Perhaps the reader has so far found this presentation of Christ’s cross too individualistic. If so, the balance should be redressed in this section. For the same New Testament, which contains Paul’s flash of individualism ‘I have been crucified with Christ....I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’, also insists that Jesus Christ ‘gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good’.1 Thus the very purpose of his self-giving on the cross was not just to save isolated individuals, and so perpetuate their loneliness, but to create a new community whose members would belong to him, love one another and eagerly serve the world. This community of Christ would be nothing less than a renewed and reunited humanity, of which he as the second Adam would be head. It would incorporate Jews and Gentiles on equal terms. In fact, it would include representatives from every nation. Christ died in abject aloneness, rejected by his own nation and deserted by his own disciples, but lifted up on the cross he would draw all men to himself. And from the Day of Pentecost onwards it has been clear that conversion to Christ means also conversion to the community of Christ, as people turn from themselves to him, and from ‘this corrupt generation’ to the alternative society which he is gathering round himself. These two transfers – of personal allegiance and social membership – cannot be separated.2
Much space is devoted in the New Testament to the portraiture of this new, redeemed society – its beliefs and values, its standards, duties and destiny. The theme of this section is that the community of Christ is the community of the cross. Having been brought into being by the cross, it continues to live by and under the cross. Our perspective and our behaviour are now governed by the cross. All our relationships have been radically transformed by it. The cross is not just a badge to identify us, and the banner under which we march; it is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disorientated world. In particular, the cross revolutionizes our attitudes to God, to ourselves, to other people both inside and outside the Christian fellowship, and to the grave problems of violence and suffering. We shall devote a chapter to each of these four relationships.
The four images of salvation, which we investigated in chapter 7, all bear witness to our new relationship to God. Now that he has acted in his love to turn aside his anger, we have been justified by him, redeemed for him and reconciled to him. And our reconciliation includes the concepts of ‘access’ and ‘nearness’, which are aspects of our dynamic knowledge of God or ‘eternal life’ (John 17:3). This intimate relationship to God, which has replaced the old and painful estrangement, has several characteristics.
First, it is marked by boldness. The word the apostles loved to use for it is parrēsia, which means ‘outspokenness, frankness, plainness of speech’ (AG), both in our witness to the world and in our prayers to God. Through Christ we are now able to ‘approach God with freedom (parrēsia) and confidence’. We have parrēsia because of Christ’s high priesthood to come to God’s ‘throne of grace’, and parrēsia by Christ’s blood ‘to enter the Most Holy Place’ of God’s very presence.3 This freedom of access and this outspokenness of address to God in prayer are not incompatible with humility, for they are due entirely to Christ’s merit, not ours. His blood has cleansed our consciences (in a way that was impossible in Old Testament days), and God has promised to remember our sins no more. So now we look to the future with assurance, not fear. We feel the power of Paul’s logic that since, when we were God’s enemies, we were both justified and reconciled through Christ’s death, ‘how much more’, having been justified and reconciled, shall we be saved on the last day from God’s wrath. Now that we are ‘in Christ’, we are confident that ‘in all things’ God is working for our good, and that nothing can separate us from his love.4
The second characteristic of our new relationship with God is love. Indeed, ‘we love because he first loved us’. Previously we were afraid of him. But now love has driven out fear. Love begets love. God’s love in Christ, which has in one sense liberated us, in another hems us in, because it leaves us no alternative but to live the rest of our lives for him, in adoring and grateful service.5
Joy is a third mark of those who have been redeemed by the cross. When the Babylonian exiles returned to Jerusalem, their ‘mouths were filled with laughter’ and their ‘tongues with songs of joy’. The old alienation and humiliation were over; God had rescued and restored them. They likened their exhilaration to the revelries of harvest: ‘Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.’ How much more should we rejoice in the Lord, who have been redeemed from a much more oppressive slavery? The early Christians could hardly contain themselves: they shared their meals together ‘with unaffected joy’.6
Boldness, love and joy are not to be thought of as purely private and interior experiences, however; they are to distinguish our public worship. The brief time we spend together on the Lord’s Day, far from being divorced from the rest of our life, is intended to bring it into sharp focus. Humbly (as sinners), yet boldly (as forgiven sinners), we press into God’s presence, responding to his loving initiative with an answering love of our own, and not only worshipping him with musical instruments but articulating our joy in songs of praise. W. M. Clow was right to draw our attention to singing as a unique feature of Christian worship, and to the reason for it:
There is no forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, except through the cross of Christ. ‘Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.’ The religions of paganism scarcely knew the word....The great faiths of the Buddhist and the Mohammedan give no place either to the need or the grace of reconciliation. The clearest proof of this is the simplest. It lies in the hymns of Christian worship. A Buddhist temple never resounds with a cry of praise. Mohammedan worshippers never sing. Their prayers are, at the highest, prayers of submission and of request. They seldom reach the gladder note of thanksgiving. They are never jubilant with the songs of the forgiven.7
By contrast, whenever Christian people come together it is impossible to stop them singing. The Christian community is a community of celebration.
