Sacred Texts of Mideast Traditions - Sacrament and Worship


Are traditional practices of Christian worship useful and useable today?

Doctrine of Transubstantiation

	Source: Devotional Manuals
Augustine / Aquinas / Francis De Sales
John Calvin
Johanne Arndt


Francis De Sales: Introduction to the Devout Life You are what you eat
How is a sense of overwhelming awe and all-consuming engagement possible if attendance at mass is a daily habit? How must one prepare one's heart and mind in order to guarantee such concentrated attention - as if one's life depended on it - to the sacrament? Because one's true 'life', one's religious life does indeed depend on the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist. Confession, penitence, and preparatory mediation... and listening intently to the words of the mass and ingesting the Eucharist elements... feed, cultivate and produce religious self. Valuing participation over study or preaching Boundaries of body and soul are not absolute, permeable. Spiritual and physical elements provide food to both parts of human. Ingestion brings salvation. Christ lives within. Frequent communion is not just beneficial, it is necessary for spiritual life.

Augustine: Material object with the word - invocation of the Spirit

Aquinas: The Word made flesh by a word changes true bread into flesh, and wine becomes the blood of Christ; and if sense suffices to make the sincere heart firm [in believing it].

Calvin: Not practice but word Theologically: Preaching of the Gospel the central act of Christian worship. Sacrament is another help, an afterthought. Practically: [about baptism and the Lord's Supper] It is life-giving... All who communicate in his flesh and blood enjoy participation in life. Communion (in Christ) means to participate in Christ's life.



Johann Arndt: Neither sacraments nor Word is primary in Christian worship
Religious self constituted neither by hearing and responding nor by participation in the sacraments. It was interior and invisible. Religious self no physical senses, not involve the intellect, True knowledge of God: faith, discover in myself a sense of God's power and love. Religious self: practice of attention to words, by sacramental participation, or interior recollectedness. The social self must be reduced to nothing in order to achieve the new self-identification. God and the religious self are polarized in order to stimulate the creation of a religious self... defined by its relation of trust and confidence in God. you are unutterably holy - I am the foulest of sinners ... You stoop down to me when I am not fit to raise my eyes to you