your Crœsi and Pyrrhi know too well. On the other hand, it was in that way we have explained, the Pythian was able to declare that they were cooking a tortoise with the flesh of a lamb; in a moment he had been to Lydia. From dwelling in the air, and their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds, they have means of knowing the preparatory processes going on in these upper regions, and thus can give promise of the rains which they already feel. Very kind too, no doubt, they are in regard to the healing of diseases. For, first of all, they make you ill; then, to get a miracle out of it, they command the application of remedies either altogether new, or contrary to those in use, and straightway withdrawing hurtful influence, they are supposed to have wrought a cure. What need, then, to speak of their other artifices, or yet further of the deceptive power which they have as spirits: of these Castor apparitions, of water carried by a sieve, and a ship drawn along by a girdle, and a beard reddened by a touch, all done with the one object of showing that men should believe in the deity of stones, and not seek after the only true God?

Athanasius, from the Life of St. Anthony:

31. ‘Wherefore if they pretend to foretell the future, let no one give heed, for often they announce beforehand that the brethren are coming days after. And they do come. The demons, however, do this not from any care for the hearers, but to gain their trust, and that then at length, having got them in their power, they may destroy them. Whence we must give no heed to them, but ought rather to confute them when speaking, since we do not need them. For what wonder is it, if with more subtle bodies than men have , when they have seen them start on their journey, they surpass them in speed, and announce their coming? Just as a horseman getting a start of a man on foot announces the arrival of the latter beforehand, so in this there is no need for us to wonder at them. For they know none of those things which are not yet in existence; but God only is He who knows all things before their birth. But these, like thieves, running off first with what they see, proclaim it: to how many already have they announced our business — that we are assembled together, and discuss measures against them, before any one of us could go and tell these things. This in good truth a fleet-footed boy could do, getting far ahead of one less swift. But what I mean is this. If any one begins to walk from the Thebaid, or from any other district, before he begins to walk, they do not know whether he will walk. But when they have seen him walking they run on, and before he comes up report his approach. And so it falls out that after a few days the travellers arrive. But often the walkers turn back, and the demons prove false.’

32. ‘So, too, with respect to the water of the river, they sometimes make foolish statements. For having seen that there has been much rain in the regions of Ethiopia, and knowing that they are the cause of the flood of the river before the water has come to Egypt they run on and announce it. And this men could have told, if they had as great power of running as the demons. And as David’s spy 2 Samuel 18:24 going up to a lofty place saw the man approaching better than one who stayed down below, and the forerunner himself announced, before the others came up, not those things which had not taken place, but those things which were already on the way and were being accomplished, so these also prefer to labour, and declare what is happening to others simply for the sake of deceiving them. If, however, Providence meantime plans anything different for the waters or wayfarers — for Providence can do this — the demons are deceived, and those who gave heed to them cheated.’

33. ‘Thus in days gone by arose the oracles of the Greeks, and thus they were led astray by the demons. But thus also thenceforth their deception was brought to an end by the coming of the Lord , who brought to nought the demons and their devices. For they know nothing of themselves, but, like thieves, what they get to know from others they pass on, and guess at rather than foretell things. Therefore if sometimes they speak the truth, let no one marvel at them for this. For experienced physicians also, since they see the same malady in different people, often foretell what it is, making it out by their acquaintance with it. Pilots, too, and farmers, from their familiarity with the weather, tell at a glance the state of the atmosphere, and forecast whether it will be stormy or fine. And no one would say that they do this by inspiration, but from experience and practice. So if the demons sometimes do the same by guesswork, let no one wonder at it or heed them. For what use to the hearers is it to know from them what is going to happen before the time? Or what concern have we to know such things, even if the knowledge be true? For it is not productive of virtue, nor is it any token of goodness. For none of us is judged for what he knows not, and no one is called blessed because he has learning and knowledge. But each one will be called to judgment in these points — whether he have kept the faith and truly observed the commandments.’

Miscellaneous

“But sometimes heretics perform signs and miracles as well, but in order that they may here receive back the rewards of their chastening and abstinence, that is, the praises which they seek after. Hence it is said by the voice of the Redeemer: “Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy Name have cast out devils, and in Thy Name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22). By this sentence, what is given to be understood except that in man it is the humbleness of charity, and not the signs of miraculous virtues, that ought to be revered? Whence Holy Church, even if there be any miracles performed by heretics, sets them at nought, because she sees that these are no proof of holiness. For the way to prove holiness is not to perform miracles, but to love every man as oneself; and concerning God, to think what is true, and concerning one’s fellow-creature, to think better things than of oneself.” -Pope St. Gregory I, Moralia 20.17

Conclusion

This is not exhaustive. I plan to continue to gather quotes as I work through the data to develop a framework for understanding miracles here. For now I offer them for consideration.

However, in this blogpost, I want to start to explore an idea I plan to develop: that the irreducibility of consciousness actually significantly blunts the problem of evil as an argument for naturalism and maybe even as an argument against theism.

Suppose, for instance, you think (as I do) that pscyho-physical harmony, law of identity type descriptive challenges, and other sorts of arguments Joshua Rasmussen has raised are actually persuasive against the notion that consciousness is either reducible to brain-stuff or a physical substance in any sense. Then the very perception of evil or suffering itself, while possibly providing some evidence against theism, provides much greater evidence against physicalism.

Now suppose you think the data of consciousness actually points with almost overwhelming force to the existence of God (or, like me, to theistic idealism). Then it turns out that the experiences of suffering and evil become evidences for the existence of God with respect to experience at all. And if the force of the argument from consciousness is such that it overwhelmingly points to the existence of God, then the data of consciousness—suffering included—ironically become overwhelming evidence for the existence of God more than they are evidence against his existence.

That is a path, at least, I plan to explore in my PhD program. I think it may be a fruitful one.

First, Crosby says that Dugmore’s thesis that the criticism of sacrifice in the English Reformers centered on the notion that the Mass could be applied ex opere operato for the satisfaction of punishments for the living and the dead has been “thoroughly discredited.” He cites Dugmore’s claim that Cranmer’s Eucharistic doctrine was patristic rather than Reformed and shows the voices that refute this claim. But note that my claim thus quoted has nothing to do with whether Dugmore was right that Cranmer’s doctrine was more patristic than Reformed. I actually agree that this dichotomy is false—Cranmer’s was both in its elements of the presence of the body and blood and of its articulation of sacrifice. I am somewhat baffled that one would say “Dugmore was wrong in dichotomizing Cranmer’s patristic/reformed mix, and so his thesis about what the critique of the Mass aimed at is false.”

Second, Crosby cites scholarship indicating significant departures from the English Reformation on the part of the Caroline divines. But he does not adduce evidence from the scholarship on the point in question: whether they depart from the positive theology of sacrifice put forth by the Elizabethean divines. He critiques me for decontextualized block quotes, but these are not decontextualized. I cited them as examples of the sort of thing Crosby claims is a departure from the early divines. However, having them in our purview helps us test that claim—since I am not (here anyway) defending everything the Caroline divines did as consistent with the Elizabethean Reformers, but focusing rather on their doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice (and hence I adduced quotes to that end as representative of the sort of doctrine of sacrifice we find in the Carolingian era).

Third, Crosby argues:

a) “For 3.1.a, consider the second sentence of Article XXXI: “Wherefore the sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” As best I can make it out, Mr. Luke’s position is that the Article here condemns only the idea that the priest offers Christ for the remission of pain. This, to put it mildly, is implausible in the extreme; there is no textual reason to locate the objection only in the offering of Christ for the remission of pain. A much more natural reading of this sentence, in and of itself and in the broader context of the rest of the Article and 16th c. Protestant theology as a whole, is that the propitiatory offering of Christ by priests for remission of sins or of punishment is rejected wholesale.”

This is, quite honestly, remarkable. The text literally says "to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” I have no earthly idea where he gets the notion that the propitiatory offering of Christ by the priest is rejected in any sense. Ironically, in the article he responded to, I was sure to model the language I used off the article itself and Crosby still claimed it was a stretch.

Undoubtedly, he’ll say that is just “a-historical”. But the notion that the Mass is offered to remit pain or guilt is a particular notion; he is yet to show how my claim is “a-historical” beyond asserting it is so.

Crosby cites Thomas Rogers’ rejection of the Mass as a sacrifice. But remember that I’ve already acknowledged English divines speak this way. However, unless Crosby wants to say they were just incoherent—perhaps he does, but I don’t think we need to follow him—I’ve argued this meant something particular in their context given that they ostensibly have no problem with the way Chrysostom, Aquinas, and Lombard all talk about the nature of the sacrifice. Crucially, Crosby did not address the particular Reformed voices I adduced (including Bucer!) in the first article that shows what this meant.

Now, Crosby claims Jewel neither endorses nor denies Chrysostom’s sacrificial language, but is merely pointing out that it does not require a corporal presence. But this is false. First, remember that for Crosby’s claim to stand, he has to show that Jewel's view is positively incompatible with Chrysostom—not merely that Jewel neither endorses or denies it. If Chrysostom’s view is actually compatible with what Jewel claims, then all of the conclusions follow since I’m arguing that a sacramental commemorative sacrifice literally just entails that the Passion is tendered via the tendering of the body and blood in the Eucharist. But it is rather obvious Jewel does not disagree with Chrysostom:

For Crosby’s claim to stand, he must assert (a) that Jewel thought Chrysostom merely meant that the Eucharist was a sheer reminder of the sacrifice of Christ as a picture is a sheer reminder of a loved one without making it present and (b) that Jewel was merely enumerating that the old fathers don’t affirm the Roman view, not specifying agreement with them (despite his repeated avowal to the fathers of the first five centuries, famously). Neither of these points are tenable.

Now, he asserts I did not address his Jewel quote but I did precisely by looking at Jewel’s condemnation of sacrifice in the context of his wider thought. If Crosby suggests that Jewel just contradicts himself then by appropriating Chrysostom, he is free to. I see no reason to affirm this precisely because of how Jewel specifies his critique elsewhere.

Further, in the quote Crosby addresses, we read the following:

He argues here that Jewel does not commit himself to Chrysostom’s theology. But remember he needs to argue then that by appropriating the language of “commemoration, figure, or remembrance”, Jewel did not mean to affirm this but actually affirmed that the Eucharist was no more of a sacrifice than a picture of a sacrifice is. If Crosby insists that even for Jewel the Eucharist actually did effect the fruits of Christ’s Passion, this affirmation is all the doctrinal space needed from which to draw the sacrificial theology of the Caroline divines. He is welcome to show Jewel in truth denied Chrysostom at this point.

Now, curiously, Crosby seems to deny that the Eucharist is sacrificial in that it (he claims) partaking of it does not pertain to the remission of sins.

However, Thomas Cooper—a first generation divine—writes,

“We grant with the holy fathers, that a great and marvellous mutation and change is made in the sacrament by God’s word. We detest, even as much as you do, all such as see no more but common bread or a bare sign in this holy Supper.”^[1]

This change is such that the

“base creatures of bread and wine be consecrated into the sacrament of the everlasting covenant and testament of Jesus Christ: wherein he giveth us, not earthly vanities, but the precious food of his body and blood, remission of sins, and the heritage of his heavenly kingdom.”^[2]

Crosby writes,

“Any secondary sense of reception as sacrificial that is granted is connected to praise and thanksgiving (rather than propitiation) or the public confession of Christ before men (rather than any offering of Christ to the Father).”

But note that he has not addressed Ridley affirming it is a sacramental showing forth, nor has he shown that a sacramental commemoration is a sheer memorial. Perhaps he would deny that a saramental commemoration is a sheer memorial; but if he affirms it in the sense that Ridley and Cranmer insist they affirm Lombard, my entire argument follows. If Christ’s sacrifice in which he offers himself to the Father is commemorated by anamnesis, then that is present; and if Christ’s passion is the sacrifice we offer, then it is Christ’s self-offering to the Father that we offer.

Finally, I thought I had addressed Zanchi, but I can here. If Crosby asserts that Zanchi only thought the Eucharist was an image of Christ’s sacrifice in the sense of a sheer memorial, he may state that—and we can address that evidence. If he thinks that Zanchi thought it was a commemorative sacrifice in which the benefits of Christ’s Passion are made present, then my entire argument follows. Once again, if Christ’s sacrifice in which he offers himself to the Father is commemorated by anamnesis, then that is present; and if Christ’s passion is the sacrifice we offer, then it is Christ’s self-offering to the Father that we offer.

This should suffice. In short, Crosby raises irrelevancies and misinterpretations of the data in reply to my arguments (e.g., Dugmore falsely dichotomizes patristic and Reformed thinking in Cranmer’s thought—and that is somehow relevant to his specification of the critique of Eucharistic sacrifice, or that Article XXXI is “strainedly interpreted against its natural meaning” by me despite the purposive clause, or that Jewel’s thinking is contradictory (?) to Chrysostom’s (or if he admits it is not, then his argument against my saying the Caroline divines do not depart falls down).

^[1] Thomas Cooper, An Answer in Defence of the Truth Against the Apology of the Private Mass (Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1850) 194.

^[2] Ibid., 214

If I understand him right, he is arguing that there is no sense in which the authors of the BCP allowed for an offering of Christ to the Father in the Eucharist. My specification of the sacrifice of the Mass to the system in which the Mass could be applied unto the remission of temporal punishment by the satisfactory value of the work worked is what is at stake.

Of course, I am not the first to make this argument, however. One finds this account in Dugmore.1 That is vindicated in the actual language of Article XXXI—which Crosby does not cite:

Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

The sense in which the late medieval system offered Christ for the living and the dead to remit pain or guilt is squarely about the system of merit. Vicarious satisfactory masses exclusively in this way, according to the Catechism of Trent: the value of the Mass in the working of the worked can be applied by the Priest to remit punishments owed.

Because the defenders of the view argue that there is no sense in which it was allowed that Christ’s sacrifice is set forth before the eyes of the Father, they typically see these voices as departures from the early Anglican view:

“And in this sense, it is not only a eucharistical but also a propitiatory sacrifice. And to prove it a propitiatory sacrifice, always so acknowledged by the ancient Church, there can be no better argument than that it was offered up not only for the living but also for the dead, for those who were absent, for travelers, for Jews, for heretics, etc., who could have no other benefit from it but as a propitiatory sacrifice. That this was indeed how they offered it—read a whole army of Fathers (apud Mald. De Sacr., p. 342, etc.). Nos autem ita comparati sumus, ut cum tam multis et magnis authoribus errare malimus, quam cum Puritanis verum dicere. Not that it makes any propitiation as the sacrifice of the Cross did, but that it obtains and brings into act that propitiation which was once made by Christ; and in this way, we may speak of prayer, for that is propitiatory too. Why should we then make any controversy about this?”2

“The Holy Eucharist is a commemoration, a representation, and an application of the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross. If the Sacrifice of the Mass has any other propitiatory power or virtue beyond commemorating, representing, and applying the merit of the Sacrifice of the Cross, let it be plainly stated what it is. Bellarmine knew no more of this Sacrifice than we do: Sacrificium crucis, etc. — “The Sacrifice of the Cross remits all sins past, present, and future, since it acquired a most sufficient price for the sins of the whole world. Therefore, that Sacrifice being finished and sins being remitted, there remains no other Oblation for sin like it—that is, for acquiring a price or value for the remission of sins.” To what purpose, then, does the Sacrifice of the Mass serve? Hear him out: Adhuc sunt, etc. — “There are yet, and will be until the end of the world, those to whom this price of deliverance must be applied.” If this is all, as it clearly is—to apply that price of deliverance which Christ paid for us—then what noise have they raised in the world to no purpose? If so, then our Sacrifice is as good as theirs.”3

“Hence, as I have shown and shall show again, in the time of the Apostles, the bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist came to be called δώρα and προσφοραί, “gifts” and “offerings,” and the ministers of the Gospel προσεδρεύοντες τῷ θυσιαστηρίῳ, “waiters at the altar,” and προσενέγκοντες τὰ δώρα, “offerers” or “sacrificers.” Their ministration at the Lord’s table was considered the most special and excellent part of their priestly function. By making the bread and wine a holy and acceptable sacrifice to God through solemn oblation and prayers, they thereby made intercession and atonement for their own sins and the sins of the people. This was done as a most solemn rite of supplication, according to the nature and use of sacrifices, by which God is atoned and His mercy and favor procured.”4

“This commemoration is to be made to God, His Father, and is not a bare remembering or merely putting ourselves in mind, as is commonly supposed, but rather a putting of God in mind. For every sacrifice is directed unto God, and the oblation therein, whatsoever it may be, has Him as its object and not man. If, therefore, the Eucharist is Sacrificium Christi commemoratium, as ours grant, then the commemoration therein must be made unto God. And if Christ therein is offered objectively—that is, as the object of the commemoration made, as that learned bishop speaks—if the commemoration of Him is an oblation of Him, to whom is this oblation, that is, commemoration, made but to God?”5

This is just a smattering of quotes found in the second and third generations of Anglican divines. Typically, defenders of the Reformed view will decry this (it seems) as renouncing the original intent of the formularies. But as I’ve just argued, the language of the Article is specifically indexed to this. And this makes sense, given Luther’s own influence on early Anglicanism and his critiques of the Mass:

“Hence it is a manifest and wicked error to offer or apply the mass for sins, for satisfactions, for the dead, or for any needs whatsoever of one’s own or of others. You will readily see the obvious truth of this if you firmly hold that the mass is a divine promise, which can benefit no one, be applied to no one, intercede for no one, and be communicated to no one, except only to one who believes with a faith of one’s own.”

Indeed, this is what he is taking aim at in critiquing the sacrifice of the Mass. Now, it is true—the early Protestants simply critiqued “the sacrifice” of the Mass. But time and time again in the sources this is indexed to the notion that the sacrificial action comprising the Mass has satisfactory value that can be applied according to the intention of the Priest. And, as I’ve argued elsewhere, this really does constitute the sacrificial action itself as a distinct sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins—which is rightly rejected by the Reformers.

Now, Crosby quotes Jewel’s rejection of the Priest’s power to make a sacrifice of Christ:

“Touchinge the Oblation of Christes Bodie, wee beleeue, + Confesse as muche, as the holy Ghost hath opened in the Scriptures. Where as M. Hardinge saith, Christes Bodie is offered vp by the Priest vnto God the Father, in Remembrance of that Bodie, that Christe him selfe offered vpon the Crosse, He seemeth not to consider the inconstancie, and folie of his owne tale. For it is wel knowen to al Creatures…that Christe was Crucified vpon the Crosse: But that Christe should be Sacrificed by a Mortal man, Inuisibly, and, as they saie, vnder the Formes of Breade, and Wine, and that Really, and in deede, it is a thinge so far passinge the common sense of Christian knoweldge, that the best learned, and wisest of the Ancient learned Christian Fathers coulde neuer know it.”

But there is a problem in reading this as a sheer denial of the Eucharistic sacrifice being a re-presentation of the sacrifice Christ offers to the Father: Jewel quotes Chrysostom positively here:

"We offer indeed, but in remembrance of his death. This sacrifice is an exemplar or figure of that sacrifice. The thing that we do is done in remembrance of that thing that was done before. For Christ saith, 'Do this in my remembrance.' We offer up the same thing; nay, rather we work the remembrance of a sacrifice." By thus many sundry ways Chrysostom opened his own meaning. Yet all this M. Harding thought best to dissemble closely, and to pass it in silence. Certainly, the commemoration or figure or remembrance of Christ's death maketh small proof for corporal or fleshly presence. True it is that whole Christ is fully at every communion, as Chrysostom saith: not that he is there in fleshly or bodily presence; for so St Chrysostom saith not; but for that by his grace and holy Spirit he worketh wholly and effectually in the hearts of the faithful.

Indeed, in his Treatise on the Sacraments, Jewel rightly safeguards the notion that Christ’s sacrifice alone is the true sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins—thereby ruling out the sacrifice of the Mass for forgiveness (and, as argued in the link above, it really was a distinct sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins given that the devotion of the Church herself constitutes the limiting factor on the satisfactory value of the sacrifice for forgiveness):

"Here note, this Ministry of the Church was not ordained to offer sacrifice for forgiveness of sins. Whosoever taketh that office upon him, he doth wrong and injury to the death and passion of Christ. He only 'is called of God an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.' He only, 'by His own Blood entered in once into the holy place, and obtained eternal redemption for us.' He only, 'with one offering hath consecrated for ever them that are sanctified.' He only hath said, 'It is finished.' The ransom or price for man's salvation, and for forgiveness of the sins of the world, is paid in Me, in My death upon the cross. Of Him alone, and only of Him, hath it been spoken, 'This is My well-beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.' And by Isaiah, 'With His stripes only we are healed.' It is He only 'which hath made of both one.' It is He only 'which did put out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us; He even took it out of the way, and fastened it upon the cross.' He alone is our High Priest, the Lamb of God, the Sacrifice for sins, the Altar, the Propitiation for sinners, and Redeemer of the world. He only hath appeased the wrath of God. He only appeareth in the sight of God, to make intercession for our sins. All others whatsoever, apostles, prophets, teachers, and pastors, are not in office to offer any propitiatory sacrifice: but are called to the ministry of the saints, to the edification of the Body of Christ, and to the repairing of the Church of God." -Jewel, Treatise on the Sacraments

This then makes good sense why the third or fourth generation of Anglicans felt free to speak of the sacrifice being offered to the Father in the Eucharist. In the Mass, one has no new sacrifice—and this contra Rome’s pretensions, because we utterly deny that the devotion of the Church in offering the Mass in any sense or in any way has any satisfactory value in the Mass or otherwise. Christ alone is our propitiation. This is indeed a staple of Anglican theology. Christ is not used as a Victim signifying the devotion of the Church, such that offering him 5 or 10 times is more efficacious for forgiveness—and thereby makes repeated offerings for forgiveness.

But if the Sacrament is really a sacramental commemoration—not a mere memory or reminder of the sacrifice—then it is obvious that, theologically, Christ’s self-presentation to the Father is made present in the Eucharist (or else it wouldn’t forgive sins).

We find Jewel echo this critique elsewhere:

“Besides, where they say, and sometimes do persuade fools, that they are able by their masses to distribute and apply unto men's commodity all the merits of Christ's death, yea, although many times the parties think nothing of the matter, and understand full little what is done, this is a mockery, a heathenish fancy, and a very toy. For it is our faith that applieth the death and cross of Christ to our benefit, and not the act of the massing priest. "Faith had in the Sacraments," saith Augustine, "doth justify, and not the Sacraments." And Origen saith, "Christ is the Priest, the Propitiation, and Sacrifice: which Propitiation cometh to every one by means of faith." That by this reckoning, we say that the Sacraments of Christ without faith do not once profit those that be alive; a great deal less do they profit those that be dead.”6

Similarly:

“Then ye began to tell the simple that it was sufficient for them to sit by; that your mass was a propitiatory sacrifice for their sins; that it was available unto them ex opere operato, although they understood not what it meant; that you had power to apply it to quick and dead, and to whom ye listed; and that the very hearing thereof of itself was meritorious. Upon this foundation ye erected your chantries, your monasteries, your pardons, your supererogations, and I know not what.”7

This critique sits squarely in the whole Roman system of merit—the act of propitiation ex opere operato made in the sacrificial act of the Mass.

Once again, it comes up in Thomas Cooper:

“It is a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ…by one priest alone offered to God the Father for the sins of quick and dead: which, without any to participate with him, he may apply to the benefit of what persons and things he listeth…that one may offer it for quick and dead, that it is in the priest's power to apply it, all your sort do not only without resistance easily confess, but without reason stoutly defend.”8

Conclusion

The Reformed Anglican insists that Cosin, Taylor, and others departed from the early English Reformation over and against the language of the Book of Common Prayer. This frankly seems uncharitable to me. The whole notion that they betrayed the intent of the BCP or the divines of the first generation does not seem sustainable.