Paul expresses our common sense of joyful exhilaration by alluding to the best-known Jewish feast: ‘Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival...’ (1 Cor. 5:7). Strictly speaking, ‘Passover’ referred to the communal meal which was eaten during the evening of the 15 Nisan, immediately after the killing of the paschal lambs that afternoon (14 Nisan), although it came to be applied also to the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread which followed. The foundation of the people’s rejoicing was their costly redemption from Egypt. Costlier still was the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is because he, our Paschal Lamb, has been slain, and because by the shedding of his precious life-blood we have been set free, that we are exhorted to keep the feast. In fact, the whole life of the Christian community should be conceived as a festival in which with love, joy and boldness we celebrate what God has done for us through Christ. In this celebration we find ourselves caught up in the worship of heaven, so that we join ‘with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven’ in giving God glory. And because the worship of God is in essence the acknowledgment of his worth, we unite with the heavenly chorus in singing of his worthiness as both Creator and Redeemer:
‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honour and power,for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.’(Rev. 4:11)
‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!’
(Rev. 5:12)
It is surprising that Paul’s references to the Passover Lamb and the Paschal Feast come in the middle of an extremely solemn chapter, in which it has been necessary for him to upbraid the Corinthians for their moral laxity. One of their members is involved in an incestuous relationship. Yet they show no signs of humble grief or penitence. He instructs them to excommunicate the offender, and warns them of the danger that sin will spread in the community if decisive steps are not taken to eradicate it. ‘Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?’ he asks (1 Cor. 5:6). It is this allusion to yeast (leaven) which reminds him of the Passover and its Feast of Unleavened Bread. As Christians ‘keep the Festival’, they must do it ‘not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth’ (v. 8). For the Christian festival is radically different from pagan festivals, which were usually accompanied by frenzy and often degenerated into an orgy of drunkenness and immorality. Holiness is to mark the Christian celebration, for Christ’s ultimate purpose through the cross is ‘to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation’ (Col. 1:22).
Although the Christian life is a continuous festival, the Lord’s Supper is the particular Christian equivalent to the Passover. It is therefore central to the church’s life of celebration. It was instituted by Jesus at Passover-time, indeed during the Passover meal itself, and he deliberately replaced the ceremonial recitation ‘This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate’ with ‘This is my body given for you. ... This is my blood shed for you . ..’. The bread and wine of the Christian festival oblige us to look back to the cross of Christ, and to recall with gratitude what he suffered and accomplished there.
Protestant churches have traditionally referred to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as either ‘sacraments of the gospel’ (because they dramatize the central truths of the good news) or ‘sacraments of grace’ (because they set forth visibly God’s gracious saving initiative). Both expressions are correct. The primary movement which the gospel sacraments embody is from God to man, not man to God. The application of water in baptism represents either cleansing from sin and the outpouring of the Spirit (if it is administered by affusion) or sharing Christ’s death and resurrection (if by immersion) or both. We do not baptize ourselves. We submit to baptism, and the action done to us symbolizes the saving work of Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, similarly, the essential drama consists of the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread, and the taking, blessing, pouring and giving of wine. We do not (or should not) administer the elements to ourselves. They are given to us; we receive them. And as we eat the bread and drink the wine physically, so spiritually by faith we feed on Christ crucified in our hearts. Thus, in both sacraments we are more or less passive, recipients not donors, beneficiaries not benefactors.
