“Falsely Called Anabaptists”

Just a note to say that I added my Sacraments paper to my Papers page – “Falsely Called Anabaptists”: The Particular Baptist Doctrine of Baptism

Cur Deus Homo

The past couple of years, I’ve taken to celebrating Christmas with a bit of Athanasius, but I’ve done that twice in a row now, so here’s a bit of Anselm instead, taken from chapter three of book one of Cur Deus Homo.

Boso. Infidels ridiculing our simplicity charge upon us that we do injustice and dishonor to God when we affirm that he descended into the womb of a virgin, that he was born of woman, that he grew on the nourishment of milk and the food of men; and, passing over many other things which seem incompatible with Deity, that he endured fatigue, hunger, thirst, stripes and crucifixion among thieves.

Anselm.. We do no injustice or dishonor to God, but give him thanks with all the heart, praising and proclaiming the ineffable height of his compassion. For the more astonishing a thing it is and beyond expectation, that he has restored us from so great and deserved ills in which we were, to so great and unmerited blessings which we had forfeited; by so much the more has he shown his more exceeding love and tenderness towards us. For did they but carefully consider bow fitly in this way human redemption is secured, they would not ridicule our simplicity, but would rather join with us in praising the wise beneficence of God. For, as death came upon the human race by the disobedience of man, it was fitting that by man’s obedience life should be restored. And, as sin, the cause of our condemnation, had its origin from a woman, so ought the author of our righteousness and salvation to be born of a woman. And so also was it proper that the devil, who, being man’s tempter, had conquered him in eating of the tree, should be vanquished by man in the suffering of the tree which man bore. Many other things also, if we carefully examine them, give a certain indescribable beauty to our redemption as thus procured.

Merry Christmas!

A Bit More on Historical Continuity

As I mentioned before, since coming to Westminster, the glimpses of the catholicity of the Reformed faith that I’ve gotten have been about as eye-opening as the first bit of Dr. Horton’s Christian Mind class on covenant theology. It’s simply never come up in any of the little bits and pieces I’ve had of church history, and I can think of at least a couple of places where it would’ve fit in quite nicely, too. Today in MedRef, we learned about the debate between Radbertus and Ratramnus in the ninth century.

Radbertus and Ratramnus both wrote books around the early-middle of the ninth century (830s-840s) on the body and blood of Christ. The issue at hand was the Lord’s Supper. Radbertus put forward the groundwork for the doctrine that would later be known as transubstantiation — he argued that at consecration, Christ’s humanity is miraculously present in the Supper. He said that because Christ is God and because the Supper becomes Christ, he who eats the Supper has eternal life. The elements, however, do not change in corporeal substance and taste. As the Lutherans later would, he insisted that Hoc est corpus meum could only be taken literally — it did not at all mean a figure of the body.

Ratramnus wrote a response to Radbertus (incidentally, both of their books shared the same title) in 843 or 844. He wrote that the body in which Christ was conceived, born, crucified, and raised is the same body he possesses at the right hand of the Father. We eat it by faith, but that body is represented to us in a figure in the elements of the supper, which are not substantially changed at consecration. The elements are literally bread and wine, but to the soul they become the body and blood of Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit. Roughly 700 years later (give or take a few decades), John Calvin would put forward the same argument in his view on the Supper. During the Reformation, the works of both Radbertus and Ratramnus would be republished — the former by the Lutherans and the latter by the Reformed (Calvinists, not Zwinglians).

For years, like most of at least Protestant North America, church history was a sore spot — too Roman to be comfortable, and so I really didn’t know what to do with it. But really, that’s not how it was. At the risk of needlessly repeating myself, Protestants do have connections to the past and we don’t have to shuffle our feet and look away when Rome asks us where our faith was before Luther. The Reformed confession of faith is a catholic confession of faith. Did it exist in the way that we know it today? Of course not. But the groundwork was there. From the undeveloped covenant theology of the fathers to the (what would become) Calvinistic soteriology in Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Gottschalk to the Christology and doctrine of the Eucharist in Ratramnus — it’s there in history. We are simply standing on the shoulders of giants.

Historical Continuity

When you reject the current trend to “go beyond the Enlightenment to the church fathers” on the basis that that means someone wants to go beyond the Reformation, you imply one of two things: either there was a great apostasy after the last apostle died and the Reformation brought us back to where we were supposed to be or there is some level of innovation in the work of the Reformers. Either of these leave the average Christian with nothing to say when asked where our faith was before Luther.

I know because I speak with experience, so it was something of a surprise to learn in last term’s Puritanism class that the Puritans were concerned with the Vincentian canon (what is believed by all people in all places in all times). It was less of a surprise when that information was repeated the next week in my Ancient Church class, and by the time it was repeated again in yesterday morning’s Medieval and Reformation class, I’d gotten around to taking it for granted.

I have been enjoying learning how various aspects of our faith existed prior to the Reformation. We can see the beginnings of our covenant theology in the patristic authors (as I discussed here). And, of course, we’re familiar with the close ties of Calvinism to Augustine, but you’ve also got Prosper of Aquitaine at the time as well as Gottschalk four centuries later.

The point I wrote into my notes is this: the foundations of the Reformed faith existed in the 5th C and they continued through the medieval church. We have a claim on the medieval church — it doesn’t belong solely to Rome. As the semester continues, I’m looking forward to learning more details on our claim on the medieval church.