As a theologian I often struggle with ways to translate conversation in the academy into useful materials for the church. What follows is a sermon that I preached in May 2008 when the Revised Common Lectionary presented the challenge of the Genesis creation narrative. I created a PowerPoint presentation to display as I spoke. Many of the images are presented here with the text. Continue reading
In previous posts we have examined several iterations of the Eucharistic performance within the framework of a postmodern understanding of the inherent instability of the text. Now we turn to a final criticism often raised in opposition to innovations within the spiritual life of the church.
Let us turn to the final task laid out in the introduction: the potential for a reading of the Eucharistic text in which an unordained person acts as celebrant. From the perspective of the magisterium's teachings or the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this may seem an impossibility. However, let us draw on one other scenario in which (iterative) translations play out.
While the Eastern Orthodox fixation on the bishop runs just as deeply as the Roman Catholic tradition, there are differences in the iterative understanding of the episcopal role in the Lord's Supper. The Eastern tradition shares the understanding of the bishop's privilege in the Eucharist found in St. Ignatius' writings. But a fundamental difference remains within Orthodox theology that opens the possibility of women celebrants: the rejection of the doctrine of Eucharistic celebrant acting in persona Christi.
In the middle of the third century a conflict emerged in the church over the use of water instead of wine as an element in the Eucharistic feast. Attacking the practice in a letter to a fellow bishop, Cyprian of Carthage argued:
"For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of Himself, certainly that priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ Himself to have offered."[1]
In a previous post we discussed Derrida's claim that an adequate translation can only be made when we understand not only the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but also the rhetorical uses of the language, as well as the history and the cultural context of work. With this in mind, we return to Marion, whose explication of the Eucharistic site of theology and the role of the (Roman Catholic) bishop as true theologian and mediator of Christ is also situated within a given context.
In our previous post we explored Derrida's concepts of iterability and (un)translatability. In this post we apply the first of these concepts in an examination of iterations of the Eucharistic text.
il n'ya pas de hors texte…[1]
Jacques Derrida
Summarizing Derrida's deconstructive project would be a colossal task. Because of its very nature, there is no short, clear exposition of deconstruction. However, for our purposes we will focus on only a couple of its concepts, gleaning insights from a few key texts. The first of these, perhaps the most famous axiom of postmodern thought: there is nothing outside of the text. Continue reading
In God Without Being, Jean-Luc Marion explores the Eucharistic event as the scene of inbreaking of God's unconditional gift to humanity – a theological site where sign, locutor, and referent all converge in the person of Jesus Christ, the living Word.[1] However, along with the gift Marion includes a conditional that keeps on giving: the bishop as mediator of Christ, or put another way, a human male claiming apostolic succession within a rigidly defined hierarchy who, acting in persona Christi, presides over the Eucharist as the icon of the invisible Christ. But is this the only reading of the Eucharistic text? Using Derrida's concepts of iterability and (un)translatability, I propose to explore the development of the Eucharistic celebration as a text that has moved through countless iterations since its first appearance with Jesus and his disciples. Along the way we will discover room within the text for a woman to celebrate the Eucharist, as well as the unordained. Continue reading
Tertullian of Carthage
Tertullian of Carthage (c160-c220 CE) has never been one of my favorite Early Church figures, but I have to admit I enjoyed reading his On the Flesh of Christ as part of class this quarter. Tertullian's gritty descriptions of the Jesus' physicality resonated with a certain campy cord in me, as though I were listening to an old drag queen tell a story for shock value, playing on her audience's discomfort. (The discomfort was real in Tertullian's listeners, but more because of their shock at the idea that God would condescend to put on inferior flesh.)
On a future iteration I would like to stop and think about how Tertullian's account of Jesus' flesh might speak to a queer audience constantly bombarded with messages of deep suspicion for the flesh. But for now, what follows is a discussion of Tertullian's incarnational theology as expressed in On the Flesh of Christ.
