“Receptive Ecumenism” — The Sacraments, and the Fullness of the Gospel

I offer these comments – what can Evangelicals learn from Catholics — as an Evangelical. I speak to this theme as one who is at peace with my own tradition. I deeply value and appreciate the strengths and perspectives of my religious formation and upbringing. And I appreciate and affirm the theological emphases of this heritage.

But I also speak as one deeply indebted to perspectives and wisdom from the Catholic tradition that has, over many years, enriched my Christian journey.  Indeed, I would say that I am indebted — deeply so — to the gifts I have received along the way from the Catholic theological and spiritual tradition.   

In this regard, there are some inevitable limitations on my perspective. I do not speak as an insider. There are some things I will not get quite right; there is the danger that I will even potentially offend someone who is Catholic. But we need to take this risk. It is so good to see the growing movement known as “Receptive Ecumenism” that offers the observation that this is where ecumenism needs to go:  we can and must consider not only where we differ and try to manage or make sense of those differences, we also need to ask, “What can we learn from one another?” — and, of course, explore what we can learn together.

This perspective assumes the diversity of gifts that we each bring to the table.

Do we differ? Do we differ substantially? Yes, without doubt. Are the issues on which we differ matters that merit focused attention? Yes. What follows is not naïve to these differences; neither am I seeking to paper over differences. But I do come at this with a two-fold conviction. First, we are learners and need to be, learning from each other and with each other; we have the potential to enrich each other’s experience of Christ. And second, that our differences, however significant, should perhaps actually be approached through this lens — that is, perhaps we should address our differences even as we are learning from and with each other and in light of what we are learning from one another and what we are learning together. Perhaps this should be our point of departure.

I am also conscious of the fact that we are coming up to the 500th anniversary of the launch of the Protestant Reformation, in 2017.  And I wonder if this should be the focus of this year: how and in what ways might we look back and see not so much our differences as the ways in which we can learn from one and other and learn together.

To that end, here is what one Evangelical has and is learning from Catholic Christians. I will be autobiographical — and use this lecture as a way to say “thank you.”

1.  Sacramentality: the vital place of the sacraments in the worship and witness of the church.

I offer these observations in no particular order and yet, I am going to begin with what is perhaps most front and center and, in a sense, most obvious:  the centrality of the sacraments in Catholic worship, and by implication an appreciation of the place of the place of sacraments for the whole of the Christian faith and for Christian mission.  

While there is a definite stream of sacramentality within Protestantism, and without doubt, some (not all) Anglicans would insist they are sacramental, and while my own view of the sacraments has been most informed by John Calvin’s Institutes, there is no doubt that for most Evangelicals, their encounter with a more sacramental worship and spirituality comes through observations and experience of the Catholic world, and especially Catholic worship. When we instituted weekly Lord’s Supper/Eucharist at Tenth Church in Vancouver — a church community that is very much “evangelical”, we were accused of being Catholic! Even though both John Calvin and John Wesley advocated for weekly celebration of the Eucharist, the perception remains that a more sacramental orientation is a more “Catholic’” perspective and approach to worship. And indeed even in my own understanding, my reading of Calvin and Wesley was formative. But initially and in a continued sense, it is Catholic voices and perspectives that have called me to a greater appreciation of the sacraments in the life and witness of the church.

I grew up within a religious sub-culture that pitted evangelical worship as contra, almost the antithesis of Catholic sacramentality: we were very definitely not sacramental, and indeed, in a sense we were actually anti-sacramental.

I can truly say that I am grateful to Catholic voices that have helped me and many other Evangelicals come to a greater appreciation of the central principle of sacramental worship: that embodiment matters, that materiality is inherent in our way of being — that physicality in worship is essential to true worship; the sense that if it only happens in our heads and our hearts and does not happen in our bodies as well, then, perhaps, it does not “take” deeply and thoroughly. The great danger of Evangelical worship is that it could be entirely interior: either cerebral, rational and in the mind — something we merely think about — or mere sentimentality and nothing but good feelings. But Catholics challenge us to a full orbed and fully embodied worship. They remind us that grace, by its very nature, must be “bred in the bone” — embodied — if it is to have long term, transformational impact in our lives.