Now, some have argued that the prayer of impetration Cranmer includes in the early liturgy does not support what I’ve argued for—in which the congregation pleads for God to accept the sacrifice through and for the merits of Christ at the end of having received the Eucharist. The claim is that because this prayer comes after the reception of the Eucharist, the Mass cannot be said to be an offering of Christ to the Father in any sense:

“"O Lord and heavenly Father, We thy humble servants entirely desire thy fatherly goodnes mercifully to accept this our Sacrifice of prayse and thanksgiving, most humbly beseeching thee to grant that by the merits and death of thy sonn Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtein Remission of our Sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our soules and Bodies to be a reasonable holy and lively sacrifice unto thee, humbly beseeching thee, that all we who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fullfilled with thy Grace, and heavenly Benediction. And although we be unworthy through our manifold sins to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, World without end. Amen."

But this is not a sustainable conclusion. First, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving is made in such a way that in making it we beseech God for the remission of sins. That is obviously an act of impetrating the passion of Christ, since it is through his sacrifice alone that we obtain such remission. Second, we agree that the sacrificial action is completed in the faithful reception of the elements (and this contra Rome) in the new covenant. Whereas Rome posits a sharp divide between the reception of the Sacrament and the act of Sacrifice, Anglican theology does not: the Sacrifice is the impetration of Christ culminating in the sacrificial meal of receiving the elements (which is part of why we have never allowed the Priest to simply consume on behalf of the people).

This prayer itself is the culmination of the sacrificial meal in which we impetrate God for forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice. This, quite clearly, is the doctrinal space in which the Eucharistic theology of the Caroline divines lived and moved and had their being.

I won’t respond to all the criticisms of this article. But I will respond to an error from within our own tradition from those claiming to represent it. Now don’t get me wrong: Reformed Anglicans are (traditionally at least) authentically Anglican. They are committed to the formularies—the BCP, the Articles, the Homilies—and its historic interpretation. That’s why we need to have this conversation.

Reformed Anglicans lately have been departing from their Reformed Anglican forebears on the Eucharistic sacrifice. I’ve even seen the whole concept reduced to the sheer notion that we are just giving thanks in the Eucharist with no reference to the sacramental re-presentation of Christ.

Now look, I’ve written at length with plenty of citations from Anglican writers here. You can look at them. We really did affirm a Eucharistic sacrifice that was more than just an act of sheer thanksgiving.

But perhaps those voices are all dirty Romanizers. Okay. In this article I want to focus specifically on Reformed theologians that affirm the exact same. I will cite both continental Reformed theologians and Anglicans to show this isn’t some random intrusion from the Anglo-Catholics.

The Re-Presentational Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

It is common for Reformed Anglicans to say that we only believe the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the sense that we give thanks to God for the benefit received, and we deny any other sense of the term “sacrifice.” But this simply does not fit either the continental Reformation or the English Reformation.

Giorlamo Zanchi, the Italian Reformed divine, writes the following in Theological Topics From Ephesians, Chapter V Topic 1 after listing the sacrificial elements of bread and wine, thanksgiving, alms, and praise:

“We can add a fifth reason, namely, that the faithful, by eating the body and drinking the blood of the Lord in faith, become partakers of His sacrifice. If one could see the minds and hearts of the faithful as God sees them, one would perceive that they are spiritually sprinkled with the blood of Christ, in a mystery. This is related to what the Apostle says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Therefore, even more so, when they eat the true flesh of the Lord, they proclaim and represent the Lord’s death.

Herein lies a certain antiphon that is often said and recited in the Pontifical Mass: “O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us, Alleluia.” The same Supper is a sacrament, insofar as in it, Christ is truly received, the mind is filled with grace, and the bread is given as a pledge of eternal glory to us. And it is a sacrifice, in that in it, the memory of His passion is recalled, and we give thanks to God, offering ourselves to be sacrificed to Him, which is all done spiritually and in a mystery.

This also relates to what Augustine says in his commentary on the Psalms, where he states that Christ is immolated daily in memory and contemplation. He also says in Book 5 of The City of God, Chapter 6, that in the sacrifice of bread that the Church offers, the Church itself is offered. He concludes this section by saying, “Therefore, the sacrifice of Christians, that is, the whole body of Christ, consists of many members, who, in the sacrament of the altar, which the Church frequently celebrates with a known rite, are shown that they are also offered in that offering.”

Thomas Aquinas adds a fourth reason, namely, that we are participants in the sacrifice offered by Christ. However, he also mentioned the first reason. Let me cite the passage from his work: In Part III, Question 83, Article 1, he asks whether Christ is sacrificed in the celebration of this mystery. At first, he denies it based on the passage from the Apostle to the Hebrews, saying that Christ sanctified us by one offering forever. Later, he cites Augustine’s saying from Prosper’s book of sentences, “Christ was sacrificed once, and yet He is sacrificed daily in the sacrament.” He reconciles both statements and says: “I answer that the celebration of this sacrament is called the sacrifice of Christ for two reasons. First, as Augustine says to Simplicianus, the representations are often called by the names of the things they represent. For example, when we see a painted tablet or wall, we say, ‘This is Cicero,’ ‘That is Sallust.’ Now, the celebration of the sacrament is a certain representative image of Christ’s passion, which is the true sacrifice. Therefore, the celebration of this sacrament is called the sacrifice of Christ. This first reason is also confirmed by the saying of Ambrose. Secondly, with regard to the effect of Christ’s passion, because through this sacrament, we become participants in the fruits of the Lord’s passion, which is confirmed by a certain collect from the Missal.”

Zanchi quotes Lombard, Augustine, and Aquinas approvingly with respect to the senses in which the Eucharist can be termed a sacrifice.

Martin Bucer writes the following:

Bishop Francis White, the Anglican Bishop of Ely, writes,

In a “lower-Church” (Puritan-sympathetic? To use an anachronism) bishop, John Hooper, we read the following:

“et quod sacramentum mortis Christi vocatur sacrificium, propterea est vel quod sit memoria sacrificii Christi semel peracti, vel quia in coena Domini omnes fideles, (qui rite sacramento utuntur) sint participes illius fructuosissimi sacrificii in cruce oblati”

“And the sacrament of Christ’s death is called a sacrifice, either for the reason that it is a memorial of the sacrifice of Christ once performed, or because in the Supper of the Lord all the faithful (who rightly use the sacrament) are participants in the most fruitful sacrificial oblation of the cross.”^[1]

Bishop Nicholas Ridley, the famous Oxford martyr, writes,

““I know that all these places of the Scripture are avoided by two manner of subtle shifts: the one is, by the distinction of the bloody and unbloody sacrifice, as though our unbloody sacrifice of the church were any other than the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (1), than a commemoration (2), a shewing forth and a sacramental representation of that one only bloody sacrifice once offered up for all.”1

We will end here with the words of Bp. Jeremy Taylor:

“"[Christ makes] perpetual intercession for his church, the body of his redeemed ones, by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice: there he sits a high-priest continually, and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice; that is, still represents it as having been once finished and consummate…this also his ministers do on earth; they offer up the same sacrifice to God, the sacrifice of the cross, by prayers, and a commemorating rite and representment according to this holy institution…as Christ is a priest in heaven for ever, and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh, nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a priest, but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God, and offers himself as sacrifice, so he does upon earth by the ministry of his servants…[it is] an instrument of applying the proper sacrifice to all purposes which it is which it first designed"2

Note: Many thanks to @WesternCatholik on X for supplying the quotes from the continent above.

^[1] John Hooper, Later Writings of Bishop Hooper Together with His Letters and Other Pieces, ed. Charles Nevinson (Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1852) pp.532

For Fr. River, the worst ideas of Edwards are these:

1.) The elect will rejoice eternally over the suffering of the damned (Aquinas believed this too)

2.) The offending quote is this: “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet, it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”

Here, I’ll deal with number 2. We have to remember the *moral* context of this quote. We hear this language and instantly project things Edwards is not saying. He is not saying, for instance, that you are not also loved as an image of God. He is not saying that you are not desired by Christ or that Christ does not long over you (he affirms this explicitly in “The Excellency of Christ”). Rather, in Scripture, God’s holy hatred of us relative to our sin and his love of us relative to desiring our good are not at odds. Aquinas reminds us: “We speak of anger in God, not as of a passion of the soul but as of judgment of justice, inasmuch as He wills to take vengeance on sin. Because the sinner, by sinning, cannot do God any actual harm: but so far as he himself is concerned, he acts against God in two ways. First, in so far as he despises God in His commandments. Secondly, in so far as he harms himself or another; which injury redounds to God, inasmuch as the person injured is an object of God’s providence and protection.” (ST. I-II.q47.a1) God’s anger is not a passion of a drunken father beating a child in rage, but his holy opposition to injustice and sin. It is in *that moral sense* that we are more abhorrent to God than a spider. A man who murders a bunch of children *should be abhorrent to us*; this is not in opposition to such a man being also loved in some sense by us, insofar as we might desire some good for that murderer. But think about the nature of moral abhorrence. It is a deeper sort of disgust than being disgusted by a spider. Where exactly do we derive this disposition? It (analogically) corresponds to how God deals with sin.

But note that Edwards *does* reference the love of God even here. God could justly cast us into hell. He could justly pour out swift vengeance on us and he would be in the right--not merely because “whatever God does is good”, but because *our sin is actually that ugly*. If he were to take off his restraining hand, we would be consumed by our own vice--it would spiral into hell forever. Bu why does God keep us from falling into hell? *This itself is an expression of love*. Despite the fact that we would rebel against him, spurn his commands, spit at him, spit at his creatures, the holy God keeps us from falling into eternal darkness. That *is* an act of love. And it is on that account that we see the endless mercy of God in the world--the wicked walk the earth only by the providence of God extending his offer of repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness.

Now, one might quibble with the rhetoric Edwards uses. One might rightly say it isn’t repeatable exactly given where our culture is at. These things might be true. But the basic idea Edwards is arguing for is right and actually vital to grasp: it is by God’s sheer mercy alone that we are not ruined. And this isn’t because of some abstract “God could kill us but he doesn’t and I need to call this good just because”; it’s because our sin is actually, objectively, that bad. If God gave us eyes to see our own sinfulness, we would *scream* in horror--and so it is a mercy that sanctification is progressive and the awareness of our own sin is so as well.

But it is precisely against this backdrop that we feel the stunning mercy of Jesus Christ in the Gospel:

⁹ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed^[a] thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” -Luke 18:9-14

And once we feel in our bones what Edwards is saying, we will be stunned with awe and wonder at the sheer depth of the grace of Christ, who deals so lavishly with rebels out of sheer love—who weeps over Jerusalem as he saves those who call on him from destruction. In making us sensible of our just deserts, God prepares us for the wonders of mercy:

“By this means the redeeming mercy and love of God are more highly prized and rejoiced in, when discovered. By the previous discoveries of danger, misery, and helplessness, and desert of wrath, the heart is prepared to embrace a discovery of mercy. When the soul stands trembling at the brink of the pit, and despairs of any help from itself, it is prepared joyfully to receive tidings of deliverance. If God is pleased at such a time to make the soul hear his still small voice, his call to himself and to a Savior, the soul is prepared to give it a joyful reception. The gospel then, if it be heard spiritually, will be glad tidings indeed, the most joyful which the sinner ever heard. The love of God and of Christ to the world, and to him in particular, will be admired, and Christ will be most precious. To remember what danger he was in, what seas surrounded him, and then to reflect how safe be now is in Christ, and how sufficient Christ is to defend him and to answer all his wants, will cause the greater exultation of soul. God, in this method of dealing with the souls of his elect, consults their happiness, as well as his own glory. And it increases happiness, to be made sensible of their misery and unworthiness, before God comforts them. For their comfort, when they receive it, is so much the sweeter.” -Edwards, Sermons

I wish I were joking. And I wouldn’t even take time to write this if so many RCs weren’t chomping at the bit of his argument.

This won’t be a very long post. Recall that Sola Scriptura simply means that Scripture alone is of itself sufficient to bind us as to what to receive as Divine Revelation. That’s it. It doesn’t exclude other means of knowing. It doesn’t even mean all doctrine comes from Scripture. It doesn’t even mean that Scripture is our only way to know what counts as divine revelation. It just means that Scripture alone is of itself sufficient to bind the conscience as to what to believe is Divine Revelation. Scripture is the only thing that can do this by its own say-so.

His argument is that Scripture gives no explicit prohibition against masturbation, child marriage, etcetera; therefore Protestants cannot condemn these things.

But recall that if Sola Scriptura just means “Scripture alone is of itself sufficient to bind the conscience as to what to believe is Divine Revelation”, that obviously doesn’t exclude other means of knowing either a) what Scripture says (like the consensus of the Church through time) or b) the use of natural law.

Scripture tells us that marriage is for imaging forth the covenantal love of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:22-33). In Ephesians 5, we learn that sex is for imaging in our very bodies, with our spouse, the mystery of Christ and the Church. It is very easy to learn from natural law where the sexual organs are meant to join up….that isn’t rocket science. Hence, we learn from Ephesians 5 and natural law that the sexual act tends towards imaging forth Christ and the Church by establishing a one-flesh union in the body. Thus, anal sex violates the imaging forth of Christ and the Church insofar as it does not utilize the God-built site in which a man and a woman become one-flesh in the sex act. Obviously sexual organs are for this purpose—we can discern this by natural reason—whereas…erm…anuses are not.

It is not hard to rule out child marriage from the covenantal purpose of sex. Marriage, as a covenant, is free; it involves two parties freely entering into it. The sexual relation in marriage is a free one. Children cannot give consent. Ergo, they cannot forge a marriage covenant. Once again, we learn that “children cannot give consent” not from some magisterial pronouncement of the Church but from natural reason. This is why even atheists know children cannot give consent. Once again, this isn’t difficult.

Masturbation is wrong because, once again, the purpose of the sex act is to image forth Christ and the Church. Sexuality by its nature thus tends towards this union. It distorts the purpose of sex therefore to not allow sexual desire to drive one towards union with their spouse.

We can rule out cousin marriage from natural law (though notably this wasn’t always forbidden in the Roman Church; indeed, to this day, they allow it under dispensation according to one source1): cousin marriages have frequent genetic defects associated with their offspring. That’s a good sign we shouldn’t be doing this. Once again, even atheists can grasp this.

The More Fundamental Problem

The more glaring issue underlying all of this is that, no matter how many times we clarify, Roman Catholics still make arguments like this. Even if you defined Sola Scriptura to mean that “Scripture is the sole infallible norm for the Church and not the only norm” (I prefer the formulation above, but let’s just go with this), then you still don’t yield to Trent’s argument. That definition still allows for other sources (like natural law) to norm our ethics.

But I get the sense people will find Trent’s argument compelling anyway despite all of this. And they will keep repeating the falsehood that appeals to natural law in combination with Scripture falsify Sola Scriptura (despite not showing how that is incompatible given the definitions above). Ah well. Such is the current moment.

Moral Responsibility and Determinism

The demands of the Good—the summons even to higher motives—shows us that physicalism cannot possibly be true. Physicalism is the belief that we are nothing more than physical stuff; there is nothing more to human beings than the matter that comprises us.^[1] But if physicalism is true—if only physical stuff exists—then the demands of morality are nonsensical. At best, morality would only address the physical conditions of our existence since there would be nothing else to address. Morality would be a matter of improving those physical conditions, with the internal motive only mattering insofar as those physical conditions were improved. But this is false, as already observed. The man whose motives of receiving praise might conduce just as much to the improvement of our physical stations as the man whose motives were other-oriented do. Yet clearly the latter man is the more morally praiseworthy one.

The matter appears more plainly when we consider the notion of just desert. Butler argues,

“Every one speaks of such and such actions as deserving punishment; and it is not, I suppose, pretended that they have absolutely no meaning at all to the expression. Now the meaning plainly is not, that we conceive it for the good of society, that the doer of such actions should be made to suffer. For if unhappily it were resolved, that a man who, by some innocent action, was infected with the plague, should be left to perish, lest, by other people’s coming near him, the infection should spread; no one would say, he deserved this treatment. Innocence and ill desert are inconsistent ideas. Ill desert always supposes guilt: and if one be not part of the other, yet they are evidently and naturally connected in our mind. The sight of a man in misery raises our compassion towards him; and, if this misery be inflicted on him by another, our indignation against the author of it. But when we are informed that the sufferer is a villain, and is punished only for his treachery or cruelty; our compassion exceedingly lessens, and, in many instances, our indignation wholly subsides. Now what produces this effect, is the conception of that in the sufferer, which we call ill desert. Upon considering then, or viewing together, our notion of vice and that of misery, there results a third, that of ill desert. And thus there is in human creatures an association of the two ideas, natural and moral evil, wickedness and punishment. If this association were merely artificial or accidental, it were nothing: but being most unquestionably natural, it greatly concerns us to attend to it, instead of endeavouring to explain it away.”^[2]

For instance, in the classic book Crime and Punishment the main character Raskolnikov commits a brutal murder of two ladies. Most of the book explores the psychological dimensions of guilt he undergoes. While this guilt eventuates in his repentance, no one thinks the brutal torments of conscience he faces are unjust. Indeed, even if he had not repented and confessed his crime at the end, most of his think that it would still have been better for him to experience the torments of guilt than not.
Or consider the case of the 2022 Idaho University murders. On a cold November morning in 2022, Bryan Christopher Kohberger snuck into an off-campus residential house where several college students were sleeping. He brutally murdered 4 of them with a knife. For the next few months, he tried to escape police custody but eventually was found out. During the court hearings, in which he eventually pled guilty, he remained cool and unperturbed—seemingly proud—of what he had done. Consider the question: would it be better for Kohberger to experience the pangs of conscience for what he had done, all things being equal? By “the pangs of conscience”, I mean the moral sense of friction one has when they feel themselves radically at odds with the Law of Moral Goodness. It is something like “guilt” if one let themselves understand the meaning of such pangs—it can rise to the level of internal torment (like Raskolnikov breaking out in a fever over his awareness of his own crime. Suppose he had no intention towards repenting at all. Would it be better for him to experience the pangs of conscience even if it would not eventuate in repentance? I think the obvious answer is yes. It is in fact moral insanity to say otherwise. If one says “the pangs of conscience are only worthwhile so long as it affords the opportunity for repentance”, then they’d be forced to say that a world in which Kohberger experienced such pangs which would in no way eventuate in repentance is not as good as a world in which he does not experience pangs. That is obviously incorrect. We know that we deserve the feelings of guilt themselves if we have done something wrong even if we have no intention of repenting. Guilt over wrongdoing is an intrinsic good; it is not merely an instrumental good relative to bringing about repentance.

Now consider the alienation and disapproval he has from the general human community. He deserves the ire from the victims’ family members. In response to Bryan Kohberger’s murder, Kaylee Goncalves famously delivered a searing impact statement. She later said, “That was obviously a big point of why I did what I did -- to make him feel small.” It was not Kaylee’s intention to help Kohberger’s rehabilitation, but rather to deliver some measure of just sting with her words. Was she being needlessly vengeful? Suppose human community at large holds Kohberger at bay—we all are disgusted by him and he feel the weight of human disgust. Is that not itself deserved? What I’m pointing out here is this: these are retributive instincts. No one thinks Kaylee’s statement was only justified in inflicting verbal wounds only insofar as it would help Kohberger recover. No one thinks society is cruel given that there is no intention of revoking his life sentence. But that means that our faculties for moral approbation do not all relate to the sheer improvement of physical circumstances. Kohberger’s condemnation is good whether or not it tends toward his own improvement. And it is good not merely for isolating him from society, but also for the punishment itself inflicted on him that represents the seriousness of his actions.
But then there is yet another reason why physicalism must be false given our moral reality: moral evaluations like these simply do not fit in a physicalist world. In the movie Obsession, the main character Bear breaks a “One-Wish-Willow” that causes his love-interest—Nikki—to fall madly in love with him. “Nikki” becomes obsessed with him, claiming to love him more than she loves anything else. Occasionally, the real Nikki surfaces with the horror of feeling out of control of her own actions. By the end of the film, Nikki is surrounded by the carnage wrought by “Nikki”. Is she truly culpable for the carnage? Of course not. The audience rightly recognizes Nikki as a victim of the external influences inflicted upon her by the One-Wish-Willow. If she had had a mad scientist attach electrodes to her brain and cause her to act in the ways she did, she would not be culpable for those actions for much the same reason: if one’s actions are wholly determined by factors outside of their control, they cannot be culpable for them.

But then, physicalism as such eliminates moral culpability. To see this, imagine that “consciousness, will, and personality” are identical to some diagonal line of neurons running across both hemispheres of the brain. That line of neurons is situated within a larger system of neurons and derived its being from that system. Its motions come from motions received from that external system; any motions it triggers upon the external system are preceded by motions from the system in which it is situated. The situation does not change if consciousness and will are not identical to some diagonal line but instead some larger and more complex system. Its motions are still derived from its environment. In other words, there is no “thing” over and above the physical base that causes it to move in the ways it does. Its motions are at the causal mercy of its environment upon which it depends.

This picture turns our capacity for moral outrage, approbation, and disapproval all into a farce. One should feel no more outrage at Bryan Kohberger than they do at Nikki—and indeed, one should feel the same sort of pity for Kohberger that they do for Nikki if the physicalist picture of reality turns out to be true. But then there would be no fitting correlate in the environment to the capacity of moral outrage or moral praise. Unlike other capacities like fear, hunger, and thirst—all of which indicate realities answerable to those emotions—moral affective capacities would uniquely have no fitting correlate in reality to which they rightly correspond. But then this is arbitrary. There is no reason why these emotional capacities alone would be so radically delusional.

Yet these affective capacities, like affective capacities for reverence that perceive value, most certainly compel us toward moral action as moral agents. In other words, the moral demands made upon us by The Good best fit the imperatives that only make sense if directed at agents. It makes no sense to issue a moral demand to a rock, or to experience outrage at a non-sentient robot. Moral imperatives assume a moral agency answerable to the imperative. And as such, we must assume that moral demands are ordered towards moral agents—they have eliciting action from moral agents as their orientation. But at this point, we seem to be speaking of a mode of communication. Communication alone is aimed exclusively for other communicative agents. Thus, the reality of the moral law fits with the reality of an agent behind the Law—an agent that seeks to elicit moral action from us.

^[1] See Gregor Michael Hörzer, Understanding Physicalism, Epistemic Studies 43 (De Gruyter, 2020).

^[2] Butler, Butler’s Three Sermons on Human Nature and Dissertation on Virtue 57-58.

I first appeared on Michael Lofton’s show a number of years ago as a very ecumenically minded Anglican. In fact, back then, I very well could have convinced myself to become a Roman Catholic. I believe the comments on that video were anticipating my eventual conversion to Rome; back then, that wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. I eventually found that I had to look into the questions Roman Catholics raised.

But very soon, I found that pulling on that thread unmasked the problems for any ecumenist. If one is committed to reconciling Vatican II and the pre-Vatican II Roman Church, they must argue (pretend, I now think) that the Council of Florence is “in the most strict continuity” (so I’ve been told by multiple traditionalists now) with Vatican II. Vatican II is only a change in emphasis. Ergo, Roman Catholicism still teaches that, generally speaking, Protestants, EO, OO, AoE, etcetera, are all schismatic heretics. The Council of Florence says in no uncertain terms that even if [schismatics] should shed their blood for the name of Christ, they are going to hell—their Baptisms, while valid, are not efficacious to bring about salvation.

