[soc.religion.christian] Sacrifice and Christian Liturgy

jhpb@granjon.garage.att.com (07/26/90)

More on the Sacrificial nature of the Liturgy.

There are a couple points to be made from the New Testament.  One has to
do with the words of institution in Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24, and Luke
22:20.  (This is from one of the Catholic Encyclopedia's articles on the
Mass.)

All three use the double present (participle and finite verb) in the
Greek, meaning that the time denoted is strictly the present.  The blood
thus being shed right then and there at the Last Supper:

    For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
    (Matt.) 

    This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
    (Mark)

    This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which is shed
    for you. (Luke)

This is borne out in a striking way by St. Luke's passage.  The Greek is
such that it requires connecting the shedding with the chalice, not the
blood, thus requiring the shedding in the present, and not the future.

I Cor. 10:18-20 offers another example:

    Behold Israel according to the flesh; are not they that eat of the
    sacrifices partakers of the altar?...  Do I say that what is offered
    in sacrifice to idols is any thing, or that the idol is anything?
    But the things which the heathens sacrifice they sacrifice to
    devils, and not to God.  And I would not that you should be
    partakers with devils.  You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord and
    the chalice of devils; you cannot be partakers of the table of the
    Lord and of the table of devils.

Just as the Jews and heathens had altars and sacrifices of which they
partook, so did the Christians.  St. Paul said that they could not be
partakers of both.

Another OT example is Melchisedech, offering a sacrifice of bread and
wine.  The Psalm says of the Christ, "Thou art a priest forever
according to the order of Melchisedech."

--------

The Eucharistic Liturgy is not another crucifixion of Christ, in which
He is killed again and again for sins.  He is not harmed at all.  He
can't be, for "Christ now dies no more."

What it is is the bringing of the Sacrifice of Calvary to the present,
crossing the bounds of time and space.

There is thus no problem with the one Sacrifice of Christ.  There was
indeed one Sacrifice offered for sins, the one at Calvary.  The Mass is
the bringing of this one same Sacrifice to souls.

In the Old Testament, God established public worship of Himself through
the system of the ritual sacrifices of the Old Testament priesthood.
This was a prefigure of the one Sacrifice of Christ, offered for the
Redemption of men.

God ordered sacrifices in the OT and Christ was sacrificed because it is
the highest form of worship of God.  Christ could have redeemed us by
saying a prayer, but He didn't, He sacrificed Himself, because that is
the most perfect act of religion: sacrifice.  Without sacrifice, the
public worship of God would be defective in the New Testament.

All Christians do indeed offer sacrifices to God.  But they are
figurative and spiritual sacrifices, not true and real sacrifices, like
that of the Cross.  These spiritual and figurative sacrifices are the
reason that all Christians can be considered priests.

Where to get a real and true Sacrifice for the New Testament, though?
The Sacrifice of the Cross cannot be surpassed in intrinsic value.

So what Christ did was to give us that Sacrifice, the very same.  It
is presented again and again to the Father and made present to us.  It
gives Christianity a form of public worship far surpassing anything that
was even dreamed of in the Old Testament -- the Sacrifice of God offered
to God.

------

The evidence of history in this regard is particularly clear, as I tried
to show in a previous posting.  A couple more examples:

St. Clement of Rome wrote:

    Our sin will not be small if we eject from the episcopate those who
    blamelessly and holily have offered its sacrifices.  (letter to the
    Corinthians, 44:4)

You can't get any closer to the New Testament than that, because Clement
was contemporary with at least St. John the Apostle.

Consider the beginning of canon number 18 of the Council of Nicea (325
AD):

    It has come to the attention of the holy and great council that in
    some localities and cities deacons give the Eucharist to presbyters,
    although neither the canon nor the custom permits those who do not
    offer sacrifice to give the Body of Christ to those who do offer the
    sacrifice.

Protestants and Catholics have both been faithful to their traditions
since the Reformation, roughly 500 years.  The early Church could be
faithful to Christ and the Apostles for 300, it seems to me.

The main problem underlying these discussions is not really how this
passage is interpreted, or that, but the underlying assumptions about
the nature of the Church.  Assuming universal gross historical errors
implies that the Church is modernistic, in the sense that, for instance,
the Fathers are supposedly the great orthodox teachers of their time,
but really don't know what they're talking about.

I would really rather discuss this assumption than anything else.  Other
issues are somewhat peripheral.

[Some comments on Luke 22:20, since you make a point of it.

Interestingly, there is some textual question about this passage.  One
copy of the RSV that I have omits it completely.  So does the NEB, I
believe.  However with the discovery of P75 (papyrus from about 200
AD) I don't think there's any serious doubt that the verse should be
there.  The major evidence is:

  for: P75 aleph A B C L T(vid) W
  against: D and several Old Latin MSS

Apparently there is no agreement among commentators as to whether it
is "This cup is the new covenant with my blood which is poured out for
you." (Anchor Bible) or "This cup that is poured out for you is the
new covenant in my blood" (NRSV).  "is poured out for you" matches
"cup" in case, but the sentence structure may be more consistent with
the other.  However since the whole point of the passage is to
identify the blood and the cup symbolically, I suspect that the author
saw them both poured out for us.  The term "poured out" is used
elsewhere in the NT both of pouring liquids and shedding of blood.
The Anchor Bible says that the present participle "is to be understood
as denoting 'a relatively future' action", i.e. "to be poured out".

--clh]