part one
Sacraments
Great is the baptism that lies before you: the ransom of captives, the forgiveness of sins, the death of sin, the regeneration of the soul, the garment of light, the holy perpetual seal, a chariot to heaven, the delight of paradise, a welcome into the kingdom, the gift of adoption.
Cyril of Jerusalem Procatachesis 16
It is the Holy Spirit who effects with water the second birth, as a certain seed of divine generation. It is a consecration of a heavenly birth and the pledge of a promised inheritance.
Novatian Treatise Concerning the Trinity[1]
Faith and baptism are two kindred and inseparable ways of salvation: faith is perfected by baptism; baptism is established by faith, and both are completed by the use of the same names. As we believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so we are baptized into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Confession leads the way and brings us to salvation; baptism follows, setting the seal on our assent.
Basil of Caesarea On the Holy Spirit
one
BAPTISM
Entering the Worshiping Community
The Sacramental Mysteries
Some readers, particularly those from an evangelical background and perspective, may find themselves surprised, bewildered and perhaps troubled to discover that the church fathers thought, lived and worshiped sacramentally. That is to say, the fathers believed that God delights to use tangible, concrete, earthy meansâmatter itselfâto communicate his grace, redemption and presence to us, elements as simple and specific as bread, wine, water and oil. Sometimes this perspective is known today as sacramental realism.
The word sacrament (Lat. sacramentum) was borrowed by Latin Christian writers such as Augustine from its common use in the Western Latin world; in a Roman context sacramentum was the term employed for the oath sworn by a candidate entering the military service. Because entrance into Roman military service included religious rituals and sacrifices, sacramentum possessed religious connotations, non-Christian though they were.[2]
With the passage of time Latin fathers began to use sacramentum in a specifically Christian sense and related its meaning to the Greek word mysterion.[3] Sacramentum never lost its pagan Roman overtones, however, in terms of obligations taken under oath. To enter the church in baptism was to accept certain clear and distinct obligations and to profess a commonly held faith.[4] As we will see, baptism was serious businessâboth joyful and solemn.
Why would the church fathers embrace a sacramental worldview, a way of viewing the world that seems strange and counterintuitive, at least from an Old Testament perspective? Are we not a step awayâif not closerâto the heinous sin of idolatry? Isnât the attempt to merge the divine with the material idolatryâs foundation stone? One can imagine an Israelite carpenter fashioning an image out of wood or stone and quickly encountering the wrath and sarcasm of Isaiah. âTo whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it. A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot. He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not toppleâ (Is 40:18-20). To unite or combine the realm of the Spirit with the realm of the material, then, appears deeply troublingâboth foolish and dangerousâfrom a biblical perspective.
So again we have to ask the question, why would the church fathers clearly and openly affirm that God has chosen to draw near to us through the medium of his own creation? There is only one safe, solid, coherent answer: Jesus Christ. In the incarnation of the eternal Word we discern the rhyme and reason of the sacraments. In the wondrous, mysterious, divine-human person nestled in the Virgin Maryâs womb, we encounter the sacramental principle. The eternal Word, the Son of God, has humbly joined his nature to the human nature trustfully and lovingly offered to him by Mary. In Christ the divine and human, the immaterial and the material, the Spirit and the flesh, are married. Who would have thought that such a wonder was possible?
The incarnation, then, is the bedrock upon which all sacraments are built. The sacramental principleâGod wills, indeed, delights in using tangible, earthy means to draw near to his image bearersâis grounded on the Word made flesh. John of Damascus captures this principle well:
I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked. . . . I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace. Is not the thrice-precious and thrice-blessed wood of the cross matter? Is not the holy and august mountain, the place of the skull, matter? Is not the life-giving and life-bearing rock, the holy tomb, the source of the resurrection, matter? Is not the ink and the all-holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and tablets and bowls are fashioned? And, before all these things, is not the body and blood of our Lord matter?[5]
Those grounded in the tradition of the fathers believe that to reject a sacramental worldview is to cut oneself off from the very means God has ordained for human growth and flourishing. Theophan the Recluse, a nineteenth-century Russian Christian and spiritual father of the Orthodox Church, puts it this way: to ârejectâ the ânatural meansâ of the sacraments is similar to âsomeone who wants to cross a river by means of some spiritual power, while boats and bridges are at his disposal. Such a person will wait in vain for the power of the Spirit. And while others cross to the other side, he will be left on the riverbank, alone.â A sacrament, Theophan comments, âis like a framework that supports oneâs inner attitude and ensures its stability.â[6]
Both Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa emphasize that the sacraments are indissolubly linked to âthe historical economy of salvation in the events of the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.â[7] For instance, when the fathers contemplate the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist (the Lordâs Supper), they interpret them through the lens of the biblical narrative from beginning to end. If God has chosen to use water in baptism to signify redemption and re-creation in Christ, it should not surprise us to find the fathers mining the Old Testament references to water for deeper redemptive, christological meaning.
