Beyond Sacramentalism: The Church as the Public of the Holy Spirit (or why I …

[Jason Clark]

Beyond Sacramentalism: The Church as the Public of the Holy Spirit (or why I am still a Pentecostal Charismatic)

This paper explores and compares the two trajectories of a) post-Church ecclesiologies and b) the sacramental turn being made by many Evangelicals, as responses to critiques of Evangelicalism.

My paper claims that post-Church ecclesiologies have their institutional imaginations largely funded by an anti-church narrative that is unable to instantiate Christian identity. It further claims that the alternative trajectory of the sacramental turn is more hopeful for Christian identity and formation, being counter intuitive to anti- institutional imaginations. However that sacramental turn makes too much of the church and is ultimately unable to fulfill its own ambitions to compete with the imaginations of cultural liturgies.

This paper suggests how a pneumatological understanding of sacramental worship practices is needed, so we might get beyond the Eucharist and the sacramental turn. We need to understand where God is in the practices of worship beyond the Eucharist. Such an understanding allows for us to better understand how the Spirit is poured out on all moments and locations, where believers re-capitulate and instantiate the Christ event by the Spirit. In other words how are our Charismatic worship practices affective in competing with rival cultural liturgies in terms of experience, and spiritual reality?

Or to put it more simply, this paper explores why I remain a Pentecostal Charismatic, instead of making the turn out of the church completely, or the sacramental turn back into the Church.

The full paper is attached to this post as a PDF.

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[Christopher Heintz]

Thank you for your paper, Jason. I think it raises important questions.

But I do think the anglo-catholic sacramentalism that concerns you can and does contain the fuller sense of Christ's mediating presence that you see in the various charismatic movements. And since you reference Cavanaugh, I think that is indeed very much what he argues. The whole life of the church is eucharistic, in-so-far as it imitates his cruciform witness in its whole social life. And that the eucharistic presence of Christ is his presence in the church as the Body of Christ as it is given life through the power of the Spirit - and not simply what happens in the mass.

In any case, I don't think trying to show how one tradition is more faithful than another is the most helpful way to go. And this is what I was trying to say, though I communicated it poorly, when you raised this question. There are certainly things that the pentecostal-charismatic tradition gets more right than the anglo-catholic tradition and visa-versa (although, again, the anglo-catholic tradition has shown it certainly can contain the charismatic movement within its tradition as it does in the global south, for instance). But it seems to me that this sort of approach to church membership leads to an atomizing of the Body of Christ. Because then we just keep leaving the churches we're part of when our theology changes.

One of the very important things I've learned from Catholics is that they don't simply change church membership when their theology changes - its the tradition of loyal dissent. Which is why they can have feminist nuns and priests who will happily serve the eucharist to Protestants. It's part of their tradition that they don't let their secondary theological differences divide them. And it's at least partly why I responded that one of the most catholic things I can do (when I have the conviction that we - Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox - are all equally members of the Body of Christ) is to remain in the theological tradition that I believe God, for whatever reason, placed me in. It is a way of making our particular membership in a local body more primary than our membership in some movement or traditional expression that better matches our theology. Choosing to leave or choosing to stay part of one's particular church on the basis of "best theological options" seems simply to perpetuate the endless schisms unleashed by protestantism.

(I realize there's more to unpack here, but I'll wait to respond. I hope this makes some sense.)

[Jason Clark]

HI Chris.  As I said over Q&A I am agnostic about the sacramental turn.  It does help Evangelicals to see how the body of Christ does compete with other social arrangements,and that the church is all to often instrumentalised and used by Evangelicals towards other ends and other social arrangements, family, hobbies, consumer dreams etc.

The Ecclesiology in the sacramental turn, makes too much of the church for me as a charismatic evangelical.  That's a not an assessment on faithfulness, just me in my location, not wanting to make too much of the church for my tradition.

Theologically there is I believe a pneumatological gap in the sacramental turn, in practice and theology, again for Charismatics like me.  The role of the Spirit in instantiating the church is not explicated enough in theology and practice.

I do believe we can be anglo-catholic and charismatic, without leaving our charismatic traditions.  I like the way you articulate why you stay in your tradition, inspired by anglo-catholic etc.  But what is it about Charismatic ecclesiology, and theology that would also have you stay and not move over to ore eucharistic worship traditions?

That's the kind of questions I am asking :-)

[Christopher Heintz]

Yeah, I think you're certainly right that pneumatological reflection is significantly lacking in most non-charismatic traditions. And perhaps more so in the anglo-catholic traditions.

And that is obviously one thing I find very important about the charismatic tradition. In fact, a good part of why I think God has me in the Vineyard is to press into deeper and deeper pneumatological experience and reflection when my temptation would be to avoid it.

To your question directly, on many days I find that I would rather be part of a catholic or Anglican church, whose traditions seem to me much wider and much deeper. But again, I think membership in a particular local body is more fundamental, because I believe -and this is partly what I meant to communicate in my paper- its only as social bodies (churches) that we begin to proclaim and bear witness to the kingdom of God. And that the various forces of social fragmentation undermine our ability to instantiate the body of Christ/bear witness to the kingdom of God. It's that, most of all, which keeps me from leaving the particular church that I'm part of, which happens to be charismatic, for the Anglican church down the road.

What happens by remaining, of course, is that I discover all kinds things in the charismatic movement that I might not otherwise have learned, and for which I'm extremely grateful. I learn to take gifts of healing and prophecy and speaking in tongues very seriously. I learn to take discerning the movement of the Spirit very seriously. And I begin to see how certain ecclesiological structures have a tendency to inhibit that movement of the Spirit, as in the anglo-catholic traditions. And so on.

So the other part of my reply to your question is that I'm thouroghly convinced that the charismatic tradition has infinitely more to teach me about God and how God moves through the Spirit than I really have much clue of. And its by pressing in and drawing deeply from "my own wells" so to speak, that I begin to discover that.

[Jason Clark]

Sounds compelling to me :-)  Thank you for the response to my question.