Most converts to Rome find themselves in an interesting position. They come into the Roman Church initially convinced that they could view their Baptist grandma in much the same way they had before—maybe misguided, but still probably filled with the Holy Spirit. But if you take Florence seriously, that assumption cannot be sustained. The traditionalist appeal to “invincible ignorance” forgets how high a bar invincible ignorance was historically. Bp. George Hornihold in the 18th century, who converted from Anglicanism, thought that this applied to almost no adult in his own day in England. Indeed, it is “next to impossible” for someone who lives in a land with Roman Catholics to be invincibly ignorant. “Invincible ignorance” is the notion that there is no culpable fault whatsoever which can be charged to you for not becoming Roman Catholic. But when you reflect on the “through no fault of their own” clause, the situation becomes…well…dire for the ecumenist. It really means through no fault of your own.

Suppose you were a 25 year old who was irresponsible in religious duties. You are culpably so. If at 49, you shape up, but you still don’t become a Roman Catholic, then it doesn’t matter how many alms you give or if you shed your blood for the name of Christ. You are damned. Why? Because you had a chance when you were 25 to, through doing your duty, become a Roman Catholic and did not. Invincible ignorance means there was no fault that can be attributed to you in failing to become a Roman Catholic, such that through the removal of that fault you would have become one. If that does not describe you, so the harmonizer of V2 and Florence says, then yes, this applies to you:

“It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.”

This is why, as a general rule, heretics and schismatics were simply assumed to be damned prior to Vatican 2. Very few people are without fault in holding false beliefs—especially those of significant import. No one can say they faultlessly did their duty to come to a true apprehension of the truth on a given matter—and for that reason, apart from a Revelation, it is impossible to pronounce anyone (except infants and the mentally challenged) positively invincibly ignorant.

That actually does leave the ecumenicist in a particularly challenging spot. The only rational ecumenical option for the Roman Catholic is “submit to Rome.” the only rational ecumenical option for the Protestant is to call the Roman communion to repentance.

This is inevitably where the force of the past leads.

Now, if you’ve expected to find an argument against Rome on this basis, you should be disappointed. That isn’t really my intention. Here, I am just expressing a lament. I had thought, initially, I could go back-and-forth with Roman Catholics with the mutual understanding of each other as indwelt by the Spirit and searching for the fullness of Christ’s life. But that stance is no longer possible for me. The Roman Catholic must look—if they are consistent—with inveterate skepticism on the salvation of their Protestant friends and family. A Roman Catholic cannot know that their Protestant mother or brothers or friends are invincibly ignorant, and consequently they can never really know that their Baptisms, Bible reading, prayers, etcetera, are actually products of the Spirit’s saving grace. Baptism doesn’t conduce to salvation for schismatics (as minimally a general rule per Florence), even if valid (since the sin of schism is an impediment to receiving the efficacy of the grace given).

Now, perhaps a more ecumenically minded Roman Catholic will say “Sean, you’ve let the E-Thomists rot your brain.” Perhaps. But prove them wrong. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to reconcile Vatican 2 with the past. Now there are Roman Catholics who simply admit (the plain fact of—at least to my mind) the contradiction of Vatican 2 with past teaching. They admit Ut Unum Sint or Unitatis Redintegratio contradict the past, or that Dignatitatis Humanae overthrows Quanta Cura. Francis Sullivan came rather close to this when he thought Vatican 2 reversed the disposition of the Roman Church towards heretics and schismatics (Erick Ybarra has argued that Francis Sullivan himself was simply wrong). I get along with those Roman Catholics—but, I’ve become convinced, that is because they’ve practically conceded Protestantism at that point. And if that is the case—if it’s the case that those who presume the Holy Spirit’s presence in their Protestant separated brethren who seem to be of good will are functionally repudiating the past teaching of their church—then the case is dire with consistent Roman Catholics.

That greatly impacts a true ability to delight in Christ together. For instance, once upon a time, it was the case that Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden from participating at all in the religious ceremonies of non-Roman Catholics:

Code of Canon Law 1917, Canon 1258:

“1. It is not licit for the faithful by any manner to assist actively or to have a part in the sacred [rites] of non-Catholics.

§ 2. Passive or merely material presence can be tolerated for the sake of honor or civil office, for grave reason approved by the Bishop in case of doubt, at the funerals, weddings, and similar solemnities of non-Catholics, provided danger of perversion and scandal is absent.

Mortalium Animos echoes much the same thing. The E-Thomists gather from these that as a general rule praying with Protestants/schismatics/heretics is forbidden. That is their best way of reconciling Vatican 2 with the past—whereas V2 allows this “in limited and exceptional circumstances”, the past provides the general rule. But if they are right—and I see no reason to think otherwise—then one can see why the ecumenical spirit is a farce, surely. The best synthesis of Roman Catholic teaching that claims consistency will have to infuse its adherents with a caution about going to Protestant worship services, praying with Protestants, reading the Bible with Protestants, etcetera.

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. -Mortalium Animos

Now, again, yes—Vatican 2 says otherwise. But the E-Thomists have accounted for that: the past provides the general rule, and V2 provides the exception. (Now, you might be wondering how they handle their Popes and the recent ecumenical movement. But as they point out, those actions and documents aren’t magisterial; Roman Catholics are free to think these recent Popes are unwise and giving scandal to the faithful)

Once again, none of this proves the traditionalist to be wrong. Rather, it is more a lament for myself—a confession of a kind of dizziness. The contest between the Church of Rome and the Protestant Reformation is of eternal stakes. If the EO/RC contingent is right, then getting the question of the true Church wrong will, in all strong probability, send you to hell (with some exceptions here and there for the invincibly ignorant). If the Protestant is right, then genuine repentance and faith in Christ rooted in a valid Baptism really is sufficient across denominational lines. We have different conceptions of what is sufficient to unite us to Christ.

And that is simply sad to me. That is all.

The Anglican Bishop Henry Hammond has a far better view than Richard here.

What if the initial separations were unjustified?

Let’s start by granting the premise that the initial separations were unjustified. The founding of the REC, the ACNA, the PCA, etcetera, were all initially schismatic. What then?

Bp. Hammond addresses this in the case of the Church of England. Roman Catholics, then and now, frequently charged the Church of England with schism. “Henry VIII started Anglicanism", they say. Despite being shown this is calumny, that actually still didn’t stop Roman Catholics from repeating this charge (some things just don’t change, I guess).

Hammond takes a different tact. Interestingly, he asks “what follows if the initial separation was unjustified”? Does that mean that the Church of England should now return to Rome? His answer is clear: no. Here’s why:

The evidence of which is, I conceive, so demonstrative and irresistible, that it will be justly extended much further than the present case of the Church of England gives me any temptation to extend it; for in case our ancestors had unjustly and criminously made a separation from the Church of Rome, which it shall anon appear that they have not, and we and our successors in that schism should unfeignedly confess, and repent, and desire to reform that sin, and uprightly discharge our conscience in neglecting no means that patience, humility, charity could suggest to us in order to obtaining our reconciliation, yet if that cannot be obtained by all these submissions without that harder condition of renouncing, or professing, or seeming, in common reputation of men, to renounce any part of divine truth or Christian practice, which we verily believe to be the truth and our duty, it would not be our guilt, but only our unhappiness, that we were thus forced to continue in that separation. The reason is evident from the former grounds. We must not sin, that we may give glory to God, (such is confession and fruits of repentance;) a penitent must not lie to enable himself to make restitution, nor the contrite schismatic commit any new sin, (such certainly is hypocrisy, lying, professing contrary to present persuasion,) to complete his repentance for the old.

If this last be conceived, as it is not the present case of the Church of England, so to be an impossible, unsupposable case, not only upon the Romanists’ grounds, who I presume will not acknowledge any such hard condition, as is the profession of an untruth, to be required to any man’s reconciliation and readmission to their communion, but upon this other score, because if any false profession be now required to our readmission, the same was formerly required to our continuance in their communion, and consequently our ancestors’ departure then could not be supposed, as in this last fiction of case it is, a schismatical departure: I shall not need to give any more distinct answer to this, than, 1. that we that acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be infallible, may be allowed to make a supposition, which is founded in the possibility of her inserting some error in her confessions, and making the explicit acknowledgment of that the peremptory indispensable condition of her communion; 2. that it is possible also, though not by us pretended, that she should since that supposed departure of our ancestors, introduce some new doctrines, and consequently some new errors, and those now be supposable to lie in the way to our return, though they had no part, before their birth, in driving us from them; 3. that may be by the Church of Rome permitted, and allowed to those that have always remained in their communion, which to them that have departed, and either in their persons or posterity desire to return to it, will not be permitted by them; it being more ordinary to indulge liberties to sons that have always continued in the family, than to grant them to offenders and suppliants, that expect favours, and graces, and restoration to privileges; 4. that those which have had their education out of the communion of the Church of Rome, may very possibly and probably come to discern that, which in that communion would never have been, for want of representation, discerned by them, and consequently may observe some errors in their doctrine or practice, which their ancestors at their very departure from them had not discerned, and then though those errors subscribed to by them, had the lenitive, or antidote of blameless ignorance, yet because those that now really discern that truth which their ancestors discerned not, cannot lawfully profess not to discern it, or profess against conscience to believe what they do not believe, it is therefore necessarily consequent, that the return of such to the peace of the Roman Church may by this means be rendered impossible, though their ancestors’ continuance there lying under no such prejudice, their separation were acknowledged unlawful.” -Henry Hammond, "Of Schism: A Defence of the Church of England against the Exceptions of the Romanists," in The Miscellaneous Theological Works of Henry Hammond, D.D., 3rd ed., vol. 2, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1849), pp.217-219

Hammond argues that even if the initial separation were done for poor reasons, returning to heal the schism would actually be unlawful if the original Church had a) instituted new errors that made it impossible or b) the descendants of those in a separated Church discern such errors that actually make it impossible to return without compromising Christian truth in confession.

Speaking for the ACNA (I’ll let the PCA guys apply this to their situation) at least, this is the precise situation we find ourselves in even if the initial separation was unjustified. Let’s take a concrete case: the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). The REC undoubtedly initially separated from TEC for bad reasons. They thought TEC had capitulated to the Oxford movement and compromised Anglicanism. As it turns out, no one in the REC thinks Pusey and co are actually compromisers anymore (obviously the ones that went to Rome were, but their initial objections to the Oxford movement are no longer upheld). So they really were schismatics at their founding. But what now? What do they do to remedy the situation? They canonically cannot return to TEC. Their clergy would be forced to swear to uphold canons they cannot swear to uphold vis a vis keeping the path to women’s ordination open.

“But Sean, doesn’t the ACNA permit women’s ordination?” Yes, but famously dual-integrities means that no Bishop is canonically required to keep this path open in his diocese. Now, that doesn’t mean dual-integrities is a good thing; I’ve critiqued it quite a bit. But it does mean that separation from the ACNA on this ground is indeed not justified. The situation for TEC and the PCUSA, however, is very much different.

Were the Initial Separations Justified?

I cannot speak for the PCA. At least for the ACNA, the situated is rather complicated and varies by diocese to diocese. And on this score, I’m actually still looking into the history. ACNA history is in fact rather complicated. Bishop Jack Iker for instance tried to hold the line in TEC for as long as he could.

Frankly, I have not heard everyone’s stories. Neither has Richard. I myself need to do a lot more research into recent TEC/ACNA history and hear from the leaders themselves. Richard certainly doesn’t know ACNA history anywhere as near as he knows Presbyterian history in the US.

If we are respecting our fathers and mothers, we cannot likewise just throw around the accusation of “schism” without knowing whether such was the case. If it were the case, for instance, that eventually in TEC the Bishops who left realized they could not uphold the canons, then their separation would be justified. Richard might say “well then they should have left sooner.” That may be the case, but in actual concrete life it takes time to recognize when such a situation exists.

I also simply don’t know the state of the question in the Church of England or other Anglican provinces, so I cannot comment on whether separations were likewise justified, or—if they initially were not—whether they are now justified in light of new canonical realities.

He accused me of being “borderline disingenuous” for even using this analogy because Protestant justification is “extrinsicist” and “you can always find resonances within systems.” The sheer deflection here is astounding. He then proceeded to block me on socials rather than address the analogy.

In this post, I will do two things. First, I'll exposit the analogue for those interested in truth—Hurd, I am convinced, is no longer among those. Second, I will use Hurd’s response to document what I see as a phenomenon among converts: conversion by scholastic regurgitation. Hurd has proven himself able to regurgitate the auctoritas of Aquinas and the scholastics. He has also proven himself unable to critically assess those frameworks himself. If his take on justification is reflective of his theological method in general—and of course he’s given us no reason to think otherwise—then it should become clear that he is credible only as someone who can regurgitate and deflect to the past and not as someone who can critically assess arguments for himself.

Note: to understand what comes below, it is imperative that you understand Rome’s system of satisfaction outlined here.

“Protestant Justification is Extrinsicist” and other Nonsense

Hurd’s claim is that it is disingenuous (or “borderline” disingenuous) for me to show that the mechanism Protestants apply to justification already exists in the Roman system with respect to vicarious satisfaction. But if the very same logic used to justify imputation in the case of vicarious satisfaction is used by Protestants in justification, then objection to the latter makes no more sense than objecting to the former. After pointing this out, Hurd proceeded to block me rather than address the actual analogue.

So for those interested in things like the truth and progress on these issues, I’ll lay it out here as Hurd continues to punt to “oh that’s disingenuous since extrinsicism and different systems” without actually addressing the points of analogy raised.

According to Aquinas, how does one person make satisfaction for another? He answers:

“I answer that, Satisfactory punishment has a twofold purpose, viz. to pay the debt, and to serve as a remedy for the avoidance of sin. Accordingly, as a remedy against future sin, the satisfaction of one does not profit another, for the flesh of one man is not tamed by another's fast; nor does one man acquire the habit of well-doing, through the actions of another, except accidentally, in so far as a man, by his good actions, may merit an increase of grace for another, since grace is the most efficacious remedy for the avoidance of sin. But this is by way of merit rather than of satisfaction. on the other hand, as regards the payment of the debt, one man can satisfy for another, provided he be in a state of charity, so that his works may avail for satisfaction. Nor is it necessary that he who satisfies for another should undergo a greater punishment than the principal would have to undergo (as some maintain, who argue that a man profits more by his own punishment than by another's), because punishment derives its power of satisfaction chiefly from charity whereby man bears it. And since greater charity is evidenced by a man satisfying for another than for himself, less punishment is required of him who satisfies for another, than of the principal: wherefore we read in the Lives of the Fathers (v, 5) of one who for love of his brother did penance for a sin which his brother had not committed, and that on account of his charity his brother was released from a sin which he had committed. Nor is it necessary that the one for whom satisfaction is made should be unable to make satisfaction himself, for even if he were able, he would be released from his debt when the other satisfied in his stead. But this is necessary in so far as the satisfactory punishment is medicinal: so that a man is not to be allowed to do penance for another, unless there be evidence of some defect in the penitent, either bodily, so that he is unable to bear it, or spiritual, so that he is not ready to undergo it.” -Supplement, q.13, a2

Note that since there is a union of head and members, one person can make satisfaction for another not by way of taming the flesh of another but by way of satisfaction. Hurd might try to say “well satisfaction in the bond of charity is different than imputation and always involves charity”, but this response—alongside showing his incompetence as an interpreter of Protestantism—ignores the actual point of analogy. One person does not satisfy for another under the mode of satisfaction by meriting an increase of grace for another but by willing bearing punishment on the behalf of another.

In speaking of vicarious suffrages, Aquinas writes,

“To the fourth question, it should be said that the work of a suffrage that is done for another can be considered in two ways. In one way as it is expiative of punishment in the manner of a kind of recompense, which is expected in satisfaction; and in this way a work of suffrage, which is regarded as though it belonged to the one for whom it is done, so absolves him from the debt of punishment that it does not absolve the one doing it from the debt of his own punishment; for in such recompense the equality of justice is considered. However, that work of satisfaction can be so adjusted to the guilt of one person that it is not equal to another.” -Sent. IV.D45.Q2.A1.Q4

That the formal cause of God’s act of remitting the punishment of sin in the case of those in purgatory is not charity as such (which charity is a sine qua non as the bond of union for imputation) but imputation of satisfaction of one person to another becomes even clear for those who deny that charity itself is properly increased in the sufferings of those in purgatory. The case becomes clearer when we remember that Aquinas argues it is not the movement of love towards God in purgatory which effects the remission of punishment:

“And some have said about venial sin that, in those who possess charity, it is always remitted in this life regarding moral fault, and remitted after this life only regarding punishment, namely, by discharge of the punishment. And this indeed seems probable enough in the case of those who depart this life with the use of reason, since it is unlikely that one possessing charity and conscious of imminent death would not be moved by an impulse of charity both toward God and contrary to every sin committed, even venial sins. And this suffices for the remission of venial sins regarding moral fault, and perhaps also regarding punishment if there be intense love. But it sometimes happens that some during their very acts of venial sin or while intending to sin venially are drowsy or overcome by emotions that take away the use of reason, and death overtakes them before they can use reason. And for such persons, venial sins are evidently not remitted in this life. And yet such persons are not on that account kept forever from eternal life, and they in no way attain eternal life unless they are completely free of every moral fault they have committed. And so we need to say that venial sins are remitted after this life even regarding moral fault in the same way that they are remitted in this life, namely, by an act of love of God contrary to venial sins committed in this life. Nonetheless, because there is no condition of meriting after this life ends, the movement of love in persons in purgatory indeed takes away the impediment of venial sin but does not merit the discharge or diminution of punishment, as the movement of love in this life would.” -De Malo, q7

Indeed, Robert Bellarmine directly argues that every soul existing in purgatory is absolutely perfected in charity:

“I respond to the preceding: The souls of Purgatory can be called imperfect in respect to those which are in glory, and even a soul in Purgatory can be called imperfect in respect to another, whether in Purgatory or existing in this world. Nevertheless, every soul existing absolutely in Purgatory is perfected in charity. For there is no charity that is simply imperfect: “He who keeps his word, truly in him the charity of God has been perfected” (1 John 2:5). Moreover, each degree of charity suffices that someone would keep the word, that is, the precepts of the Lord.”

As Martin Jugie explains,

“A soul may go to Purgatory, then, for three reasons:

1° on account of venial sins not remitted here on earth;

2° on account of vicious inclinations left in the soul through habits of sin;

3° on account of the temporal punishment due to every sin, mortal or venial, committed after Baptism and not sufficiently atoned for during life. Certain souls go to Purgatory for the third reason only, for they have brought to the Judgment Seat neither venial sins nor ingrained inclinations to vice. If a person dies with one single venial sin on his soul, he is condemned to Purgatory for the first and the third reasons, since venial sin, too, must be atoned for. Then, again, it can be safely said that no one goes to Purgatory solely for the second reason, since vicious inclinations do not in themselves constitute sins, and the majority of theologians hold with St. Thomas that these inclinations do not survive the first instant that follows separation of soul and body. They disappear in that instant; for the soul in a state of grace, once it finds itself in the presence of God, strains towards Him with ardour and hates intensely all that displeases Him. This violent turning-away from sin suffices to detach the soul from every inclination to commit sin, and gives to it a perfect moral rectitude. The position becomes perfectly clear, when it is remembered that the greater number—if not all—of vicious inclinations are linked in some fashion to sensibility and the organs of sense, whose exercise is suspended by the separation of body and soul effected by death.

What is said of vicious inclinations is true also of venial sins not remitted here below. The act of perfect Contrition breathed by the soul at the moment of death suffices to wipe out the guilt of venial sin, but there remain the ex­piatory chastisement fixed by Divine Justice. Here again is the doctrine of St. Thomas, and held by the best theologians. It would appear to be the only true one. The idea of progressive purification from venial sin as such and from vicious inclina­tions would appear to presuppose a sort of purification of souls separated from their bodies. We will demonstrate this presently.

It follows from all this, that the principal—one might even say the unique—reason for the existence of Purgatory, is the temporal punishment due to sins committed after Baptism, since neither venial sin nor vicious inclination sur­vives the first instant that follows death. Immediately on its entering Purgatory, the soul is perfectly holy, perfectly turned towards God, filled with the purest love. It has no means of bettering itself nor of progressing in virtue. That would be an impossibility after death, and it must suffer for love the just punishment which its sins have merited. It is not surprising, therefore, that the official definitions of the Church regarding Purgatory mention only the temporal punishment due to sin. Let us examine some of these.

Ludwig Ott agrees, writing

“The remission of the venial sins which are not yet remitted, occurs, according to the teaching of St. Thomas (De male, 7, 11), as it does in this life, by an act of contrition deriving from charity and performed with the help of grace. This act of contrition, which is presumably awakened immediately after entry into the purifying fire, does not, however, effect the abrogation or the diminution of the punishment for sins, since in the other world there is no longer any possibility of merit. The temporal punishments for sins are atoned for in the purifying fire by the so-called suffering of atonement (satispassio), that is, by the willing bearing of the expiatory punishments imposed by God.”

Now of course, one can say that Aquinas, Bellarmine, Ott, and Jugie are all wrong in thinking that those in purgatory are immediately perfected in charity. There is technically nothing prevent an RC from doing this as Luke Wilgenbusch seemingly has. But this is utterly besides the point at hand. These authors, in doing this, help us specify the way vicarious satisfaction actually works. Even if it has charity as a bond of union as the necessary condition for such satisfaction, it doesn’t mean that vicarious satisfaction doesn’t operate by imputation. The formal basis of God’s judgment in remitting punishment due to someone in the case of vicarious satisfaction is obviously not an increase of charity in the patient herself since the level of charity could be fixed and punishment would still be remitted.

But this is the exact mechanism at work in the Reformed doctrine of imputation.