The apostle Paul himself provides the pattern for this Christ-centered reading of Scripture. Paul teaches that key events in the exodus experience of Israel were themselves a kind of baptism. The food (manna) and water providentially provided for Israel in the wilderness came from Christâs presence with them. âThey were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christâ (1 Cor 10:2-4).
Key figures, events and practices in the covenantal history of Israel prefigured the fulfillment of Godâs purposes in Christ. The type (Gk. typos) of the Red Sea, for instance, finds its eschatological and sacramental fulfillment in the waters of baptism as the age to come invades this present evil age. Peter links the protection of Noah and his family within the ark to the protection baptism offers. âIn [the ark] only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you alsoânot the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward Godâ (1 Pet 3:20-21).
Augustine provides a well-known definition of a sacrament: a sacrament is âa visible form of an invisible grace.â[8] Irenaeus speaks of the sacraments as âthe mysterious operations of God.â Chrysostom refers to them as âspiritual realities under sensory signs,â grace-filled wonders that âbring to pass what they signify . . . and make visible.â They are âthe invisible in the visible.â[9]
The sacraments of the church are not magical rites, divorced from the faith of the person receiving them. âThey are like fire: if the wood is dampâthat is, if the soul is passion ridden, the inner warmth does not make itself felt immediately after receptions of the sacrament.â[10] The sacramentsâ pattern and efficacy are based on faithâfaith in Godâs actions in history on our behalf, that God in Jesus Christ is presently reigning in the midst of this present evil age. The fathers ponder Godâs actions in history as related in the narrative of the Bible and build their sacramental worldview on this biblical basis. Thus the sacraments are both biblical and eschatological in nature. God has invaded this present evil age in Christ, and the sacraments communicate that reality to believers. Hence, a sacrament is a lively, living remembering of the holy Trinityâs loving actions for human beings, âthe bringing of the past into the present before Godâs (and not primarily menâs) eyes, so that He may remember, act, and make his people walk forward from the covenant towards the end of the ages.â[11] Indeed, the fathersâ linking of sacramentum with Paulâs use of mysterion indicates their clear awareness that âthe plan of salvation eternally hidden in God,â the Lordâs divine secret, has now been ârevealed in and by Christ.â[12] This is the mystery now revealed in the âeconomy.â
Latin writers such as Ambrose connect sacramentum and mysterion in phrases such as sacramenta mysteriorum and mysteria sacramentum. In these phrases the sacramentum designates what we can see, for instance bread and wine, while the mysterion is the interior aspect of the sacrament, the spiritual reality the sacrament is conveying and communicating. âThe sacramenta introduce us to the mysteria and, in turn, the mysteria make us understand the outer sign, the sacramenta.â One reality functions as âa sign of another,â an âefficacious signâ which wondrously, mysteriously, sacramentally communicates what it signifies.[13] There is âa force in the sacrament,â a power communicated by the Holy Spirit, so that the sacrament actually âproduces the signified effect.â[14]
Two Key Sacraments: Baptism and the Eucharist
In the first two chapters of this book, I want to focus on the fathersâ fruitful reflection and teaching on two key sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist. The fathers view baptism as the door through which one enters the church and receives the life of salvation. It is the great initiatory rite of the church. In turn, it is the Eucharist that early Christians viewed as âa key component in the continued development of the believer and a central element in Christian worship.â[15] Boris Bobrinsky comments on the âbipolarity of baptism and the Eucharist. . . . This bipolarity . . . signifies in particular that every baptism tends toward the Eucharist as to its fullness, and that every Eucharist finds its source in baptism, as in the entrance door of the world to the Church.â[16]
Both baptism and the Eucharist are concrete, grace-filled, earthy means God employs to communicate central themes of the gospel narrative and the overarching biblical story to the mind and body of a Christian. Henry Chadwick speaks of Christians gathering together on the pattern of the Jewish synagogue, but to celebrate a new covenant in continuity with the old. In âwater, bread, and wineâ the church possessed âcovenant signs . . . means of divine grace and . . . ordered rites which provide both form and vitality to the disorder of human life.â[17] In early Christian worship, believers communed with God through âa pattern of symbolic words and actions through which the presence of the Lordâ was âexpressed.â[18]
We should not overlook the ethical dimension of churchâs sacramental life. To be baptized and to share in the Eucharist entailed a definite âyesâ to Christ and ânoâ to sin. In a word, the renunciations involved in baptism, âdramatically reinforced by exorcism, affected peopleâs jobs.â[19] For the baptized, certain activities and vocations were off limits.
A married man who also had a concubine or mistress or slept with his slave-girls had to change his ways. A priest serving idols could not so continue. (It is instructive that there were applications from people employed in this way.) Actors and actresses, who in antiquity were mostly slaves, or professional gladiators had to find different work, raising inevitable questions about trying to finance emancipation, perhaps with help from the church chest. In general th...