At the same time, baptism is recognized as an appropriate occasion for the confession of faith, and the Lord’s Supper for the offering of thanksgiving. Hence the increasingly popular use of ‘Eucharist’ (eucharistia, ‘thanksgiving’) as a name for the Lord’s Supper. And since ‘sacrifice’ is another word for ‘offer’, it is not surprising that the term ‘eucharistic sacrifice’ came to be invented. But is it legitimate? What does it imply?
To begin with, we should all be able to agree on five ways in which what we do at the Lord’s Supper is related to the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross. First, we remember his sacrifice: ‘do this in remembrance of me’, he said (1 Cor. 11:24–25). Indeed, the prescribed actions with the bread and wine make the remembrance vivid and dramatic. Secondly, we partake of its benefits. The purpose of the service goes beyond ‘commemoration’ to ‘communion’ (koinōnia): ‘Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?’ (1 Cor. 10:16). For this reason the Eucharist is rightly called the ‘Holy Communion’ (since through it we may share in Christ) and the ‘Lord’s Supper’ (since through it we may feed, even feast, on Christ). Thirdly, we proclaim his sacrifice: ‘For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11:26). Although his death took place centuries ago, the proclamation of it continues today. Yet the Supper is a temporary provision. It looks forward to the Lord’s coming as well as back to the Lord’s death. It is not only a feast upon Christ crucified but a foretaste of his heavenly banquet. It thus spans the whole period between his two comings. Fourthly, we attribute our unity to his sacrifice. For we never partake of the Lord’s Supper alone, in the privacy of our own room. No, we ‘come together’ (1 Cor. 11:20) in order to celebrate. And we recognize that it is our common share in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice which has united us: ‘Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf’ (1 Cor. 10:17). Fifthly, we give thanks for his sacrifice, and in token of our thanksgiving offer ourselves, our souls and bodies as ‘living sacrifices’ to his service (Rom. 12:1).
So then, whenever we share in the Lord’s Supper, his sacrifice on the cross is remembered, partaken of, proclaimed, acknowledged as the ground of our unity, and responded to in grateful worship. The question which remains, however, is whether there is any closer relationship still between the sacrifice Christ offered on the cross and the sacrifice of thanksgiving we offer in the Eucharist, between his ‘dying’ sacrifice and our ‘living’ sacrifices. It is this which has divided Christendom since the sixteenth century, and is a topic of anxious ecumenical debate today. We cannot talk about the church as a ‘community of celebration’, without delving more deeply into the nature of the eucharistic celebration.
Already in the immediate post-apostolic period the early church Fathers began to use sacrificial language in relation to the Lord’s Supper. They saw in it a fulfilment of Malachi 1:11. ‘ “In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.’8 But the unconsecrated bread and wine as ‘pure offerings’ were symbols of the creation, for which the people gave thanks. The ancient authors also regarded the people’s prayers and praises, and alms for the poor, as an offering to God. It was not until Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century, that the Lord’s Supper itself was called a true sacrifice, in which the passion of the Lord was offered to God by priests, whose sacrificial role was said to parallel that of the Old Testament priests. From this beginning the eucharistic doctrine of medieval Catholicism eventually developed, namely that the Christian priest offered Christ, really present under the forms of bread and wine, as a propitiatory sacrifice to God for the sins of the living and the dead. And it was against this that the Reformers vigorously protested.