For that original righteousness which Adam lost was never ours, either by actual or personal inhesion in each individual; but we are reputed to have lost it in Adam, inasmuch as we are members of the human race, of which Adam was the head; and by parity, although the righteousness of Christ does not dwell in us, yet it is accounted ours, because we are members of that mystical body of which Christ is the head. It is indeed true that we were moreover infected with indwelling sin through Adam; but it is no less true that we are presented with inherent righteousness through Christ…Moreover, the effect of our unrighteousness to render Christ ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, is not at all equal to his obedience and righteousness, to constitute believers righteous and innocent. The reason is that the ungodly and unrighteous are not united to Christ by that most intimate union which is the cause of this communication. They cannot therefore throw their sins upon Christ any otherwise than by his own willingness to take them upon himself; but he would only so take them upon himself as not to be thereby a sinner, but to be constituted a victim for sin. But believers grow into one person with Christ; whence he so transfers his righteousness to them, that they are able to appropriate it to themselves as their own, and offer it to God for the obtaining of justification. -John Davenant, A Treatise on Justification, or Disputatio de Justitia Habituali et Actuali, trans. Josiah Allport, vol. 1 (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.; Dublin: Curry and Co.; Birmingham: Ragg and Co., 1844) pp.189-190

The intimate union of Christ and his people is the cause for the imputation of Christ’s merits in full to the believer. Hence, Davenant even positively quotes Aquinas:

“I answer, that, although we do not fulfil the law, yet the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who are planted into Christ. First, because Christ satisfied the law for all his members by enduring the death of the cross. Secondly, because he has exactly fulfilled the whole law on their account, even to the least tittle of it. Thirdly, because he qualifies them by the Spirit of grace to render a true and sincere obedience to the law, although it be only inchoate and imperfect. Yet this inchoate obedience, when forgiveness of sins is added also, avails just as much as an absolute fulfilment of the law, according to that saying of Augustine never to be enough commended: All the commandments are then accounted as completely obeyed, when whatsoever has not been done is pardoned. And that the law is fulfilled in us through Christ, with whom we are united in one person, the Romanists may learn from their own Aquinas: Christ (says he‡) and his members are one mystical person, whence the works of the head are in some measure the works of the members also.” John Davenant, A Treatise on Justification, or Disputatio de Justitia Habituali et Actuali, trans. Josiah Allport, vol. 2 (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.; Dublin: Curry and Co.; Birmingham: Ragg and Co., 1844) p.58-59

Nor is this limited to Davenant. John Owen is worth quoting at length, since he also labors to show this move isn’t new:

The principal foundation hereof (of justification) is, — that Christ and the church, in this design, were one mystical person; which state they do actually coalesce into, through the uniting efficacy of the Holy Spirit. He is the head, and believers are the members of that one person, as the apostle declares, 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13. Hence, as what he did is imputed unto them, as if done by them; so what they deserved on the account of sin was charged upon him. So is it expressed by a learned prelate: “He sustained our cause, who had united our flesh to himself, and thus, joined to us by a most close bond and made one with us, made what was ours to be his own.” And again: “What wonder if, being constituted in our person, and clothed with our flesh,” etc. (Montacutius, Origines Ecclesiasticae). The ancients speak to the same purpose. Leo, Sermon 17: “For this cause did the divine power join itself to human infirmity, that while God made what was ours to be his own, he might in turn make what was his own to be ours.” And also Sermon 16: “Our head, the Lord Jesus Christ, transforming into himself all the members of his body, cried out on the voice of the cross what he had once uttered in the psalm.” And so speaks Augustine to the same purpose, Epistle 120, to Honoratus: “We hear the voice of the body from the mouth of the head. The church suffered in him, when he suffered for the church” — as he suffers in the church when the church suffers for him. For as we have heard the voice of the church in Christ suffering, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? look upon me;” so we have heard the voice of Christ in the church suffering, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

But we may yet look a little backwards and farther into the sense of the ancient church herein. “Christ,” says Irenaeus, “recapitulated in himself all the nations dispersed thenceforth from Adam, and the generation of mankind; whence Adam himself was called by Paul a type of the one to come” (lib. iii. cap. 33). And again: “Recapitulating the whole human race in himself from the beginning even to the end, he recapitulated also its death.” In this notion of recapitulation, there is no doubt but he had respect unto the recapitulation [ἀνακεφαλαίωσις] mentioned in Eph. i. 10; and it may be this was that which Origen intended enigmatically, by saying, “The soul of the first Adam was the soul of Christ, as it is charged on him.” And Cyprian, Epistle 62, on bearing about the administration of the sacrament of the eucharist: “Christ bore us all, who also bore our sins” — “He bare us,” or suffered in our person, “when he bare our sins.” Whence Athanasius affirms of the voice he used on the cross: “Not the Lord himself, but we were suffering in him” — “We suffered in him.” Eusebius speaks many things to this purpose, Demonstratio Evangelica, book x, chapter 1. Expounding those words of the psalmist, “Heal my soul, for” (or, as he would read it, “if”) “I have sinned against thee,” and applying them unto our Saviour in his sufferings, he says thus: “Because he took of our sins to himself” — communicated our sins to himself, making them his own: for so he adds, “Making our sins his own.” And because in his following words he fully expresses what I design to prove, I shall transcribe them at large: “But how does he make our sins his own? And how is he said to bear our iniquities, except insofar as we are said to be his body, according to the apostle who says, ‘You are the body of Christ, and members in particular’? And inasmuch as, when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, so, when the many members suffer and sin, he himself also, according to the principle of fellow-suffering — since, being the Word of God, he was pleased to take the form of a servant, and to be joined to the common tabernacle of us all — takes upon himself the pains of the suffering members, and makes our diseases his own, and grieves and labors for us all according to the laws of loving-kindness. And the Lamb of God, not only having done these things, but also having been punished for us and having undergone the penalty which he himself did not owe, but which we owed on account of the multitude of our offenses, became for us the cause of the forgiveness of sins, in that he took upon himself death on our behalf, transferring to himself the stripes, insults, and dishonors that were owed to us, and drawing upon himself the curse that had been laid up for us, being made a curse for us — for what else is this but a ransom for the soul? Wherefore the oracle speaks in our person: so that, fittingly uniting himself to us, and appropriating to himself both us and our sufferings, he says, ‘I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.’” Justification, Ch. VIII

And of course, famously, John Calvin says,

"I confess that we are deprived of this utterly incomparable good until Christ is made ours. Therefore, that joining of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts---in short, that mystical union---are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body---in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him" (Inst. 3.11.10)

Hence, Louis LeBlanc notes in his Theological Theses on Imputed Righteousness:

XXXIII. Indeed, not even our way of speaking is dared to be simply condemned by the Roman School of Theology, for they concede that it can be said in a sound sense that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us and becomes ours. Indeed, that sound sense according to which they interpret that expression is the very one that we intend. This is clearly evident from Bellarmine, Book 2, On Justification, Chapter 7, §4: "Fourth, it is refuted. For," he says, "if heretics wanted only the merits of Christ to be imputed to us, because they are given to us, and we can offer them to God the Father for our sins, since Christ undertakes the burden of satisfying for us, and not reconciling us to God the Father, their opinion would be correct."

Now, how would Hurd respond to this?

If he happens to respond (I doubt it, however—I anticipate he will more likely hand-waive it away as cope or something like that), here are the objections he will give if he hasn’t carefully thought about the arguments (by which, if he ends up giving these, you can know he isn’t reading in good faith at all):

1.) This is disingenuous, since obviously you can find resonances in any system. But that ignores that justification for Protestants is extrinsicist and that is completely different than what Rome teaches.

This is, of course, his initial reply. The whole post to this point has been an argument against this.

2.) Rome centers charity. Hence, it isn’t extrinsicist—the bond of union is charity and that means Protestantism obviously has an extrinsicist doctrine.

I’ve addressed this too. Charity is posited in the Roman system for the communication of satisfaction as the bond of union; it isn’t merely because “love is love” that love is the means through which the satisfaction of one can be imputed to the other for the Romanist. It’s because it is the bond through which the mystical body is brought together.

But note that this isn’t even the major point of difference. Whatever one posits as the mechanism by which Head and members are joined into one real body, the point remains the same: it is on account of the mystical union of Head and members, fixed by the Holy Spirit, that the communication of satisfaction is even brought about. This ends up being sheer obfuscation.

3.) But this is how Roman Catholics speak of vicarious satisfaction, not justification, so it is disingenuous to make the transfer from one to the other.

This would be yet another argument he’d make that signals his slop knee-jerk pride. The point of this argument was not that “Roman Catholics mean justification by vicarious satisfaction”. The point is that the same mechanism Roman Catholics apply to vicarious satisfaction are applied by Protestants to justification to make it a plenary remission of sins—and there is no reason why that mechanism is more extrinsicist in the Protestant case than in the Roman Catholic case.

4.) But justification for Protestants involves both the remission of sin and the imputation of merit whereby we are qualified to share Christ’s title. Therefore, it is still relevantly different since merit is not imputed.

If he makes this objection, he will show himself an incompetent interpreter of Aquinas. Aquinas, in speaking about how man condignly merits eternal life, makes it a matter of grace that man does so. Condign merit is that act whereby God rewards a good work on account of justice—on account of what is in some sense owed by virtue of the dignity of the work done. Hence, in arguing that man can condignly merit eternal life such that God owes our good works eternal life on account of justice, Aquinas writes:

“On the contrary, What is granted in accordance with a fair judgment, would seem a condign reward. But life everlasting is granted by God, in accordance with the judgment of justice, according to 2 Timothy 4:8: “As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day.” Therefore man merits everlasting life condignly.

I answer that, Man’s meritorious work may be considered in two ways: first, as it proceeds from free-will; secondly, as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Ghost. If it is considered as regards the substance of the work, and inasmuch as it springs from the free-will, there can be no condignity because of the very great inequality. But there is congruity, on account of an equality of proportion: for it would seem congruous that, if a man does what he can, God should reward him according to the excellence of his power.

If, however, we speak of a meritorious work, inasmuch as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Ghost moving us to life everlasting, it is meritorious of life everlasting condignly. For thus the value of its merit depends upon the power of the Holy Ghost moving us to life everlasting according to John 4:14: “Shall become in him a fount of water springing up into life everlasting.” And the worth of the work depends on the dignity of grace, whereby a man, being made a partaker of the Divine Nature, is adopted as a son of God, to whom the inheritance is due by right of adoption, according to Romans 8:17: “If sons, heirs also.” -ST. II-II.q114.a3

But think about this. This is most definitely a version of the imputation of merit. Aquinas is saying that our works, considered in themselves (even our grace-empowered works), do not condignly merit eternal life. There is a massive disproportion between the value of the work, considered in itself, and eternal life. But inasmuch as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Spirit, it condignly merits eternal life—since the grace of the Holy Spirit is the work of God, which is infinitely valuable in itself. And yet, by virtue of this grace being that which moves man to do good works, man can be said to condignly merit eternal life—not on account of the value of the work of grace he does, considered in itself, but on account of the principle of grace to which the work is joined and from which it derives as a work of the Holy Spirit.

This is obviously a form of imputation. For the work which is said to condignly merit eternal life only does so because of the value of that to which it is conjoined: the grace of the Holy Spirit—which is the grace of Christ given in the Holy Spirit.

But of course, it gets worse for Hurd: Aquinas uses the same mechanism the Reformed used—being their predecessor on this question—to ground the communication of merit:

On the contrary, It is written (Romans 5:18): “As by the offense of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life.” But Adam’s demerits reached to the condemnation of others. Much more, therefore, does the merit of Christ reach others.

I answer that, As stated above (III:8:5), grace was in Christ not merely as in an individual, but also as in the Head of the whole Church, to Whom all are united, as members to a head, who constitute one mystical person. And hence it is that Christ’s merit extends to others inasmuch as they are His members; even as in a man the action of the head reaches in a manner to all his members, since it perceives not merely for itself alone, but for all the members.

Reply to Objection 1. The sin of an individual harms himself alone; but the sin of Adam, who was appointed by God to be the principle of the whole nature, is transmitted to others by carnal propagation. So, too, the merit of Christ, Who has been appointed by God to be the head of all men in regard to grace, extends to all His members. -III.q19.a4

Now, you can know if Hurd (assuming he reads this—I think he is much more likely to reiterate the charge of “borderline disingenuousness”) is not acting in good faith by whether he says in reply:

“But this is obviously different, since Aquinas still affirms the remainder of temporal punishment to those in purgatory/differentiated levels of glory for the elect/charity”

I’ve addressed all of this, of course. My contention has been that the mechanism for imputation is the same in both cases, the difference being that Protestants affirm a plenary imputation of satisfaction to the justified upon their being justified. That these things are true mentioned here is irrelevant, since they only have to do with the extent of what is imputed, not the nature of the mechanism at work.

5.) But muh polemicists say…

And yes, Bellarmine and co. made slop arguments against Protestants. Regensburg, however, happened for a reason. The truth of the matter is that the extremes on both sides were loudest then and here—both of them rejecting Regensburg for conceding too much to the other, even though the document (as Anthony Lane has argued) pulled on precedents like the ones cited above.

But this brings us to our next point.

Hurd’s Auctoritas is Hurdian Scholastic Vomit

Here’s what I mean. The wells of authority he has drunk from are rich. Thomas Aquinas was brilliant and is a gift to the Church. The scholastics in general are a treasure trove to draw from—and even where they err, they are wonderfully worthwhile to engage with.

RM Hurd? Not so much. He can do no better than chest-thump about “borderline disingenuousness” and regurgitate the past in response to the points above. He is not able to critically engage these points of analogy or show why they miss the mark beyond repeating either a) repeating the slop-arguments of the past these arguments above are dealing with or b) asserting that “finding resonances is not honest engagement.” But the irony of (b) is that this is exactly how we make progress in discourse—we narrow down the points of disagreement by finding out how much territory is actually shared.

I shared with him my article in my reply why I think the issue on justification really does boil down to the issue of temporal punishment, published in a journal here.

One can disagree with my thesis; fine. Let’s discuss the arguments. Claiming it is “borderline disingenuous” without even reckoning with the analogues given is ironically a blatantly disingenuous move. If I objected to a Roman Catholic saying "even Protestants think that we merit eternal life in some since since the Reformed speak of God giving eternal life itself as a compensation for good works” by retorting “that is borderline disingenuous; any moron can find resonances between systems” without actually addressing the way the analogue bears on the controversy, everyone would know that was the actual disingenuous move.

So with Hurd. He has proven himself incapable of more than just repeating the past. But it’s worse than that. Hurd knows every single point and every single quoted source I’ve provided and has read all or most of them. He knows this argument. So his refusal to address it beyond just “that’s borderline disingenuous since anyone can find any resonances among any system” either reveals a) that he is intellectually malicious, knowing the points raised and instead deflecting or b) incompetent or c) some combination of both.

Hence his broken auctoritas.

I’ve given an initial framework for masculinity here.

I’ve defended in a bit more depth the correlation of masculinity and femininity in general with their expressions in marriage—not as a one-to-one relation, but as a context-to-part relation.

But those were all starting points. Here, I want to build on the work of my wife, Sophia Luke, who has written a great paper that will shortly be under review on feminine prayer language in the tradition. Here, my goal is quite narrow (and so not exhaustive at all): to take certain images Sophia has found and to correlate that with the feminine imagery of the Church and of the Blessed Virgin (the latter correlation will rely on the Anglican divine Anthony Stafford). Then I will conclude with some reflections on how this helps us toward a theology of femininity in the family and the Church.

Feminine Imagery for the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit

First, let’s start with eucharistic imagery.

Sophia writes,

A relatively common feminine image in the theological work of these early fathers portrays God as breastfeeding or a breastfeeding mother. The image may refer to God more broadly, or Christ specifically, especially in the context of Eucharistic metaphors. This latter image seems particularly natural, if foreign to our context: Christ feeds the people of his own body. 1

Her paper traces this image in several poignant instances:

“Blood [is] changed by the heat of the body once the mother has conceived, and in a maternal response develops and matures, for the well-being of the child... Of all the organs of the body, the breasts are the most sensitive to the condition of the womb. After childbirth, when the vein through which the blood was carried to the embryo has been cut off, then, with the passage obstructed, the blood is forced up into the breasts... and the blood begins to turn into milk.”2

The paper multiplies examples like this throughout the fathers. The image of Christ as “breastfeeding” the people often gets elided into the image of Church as Mother. Hence, Clement records an ancient hymn:

Nourished by the milk of heaven,

To our tender palates given;

Milk of wisdom from the breast

Of that bride of grace exprest;

By a dewy spirit filled

From fair Reason’s breast distilled;

Let us sucklings join to raise

With pure lips our hymns of praise

As our grateful offering,

Clean and pure, to Christ our King.3

Quoting Sophia’s paper at length:

The breastfeeding imagery, in particular, is a repeated feminine theme in the Odes. At times, the image is subtle:

“As honey distils from the comb of the bees, and the milk flows from the woman who loves her children, so also is my hope on Thee.”

At other moments, the imagery is more pronounced. In Ode 8, the Redeemer says,

“I fashioned their members: my own breasts I prepared for them that they might drink my holy milk and life thereby.”

Ode 19, however, is the most controversial; explicit and evocative, Ode 19 relies on proto-Trinitarian language:

A cup of milk was offered to me And I drank it in the sweetness of the delight of the Lord. The Son is the Cup And he who was milked is the father And the Holy Spirit milked him Because his breasts were full And it was necessary for him that His milk should be sufficiently released. And the Holy Spirit opened His bosom and mingled the milk from the two breasts of the Father And [she] gave the mixture to the world without them knowing... The Spirit opened the womb of the virgin and brought forth; And the virgin became a mother with many mercies.

Susan Harvey reflects that commentators and scholars dismiss the hymn as “grotesque” and “repulsive” imagery, but nevertheless representing extremely subtle theological work. In this psalm, the breasts belong to the Father; Christ is the cup, and the milk is grace. The Spirit, as God’s agent and womb, the place in which God’s activity is conceived, gives forth God’s grace, and Mary’s womb receives the conception of the Son.

What is fascinating about the patristic imagery here—to me anyway—is that it reflects a correlation of aspects of maternity in the triune life as refracted in the economy of salvation. Sometimes the maternal imagery is predicated of the Father and sometimes of the Son. The Eucharistic imagery was particularly poised for communication via maternal language since breastmilk was thought to have been a kind of internal transformation of blood into milk.

If there is a kind of feminine key into which the function of the Eucharist is fittingly transposed, we can name it as such: the Eucharist, like breastmilk, perfectively cultivates forth life. It brings unto consummate perfection.

Here, the fit with Genesis 2 is striking. “It is not good for man to be alone.” He is brought from a state of not-good to good by her presence. But to be brought unto full goodness is perfective by nature; consequently, the function of the Eucharist in perfecting physical life fits strikingly well with the place of the woman in the Garden, who brings forth an other who is not full in goodness towards full goodness.

Sophia cites the Odes of Solomon, among many other instances throughout the Syriac tradition, of feminine imagery for the Holy Spirit (which—btw—is well known in scholarship):

I rested on the Spirit of the Lord,

And she lifted me up on high.

And caused me to stand on my feet in the high place of the Lord,

In the presence of His perfection and His glory,

where I glorified [Him] with the composition of His hymns.

[The Spirit] gave birth to me before the Lord’s face,

and although I was a man I was named a brilliant son of God...

For according to the greatness of the Most High, so did She make me;

and according to His renewing He renewed me.4

Once again, the theme of nourishing unto perfective good seems prevalent here—the notion of bringing something that is unformed towards formation. Maternity is a good icon of this function. If I’m right that masculinity-in-marriage is such that it instantiates form that serves as the overarching order of the life of the marriage and femininity-in-marriage is a perfective principle that brings that to its visible and consummate good, then we’d expect fittingness in the way the role of the feminine functions in the patristic consciousness of the Church. This seems to be what we have with the Holy Spirit reflected here. If all things proceed from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, it is obvious that all of God’s works have their analogical origin from the Father, are executed through the Son, and are in some sense perfected in the Spirit.

The Female Glory - Anthony Stafford

Anthony Stafford was an Anglican devotional writer writing in 1587-1645. During this time, he penned a well-known work of Anglican Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary: The Female Glory. Strikingly, the BVM’s virtues exemplified in mothering our Lord are held to be the radiance of female glory at its best.

With striking lines, Stafford expresses the reverence with which we must broach the subject of our Lady:

The treasure of unspoyl'd Chastity.
Who will beleeve the wonder I have said?
Mary a husband tooke, to live a Maide.
Dare not thou Ioseph to approach too neare
This heavenly Arke, thy God inhabits there.
Touch not that sanctifi'd, and hallow'd wombe,
Whence thy salvation, and the worlds must come:
For 'tis not, Carpenter, thy Art that can
Repayre the Fabricke of selfe-ruin'd man:
Mary must Bride to thy Creator be,
And clad in flesh part of the Trinity.5

Stafford expresses the commonly agreed belief—held by Richard Hooker, Richard Field, through to William Laud—that the Blessed Virgin remained a perpetual virgin for her life. But this has nothing to do with the grossness of birth or sex or something like this. Rather, she is the heavenly ark sanctified by God’s indwelling her womb—set apart from ordinary use from which salvation and the worlds of new creation must come. Joseph’s art of Carpentry is not the means of repairing the creation. The womb of the holy Virgin is. And it is her womb and her agency from which one of the Trinity took on flesh.

Stafford goes on:

Come blessed Virgin, fixe thine eyes upon
This glorious Throne,
And on the right hand, there behold thy Sonne.
Behold his hands, his feet, his pierced side,
That for us dide,
Whose every wounds in heaven are Deifide.
Those glorious lips, which once drew milke from thee,
Shall one day be
The doome of soules, to blisse, or misery.

Blest wombe, the mysteries that sprung from hence,
Dazle our sense,
Whose only Essence is Intelligence.
Finite thou wert, yet infinite in thee
Wee treasur'd see,
Mortall, yet Mother to Eternity.
Thy Sonne made of thee, made thee, Faith aspire
One ladder higher,
Elder then's Mother, antient as his Sire.

The Blessed Virgin is “Mother to Eternity”. The Incarnation of Eternity dwelt in her womb, and from her substance the One through whom she herself was made brought to visible consummate inauguration his mission in the world.

(Now, lest anyone thinks this is too far and is just popery, don’t worry—Stafford says the following in good Anglican fashion:

“I dare not with some avouch, who magnifie her in a phrase that violates her modesty, and makes her blush at her owne exaltation. Her lowlinesse was such that it was nearer the rejecting of all commendations then entertaining, a comparison betweene her selfe, and him to whom she had profer’d her selfe an hand-maid. And no lesse is her shame, or rather, indeed, her trembling when pennes prophanely ascribe that honour to her which is onely proper, and due to that Deity from which she received her grace, and being. I will not, with Lipsius, ascribe much to her Milke, as to her Sonnes Bloud. Neither dare I side with those who averre that she is halfe of that sacrifice,6 that redeem’d us, and Gods partner here…We need not not (thanks to his infinite goodnesse) bee so dangerously venturous, since he affords us a large scope, and ground enough safely to extoll this his Favourite, second to none that ever bore desert, either in her selfe, or his esteeme.”

It would be easy to say “femininity is most itself in physical motherhood” from this. But this would be a mistake. Stafford sees motherhood and the BVM’s virtues as in fact instantiating a form of mothering eternity. The BVM is the female glory in her virtues by which she facilitated our Lord himself “growing in wisdom” according to his human nature.

Stafford goes on:

Melancthon affirmes, that her sorrow was much aswaged by her Faith, which assured her of his Resurrection. She knew he had borne the Messias, whose bloud was to wash away the sinnes of the world. Wherefore the might well be amaz’d, distrustfull she could not be at all. The holy Spirit certified her this was not a destroying death, but a triumphing. Her Faith, the oftner it was tryed in the furnace of affliction, the brighter still it shewd. She stood with the affection of a Mother, the passion of a woman, but with the constancy and fortitude of a man, in beholding her owne bloud spilt, her owne flesh rent, and mangled before her face. With an unshaken confidence, and a true internall valour, she beheld his body naked, and scourg’d, his hands and feet nailed to the Crosse: yet sometimes the strings of her relenting, mournfull heart wore ready to cracke with the very thought of his cruel tortures and afflictions; but as often againe they were strengthened and comforted with a full assurance that he should overcome them all, and death it selfe. She stood here (for Sonne only excepted) the prime patterne of a follid Faith, and constant Patience to all posterity, in that neither the feare of Tribulation, of persecution, of the wracke, of the scourge, or death it selfe could divide her from Christ.

One might balk at the comment that she had “the fortitude of a man”. But note that the whole book is portraying her as the exemplar of the female glory. The “fortitude of a man” mixed with the tenderness of a mother is part of the female glory. What she understood at the foot of the Cross makes her a kind of lively icon of Lady Wisdom: she saw, through the eyes of faith, the way the order of creation was set forth and thus clung to God. Where others saw the mangling of her Son, she—with a mother’s grief borne from a mother’s love—saw the enactment of the Father’s plan, and thus responded with faith.

Some Initial Reflections

Here’s where, I think, this leads us. Do keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive account of femininity. Much, much more work is needed—Sophia does a great job here detailing some of the relevant questions.

Nevertheless, I think we have some (not all) pieces that are pertinent to the familial expression of femininity—femininity in marriage and the Church.

It is not good for man to be alone. A helper is made fit for him; her correspondence to him is the act whereby he is brought from not-good to good. He is created to work the ground and name the animals; and yet he responds with poetry when he sees her. She is taken from his flesh, and yet brings him into a whole.

Hence, the Anglican Priest and Poet John Donne casts a strikingly positive vision of a man’s gaze on the woman he loves:

The Good-Morrow, by John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Adam finds in her a world. “If ever beauty I did see, ‘twas but a dream of thee." All excellencies of the world did not elicit poetry, but the sight of his wife did. Together, they posses one world—they find in each other what sea-farers sought for in the new world.

