Sunday, July 14, 2024

Steven Nemes on the Theology of the Eucharist in Didache 14

  

Chapter 14 appears to contain an implicit reference to the Eucharist as a “sacrifice” (14:1-3). This language is drawn from Mal 1:11, which is cited in the Didache as follows: “In every place and time offer me a pure sacrifice, for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is marvelous among the nations” (14:3). Because the sacrifice must be pure, it should be preceded by a confession of sins while unreconciled persons in conflict are not to participate (14:1-2). But this fact cannot be taken as especially significant vis-à-vis the question of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the meal. One could not argue, for example, that the description of the Eucharist as a sacrifice implies its mysterious ontological identification with the event of Jesus’s self-offering on the cross. That is because there are many ways of understanding sacrifice.

 

The New Testament proposes that the whole life of a Christian be a sacrifice: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (12:1). Paul calls the gifts sent to him by the Philippian church to be “a fragrant sacrifice, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” (Phil 4:18). First Peter calls the churches to let themselves be “built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood,” and to offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5). And Hebrews exhorts to offering to God “a sacrifice of praise, . . . the fruit of lips that confesses his name” (Heb 13:15). Clement of Alexandria will even later say of the gnostic Christian that

 

his whole life is a holy festival. His sacrifices are prayers, and praises, and readings in the Scriptures before meals, and psalms and hymns during meals and before bed, and prayers also again during night. By these he unites himself to the divine choir, from continual recollection, engaged in contemplation which has everlasting remembrance. (Stromateis 7.7)

 

Christian activities are thus called “sacrifices” because they are actions undertaken with God in mind. They are intended to express devotion to him and to be pleasing in his sight. This means that everything the Christian does is or can be a sacrifice in the sense of being something done for God. This includes the memorial celebration of the Eucharist itself.

 

One might complain that such an understanding of Christian life as sacrifice undermines the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. But Andrew McGowan writes that “sacrifices had other purposes than the forgiveness of sins.” (McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 32) Chrisitan life or activity as sacrifice is not in competition with the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus’s sacrifice served the purpose of atoning for sin and making peace with God, whereas the sacrifice of Christian life complements and responds to this by offering of gratitude and obedience to God for the accomplishment of salvation by Christ’s sacrifice. The two sacrifices are of a different sort and thus not in competition with one another. (Steven Nemes, Eating Christ’s Flesh: A Case for Memorialism [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 102-3)

 

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