Although Luther and Calvin diverged from one another in their eucharistic teaching, all the Reformers were united in rejecting the sacrifice of the mass, and were concerned to make a clear distinction between the cross and the sacrament, between Christ’s sacrifice offered for us and our sacrifices offered through him. Cranmer expressed the differences with lucidity:
One kind of sacrifice there is, which is called a propitiatory or merciful sacrifice, that is to say, such a sacrifice as pacifieth God’s wrath and indignation, and obtaineth mercy and forgiveness for all our sins....And although in the Old Testament there were certain sacrifices called by that name, yet in very deed there is but one such sacrifice whereby our sins be pardoned, and God’s mercy and favour obtained, which is the death of the Son of God, our Lord Jesu Christ; nor never was any other sacrifice propitiatory at any time, nor never shall be. This is the honour and glory of this our High Priest, wherein he admitteth neither partner nor successor...
Another kind of sacrifice there is, which doth not reconcile us to God, but is made of (sc. by) them that be reconciled by Christ, to testify our duties unto God, and to show ourselves thankful unto him. And therefore they be called sacrifices of laud, praise and thanksgiving.
The first kind of sacrifice Christ offered to God for us; the second kind we ourselves offer to God by (sc. through) Christ.9
Once this vital distinction had been made, Cranmer was determined to be consistent in its application. The ordained minister could still be called a ‘priest’, because this English word is simply a contraction of the word ‘presbyter’ (elder), but every reference to an ‘altar’ was eliminated from the Book of Common Prayer and replaced by ‘table’, ‘holy table’, ‘Lord’s table’ or ‘Communion table’. For Cranmer saw clearly that the Communion service is a supper served by a minister from a table, not a sacrifice offered by a priest on an altar. The shape of his final Communion Service exhibits the same determination, for the thankful self-offering of the people was taken out of the Prayer of Consecration (where it was in his first Communion Service, replacing the offering of Christ himself in the medieval mass) and judiciously placed after the reception of the bread and wine as a ‘Prayer of Oblation’. In this way, beyond any possibility of misunderstanding, the people’s sacrifice was seen to be their offering of praise in responsive gratitude for Christ’s sacrifice, whose benefits they had again received by faith.
Scripture undergirds Cranmer’s doctrine, both in safeguarding the uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice and in defining our sacrifices as expressing our thanksgiving, not securing God’s favour. The unique finality of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is indicated by the adverb hapax or ephapax (meaning ‘once for all’), which is applied to it five times in the letter to the Hebrews. For example, ‘Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.’ Again, ‘now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself’.10 That is why, unlike the Old Testament priests who stood to perform their temple duties, repeatedly offering the same sacrifices, Jesus Christ, having made ‘one sacrifice for sins for ever’, sat down at God’s right hand, resting from his finished work (Heb. 10:11–12).
Although his work of atonement has been accomplished, he still has a continuing heavenly ministry, however. This is not to ‘offer’ his sacrifice to God, since the offering was made once for all on the cross; nor to ‘present’ it to the Father, pleading that it may be accepted, since its acceptance was publicly demonstrated by the resurrection; but rather to ‘intercede’ for sinners on the basis of it, as our advocate. It is in this that his ‘permanent priesthood’ consists, for intercession was as much a priestly ministry as sacrifice: ‘he always lives to intercede’ for us.11
The uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice does not mean, then, that we have no sacrifices to offer, but only that their nature and purpose are different. They are not material but spiritual, and their object is not propitiatory but eucharistic, the expression of a responsive gratitude. This is the second biblical undergirding of Cranmer’s position. The New Testament describes the church as a priestly community, both a ‘holy priesthood’ and a ‘royal priesthood’, in which all God’s people share equally as ‘priests’.12 This is the famous ‘priesthood of all believers’, on which the Reformers laid great stress. In consequence of this universal priesthood, the word ‘priest’ (hiereus) is never in the New Testament applied to the ordained minister, since he shares in offering what the people offer, but has no distinctive offering to make which differs from theirs.