In both her presence in marriage and her presence as a mother, we find the function of bringing to visible, consummate perfection instantiated. We find this in the Church’s role in relation to Christ—the ongoing radiance of the Bride who renders visible the Bridegroom. We find this in the role of the Eucharist which, as breastmilk, sustains a new life inaugurated and summons it out. We find this in the patristic language reflecting a feminine function of the Holy Spirit.

Now, let me be clear again: this is far from answering all relevant questions. I point you again to Sophia’s blog. And there are other questions to ask as well. For instance, how does femininity in marriage and the Church integrate with femininity outside of those contexts? It simply is not the case, for instance, that every man is the head of every woman, or that women in general do not instantiate patterns of order for an overarching group. We have discussed rather their role in marriage and in the Church—and this we’ve only started at.

But nevertheless, a wider account of femininity must be such that it does in fact form an organic whole with this pieces. Masculinity and femininity must be coherent overarching forms since they proceed from a God of order. However, I think we have an anchor from which we may tread to make more progress.

In this post, I want to do something different. Austin Suggs recently hosted Hannah Miller King (ordained in the diocese of the Carolinas) on his podcast. The comments went…well…about as well as you’d expect.

Hannah Miller King serves alongside her husband (who is the rector of the Vine Anglican Church—if I’m not mistaken, I believe the Diocese of the Carolinas allows males alone to be rectors…which, yes, is an incoherent policy) in youth ministry at the moment.

Now, once again, I do not think her ordination to the Priesthood is valid. I’ve defended this in a major Anglican publication here. Dual Integrities makes zero sense.

But the fact that I even feel the need to qualify this so much speaks to the problem I’m about to address: in complementarian circles, we too often rigorously approach the question from the orientation “what should we bar women from” rather than “what ways may women rightfully serve God’s Church”?

Reframing the Question

Hannah King’s interview was quite insightful. I found her framing of the Eucharist as a feast of hope really compelling. And furthermore, she serves youth ministry. Both of these facts evince, I’d argue, a theological and ministerial gift. Further, she seems committed to the vitality of God’s Church.

But isn’t presbyterial WO objectively destructive of the being of the Church? Absolutely. Given this, what would your answer be for remedying the sort of situation someone like Hannah King finds herself in? The fact is that we have been swimming now in a whole century of modernist corruption. This is difficult to disentangle oneself from. The temptation to remedying the error can be to break the proverbial bone in the other direction. But, as Richard Hooker once wisely argued, the correct method to remedying the corruptions of prior generations isn’t to break the bone in the opposite direction, but to set it rightly.

Here’s what I mean. If your answer to remedying this situation is to tell Hannah to simply stop doing ministry, step down, submit, wear a head-covering and shut up in Church, then I wager you don’t actually have the tools we need to meet the crisis Christians in general find themselves in. Women are becoming increasingly more liberal than young men. Part of this is—yes—the deconstructive disease of postmodernity. Fine. But as we transition out of postmodernity to metamodernity—thank God—we recognize now (as meta-modernity rightly teaches us) that human existence is one of competing narratives that constantly converse with each other, not the lack of metanarratives (since that is impossible). So what competing positive vision do we offer women who should step down from the Priesthood and yet have evinced positive ministerial giftings?

I’ve offered a vision here. But even if you think this vision falls short of justifying ordained deaconesses (retaining the title “Deaconess” by the way) and only justifies what the REC does, then fine; at least some of my REC detractors have tried to argue for alternative positive visions (whereas some simply say “nah Chrysostom was influenced by Priestesses LOLZ”).

Regardless, we should all agree that we need to have a vision of femininity in the Church that accommodates the realities of female leadership that historically have been the case:

-Women were the first ones to notify the apostles about the resurrection

-Deborah was a judge and the text gives no indication that this was a concession to not having men around

-Huldah was a prophet, as was Miriam a worship leader

-The Blessed Virgin (mine, not his—but important nonetheless); our Lady is the chief exemplar of saintliness in the Church so much so that she raised our Lord according to his humanity. She is the Mother of God and as such is the chief Queen among all kings and queens of the new creation.

I’ll add the following pieces from the tradition of the Church:

-St. Macrina instructed St. Gregory of Nyssa in the doctrine of the resurrection, and he wrote a whole treatise about it.

-St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Catherine of Sienna, Julian of Norwich, were theologians in their own right. It is useless to pretend otherwise.

Further, deaconess liturgies explicitly recognize these realities.

Excursus: reiterating a prior post

Now, the Didascalia gives us evidence that deaconesses did more than merely Baptize women, but they also catechized women.

“Those that please thee out of all the people thou shalt choose and appoint as deacons: a man for the performance of most things that are required, but a woman for the ministry of women. For there are houses whither thou canst not send a deacon to the women, on account of the heathen, but mayest send a deaconess. Also, because in many other matters the office of a woman deacon is required.

“In the first place, when women go down into the water, those who go down into the water ought to be anointed by a deaconess with the oil of anointing; and where there is no woman at hand, and especially no deaconess, he who baptizes must of necessity anoint her who is being baptized. But where there is a woman, and especially a deaconess, it is not fitting that women should be seen by men. But with the imposition of hand do thou anoint the head only. As of old the priests and kings were anointed in Israel, do thou in like manner, with the imposition of hand, anoint the head of those who receive baptism, whether of men or of women; and afterwards—whether thou thyself baptize, or thou command the deacons or presbyters to baptize—let a woman deacon, as we have already said, anoint the women. But let a man pronounce over them the invocation of the divine Names in the water.

“And when she who is being baptized has come up from the water, let the deaconess receive her, and teach and instruct her how the seal of baptism ought to be kept unbroken in purity and holiness. For this cause we say that the ministry of a woman deacon is especially needful and important. For our Lord and Saviour also was ministered unto by women ministers: Mary Magdalene, and Mary the daughter of James and mother of Jose, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, with other women beside.

“And thou also hast need of the ministry of a deaconess for many things; for a deaconess is required to go into the houses of the heathen where there are believing women, and to visit those who are sick, and to minister to them in that of which they have need, and to bathe those who have begun to recover from sickness.” -Didascalia 16, Connolly, 70–71.

That deaconesses in some places served at the altar is evident from the Justinian codes:

In order for them to be ordained, they must be neither too old nor too young, and not liable to temptation, but they should be of middle age, and, in accordance with the sacred canons, about fifty years old, and, having arrived at that age, they shall be eligible to ordination, whether they are virgins, or have previously been married to one man; for We do not permit women who have contracted a second marriage, or who (as We have already stated), have led a vicious life, to be ordained, but they must be free from all suspicion in order to be admitted into the holy service of the Church, to be present in baptism, and assist in the celebration of the mysterious and sacred rites which form part of their duties. When, however, it is necessary for a woman under the age of fifty to be ordained a deaconess, ordination can be conferred upon her in some convent where she must reside; for she can by no means be permitted to mingle with men, or to live where she chooses, but by her withdrawal from society she must give evidence of her retirement and the simplicity of her life. -Novellae 6, Ch VI

The Barberini Codex, preserving Byzantine practice in Italy up to 780AD, has the following lines in the ordination rite (see the full one in the link):

§1. ‘Prayer at the ordination (cheirotonia) of a deaconess’

§2. After the sacred offertory, the doors [of the sanctuary] are opened and, before the Deacon starts the litany ‘All Saints’, the woman who is to be ordained Deacon is brought before the [Arch]bishop. And after he has said the ‘Divine Grace’ [statement] (see text) with a loud voice, the woman to be ordained bows her head. The Bishop imposes his hand on her forehead, makes the sign of the cross on it three times, and prays:

§3. “Holy and Omnipotent Lord, through the birth of your Only Son our God from a Virgin according to the flesh, you have sanctified the female sex. You grant not only to men, but also to women the grace and coming of the Holy Spirit. Please, Lord, look on this your maid servant and dedicate her to the task of your diaconate, and pour out into her the rich and abundant giving of your Holy Spirit. Preserve her so that she may always perform her ministry (leitourgia) with orthodox faith and irreproachable conduct, according to what is pleasing to you.”

…

§6. “Lord, Master, you do not reject women who dedicate themselves to you and who are willing, in a becoming way, to serve your Holy House, but admit them to the order of your ministers [leitourgôn]. Grant the gift of your Holy Spirit also to this your maid servant who wants to dedicate herself to you, and fulfil in her the grace of the ministry of the diaconate, as you have granted to Phoebe the grace of your diaconate, whom you had called to the work of the ministry [leitourgia].

“Give her, Lord, that she may persevere without guilt in your Holy Temple, that she may carefully guard her behaviour, especially her modesty and temperance.

“Moreover, make your maid servant perfect, so that, when she will stand before the judgement seat of your Christ, she may obtain the worthy fruit of her excellent conduct, through the mercy and humanity of your Only Son.”

….

§7. After the ‘Amen’, he [= the Archbishop] puts the stole of the diaconate [to diakonikon horarion] round her neck, under her [woman’s] scarf [maphorion], arranging the two extremities of the stole towards the front.

§8. When [at the time of communion] the newly ordained has taken part of the sacred body and precious blood, the Archbishop hands her the chalice. She accepts it and puts it on the holy table.

Once again, we do not merely have a description of a laywoman baptizing other women in emergencies. She is ordained formally by the Bishop and serves at the holy table—and a justification is given from the sanctification of women via the Blessed Virgin for service at the altar. This rite is echoed identically in 1040AD.

Further, consider the prayer prayed at the ordination of a deaconess in the Apostolic Constitutions (375-380AD):

“Eternal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of man and woman; who didst with the Spirit replenish Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah; who didst not disdain that thine only-begotten Son should be born of a woman; who also, in the tabernacle of the testimony and in the temple, didst ordain women to be keepers of thy holy gates: do thou thyself also now look upon this thy handmaid, appointed to the office of a Deaconess, and grant her the Holy Spirit, and cleanse her from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, that she may worthily discharge the work which is committed to her, unto thy glory and the praise of thy Christ.””

The deaconess is considered to continue in the Spirit of Miriam, Deborah, Anna, and Huldah; these are obviously not accidentally chosen figures, but were prophetesses, judges, and worship leading singers. Once again, we cannot restrict this vision to simply Baptizing women in emergencies.

Finally, we read the following in the Didascalia:

II, 26, 3. “These [the bishops] are your high priests; what the Levites once were, now the deacons are; the presbyters, widows, and orphans are likewise. For you, the high priest is the Levite bishop: he is your teacher and, after God, your father who regenerates through water; he is your prince and he is your chief and your powerful king. And may he who reigns in place of God be honored like God, since the bishop presides over you as the image of God (in typum Dei).

“On the contrary, the deacon is there as an image of Christ; therefore, may he be loved by you. May the deaconess be honored by you as image of the Holy Spirit. May also presbyters be considered by you as images of the Apostles. Consider the widows and the orphans as images of the altar.”

Excursus Ended

The Task for Orthodox Anglicans

We need to develop an Anglican vision for masculinity and femininity in the family, the Church, and the world. We also need to stop punting to Romanists or to those who often don’t share our assumptions about Scripture and tradition. We can glean from them, of course, but we actually do have resources in our own tradition (the poetry of John Donne, the theology of Marriage given by Jeremy Taylor, the Female Glory by Anthony Stafford—a devotional work about the Blessed Virgin Mary, the literature of Jane Austen, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, pre English Reformational sources like Julian of Norwich, etcetera) to think through a robust theology of masculinity and femininity in relation to each other.

(Our wretched problem this past century as Anglicans has been the treacherous failure to steward our own tradition well.)

If we are able to a) defend the historic view from Scripture, tradition, and theological coherence and b) develop a life-giving vision of masculinity and femininity that shows how the structures of the Church can nourish vital gifts of men and women in ways consonant with the past, I think that itself would clarify the complementarian-egalitarian disaster we Anglicans find ourselves in.

Now, of course, convicted egalitarians will always say this isn’t enough. Well and good; let’s have at their position and show it to be unsustainable. It will never matter to some that there is a Biblical and historic way to nurture gifts of men and women as men and women because all ecclesial gendered hierarchy is to them forever innately oppressive. There is no bridge there except to say their position subverts the historic witness of Scripture and the Church.

But if Hannah King could serve as a genuine spiritual mother nourished by a vision of Church motherhood drawn from the wisdom of Scripture and tradition, would she have a place to step out of Priestly ministry and into a true function that empowers her in her femininity to be a Church mother? Or if not her, would others gladly renounce Priestly orders if they had a landing pad that they could see as good and life-giving?

I suspect so. So let’s get to work on this. Lord have mercy on us and grant us to walk in the way of wisdom.

Zwingli

Zwingli came to believe that the Holy Spirit is involved in the Eucharist, but he equated Eucharistic eating with believing in Christ. So the Eucharist, insofar as it is an aid to faith, facilitates “eating Christ” which is simply identical to believing. Hence he writes:

“To eat the body of Christ spiritually is equivalent to trusting with heart and soul upon the mercy and goodness of God through Christ, that is, to have the assurance of an unbroken faith that God will give us the forgiveness of sins and the joy of eternal salvation for the sake of his Son, who gave himself for us and reconciled the divine righteousness to us. For what can he withhold from us when he delivered up his only-begotten Son? If I may put it more precisely, to eat the body of Christ sacramentally is to eat the body of Christ with the heart and mind in conjunction with the sacrament. . . . So then, when you come to the Lord’s Supper to feed spiritually upon Christ, and when you thank the Lord for his great favor, for the redemption whereby you are delivered from despair, and for the pledge whereby you are assured of eternal salvation, when you join with your brethren in partaking of the bread and wine which are the tokens of the body of Christ, then in the true sense of the word you eat him sacramentally. You do inwardly that which you represent outwardly, your soul being strengthened by the faith which you attest in the tokens.”

The idea is that faith is strengthened by the elements and through that strengthening Christ is “eaten” only insofar as he is believed in. This view is rejected by the vast majority of the Reformers after him.

Calvin

Calvin’s view was much more careful than Zwingli. He affirms a real reception of the substance of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist by faith. So he denies that the wicked receive the body and blood in any sense, but rather receive only condemnation; the believer receives by faith—as an effect of faith—the divine life flowing in the glorified body and blood of Jesus into their own bodies.

There are some Lutherans who argue that Calvin’s view only differs in name from Zwingli’s but not in substance. That is, Calvin allegedly also affirms that the same eating by faith we have prior to taking the Eucharist is the eating of Christ by faith that happens in the Eucharist, and only differs in degree. Therefore Calvin’s view is in substance the same as Zwingli’s.

But this is false from Calvin’s own words.

Against the Zwinglian view, Calvin says:

According to them, to eat is merely to believe; while I maintain that the flesh of Christ is eaten by believing, because it is made ours by faith, and that that eating is the effect and fruit of faith; or, if you will have it more clearly, according to them, eating is faith, whereas it rather seems to me to be a consequence of faith. The difference is little in words, but not little in reality. For, although the apostle teaches that Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), no one will interpret that dwelling to be faith All see that it explains the admirable effect of faith, because to it it is owing that believers have Christ dwelling in them. In this way, the Lord was pleased, by calling himself the bread of life, not only to teach that our salvation is treasured up in the faith of his death and resurrection, but also, by virtue of true communication with him, his life passes into us and becomes ours, just as bread when taken for food gives vigour to the body. -IV.10.3

He goes on:

7. I am not satisfied with the view of those who, while acknowledging that we have some kind of communion with Christ, only make us partakers of the Spirit, omitting all mention of flesh and blood. As if it were said to no purpose at all, that his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed; that we have no life unless we eat that flesh and drink that blood; and so forth. Therefore, if it is evident that full communion with Christ goes beyond their description, which is too confined, I will attempt briefly to show how far it extends, before proceeding to speak of the contrary vice of excess. For I shall have a longer discussion with these hyperbolical doctors, who, according to their gross ideas, fabricate an absurd mode of eating and drinking, and transfigure Christ, after divesting him of his flesh, into a phantom: if, indeed, it be lawful to put this great mystery into words, a mystery which I feel, and therefore freely confess that I am unable to comprehend with my mind, so far am I from wishing any one to measure its sublimity by my feeble capacity. Nay, I rather exhort my readers not to confine their apprehension within those too narrow limits, but to attempt to rise much higher than I can guide them. For whenever this subject is considered, after I have done my utmost, I feel that I have spoken far beneath its dignity. And though the mind is more powerful in thought than the tongue in expression, it too is overcome and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the subject. All then that remains is to break forth in admiration of the mystery, which it is plain that the mind is inadequate to comprehend, or the tongue to express. I will, however, give a summary of my view as I best can, not doubting its truth, and therefore trusting that it will not be disapproved by pious breasts. (IV.10.7)

Further:

As water is at one time drunk out of the fountain, at another drawn, at another led away by conduits to irrigate the fields, and yet does not flow forth of itself for all these uses, but is taken from its source, which, with perennial flow, ever and anon sends forth a new and sufficient supply; so the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which transfuses into us the life flowing forth from the Godhead into itself. Now, who sees not that the communion of the flesh and blood of Christ is necessary to all who aspire to the heavenly life? Hence those passages of the apostle: The Church is the “body” of Christ; his “fulness.” He is “the head,” “from whence the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,” “maketh increase of the body” (Eph. 1:23; 4:15,16). Our bodies are the “members of Christ” (1 Cor. 6:15). We perceive that all these things cannot possibly take place unless he adheres to us wholly in body and spirit. But the very close connection which unites us to his flesh, he illustrated with still more splendid epithets, when he said that we “are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30). At length, to testify that the matter is too high for utterance, he concludes with exclaiming, “This is a great mystery” (Eph. 5:32). It were, therefore, extreme infatuation not to acknowledge the communion of believers with the body and blood of the Lord, a communion which the apostle declares to be so great, that he chooses rather to marvel at it than to explain it. (IV.17.9)

It should be noted that the “communion of the body and blood” is in the context of his treatment of the Eucharist. He isn’t merely speaking of sheerly believing here or of the communion we always have in Christ. If Calvin were merely talking about “believing”, it does not make sense here that he would write that the kind of participation in the deified flesh of Christ at work here is “a mystery beyond understanding” particularly in the Eucharist.

The Lutheran who sees Calvin as a Zwinglian will try to say that Calvin thinks the communion we have with Christ is always mysterious. But as the quoted show above, he is specifically talking about what happens in the Eucharist—that there is a mystical conjunction of the believer together with Christ that escapes ordinary description. There is a kind of connection which, while encompassing the kind of connection believers have with Christ through faith, is uniquely effected by faith via the Eucharist.

Hence, in his short treatise on the Lord’s Supper, he writes,

How these words are to be understood, in which the bread is called the body of Jesus Christ, and the wine his blood: This can be disposed of without great difficulty, if we remember carefully the principle which I have laid down. It is that all benefit which we ought to seek from the Supper is annulled, unless Jesus Christ be there given to us as substance and foundation of all. This agreed, we shall confess without doubt that to deny the true communication of Jesus Christ to be offered us in the Supper is to render this holy sacrament frivolous and useless—a blasphemy execrable and unworthy of attention. Moreover, if the reason for communicating with Jesus Christ is in order that we have part and portion in all the gifts which he has procured for us by his death, it is not only a matter of being partakers of his Spirit; it is necessary also to partake of his humanity, in which he rendered complete obedience to God his Father, to satisfy our debts; though rightly speaking, the one cannot be without the other. For when he gives himself to us, it is in order that we possess him entirely. For this reason, as it is said that his Spirit is our life, so he himself with his own mouth declares that his flesh is truly food, and his blood truly drink. If these words are not spoken in vain, it follows that to have our life in Christ our souls should be fed on his body and his blood, as their proper food. This, then, we expressly testify in the Supper, when we are told of the bread, that we take and eat it and that it is his body; and that we drink of the chalice and that it is his blood. It is said expressly of the body and the blood, in order that we learn to seek in them the substance of our spiritual life. Now, if it be asked nevertheless whether the bread is the body of Christ, and the wine his blood, we should reply that the bread and the wine are visible signs, which represent to us the body and the blood; but that the name and title of body and blood is attributed to them, because they are as instruments by which our Lord Jesus Christ distributes them to us. This form and manner of speaking is in principle very appropriate. For though it may be that the communion we have with the body of Christ is something incomprehensible, not only to the eye but to our natural sense, it is there visibly shown to us. Of this we have a very apposite example in a similar case. Our Lord, wishing at his Baptism to give visible appearance to his Spirit, represented it under the form of a dove. John the Baptist, relating this story, says that he saw the Holy Spirit descending. If we enquire more closely, we find that he saw only the dove, for the Holy Spirit is essentially invisible. Yet knowing that this vision is not an empty figure, but a certain sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit, he does not hesitate to say that he saw it, because it is represented to him according to his capacity. It is like this with the communion which we have with the body and blood of our Lord. It is a spiritual mystery, which cannot be seen by the eye, nor comprehended by the human understanding. It is therefore symbolized by visible signs, as our infirmity requires, but in such a way that it is not a bare figure, but joined to its reality and substance. It is therefore with good reason that the bread is called body, since not only does it represent it to us, but also presents it to us. Hence we shall readily concede that the name body of Jesus Christ is transferred to the bread, as it is the sacrament and figure of it. But we likewise add that the sacraments of the Lord ought not and cannot at all be separated from their reality and substance. To distinguish them so that they be not confused is not only good and reasonable but wholly necessary. But to divide them so as to set them up the one without the other is absurd. Therefore when we see the visible sign, we ought to regard what representation it carries and by whom it is given us. The bread is given to symbolize the body of Jesus Christ, with command that we eat it; and it is given us by God who is certain and immutable truth. If God cannot deceive or lie, it follows that he performs all that it signifies. We must then really receive in the Supper the body and blood of Jesus Christ, since the Lord there represents to us the communion of both. For otherwise what would it mean that we eat the bread and drink the wine as a sign that his flesh is our food and his blood our drink, if he gave only bread and wine and left the spiritual reality behind? Would it not be under false colours that he had instituted this mystery? We have then to confess that if the representation which God grants in the Supper is veracious, the internal substance of the sacrament is joined with the visible signs; and as the bread is distributed by hand, so the body of Christ is communicated to us, so that we are made partakers of it. If there were nothing more, we have good reason to be satisfied when we realize that Jesus Christ gives us in the Supper the real substance of his body and his blood, so that we may possess him fully, and, possessing him, have part in all his blessings. For since we have him, all the riches of God, which are comprehended in him, are proffered to us in order that they may be ours. Thus, as a brief definition of this benefit of the Supper, we may say that Jesus Christ is there offered to us that we may possess him, and in him all the fulness of his gifts which we can desire; and that in this we have great assistance in confirming our conscience in the faith which we ought to have in him.

His critique of Zwingli in the treatise reads as follows:

Here we have the reason, then, why Luther failed on his side, and Œcolampadius and Zwingli on theirs. It was Luther's duty, in the first place, to make it clear that he did not intend to set up such a local presence as the papists imagine; second, he should have protested that he did not mean the sacrament to be adored instead of God; and third, he should have abstained from the similes so harsh and difficult to conceive, or have used them with moderation, interpreting them so that they could not occasion offence. Once the debate was taken up, he went beyond measure not only in declaring his opinion, but also in blaming the other with a too sharp bitterness of speech. For instead of explaining himself so that his opinion could be understood, with his accustomed violence in attacking those who contradicted him, he used exaggerated forms of speech, which were certainly hard to bear by those who otherwise were not very disposed to believe what he said. The others offended also, by being so eager to decry the contrary opinion of the papists concerning the local presence of the body of Jesus Christ as superstitious and fantastic, and the adoration which followed from it as perverse, that they laboured more to destroy the evil than to build up the good. For though they did not deny the truth, yet they did not teach it as clearly as they ought. I mean that in taking too great pains to maintain that the bread and the wine are called the body and blood of Christ because they are signs, they took no care to make the reservation that they are such signs that the reality is joined to them; or to protest that they did not at all intend to obscure the true communion which our Lord gives us in his body and blood by the sacrament. Both parties failed altogether to have patience to listen to each other, in order to follow truth without passion, wherever it might be found. None the less, we must not leave off thinking what is our duty.