The sacramental traditions as a whole, and the Catholic tradition in particular help us to see the witness to embodiment in the Scriptures. They appreciate that baptism is essential to Christian discipleship (as is clear form Matthew 28:20 and Acts 2:38), and indeed that it is integral to the experience of coming to faith in Christ. They know and demonstrate that the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist is a “real time” encounter with the risen and ascended Christ.

In my Evangelical upbringing we were taught to “think” about Jesus when we came to the Lord’s Table. But what many of us have come to learn is that at the Table the Spirit brings us into a “real-time” encounter with the Ascended Christ, and that the sacraments are the very means by which the Spirit does the Spirit’s work in the life of the Christian and in the life of the Church.

Now I know of course, that everything I just said is very much in Calvin and Wesley. And yet, for many of us, not only did we not see it in the Scriptures, we did not even fully appreciate it in our own spiritual heritage … and for many of us, it was the Catholic vision of the Incarnation and the sacramental means of divine grace that altered the conversation.

2.   A Fuller Appreciation of the Gospel:  expanding our appreciation of the full scope of what God has accomplished (and is accomplishing) in Christ.

My own tradition tends to focus in its understanding of the salvation of God, on the Cross: at the Cross we know the salvation of God — through the atoning sacrifice wherein we know the forgiveness of our sins and thus the salvation of God. This, and in many respects only this, is the Gospel.   

I appreciate this emphasis and deep, core commitment. I value the hymnody and songs of my youth — of my heritage — that recognized and affirmed that in Christ and through faith in Christ, and in radical dependence on his unique work on the Cross, we know the salvation of God.  It is interesting to me that many who choose to criticize the Roman Catholic Church do so on the conviction that the Catholic Church, as they said, has “added” to the Gospel, and they use the book of Galatians, typically, to make this argument.

But when we read the whole NT, including of course the Gospels, we see that the Gospel of Christ Jesus includes, at the very least two other dimensions, also equally critical to a biblical appreciation of God’s saving work in Christ Jesus.

First, we see that the Cross of Christ was a means to an end: that we would be united with Christ. In the words of St. Paul: “Christ in you the hope of glory.”  While the seeds of this perspective are very much within my own tradition, it was actually — as it is for so many Evangelicals — an exposure to 16th century Catholic mystics that helped me see this, and then come back and discover it within my own tradition. The writings of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Ignatius Loyola — and the guided prayers of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius and with this the whole scope of Ignatian spirituality — brought me [and, as I say, so many other Evangelicals] to an appreciation that our salvation is not only a transaction that God procured for us at the Cross. It is that, of course, but it is not only that:  our salvation is, ultimately, union with Christ, and in union with Christ participation in the life of the Triune God.

Second, it is Catholic voices that helped me come to an appreciation of the following: that the Gospel includes and must include the Lordship of Christ over all things, over all Creation, and of course over my own life. The good news surely includes the following: that even now, God in Christ is reconciling all things to himself; and that thus we pray the prayer “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” knowing that Christ sits on the throne of the universe.   

My tradition tended to separate Christ as Savior from Christ as Lord, making a distinction between salvation and discipleship. This makes no sense. And I am grateful to monastic authors and spiritual masters who helped me to see (or influenced other voices that in turn helped me to see) that the only tragedy in life is the failure to become a saint [a line from Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory].

Let me draw on an Evangelical observation for a moment.   Back in the late 1970s, IVPress put out a seminal publication:   Richard Lovelace’s, Dynamics of Spiritual Life.  It included the very brief chapter that has, in part, make this book a defining statement for many of us:  he spoke of the “sanctification gap” – the lack, in Evangelical circles, of a genuine and biblical doctrine of sanctification and holiness.   In many respects his comments were an indictment; what he essential observed, from within Evangelicalism, was that we had a truncated doctrine of salvation.

And my observation is that if this “gap” is going to be adequately addressed, we need to be in conversation with, and more, learning from, our Roman Catholic counterparts.

My point here is this:  that we all believe the Gospel; but what might be a wonderful gift is that we have much to learn from one another on this score.

Next Time: Spiritual Wisdom, and the Intellectual Apostolate