Now, it is true that Calvin wanted to claim Zwingli didn’t deny what he affirmed. This is, I suspect, why certain Lutherans try to simply identify what Calvin is affirming with what Zwingli is affirming. But as noted above, he expressly rejects the idea that eating the body and blood just is believing. It’s clear that Calvin was being too charitable to the point of over-steel-manning Zwingli’s view. Now, the Lutheran will say “but faith always transmits the divine life of Christ’s flesh, so what is different here?” But they don’t allow the answer Calvin gives to stand on its own, even though they employ mystery to defend the notion that Christ’s body is “in” the mouth non-spatially-yet-locally. Calvin simply says that it is a mystical eating that exceeds human description. Once again, this makes no sense if it were the case that he thought it was the same sort of eating by faith had in the Eucharist had outside the Eucharist differing only in degree.

On the other hand, the real difference between the Lutheran view here is the instrumentalism. Calvin thinks that the bread and wine give the body and blood to the worthy receiver. They are instruments, as he says, through which the body and blood are distributed. One finds Calvin’s view—whose short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper was translated and widely distributed by Bp. Myles Coverdale—represented in Anglicans as Richard Hooker, John Jewel, (arguably) John Cosin, and others.

Objective Spiritual Presence

This is a lesser known view in the Reformed tradition. In part, this is because it took a while to emerge. Bucer’s early view was Zwinglian, then aligned with what Calvin describes here, and then finally took a more objectivist flavor during his time in England.

Bucer’s development is fascinating. In 1536, he recognized that his initial views on the Eucharist were inadequate. He writes,

“For when the contest over the sacraments arose, my fellow ministers, Fathers and brethren — Luther and those who followed him in that contest — were speaking of the sacraments in such a way that to many they seemed to fasten the grace of Christ to external symbols and actions. I, desiring to avoid that fault, fell (as fools are wont to do) into the contrary evil, and began to press this point the more in the sacraments: that they are tokens (tesserae) of Christian fellowship, and that they are exhibiting signs (signa exhibitiva) of the grace and communion of Christ. I did not indeed deny that by the true use of the sacraments faith in Christ is increased and strengthened, nor did I wish to avoid anything other than seeming to attribute to external symbols or to the actions of men some saving power, by which the sacraments would have profited even those who communicated in them without sure faith in Christ. For I had regard to this alone, and wished this alone to stand forth in the Church: that Christ alone, through His Spirit, gives and increases faith, and through faith in Himself, salvation. But meanwhile I did not sufficiently understand — and therefore did not teach — how efficaciously the Lord, to this very end, makes use of His word and sacraments in those who hear and embrace Him with true faith as He speaks and acts in them.” Bucer in his Last Will (1541) (cf. Réhrich, Timotheus Wilhelm, Martin Butzers Testamente, nach dem Original herausgegeben ... in: Beitrdge zu den theologischen Wissenschaften ... Jena, 1851), p. 200.

However, by the time he reaches England, he is defending the idea that the Eucharist is a sacrifice. He writes,

From these things any Christian can recognize what and how many kinds of oblations and sacrifices the church has acknowledged from the very beginning, and has striven to offer and to sacrifice: namely, Christ himself, his passion, his body and his blood; prayers, thanksgivings, and the praises of God; the very administration of the Lord's Supper; the people of Christ; and their gifts, by which the needy were relieved and sustained, and by which the sacred ministries of the church, and the instruments of those ministries, were maintained. Now it must be shown what it signified to the holy Fathers to offer and to sacrifice these very sacrifices and these oblations — although this has, for the most part, already been substantially explained even from those judgments of the holy Fathers which we have already treated. Martin Bucer, De vera et falsa caenae dominicae administratione (1546), ed. Nicholas Thompson, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 184 / Martin Bucer: Opera Latina 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2014) pp.186

Bucer affirms an objective presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper such that we can even speak of an impetration of the body and blood in the Eucharist before the Father, although denying the Roman system of propitiation quite clearly. Affirming with Aquinas that there is a re-presentation of the Passion of Christ to the Father doesn’t make sense if he didn’t think the body and blood were objectively there. Hence he writes,

Interestingly, Bucer critiques Bullinger in a letter:

“Concerning your confession: When you make the dispute a matter of the spiritual and carnal presence of Christ in the Supper, you show that you do not yet understand where the point of controversy is located. For no one defends a carnal presence. Thus no one demands that we say that the bread is the body of Christ, and all approve of taking care that the simple not venerate the signs instead of the realities. The contention is this: Since the words, “Take, eat, this is my body” etc. are the words of the Lord who gives^[1]–and not bread only, but also his body, which was handed over for us–and since Christ says these things through us, his ministers, he uses us as the stewards of his mysteries, so that we might believe and confess that the very body of the Lord is given^[2] in the sacred Supper together with the bread (that is, the exhibitive^[3] sign), just as regeneration is given^[4] together with the water of baptism, and in former times communion in the divine covenant was given^[5] through circumcision, the Holy Spirit was given together with the breath of the Lord, and the blessing of the Lord and various gifts were given together with the laying on of hands. The Passover was a commemorative, not an exhibitive, sign.”

“Exhibition” here is a sacramental objective act wrought by the Spirit. It is distinct from sheer commemoration. Bucer had come to believe that the Holy Spirit hallowed the elements so that the bread and wine “exhibit”—present forth—the body and blood of Christ. Hence he writes,

"This institution and command of the Lord—to distribute the body and blood of the Lord in every celebration of his Supper—the whole Church of Christ, having been taught and instructed in this way by the apostles, has judged ought to be observed with such reverence that, at no time among the holy Fathers, would it have been considered an empty pretense of the Lord's Supper to profess its celebration while nevertheless administering the sacraments to no one." -Martin Bucer, De vera et falsa caenae dominicae administratione (1546), ed. Nicholas Thompson, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 184 / Martin Bucer: Opera Latina 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2014) pp.276

In his suggested corrections to the Book of Common Prayer, addressed to the Bishop of Ely, Bucer approves the prayer of humble access, since “we receive not only bread and wine but at the same time his body and blood (non panem tatem et vinum, sed simul corpus et sangiunem eius).”^[1] In the 1536 Concord of Wittenburg, Bucer writes that “in the Supper by the ordinance and operation of the Lord, his true body and true blood are truly presented, given, and received with the visible signs of bread and wine”^[2] Nevertheless, he is insistent that while the body and blood are given with the bread and the wine, the elements remain unchanged in their essential nature.^[3] Further still, in the Tetrapolitan Confession, Bucer (and Wolfgang Capito) asserts that the “true body and blood” of Christ is given through the bread and the wine in the Eucharist.^[4]
The effect of the Eucharist, for Bucer, is the greater perfecting of the believer’s regeneration and the renewal of the benefits of the new covenant—e.g. the remission of sins and a confirmation of adoption.^[5] The Eucharist does so precisely because, per Bucer, it is a commemoration of the one true sacrifice of Christ on the cross, which makes present the one sacrifice of Christ.^[6] Bucer is even willing to cite Aquinas:

“Thomas Aquinas, question 83, affirms for two reasons the celebration of the eucharist is to be called an immolation of Christ, both because in it there is a kind of representative image of the passion of Christ, and because in it is perceived the effect of Christ’s passion. This no one on our side contradicts.”^[7]

Some seem to occupy a kind of mystic virtualism in which the elements are really changed such that Christ’s body and blood are virtually in the bread and wine—and yet “virtually” is a power given by the Spirit. Bp. Nicholas Ridley is a good instance of this view.

Excursus on Ridley—From my book:

Ridley argues that through consecration, there is

“in the sacrament is a certain change, in that that bread, which was before common bread, is now made a lively presentation of Christ’s body, and not only a figure, but effectuously representeth his body; that even as the mortal body was nourished by that visible bread, so is the internal soul fed with the heavenly food of Christ’s body, which the eyes Bread and of faith see, as the bodily eyes see only bread. Such a sacramental mutation I grant to be in the bread and wine, which truly is no small change, but such a change as no mortal man can make, but only that omnipotency of Christ’s word.”^[1]

Yet for Ridley, there is no change in the substance of the bread and wine; they retain their natures as bread and wine, nor is there a corporeal presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. Here, Ridley—like other Anglicans—appeals to an analogy between Baptism and the Eucharist, in that as the former is sanctified by the Holy Spirit’s work to effectually convey salvation, so the latter is to convey the body and blood of Jesus.^[2] Indeed, Ridley is even able to affirm that the natural body of Christ is in the sacrament, but only in a spiritual non-natural manner.^[3]

Second, Ridley argues that the reception of the true body and blood by faith receives what is effectually offered, such that one benefits from Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice unto salvation. Ridley writes that the kind of remembrance that takes place “far passeth all kinds of remembrances”, since “whosoever recevith this holy sacrament thus ordained in remembrance of Christ, he receiveth therewith either death or life. In this, I trust, we do all agree.”^[4] Christ is so present in the sacrament just as the sun is present by its beams, such that the sacraments are “beams of Christ.”^[5] Indeed, “the representation and commemoration of Christ’s death and passion, said and done in the mass, is called the sacrifice, oblation, or immolation of Christ: non rei veritate, sed significandi mysterio.”^[6] Thus, Christ can be said to be offered in the mass sacramentally, and those who see him with “the eyes of faith” thereby partake of his spiritual life unto salvation.^[7] The benefits procured by the shedding of Christ’s blood on the cross are thereby truly received via the reception of the body and blood by faith in the Eucharist.^[8] Thus, he can say:

“I know that all these places of the Scripture are avoided by two manner of subtle shifts: the one is, by the distinction of the bloody and unbloody sacrifice, as though our unbloody sacrifice of the church were any other than the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (1), than a commemoration (2), a shewing forth and a sacramental representation of that one only bloody sacrifice once offered up for all.”^[9]

Excursus ended

Why it Matters for Anglicans

The historic range of acceptable views in Anglican theology are from Calvin to Bucer. You can find representatives who take either view. The majority of 16th century divines seem to side with Calvin’s instrumentalism (Hooker, Cranmer). Some take Bucer’s view (Montagu, Saravia).

The Anglican formularies range from Calvinist instrumentalism to Ridley-esque virtualism to Bucer’s objectivism.

None of these views are Zwinglian in the slightest. Neither memorialism nor transubstantiation are options for Anglicans. Further, the charge that Calvin’s view is Zwinglian is simply false, as I’ve argued above.

^[1] Nicholas Ridley, The Works of Nicholas Ridley, ed. The Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841) 274-275.

^[2] Ibid., 275

^[3] Ibid., 274. See also 201-202, 41, 15-19, 37-39. See also Panofré, “From Latimer’s Fellow-Martyr to the ‘English Calvin’: Nicholas Ridley’s Reputation and the Circulation of A Brief Declaration of the Lordes Supper, 1555-1570.”; G C B. (George Colliss Boardman) Davies, “Nicholas Ridley,” Churchman 68, no. 3 (1954): 167–73.

^[4] Ridley 8

^[5] Ibid., 13

^[6] Ibid., 317

^[7] Ibid., 250-251

^[8] Ibid., 37

^[9] Ibid., 210-211

^[1] Martin Bucer, Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, trans. E. C. Whitaker, Alcuin Club Collections, no. 55 (Great Wakering [Eng.]: Mayhew-McCrimmon [for the] Alcuin Club, 1974) 64.

^[2] Martin Bucer, Common Places of Martin Bucer, trans. David Wright (Abingdon, England: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1972) 359.

^[3] Ibid.,

^[4] James T. Dennison, ed., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: Volume I, 1523-1552 (Grand Rapids, Mich: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008) 138-171.

^[5] Martin Bucer, Common Places of Martin Bucer [pg].

^[6] Nicholas Thompson, Eucharistic Sacrifice and Patristic Tradition in the Theology of Martin Bucer, 1534-1546, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, v. 119 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2005) 184-185.

^[7] Martin Bucer, Defensio adversus axioma catholicum id est criminationem R. P. Roberti episcopi Abrincensis: 1534, trans. William Ian P. Hazlett, Martini Buceri Opera omnia 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 72.

How exactly does the believer’s union with Christ ground her justification before a holy God? This question is, of course, at the heart of a massive fissure in the church. While healing such a fissure is surely beyond the scope of this paper, I seek to offer a Biblically faithful account of justification in the totus Christus. I will argue that justification is best construed as an adjudication of the justified as an heir via sharing of Christ’s own title to his inheritance on account of union with Christ. The paper will proceed as follows. First, I will sample various ways Christian traditions have attempted to relate union with Christ to justification with a view to providing a sense of the terrain. The second section will comprise two parts. In the first part, I will survey the Biblical material on the nature of the believer’s union with Christ, and then I will synthesize a definition of the totus Christus. In the third section, I will repeat this process for justification. In the fourth section, I’ll attempt to show how the totus Christus concept provides a doctrinal matrix in which to understand the relationship between union with Christ and justification. Finally, I’ll conclude with a brief treatment of filial and final justification and end with reflections on how this proposal contributes to relevant debates.

You may find the PDF version of this post here:

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“That the appreciation of moral worth, or of value generally, is as true and immediate a part of our experience as the judgments of perception; and that it, as well as they, forms a part of the data of metaphysics…If we take experience as a whole, and do not arbitrarily restrict ourselves to that portion of it with which the physical and natural sciences have to do, then our interpretation of it must have ethical data at its basis and ethical laws in its structure.”[1]

The identification of ethics here is important, since the appreciation of value makes an imperative claim upon us. One ought to recognize an infant as more precious than an insect. One ought to recognize even aesthetic values—the majesty of the Grand Canyon—as superior to inferior activities (mindlessly scrolling on one’s phone). But this entails a fascinating fact about reality: value is part of our environment and makes claims upon us. One ought to recognize a flower as a flower because it actually is one; one ought to recognize an infant as more precious than an insect because this is actually so.

Our experience of the world cries out that value is a constitutive feature of reality. The Anglican philosopher A.E. Taylor explains,

“When we speak of virtue, art, science, health, as having value, it is never virtue, art, science, health, “in the abstract” to which we mean to refer, but always the actual virtuous conduct, artistic production, true thinking, healthy bodily functioning of persons conceived as existent, either in fact or ex hypothesi. The candid utterances, generous acts and impulses, the creation or appreciation of beauty, the comprehension of truth, the vigorous performance of the physical functions of life by existents-in fact by persons are the real objects to which we are ascribing the possession of value.”[2]

In other words, when we consider the “value” of infant life over the value of an insect, we are no thinking of “value” as some add-on or something that hovers over the infant. It is, somehow, inscribed into the very being of the infant; it is the infant in her very existence that is more valuable than an insect. In the same way that we do not simply think of “fear” apart from fearful things, our experience of value is part of the fabric of our experience of reality.

We can approach the question of the reality of value from a different angle. The famous Anglican writer C.S. Lewis once wrote,

“The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[3]

Whatever one makes of this as an argument for eternity, we should note the underlying intuition. The capacity for fear human nature indicates that there is something in the environment which would fittingly evoke fear. The capacity for hunger indicates that there is something in the environment which fittingly corresponds to it. In a similar way, the affective responses to the experience of Value—the preciousness of things—commands certain affective correlates (awe, delight, a sense of sublimity, reverence, etcetera). The presence of those affective capacities, fittingly evoked by the experience of value, indicates that it is something real in our environment. Further still, the fact that it exists on an objective scale—that Susie would be wrong to esteem an infant as less valuable than an insect or puppy—indicates some standard of value (we will call it “the Tao”[4]) which is the measure of all that is valuable. Things are “more” or “less” valuable inasmuch as they conform to the Tao.

But if such is the case, the Tao must be the unity of all that is valuable. If something is more or less valuable insofar as it measures up, as it were, to the Tao, the Tao is thus the measure of all that is valuable. St. Anselm of Canterbury puts it this way,

“if one considers the natures of things, one cannot help realizing that they are not all of equal value, but differ by degrees. For the nature of a horse is better than that of a tree, and that of a human more excellent than that of a horse, and to doubt it is simply not human. It is undeniable that some natures can be better than others. None the less reason argues that there is some nature that so overtops the others that it is inferior to none. For if there is an infinite distinction of degrees, so that there is no degree which does not have a superior degree above it, then reason is led to conclude that the number of natures is endless. But this is senseless, and only the senseless would think it was not. Necessarily, then, there is some nature which is superior to others in such a way that it is inferior to none. Now there is either only one of this kind of nature, or there is more than one and they are equal. Suppose there are many equal natures. They cannot be equal through different things, but are equal through one thing, that one thing through which they are equally as great as they are. This one thing, then, is either that which they themselves are (i.e. their essence), or something different from what they themselves are. But if it is simply their essence, then just as there is one essence, there is one nature, and not more than one. (For here I understand nature and essence to be the same.) If, on the other hand, it is something different from themselves, then they are, definitely, less than it—less than that through which they are great. For anything that is great through something else is less than that through which it is great. Therefore these natures are not so great that there is nothing greater than them. It is therefore quite impossible that there exist several natures than which nothing is more excellent, because a plurality of such natures cannot possibly exist either through that which they themselves are or through something different. What this leaves, then, is that there is one and only one nature which is superior to others and inferior to none. But such a thing is the greatest and best of all existing things. There is therefore some nature which is of all that exists, supreme.”[5]

The basic intuition is this. If the Tao is the measure of all that is valuable, than any other valuable thing is valuable to the extent that it measures up to the Tao. But that means the Tao must be the unity of all that makes other things intrinsically valuable. If someone being kind is more valuable than someone being less kind, for instance, this is because “more kindness” further approximates the Tao. If a statue would be less valuable than a sentient equivalent—a being the same in every way (including material constitution) but differing only by possessing consciousness—then consciousness must be one of those things that endows innate value. But this unity of all that is valuable in the Tao is exactly what we mean by “God”: the transcendent standard and unity of Beauty, Goodness, Being, Consciousness, and all that is intrinsically valuable. We can put the argument as follows:

P1) If Value is objective and gradable (differing by degrees), then there exists some standard of Value—the Tao—whose measure determines degree of Value.
P2) If the Tao exists, then the Tao is the unity of all that is Valuable
P3) If the Tao is the unity of all that is Valuable, then the Tao is the unity of beauty, goodness, consciousness, and any other intrinsically value-endowing property
P4) If the Tao is the unity of beauty, goodness, consciousness, and any other intrinsically value-endowing property, then the Tao is God and God exists
P5) Value is objective and gradable
C) Therefore, the Tao is God and God exists

Minimally, the Tao does not sit well with a merely physicalist or atheistic materialist picture of the universe at all. And its personality is suggested by the personal demands Value obligates agents to.

[1] W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God, A Study in the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1918), 32.

[2] A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist: Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews, 1926–1928, Series I: The Theological Implications of Morality (Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1930), 1:38.

[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Touchstone, 1996), 121.

[4] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools, First HarperCollins paperback edition (HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins publishers, 2001).

[5] Anselm et al., Monologion in The Major Works, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 2008) 14-15.

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, New Edition (Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Company, 1849) pp.7-8

Perennial festival. Perpetual youth. In the deep structures of the world—that “dearest freshness deep down in things”—there plays the Spirit of God who confers the youth of triune love in and through all things.

Anglican poets have named this deep original structure of the world: Wonder.

Here you will find an exposition of the Anglican Priest and Poet Fr. Thomas Traherne’s Poem “Wonder” as a vision of what God made the world to be. May it lift your own soul and fill you with the hope that, one day, God will be all in all to make all things wonderful.

Wonder with Thomas Traherne

How like an angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among his works I did appear
O how their glory me did crown!
The world resembled his eternity,
In which my soul did walk;
And ev’ry thing that I did see
Did with me talk.

The poem begins with the personification of wonder as like to an angelic being. Wonder beholds the brightness of God’s works as a crown. As Wonder surveys the world, it “resembled his eternity”. Traherne pulls on the rich conviction that God made the world to tend towards the display of the divine goodness—the richness of the divine nature. In Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Book I.V.1), he writes:

“…there is in all things an appetite or desire, whereby they incline to something which they may be; and when they are it, they shall be perfecter than now they are. All which perfections are contained under the general name of goodness. And because there is not in the world any thing whereby another may not some way be made the perfecter, therefore all things that are, are good. Again, sith there can be no goodness desired which proceedeth not from God himself, as from the supreme cause of all things; and every effect doth after a sort contain, at leastwise resemble, the cause from which it proceedeth: all things in the world are said in some sort to seek the highest, and to covet more or less the participation of God himself.”

All things tend towards resembling God in a manner appropriate to their creaturely being. Ants and hills were made to reflect God ant-wise and hill-wise.

And this eternity of God, inscribed into the laws and principles that move creatures towards their ends, talked with wonder. “The heavens declare the glory of God”, and so Wonder heard the eternity of God sung in the notes of stars, trees, skies, seas, and all creatures therein.

The skies in their magnificence,
The lively, lovely air;
Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
The stars did entertain my sense,
And all the works of God, so bright and pure,
So rich and great did seem,
As if they ever must endure
In my esteem.

A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit. I within did flow
With seas of life, like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ’twas divine.

The laws that move all creatures towards participation in God give birth to wonder. We do not know how—not fully anyway—how ants are destined to reflect God’s own beauty and being. But it is so. And so the vision of an ant in God is a vision of excess—a vision of being that exceeds what we see of antly-being right now. Antly-being stretches beyond the horizons of our imaginations and—had we eyes to see it!—would carry our imaginations towards that glorious day of God’s final triumph. Wonder sees the brightness of the works of God as rich and lovely; that “brightness” is the signal of the way creatures by nature stretch towards participation in God by resemblance and imitation. Because of this impulse, it seems as though these works must endure. Wonder sees the excess of things that moves us to wonder as we gaze beings that dwarf the horizon of our own vision. And Wonder sees that excess in terms of an echo resounding in all things of the Divine Nature.

Harsh ragged objects were conceal’d,
Oppressions tears and cries,
Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes
Were hid, and only things reveal’d
Which heav’nly spirits, and the angels prize.
The state of innocence
And bliss, not trades and poverties,
Did fill my sense.

The hallmarks of the Fall are interruptions to Wonder. Traherne gives us a glimpse into one of the horrors of sin: sin disrupts the tendency of things towards participation in the divine nature. It is a violation of the natural law writ into creation (Richard Hooker’s “second eternal law”) which governs creatures towards resembling God. And so these things are hidden to the eyes of Wonder. “Trades and poverties” are given here too because these things are “thorns and thistles”—they are the outcroppings of the Fall that are at best ways of mitigation.

The streets were pav’d with golden stones,
The boys and girls were mine,
Oh how did all their lovely faces shine!
The sons of men were holy ones,
In joy and beauty they appear’d to me,
And every thing which here I found,
While like an angel I did see,
Adorn’d the ground.

Rich diamond and pearl and gold
In ev’ry place was seen;
Rare splendours, yellow, blue, red, white and green,
Mine eyes did everywhere behold.
Great wonders cloth’d with glory did appear,
Amazement was my bliss,
That and my wealth was ev’ry where:
No joy to this!

When God made the world, it was filled with the wealth of wonder. Wonder beheld all her precious gifts distributed in the very faces of men and women. “The sons of men were holy ones.” CS Lewis once wrote in The Weight of Glory:

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified.’

In the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, the creature is glorified: bread and wine are elevated by the work of the Spirit to give the body and blood of Christ. Christ himself is hidden underneath the Sacrament, such that he nourishes us with his own deified flesh. But the bread and wine remain what they are while becoming the best of what they are: vehicles of divine life. As the glory of God is man fully alive—not man diminished before the shining of God’s glory—so the Blessed Sacrament is bread and wine made an icon of creaturely destiny. And therefore “your neighbor is holy in almost the same way”. Your neighbor is also destined to be a sort of Sacrament of the divine life—a place where, at the end of all things, God himself will give his divine life in and through the stars, the trees, the fruits, and the very presence and words of your neighbor. That is what every person was made for. And so what pearls and jewels display to our eyes is that which Wonder beholds in the being of God’s creatures.

Curs’d and devis’d proprieties,
With envy, avarice
And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise,
Flew from the splendour of mine eyes,
And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds,
I dream’d not aught of those,
But wander’d over all men’s grounds,
And found repose.

Proprieties themselves were mine,
And hedges ornaments;
Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents
Did not divide my joys, but all combine.
Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteem’d
My joys by others worn:
For me they all to wear them seem’d
When I was born.

The “hedges” and “bounds” are, I think, those things we build to guard our property from one another. Those things are necessary in the fallen condition of the world, but they were not necessary in a world of abundance, generosity, and love. Wonder could wander over all the things humanity would build and find rest. She could hallow the grounds which our hands would work, and we could have said, “Wonder rests here.” And so the jewels we wear or the coffers we own seemed to be “worn” by God’s creatures when Wonder was born. All true and good adornment of creatures, then, seeks to bring out the original goodness and excellence that God endowed them with by nature.

The Vision of Creation

The world was made as the walking-place of Wonder. All things resembled God’s eternity, stretching towards resemblance to God by the law God implanted in the nature of things. For that reason, they signaled a kind of permanence; they carried with them the message of a continuance into eternity. As Traherne writes in a different poem, “Eden”, the original state of creation beheld by Eden (personified) was one of delight:

Joy, pleasure, beauty, kindness, glory, love,
Sleep, day, life, light,
Peace, melody, my sight,
My ears and heart did fill and freely move.
All that I saw did me delight.
The Universe was then a world of treasure,
To me an universal world of pleasure.

The pleasures of God filled the air. By looking back, the Christian may look forward: the world will ring with the praises of God again. The trees of the forest will clap their branches at the return of Jesus Christ. The meadows will sing—and their song will be taken up by Christ as part of the Eternal Song in which he returns himself in love to his Father in the Spirit.

And so even now, we may catch glimpses of that original wonder and hope for its deepening in the world to come. In Christ, all things will ring with both their original harmony and with their harmony won by the victory of Christ. In words truer than Emerson himself knew,

“In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly in our memory with the geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him,—the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man.”

The criticisms confirmed what I suspected. I argued that the only universalism worth having is one in which we all confess that we justly deserve God’s eternal punishment. The responding universalists disagree: not only do we not deserve God’s eternal punishment, but evidently God owes it to us to save all.

That confirms my suspicion that current iterations of universalism are indeed blasphemously premised on a simple rejection of the holiness of God and its demands on us. Contemporary universalists seem to think grace is owed to us by virtue of our being creatures. This subverts the meaning of grace. On the contrary, if one thinks that we justly deserve the eternal wrath of God, then they will be forced to confess that God’s eternal wrath is the just sentence owed to us. The only remaining ground for universalism will be the conviction that the mercy of God’s lovingkindness will win out. I will not argue against this version here.

In this post, I will target again the former notion and argue that hell is our just sentence. My hope is that by the end of this post, you will be able to truly pray the confession of sin from the Book of Common Prayer (1662), and therefore grasp the magnitude of God’s undeserved, lavish mercy on sinners:

ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Nature and Justice of Hell

On a cold November morning in 2022, Bryan Christopher Kohberger snuck into an off-campus residential house where several college students were sleeping. He brutally murdered 4 of them with a knife. For the next few months, he tried to escape police custody but eventually was found out. During the court hearings, in which he eventually pled guilty, he remained cool and unperturbed—seemingly proud—of what he had done.

Consider the question: would it be better for Kohberger to experience the pangs of conscience for what he had done, all things being equal? By “the pangs of conscience”, I mean the moral sense of friction one has when they feel themselves radically at odds with the Law of Moral Goodness. It is something like “guilt” if one let themselves understand the meaning of such pangs—it can rise to the level of internal torment (like Raskolnikov breaking out in a fever over his awareness of his own crime.

Suppose he had no intention towards repenting at all. Would it be better for him to experience the pangs of conscience even if it would not eventuate in repentance? I think the obvious answer is yes. It is in fact moral insanity to say otherwise. If one says “the pangs of conscience are only worthwhile so long as it affords the opportunity for repentance”, then they’d be forced to say that a world in which Kohberger experienced such pangs which would in no way eventuate in repentance is not as good as a world in which he does not experience pangs. That is obviously incorrect. We know that we deserve the feelings of guilt themselves if we have done something wrong even if we have no intention of repenting. Guilt over wrongdoing is an intrinsic good; it is not merely an instrumental good relative to bringing about repentance.

Now consider the alienation and disapproval he has from the general human community. He deserves the ire from the victims’ family members. In response to Bryan Kohberger’s murder, Kaylee Goncalves famously delivered a searing impact statement. She later said, “That was obviously a big point of why I did what I did -- to make him feel small.” It was not Kaylee’s intention to help Kohberger’s rehabilitation, but rather to deliver some measure of just sting with her words. Was she being needlessly vengeful? Suppose human community at large holds Kohberger at bay—we all are disgusted by him and he feel the weight of human disgust. Is that not itself deserved?

What I’m pointing out here is this: these are retributive instincts. No one thinks Kaylee’s statement was only justified in inflicting verbal wounds only insofar as it would help Kohberger recover. No one thinks society is being cruel given that there is no intention of revoking his life sentence.

“Okay”, one might say, “but just because Kohberger’s murder merits a life sentence cannot possibly show that my sin merits eternal punishment.” True—but that isn’t the point. The point here is that we are not owed grace in light of the actual seriousness of the punishment. My point is simply that we are owed the punishment of the internal disintegration and the alienation from relationship that corresponds to the extent of sin.

There is evidence that guilt alters bodily rhythms,[1] it seems to me that most of us know the feeling of being sick to our stomach with guilt. We also know the internal disintegration that follows in the wake of sin. When one sins and is aware of their sin, they feel at odds with themselves—alienated from their own sense of the good by their lived experience.[2] Stump writes,

“A person internally divided in this way cannot be close to others either. He cannot reveal his mind to another person if he has hidden a good part of his mind from himself… whichever part of his divided will another person is in harmony with, she will be separated from some other part. To that extent, she and he will not be united; he will want something she does not want (or vice versa), no matter what the state of her will is. For this reason, in serious moral wrongdoing, to one degree or another, a person isolates himself from others. And this point holds even if the other in question is God.”[3]

Conviction of sin, it seems to me, is the unity of shame and guilt in the consciousness of one’s own condemnability for sin. Shame, when rightly felt, colors one’s existence with a rightly calibrated sense of their own unacceptability, which often leads to self-isolation in the wake of unrepentance or inadequate repentance; guilt involves the consciousness that one has fallen short of a standard.[4] This moral emotion of conviction, as it grows, is embodied in the kind of delirium, guilt, fever, and illness

So how does this relate to the eternality of hell? Given libertarianism, it is not the case that people reject the Good out of sheer ignorance of their own true good, as Hart seems to imply.[5] Rather, evil signifies a radical possibility of human freedom. For if God created creatures good, such that evil is not necessitated by any weakness innate to the creature (lest God be made the author of evil), then the fall from primordial goodness can only owe to a radical choice to rebel which has no further explanation.[6] Through such choices, I argue, one is (de)formed with a character suited to continually traveling down the spiral set by such choices.[7] But is this really a plausible conception of our choice to do evil? It seems to me that two features of our moral experience commend this view.

First, consider the phenomena of akrasia. Akratic actions are actions performed by an agent against her better judgment. That is, she judges that it is best to do A rather than B but chooses to do B anyway.[8] For instance, I’ve known what it’s like to join my friends in making a bad decision while knowing the particular action is, in fact, a poor course of action. Interpersonally, most of us know conflicts where, even though we know it would be better to admit that the other person is right, we choose to persist in our embittered state of heart. Someone given over to akrasia, then, would persist in willfully and obstinately rejecting what they know on some level to be the case—like Raskolnikov continually rejecting the pangs of conscience.

Second, consider the phenomena of culpable moral ignorance. We know of instances in moral experiences where one ought to have known better. But how can someone be culpable for their ignorance? Michael Zimmerman argues, that such culpability is indirect, insofar as one is blameworthy and culpable for having done some logically prior action which they knew was wrong and which resulted in their current moral ignorance.[9] Furthermore, there are times where we act with blear-eyed akrasia which results in moral ignorance(e.g. the CEO who tells his workers to increase profits without saying how they did so).[10] Yet, contra Zimmerman, this is not the only case in which one can be culpably morally ignorant. Consider the case in which Susie takes herself to have equal epistemic reason to scrutinize her moral beliefs or to not scrutinize her moral beliefs in a given situation. Her not doing so will perpetuate moral ignorance. She is culpable for the consequent moral ignorance following her choice not to scrutinize her own moral beliefs.[11] The blameworthiness of moral ignorance stems from the fact that the will, at one point or another, was not externally determined to make the relevant choice resulting in such ignorance.[12] Over the course of time, those who are culpably morally ignorant form a character that looks the other way, as it were, from the gaze of the Good.[13]

We might state the picture as such. Whenever those outside of Christ die, their soul goes to Sheol—a holding place of the dead until final judgment. They maintain a character consonant with the kind of person they were in life. If they did not seek out the nature of goodness, the reality of truth, the depths of their own sinfulness in life, then they may become the kind of creature (saving the intervention of God’s grace) that continues to do so. In the final resurrection, God raises the just and the unjust from the dead, and fills all creation with his glory, beauty, and presence. When God is all-in-all, it will be impossible to shield one’s inmost being from the presence of the Good. One’s response to God’s presence at final judgment will seal (or reveal) one’s permanent, self-formed state. To the unjust, presence of God is painful.[15] This pain is God’s self-presentation to the conscience of humanity. Just as there is pain when we resist the tug of conscience, so the damned in hell are those whom God permits to obstinately and persistently his presence. While they acknowledge Jesus as Lord, they do so through gritted teeth, as it were—as most of us have said “you’re right” to friends who lovingly correct us from bitterness at their rightness. This creates a kind of internal disintegration, as Stump argues, insofar as one lives and wills in a way at odds with what their minds apprehend. This disintegration or self-at-odds-ness physically manifests in the breakdown of the body. The suffering of hell is the painful tension generated from beholding the purity of Goodness, the extent to which one falls short, and the refusal to admit one’s need fully and completely for healing (e.g. Raskolnikov). God sustains them in this state as an ongoing icon of the divine denunciation of the Son’s disfigurement in creation writ into the material conditions of the damned’s existence.

It is this final state that constitutes the eternality of hell: the fixity of will in the damned to resist the justice of God with clenched teeth. Like the sailors who hate Billy Budd in Herman Melville’s famous short story, the damned clench their teeth and curse God for being in the right. And their teeth get proverbially tighter and tighter in the face of God’s righteousness into eternity.

Every sin deserves eternal punishment not because it is intrinsically infinitely evil necessarily, but because it contains in itself the seed of a downward progression into the madness of evil. But make no mistake: this madness is self-imposed. Hence when someone says “well surely anyone who would choose such a thing is irrational and so cannot be held accountable”, they are simply wrong. The word “irrational” can be used in two different senses. The man who has no control over their rational capacities—the mentally disabled for instance—cannot be held accountable for what others who have such control can be. In that sense they are not capable of acting rationally. But the man who knows what he is doing is wrong and has control over his rational faculties is still acting against reason. The damned in hell are in the latter camp.

But perhaps you might say “okay, no one will persist in that state.” Really? Do you not know your own heart? Have you really not gritted your teeth in the face of someone’s goodness and said (with Jonah), “I hate that person for being a better/for delivering mercy/for their goodness.” Have you not experienced moral resentment? Apart from the grace of repentance, you and I would grit our teeth too—and consequently gnash them forever in outer darkness.

Just yesterday I communicated with an individual who said he had no interest in accurately representing people he disagreed with. When I asked him if he thought he could say he was genuinely seeking the truth, he balked. You might think “he wouldn’t balk forever"—but you’d have to ignore how sin calcifies in the soul. Smeagol becomes Gollum over time and, eventually, unable to tolerate the light.

The Gospel becomes sweet to us against this backdrop. And against this backdrop—against this recognition of what we deserve—Christ gives us healing balm for our souls. Against this backdrop, we are liberated to pray:

We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And if we can pray this, Christ will turn us from our own spiral into outer darkness and lead us into his marvelous light.

[1] Stewart et al., “The Psychophysiology of Guilt in Healthy Adults.”

[2] Stump, Atonement, 59–60.

[3] Ibid.,

[4] VandenBerg, “Shame, Guilt, and the Practice of Repentance: An Intersection of Modern Psychology with the Wisdom of Calvin.” See the sources she references in her article for the distinction between shame and guilt.

[5] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 155–95.

[6] Brown, “The First Evil Will Must Be Incomprehensible: A Critique of Augustine.”

[7] See the concept of “Self-Forming Actions” in Kane, “Moral Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes and Freedom of Will.”

[8] Stoyles, “Aristotle, Akrasia, and the Place of Desire in Moral Reasoning.” See also Cagnoli Fiecconi, “Aristotle on the Structure of Akratic Action.” Some argue that akratic action is impossible and prefer various interpretive strategies, including arguing for weakness of will as the true phenomena akrasia mistakenly names Jackson, “Weakness of Will.” Others see a close association, as in Mele, “Weakness of Will and Akrasia.” Still others attempt to assert that we might choose in accordance with a narrower judgment rather than our more comprehensive best judgment to preserve the link between rational choice and judgement as in Sebo, “Multiplicity, Self-Narrative, and Akrasia.” Yet such attempts, to my mind, ultimately fail. We know instances of choosing things which we both know are bad for us to choose, we know will end poorly, and yet we neglect these in choosing them anyway. One might, as Sebo does, say that we are choosing in accordance with a narrow judgment over and against the more comprehensive one. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless the case that we choose to attend to the narrow judgment. In other words, it is the choice to focus on that narrow judgment itself which explains why we act in accordance with that narrow judgment.

[9] Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance.” See also Rosen, “Culpability and Ignorance”; Levy, “Culpable Ignorance and Moral Responsibility: A Reply to FitzPatrick.”

[10] Mason, “Moral Ignorance and Blameworthiness,” 3041.

[11] Robichaud, “On Culpable Ignorance and Akrasia.”

[12] Lynch, “Willful Ignorance and Self-Deception.”

[13] Neil Campbell, “Self-Forming Actions, Contrastive Explanations, and the Structure of the Will,” Synthese 197, no. 3 (2020): 1225–40; See also Robert Kane, “Libertarianism,” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 144, no. 1 (2009): 35–44.

[14]See Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity.

[15] See Metallenos, “Paradise and Hell in the Orthodox Tradition.” See also Egan, “Hell: The Mystery of Eternal Love and Eternal Obduracy.” I do not agree with the dichotomy Metallenos sets between “punishment” and “natural consequence.” God sustains those facing his full presence in being by a divine act of conservation. Thus, he chooses to sustain the damned in his presence; this seems to me a willed punishment.

What we have seen thus far is that the Anglican priesthood has affirmed a sacramental re-presentation of the true body and blood of Christ via bread and wine. Thus, both Roman Catholics and Anglicans agree that the Eucharist makes present the very body and blood of Christ, and that this very body and blood is received by the faithful. We disagree, however, on the notion that the mass can be offered as the kind of sacrifice which wins merit that releases the temporal debt of the faithful (either of the living or the dead). What Roman Catholics must maintain in order to sustain the argument of Apostolicae Curae, then, is that a valid Priesthood requires the intent to consecrate ministers which offer up the mass as a sacrifice so as to accrue merit which releases temporal debt. They must also maintain that the mass requires the intent to consecrate priests who confect the Eucharist such that transubstantiation is entailed. In this chapter, we will examine the former claim, and in the next chapter we will examine the latter. I will argue that, given Rome’s recognition of Eastern Orthodox holy orders, they cannot maintain that a valid Priesthood depends on consecrating propitiating priests—by which I will denote those priests who offer up the mass in order to accrue merits for the lessening of temporal punishment.

First, I will examine the Eastern Orthodox notion of the Eucharist, examining public confessions and turning to secondary writers. Then, I will seek to ascertain the role and function of the Eucharist in the patristic era. An examination of these sources will show why the notion of a propitiating priesthood is not essential to possessing valid holy orders.

3.1 – Τhe Eastern Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice

According to Philip Schaff, there are two main public confessional documents that give anything like an “official” voice to the Eastern Orthodox view of the Eucharist. What we find is that while there is an affirmation of something very close to transubstantiation, the system of merit presumed by a propitiating priesthood is entirely absent. To show this, we will focus on the Eastern conception of post-mortem cleansing and their concept of the Eucharist.

The Confession of Peter Mogila of 1643 was written in response to both Jesuit missionaries from France and Protestants, defining the Eastern church in its distinctives.[1] Drawn up initially by Peter Mogila, the metropolitan of Kieff, it found acceptance at the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672.[2] The key distinctives of the East displayed here include a decidedly non-retributive version of post-mortem cleansing and even the possibility of post-mortem salvation. The English of §66, reproduced from Schaff,[3] are translated by Lodville as such[4]:

It is nowhere taught in the holy Scriptures that there is any temporary Punishment, whereby the Soul, after Death, may be purged. On the contrary, the Church, in the second Council of Constantinople, did condemn Origen for this very Opinion. Moreover, it is evident that the Soul, when once departed, cannot again become a partaker of the Sacraments of the Church. Could this be, that the Soul could satisfy there for Sins committed in this Life, then, by like Reason, it might partake of the Sacraments of Penance there ; which being contrary to orthodox Doctrine, the Church rightly and wisely offers the unbloody Sacrifice for those Souls, together with her Prayers, that they may be forgiven those things wherein they had offended , whilst they continued in this Life : And not that they might be delivered from any Punishment that they were then suffering for a Time only. Church doth not admit or approve of such Fables as some Men have fancied concerning the State of Souls after Death ; as that they are tormented in Pits and Waters, and with sharp Prongs, when they are snatched away by Death before they can have done sufficient Penance for their Faults.

The text states that there is nothing in Scripture concerning temporary punishments and even states (whether rightly or wrongly) that this opinion represents a condemned opinion of Origen’s. Yet it affirms that the church wisely and rightly offers the “unbloody sacrifice” of the mass for the dead. How can it affirm this? To understand the claim, we need to read the immediately preceding sections 64-65. The text of §64 is produced by Schaff[5], reads[6]:

Read more

Christian Wagner and I have been engaged in a cordial back-and-forth in reply to my comparison of the Finite Roman mass and the Infinite Anglican Mass. His article does a good job replying without burning straw-men, so it certainly merits a response.

First, it will be helpful to state the common framework upon which we agree to more precisely locate the disagreement and specify my critique. We both agree that in sin, God’s honor is distorted in the cosmos. His honor consists in giving the glory due to him—displaying the divine nature to the world in our actions, affects, etcetera. In light of wronging him, satisfaction is owed the offended. For the same reason that, if I wrong someone, I ought to do more than just doing the thing I ought to have done (e.g., I should get my wife flowers or the like if I fail to keep some promise as well as making good on the promise), so God is owed satisfaction that compensates for the wrong doing.

Furthermore, we both agree that in principle, man can merit things from God given the right definition of the word “merit”. Bp. Davenant argues that the Augustinian sense of this word is acceptable, even though Protestants generally resist using this category for reasons of pastoral discipleship. But conceptually, we both agree that through grace, man can merit certain gifts from God. For instance, through grace empowering prayer, man merits certain graces answerable to the prayer— “merit” here denoting a fitness between God’s response and our action established a) from the gracious covenant God has made with man and/or b) in proportion to the dignity of the work (e.g. “the prayer of a righteous man effects much”).

Further, we also agree that in the case of a meritorious cause, the gift merited for another may be impeded by the condition of that other. Hence, if I pray for repentance for someone, it can be the case that the condition of that other can impede the grace prayed for and even merited by my prayer. We also agree on the distinction between proximate and remote reasons for why a certain grace merited by one for another might not be received for that other. For instance, Christ could very well by grace remove the disposition that prevents the grace merited by prayer from being efficacious; remotely, it would be true that the reason such merited grace was not efficacious was the will of Christ, while proximately it will be the condition of the person.

Wagner attempts to apply this to the logic of satisfaction. In the atonement, Christ merits infinite graces owing to the infinite dignity of the gift offered to the Father—his Love, displayed in his Passion. But when that Love is re-presented in the Mass, the Mass is finite on several levels. We would agree that it is finite relative to certain graces by the will of Christ. For instance, Christ merits the grace of remission of sin for all people, but he does not wish to actualize that grace. Consequently, he does not wish to distribute that grace in the Mass even if he merits it. Wagner argues this equally applies to the propitiatory value of the Mass—the value of the Mass to remit the temporal punishments owed to someone.

However, as Wagner knows, not all meritorious causes work alike. My prayer may merit the grace of repentance for someone outside of Christ, but that does not operate by way of satisfaction. Meritorious causes and satisfactory acts cannot be strictly reduced to one another.

Aquinas:

I answer that, Satisfactory punishment has a twofold purpose, viz. to pay the debt, and to serve as a remedy for the avoidance of sin. Accordingly, as a remedy against future sin, the satisfaction of one does not profit another, for the flesh of one man is not tamed by another's fast; nor does one man acquire the habit of well-doing, through the actions of another, except accidentally, in so far as a man, by his good actions, may merit an increase of grace for another, since grace is the most efficacious remedy for the avoidance of sin. But this is by way of merit rather than of satisfaction. on the other hand, as regards the payment of the debt, one man can satisfy for another, provided he be in a state of charity, so that his works may avail for satisfaction. Nor is it necessary that he who satisfies for another should undergo a greater punishment than the principal would have to undergo (as some maintain, who argue that a man profits more by his own punishment than by another's), because punishment derives its power of satisfaction chiefly from charity whereby man bears it. And since greater charity is evidenced by a man satisfying for another than for himself, less punishment is required of him who satisfies for another, than of the principal: wherefore we read in the Lives of the Fathers (v, 5) of one who for love of his brother did penance for a sin which his brother had not committed, and that on account of his charity his brother was released from a sin which he had committed. Nor is it necessary that the one for whom satisfaction is made should be unable to make satisfaction himself, for even if he were able, he would be released from his debt when the other satisfied in his stead. But this is necessary in so far as the satisfactory punishment is medicinal: so that a man is not to be allowed to do penance for another, unless there be evidence of some defect in the penitent, either bodily, so that he is unable to bear it, or spiritual, so that he is not ready to undergo it. -Supplement, q13.a2

Further, in the Sacra Theologica Summa, we read:

Also, merit differs from impetration and satisfaction. For merit moves another by means of service; but impetration by means of a humble profession of one’s own need and the request for mercy; satisfaction moves by means of compensation for an offense against another. Hence, just as impetration implies need, so satisfaction implies an offense. But merit prescinds from both of these. (Severino González Rivas, Sacrae Theologiae Summa IIIB: On Grace · On the Infused Virtues, trans. Kenneth Baker (Saddle River, NJ: Keep the Faith, 2014 p.222-223)

How exactly does satisfaction work? Satisfaction can be both congruous and condign. That is to say that satisfaction which one man offers for another works in proportion to the charity offered. If someone does a work with a certain amount of charity for another, and someone does a work with a greater amount of charity for another, it would violate justice to remit simply the same amount of temporal punishment. Hence we read the following in the Sacrae:

The satisfaction we are talking about in the thesis, we say is not only congruous (de congruo), but also condign (de condigno). This is because we are defending the idea that the compensation offered for satisfaction is equivalent morally to paying the penalty. In fact, this is a common and certain opinion, opposed to the error of de Bay, which was condemned by Pius V: “When by almsgiving and other good works of penance we make satisfaction to God for temporal punishment, we do not offer a worthy price to God for our sins..., but we do something, in view of which the satisfaction of Christ is applied and communicated to us” (D 1959). And again: “Laborious satisfactions of those who are justified are of no avail to expiate in a condign manner the temporal punishments remaining after the fault has been remitted” (D 1977). However theological reasoning proves it: for, a just man can merit condignly an increase of grace and glory; therefore a fortiori he will be able to satisfy condignly for the temporal punishment of sins…178. Scholium 3. On vicarious satisfaction. There is a common and certain opinion which holds that a just man can satisfy condignly also for the punishments that must be paid by another wayfarer after his sin has been forgiven. And this concerns satisfaction in the strict sense, not just about a prayer or merit. This is certain from the dogma of the communion of saints and is implicitly contained in the dogma concerning purgatory, since it includes the affirmation of the possibility of aiding the souls detained there by the suffrages of the just; for, suffrages are satisfactions, if we want to speak strictly. A just man can also make satisfaction for a sinner in a congruous way. See S.Th., Suppl. q. 13, a. -Joseph A. de Aldama et al., Sacrae Theologiae Summa IVA: On the Sacraments in General · On Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance and Anointing, trans. Kenneth Baker (Saddle River, NJ: Keep the Faith, 2015) pp.532-533

I am not aware that congruous vicarious satisfaction is ever such that less is given to the dignity of the gift offered.

Can the offended justly not remit the offense in accordance with the dignity of the gift accepted? While Occam seems to think so, there are a couple of reasons to deny this. To see this, we need to understand the logic of the atonement.

Aquinas rightly states:

I answer that, He properly atones for an offense who offers something which the offended one loves equally, or even more than he detested the offense. But by suffering out of love and obedience, Christ gave more to God than was required to compensate for the offense of the whole human race. First of all, because of the exceeding charity from which He suffered; secondly, on account of the dignity of His life which He laid down in atonement, for it was the life of one who was God and man; thirdly, on account of the extent of the Passion, and the greatness of the grief endured, as stated above (III:46:6). And therefore Christ’s Passion was not only a sufficient but a superabundant atonement for the sins of the human race; according to 1 John 2:2: “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”

Reply to Objection 1. The head and members are as one mystic person; and therefore Christ’s satisfaction belongs to all the faithful as being His members. Also, in so far as any two men are one in charity, the one can atone for the other as shall be shown later (Supplement:13:2). But the same reason does not hold good of confession and contrition, because atonement consists in an outward action, for which helps may be used, among which friends are to be computed. -ST III.q48.a2

Now, if Christ properly gave more than what was required for the salvation of all, why are not all saved? Wagner correctly points out that though Christ merits the graces that would result in the salvation of all, he wills not to actualize those graces in accordance with the Divine Wisdom and providence that orders the world unto the display of God’s glory. Fair enough. But why can’t this be the case with the merits distributed to the people?

In the sacrifice of the Mass insofar as it touches the remission of temporal punishments, what we have is not a case of a meritorious cause as such but we have an instance of satisfaction.

Atonement works, as Aquinas says, when the offended is offered something which the offended loves equally or more. Christ offers his charity to the Father, and that avails for all Christ’s own because Christ and his people constitute one mystic person. Now, that doesn’t yet answer the question, since that Christ and his people constitute one mystic person does not equate to an equality of graces poured out on Christ and his people. Rather, given this—given that what Christ offers by way of satisfaction to the Father is an infinitely dignified gift on account of those who are united to him—would it violate the principles of strict justice to not remit the temporal punishments owed given that what Christ offers in the Mass is of infinite value. Christ would be free to offer something that is not of infinite value. He would not have impugned justice in any way whatsoever had he done so—we cannot begrudge his generosity, and strictly speaking we all merit hell. But given the dignity of the gift offered the offended and the divine acceptation of the gift for the members, can the Father operating in accordance with justice give less than what that gift merits (he often gives more than what our merits deserve on account of our union with Christ, but does he ever give less?).

The issue is this: in the act of satisfaction, in which a gift is offered to the offended, can the offended justly not remit the offense in accordance with the dignity of the gift accepted? The offended can of course choose to repudiate the compensatory gift (at least in theory). But if that gift is accepted, can the offended then choose to not remit temporal punishments in accordance with the dignity of that gift offered? We argue this would violate the demands of strict justice.

This is why I brought up an analogue to Baptism in the first place. Wagner argues that charity remits temporal punishment in Baptism by way of formal infusion by the Holy Spirit. But presumably, this is because the charity infused in us by grace is of itself of infinite dignity since it is the charity of Christ that is infused into us. And in that case, it is presumably not the fact of its being formally infused as such that remits all temporal punishments owed, but the fact of its infinite dignity and the divine acceptation of the dignity of the thing infused. And it is the grace of what is infused that condignly merits remission of all punishment.

Addressing Wagner’s Replies

Objection 1. Sean: “The limitation on the remission of temporal punishment doesn’t apply to the newly baptized so long as they have faith whatsoever… For the exact same reason this should apply in Baptism — since it is the life of Christ, who is the God-Man and thus whose life is always infinitely more lovely than sin is ugly — it should apply here.”

Response. Indirectly, this argument proves too much. Each of the ends of the Mass takes place in virtue of the infinite charity of Christ in His life and Passion, i.e., such is their meritorious cause. Hence, if we were to argue that propitiation takes place in an infinite degree for such and such an individual, then we would also have to argue the same for the other fruits of the Mass. Yet nobody admits this as a consequence. Hence, the argument fails.

I do not think this response works. As we have covered, what is at stake in this debate is not the meritorious nature of the Mass, but its satisfactory nature. And satisfaction works by offering the offended something equally or more lovable than the offense.

Now, why does Baptism remit all sin? Because by Baptism, one is incorporated into Christ in which such incorporation redounds to oneness between Christ and his members. And we see several (ultimately convertible, I think) grounds for the remission of temporal punishments in the Summa:

“On the contrary, Ambrose commenting on Romans 11:29: “The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance,” says: “The grace of God requires neither sighs nor groans in Baptism, nor indeed any work at all, but faith alone; and remits all, gratis.”

I answer that, As the Apostle says (Romans 6:3-4), “all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death: for we are buried together with Him, by Baptism unto death”; which is to say that by Baptism man is incorporated in the very death of Christ. Now it is manifest from what has been said above (III:48:4; III:49:3) that Christ’s death satisfied sufficiently for sins, “not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world,” according to 1 John 2:2. Consequently no kind of satisfaction should be enjoined on one who is being baptized, for any sins whatever: and this would be to dishonor the Passion and death of Christ, as being insufficient for the plenary satisfaction for the sins of those who were to be baptized.

Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says in his book on Infant Baptism (De Pecc. Merit. et Remiss. i), “the effect of Baptism is to make those, who are baptized, to be incorporated in Christ as His members.” Wherefore the very pains of Christ were satisfactory for the sins of those who were to be baptized; just as the pain of one member can be satisfactory for the sin of another member. Hence it is written (Isaiah 53:4): “Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” -ST. III.q68.a5

But consider that the form of such incorporation into Christ is charity. Hence Session VI.VII:

“the alone formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one’s proper disposition and co-operation. For, although no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification of the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ,”

If the sharing of merits from Head to members is the result of one’s incorporation into Christ, but the formal cause of such incorporation is charity infused at Baptism, then it follows that the sharing of merits from head to members is the result of infused charity, which is the formal cause of one’s incorporation into Christ. Hence, while it is true that Baptism does not remit sin by way either of a meritorious cause or of a satisfaction done for such forgiveness, it nevertheless is related to the satisfaction of Christ by making us a sharer in that satisfaction—a satisfaction that consists in the presentation Christ makes of his own charity to the Father, then communicated into the hearts of those united to Christ by the Spirit. Baptism makes us sharers in Christ’s satisfaction, which is efficacious to remit all sin by way of its infinite dignity.

But then, the Mass also does this in two ways. First, the satisfactory power of the Mass assumes a union between Head and members already (hence why, while it may merit graces for those outside of Christ, it does not make satisfaction except for those united to Christ ex opere operato—although it may make satisfaction indirectly for those outside of Christ by meriting the grace of repentance and thereby making them a sharer in atonement). By way of such a union already existing, the Head pleads that which is of infinite value for all those united to him by way of satisfaction, not merely merit. And for the same reason that it would be unjust to remit vicarious satisfaction offered for Billy by Bob done with more charity than that done by Sally for Billy, it does not make sense to say that the Father gives less remission than what the gift offered deserves by way of satisfaction. Second, by receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, we receive the very life of Christ and are further incorporated into him. That life infused into us through the Eucharist, as the life of the God-Man, is infinitely more lovely than sin is ugly. Hence Chrysostom:

“Wherefore it is necessary to understand the marvel of the Mysteries—what it is, why it was given, and what is the profit of the action. We become one Body, and members of His flesh and of His bones (Ephesians 5:30). Let the initiated follow what I say. In order, then, that we may become this not by love only, but in very deed, let us be blended into that flesh. This is effected by the food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love which He has for us. On this account He has mixed up Himself with us; He has kneaded up His body with ours, that we might be a certain one thing, like a body joined to a head. For this belongs to them who love strongly. Thus Job implied, speaking of his servants, by whom he was beloved so exceedingly that they desired to cleave unto his flesh. For they said, to show the strong love which they felt, ‘Who would give us to be satisfied with his flesh?’ (Job 31:31). Wherefore this also Christ has done, to lead us to a closer friendship and to show His love for us. He has given to those who desire Him not only to see Him, but even to touch and eat Him, and fix their teeth in His flesh, and to embrace Him, and satisfy all their love.

Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil, thinking on our Head and on the love which He has shown for us. Parents often entrust their offspring to others to feed; but I, says He, do not so. I feed you with My own flesh, desiring that you all be nobly born and holding forth to you good hopes for the future. For He who gives out Himself to you here, much more will do so hereafter. I have willed to become your Brother; for your sake I shared in flesh and blood, and in turn I give out to you the flesh and the blood by which I became your kinsman.

This blood causes the image of our King to be fresh within us, produces beauty unspeakable, permits not the nobleness of our souls to waste away, watering it continually and nourishing it. The blood derived from our food becomes not at once blood, but something else; while this does not so, but straightway waters our souls and works in them some mighty power. This blood, if rightly taken, drives away devils and keeps them afar off from us, while it calls to us Angels and the Lord of Angels. For wherever they see the Lord’s blood, devils flee and Angels run together. This blood poured forth washed clean all the world; many wise sayings did the blessed Paul utter concerning it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This blood cleansed the secret place and the Holy of Holies. And if the type of it had such great power in the temple of the Hebrews, and in the midst of Egypt when smeared on the door-posts, much more the reality.

This blood sanctified the golden altar; without it the high priest dared not enter into the secret place. This blood consecrated priests; this, in types, cleansed sins. But if it had such power in the types, if death so shuddered at the shadow, tell me, how would it not have dreaded the very reality? This blood is the salvation of our souls. By this the soul is washed; by this it is made beautiful; by this it is inflamed. This causes our understanding to be more bright than fire and our soul more beaming than gold. This blood was poured forth and made heaven accessible.”

The analogue between a meritorious cause and a satisfaction does not obtain in this case. Even if one argues that satisfaction is a species of a meritorious cause, not all meritorious causes operate the same way. The central question here is the precise one of whether the gift offered for another (and infused into us—Christ himself) can ever satisfy for less punishment than its condign worth.

Objection 2. This contradicts the view of SS. Thomas Aquinas, Robert Bellarmine, etc., that it is the limited devotion of the ministers which limits the fruits of the Mass.

Response. When reasons are assigned for things, we may assign either more proximate or more remote and ultimate reasons. Hence, e.g., when we speak of the justification of a man, we may speak of it either as from his faith (more proximate) or from the predestinating will of God (more remote and ultimate). In a similar way, we can speak of both the limitation of ministers and the sovereign will of Christ as reasons for the limited fruits of the Mass, yet the latter is ultimate. The liberty of Christ is exercised in accordance with the laws of prudence and in a reasoned manner. Hence, He limits the fruits of His offering in accordance with reasonable considerations (e.g., the devotion of the ministers). Hence, it would be better to speak of Christ limiting the fruits of His Passion in light of the fervor of the offerer than to speak of the fervor of the offerer limiting the fruits of His Passion.

As argued above, it is true that we can assign different causes or reasons for different things in accordance with remoteness or proximity. Christ might merit infinite grace, but only choose some of those graces to which he is entitled to distribute in the world. Hence, it might be the case that Christ merited in a certain sense the grace of repentance for a given non-elect person, but that grace is inhibited by their own resistance; and yet, remotely, Christ willed to limit the grace of repentance in light of the degree of resistance, rather than the degree of resistance limiting the grace of repentance.

But as argued, we are dealing with the specific issue of satisfaction. And it is true that Christ could have offered something less worthy than himself for the sins of the world. But he in fact did not. And he does not offer something merely finite in any Mass. That his charity is always part of the gift that is offered is evident from the fact that the charity of the Church would not have efficacy unless joined to the charity of Christ in the first place. But the problem is this: if it is the case that such charity is infinitely valuable in whatever degree it is offered—and it is if it is Christ’s, since it is the charity of the God-Man—then it follows that such charity, as part of the offering offered in the Mass, is an infinitely valuable gift offered on the altar in the mode of satisfaction.

There are a couple of ways one might argue against this. Taille, as already mentioned, documents that Suarez proposes a divine taxation. But the reason such a “taxation” is even necessary is because the gift offered in the Mass is of infinite value. As argued above, a sheer taxation of the gift offered in satisfaction is unprecedented. It argues that whereas it would be unjust for God to remit less temporal punishment proportionate to greater charity done on behalf of one for another in the case of a mere man satisfying for man, it is somehow just for God to do so with respect to Christ.

More commonly, Rome’s theologians appeal to the devotion of the offeror:

“In the second place, the value and efficacy of the Sacrifice are to be considered, inasmuch as the celebration of it is an act of the united Church, or, in other words, inasmuch as the priest in the name and by the commission of the entire Church performs this sacred function at the altar. The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the prayers of the Breviary form the principal part of public divine worship, which, by the ordinance and for the welfare of the Church, is conducted by ministers specially ordained and appointed for this purpose. At the altar the united Church offers and prays through the priest, her representative and delegate; there she presents to God the Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, of propitiation and petition. Under this aspect, the value and efficacy of the Sacrifice of the Mass is measured by the dignity, merit and sanctity of the Church. From this it follows that the value of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, inasmuch as the Church offers it, is always finite and limited, for at no time has she been nor can she be infinitely holy. It is self-evident that on the part of the Church the effects which follow the celebration of Mass are always limited as to degree and greatness. It must here be noted, however, that the Church, inasmuch as she offers the Holy Sacrifice and prays through the priest, cannot merit and satisfy, since for this is required a positive action or suffering of a person pleasing to God. But in the celebration of Mass, there is, on the part of the Church, no such positive activity, to which could be attached the power of meriting or satisfying. Accordingly, the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice by the Church has only impetratory power, that is, she can draw down graces and blessings from Heaven only by way of petition.” -Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained, trans. from the 6th German ed., 5th ed. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1921) pp.144

The argument here seems to be that even though the intrinsic dignity of the Mass is infinite by way of the Victim presented (Christ), the application is finite by way of impetratory application in proportion to the devotion of the Church. Hence we also read.

b) Next after Christ, and in the second place, comes the Church as a juridical person, who, according to the express teaching of the same Council, has received from her Divine Founder the institution of the Mass and also the commission constantly to ordain priests who will celebrate this most holy Sacrifice unto the end of time. St. Augustine speaks of “the daily sacrifice of the Church, who, being the body of the Head, offers up herself through Him.” As the Church is the “beloved Bride of Christ,” her daily sacrifice cannot but be agreeable to God, even though the celebrant should happen to be an unworthy priest; for, acting in his official capacity, even an unworthy priest offers a valid sacrifice, which, being the sacrifice of the Church as well as the self-sacrifice of Christ, remains essentially spotless and untarnished before God. From this point of view there are no private Masses, inasmuch as every Mass is offered in the name and by commission of the Church and therefore constitutes a solemn and public act of divine worship. “The sacred and holy Synod [of Trent] does not condemn, as private and unlawful, but approves of and therefore commends those Masses in which the priest alone communicates sacramentally, since those Masses also ought to be considered as truly common, partly because the people communicate spiritually thereat, partly also because they are celebrated by a public minister of the Church, not for himself only, but for all the faithful.” To this special sacrificial activity of the Church, offering up the Holy Sacrifice together with Christ, there corresponds as a special fruit an ecclesiastico-human merit, which, as De Lugo points out, is lost when Mass is said by an excommunicated or suspended priest, because such a priest no longer acts in the name and with the commission of the Church. We are compelled to concur in another view of Cardinal De Lugo, namely, that the value of the Mass is dependent on the greater or lesser holiness of the reigning pope, the bishops, and the clergy throughout the world. The holier the Church is in her members (especially the pope and the episcopate), the more agreeable must be her sacrifice in the eyes of God. The human merit of the Church in offering up the Sacrifice of the Mass is, therefore, an opus operans of the Church as such, and consequently, being independent of the worthiness of the celebrant and the faithful, constitutes for these an opus operatum, which has impetratory effects similar to those produced by the sacramentals.

c) With Christ and the Church is associated in the third place the celebrating priest, the representative through whom Christ offers up the sacrifice. If he be a man of great personal devotion, holiness, and purity, there will accrue an additional fruit, which will benefit himself and those in whose favor he applies the Mass. Hence the faithful are guided by a sound instinct when they prefer to have Mass celebrated by an upright and holy priest rather than by an unworthy one, since, in addition to the chief fruit of the Mass, they secure this special fruit, which springs ex opere operantis from the piety of the celebrant and is for them, therefore, an opus operatum.

d) In the fourth place must be mentioned those who take an active part in the Sacrifice of the Mass, e.g. the servers, sacristan, organist, singers, and, finally, the whole congregation. All these individuals are benefited in proportion to their personal disposition. The more fervent a prayer, the richer its fruit. Most intimate is the active participation in the sacrifice of those who receive holy Communion, since in their case the fruits of Communion are added to those of the Mass. (Joseph Pohle, The Sacraments: A Dogmatic Treatise, vol. 2, The Holy Eucharist, adapted and ed. Arthur Preuss, 6th rev. ed. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1930, pp.388-389

There are two problems with saying that the value of the Mass is limited by the charity of those offering. First, recall that the charity offered in the Mass is only efficacious in the manner of satisfaction because it is joined to Christ’s own charity. But Christ’s own charity exemplified in the Passion is of infinite value. Ergo, the offering of our charity joined to Christ’s cannot be less than Christ’s charity exemplified in the Passion. One might again posit a kind of “taxation” in which God taxes the value of the Mass offered by way of satisfaction, but that supposes God does with Christ’s charity that which he does to no one else’s: render to it less than what it deserves to remit for another in the manner of satisfaction.

And since satisfaction is only made for those who are united to the Head in mystical union, it only profits by way of satisfaction those in such a union—hence why it is not the case that everyone’s sins are forgiven throughout the world every time the Mass is offered.

Second, as argued before, we still have the issue of a plurality of sacrifices in the Mass offered for the forgiveness of sins as Taille seemingly admits (as argued in my last post). If sacrifice is that act in which the material Victim signifies an internal act of charity, then even if the Victim is the same, the instance of charity differs. And insofar as it is not the charity of the Victim exhibited in the Passion alone signified for the forgiveness of sins in the Mass, we do then indeed have multiple sacrifices made for the forgiveness of sins operative in the Mass. And yet this is precisely what Hebrews rejects, affirming that old covenant sacrifices for forgiveness were abolished because of their relative insufficiency to Christ’s sacrifice. But of course, all other sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins have the same relative relationship which caused their abolition per the argument of Hebrews. Hence Aquinas in his commentary on Hebres 10:18:

“Then when he says, and the Holy Spirit also bears witness to this, he confirms what he had said by citing and authority taken from Jeremiah (31:33). Since this text has been explained above in chap. 8, we pass over it at present. Yet it can be divided into two parts: first, he cites the authority; secondly, he argues from it (v. 18). He forms the following reason: Sins are remitted in the New Testament by Christ’s sacrifice, because the blood of Christ was shed for the remission of sins; therefore, in the New Testament, in which sins and iniquities are forgiven, as the authority indicates, there is no offering to be repeated for sins: ‘They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill’ (Mt. 9:12). Therefore, where there is forgiveness of sins, there is no longer any offering for sin. For this would be to demean Christ’s sacrifice.”

And Chrysostom in his homilies on Hebrews:

“But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us. He had said that those sacrifices are not offered; he reasoned from what is written and from what is not written; moreover, he also put forward the prophetic word which says, ‘Sacrifice and offering You would not.’ He had said that He had forgiven their sins. Again, this also he proves from the testimony of what is written: ‘For the Holy Ghost,’ he says, ‘is a witness to us: for after that He had said, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.”’ So then He forgave their sins when He gave the Covenant, and He gave the Covenant by sacrifice. If, therefore, He forgave sins through the one sacrifice, there is no longer need of a second.”

One might try to get around this by arguing that Christ’s sacrifice is the sole sacrifice which is a sine qua non for the efficacy of all other sacrifices for forgiveness in the new covenant. But this will not work. Old covenant sacrifices were also only efficacious through the blood of Christ. They also in that way were only efficacious because they were participatory. Yet that does not save them. Introducing an act of charity which is propitiatory that is anything other than that which Christ himself offers as the merit of his Passion is to offer another sacrifice—one that is relatively insufficient—and thus to do what Hebrews tells us is now obsolete.

Conclusion: Does this derogate the freedom of the Word?

Wagner’s argument rests on the assumption that the Word restricts the efficacy of satisfaction by his own free will. He may do this in view of the devotion of the ministers, but nevertheless it is his free choice to do so. He charges my own view with impugning the Word’s dignity of freedom.

But the opposite is the case: Wagner has impugned the dignity of the charity the Word offers in each Mass. The offering is not merely the devotion of the Church (and of course, Anglicans would simply deny our charity is offered for satisfaction at all). It is Christ’s alone.

This is not a limitation on the freedom of the Word because no one denies that the Word could have willed to only offer up sacrifices of finite value for the remission of punishment due us. But he didn’t. Wonder of wonders, the Word offers his own self and presents that self-offering in and under bread and wine. He could have simply limited the offering made at the Mass to a kind of finite viewing of the charity of the Church. But his Charity—the Charity of his Passion—is what is offered therein by way of satisfaction. And far from the Father giving less than what the satisfactory gifts satisfies for with respect to the members united to the Head, the Father gives what the satisfactory gift deserves: a remission of punishment consonant with the infinite worth of the Word’s self gift.

He did not have to. No demand of justice owed to us made him do it. And yet, out of his free love for us and for our salvation—the love of the supreme Head for the members, the Bridegroom for the Bride—his charity, always of infinite dignity, is what is offered in the Mass for us. And it is for that reason that what the Tridentine theologians falsely called heresy is true: all temporal punishments are remitted to the justified and thus through the means through which that justification is wrought for the members of the Righteous Head.