What spiritual sacrifices, then, do the people of God as a ‘holy priesthood’ offer to him? Eight are mentioned in Scripture. First, we are to present our bodies to him for his service, as ‘living sacrifices’. This sounds like a material offering, but it is termed our ‘spiritual worship’ (Rom. 12:1), presumably because it pleases God only if it expresses the worship of the heart. Secondly, we offer God our praise, worship and thanksgiving, ‘the fruit of lips that confess his name’.13 Our third sacrifice is prayer, which is said to ascend to God like fragrant incense, and our fourth ‘a broken and contrite heart’, which God accepts and never despises.14 Fifthly, faith is called a ‘sacrifice and service’. So too, sixthly, are our gifts and good deeds, for ‘with such sacrifices God is pleased’.15 The seventh sacrifice is our life poured out like a drink offering in God’s service, even unto death, while the eighth is the special offering of the evangelist, whose preaching of the gospel is called a ‘priestly duty’ because he is able to present his converts as ‘an offering acceptable to God’.16
These eight are all, in Daniel Waterland’s words, ‘true and evangelical sacrifices’, because they belong to the gospel not the law, and are thankful responses to God’s grace in Christ.17 They are spiritual and ‘intrinsic’ too, being ‘either good thoughts, good words or good ways, all of them issues of the heart’.18 And, he continued, the Eucharist may be termed a ‘sacrifice’ only because it is an occasion both for remembering Christ’s sacrifice and for making a responsive, comprehensive offering of ours.
The Protestant Reformation, including its careful distinctions between Christ’s sacrifice and ours, was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545–64). Its Session XXII (1562) focused on the sacrifice of the mass.
Inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory....For, appeased by this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence, and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of the offering being different.19
If anyone says that in the mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God,... let him be anathema. (Canon 1)
If anyone says that by those words Do this for a commemoration of me Christ did not institute the Apostles priests, or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his own body and blood, let him be anathema. (Canon 2)
If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving; or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one, let him be anathema. (Canon 3)
The Canons of the Council of Trent remain in force as part of the Roman Catholic Church’s official teaching. Their substance has been confirmed within the last century, for example, in two papal encyclicals. Pius XI in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii (1935) described the mass as being in itself ‘a real sacrifice...which has a real efficacy’. Moreover, ‘the ineffable greatness of the human priest stands forth in all its splendour’, because he ‘has power over the very body of Jesus Christ’. He first ‘makes it present upon our altars’ and next ‘in the name of Christ himself he offers it a victim infinitely pleasing to the Divine Majesty’ (pp.8–9). In Mediator Dei (1947) Pius XII affirmed that the eucharistic sacrifice ‘represents’, ‘re-enacts’, ‘renews’ and ‘shows forth’ the sacrifice of the cross. At the same time he described it as being itself ‘truly and properly the offering of a sacrifice’ (para. 72), and said that ‘on our altars he (Christ) offers himself daily for our redemption’ (para. 77). He added that the mass ‘in no way derogates from the dignity of the sacrifice of the cross’, since it is ‘a reminder to us that there is no salvation but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (para. 83). But in spite of this claim, to call the Eucharist in the same paragraph ‘the daily immolation’ of Christ inevitably detracts from the historical finality and eternal sufficiency of the cross.
There are three particularly obnoxious elements in these statements of the Council of Trent and subsequent papal encyclicals, which need to be clarified. The implications are that the sacrifice of the mass, being a daily though unbloody immolation of Christ, (1) is distinct from his ‘bloody’ sacrifice on the cross, and supplementary to it, (2) is made by human priests and (3) is ‘truly propitiatory’. By contrast the Reformers insisted, as we must, that the sacrifice of Christ (1) took place once for all on the cross (so that it cannot be re-enacted or supplemented in any way), (2) was made by himself (so that human beings cannot make it or share in making it), and (3) was a perfect satisfaction for sin (so that any mention of additional propitiatory sacrifices is gravely derogatory to it).
Theologians of the Catholic tradition in more recent times, however, together with some scholars of other traditions, have proposed a variety of more moderate positions. While wishing to retain a concept of eucharistic sacrifice which links our sacrifice to Christ’s, they have at the same time denied that his unique sacrifice could in any way be repeated or supplemented, or that we can offer Christ, or that the Eucharist is propitiatory. Some make all three denials together.
Although slightly out of chronological sequence, it seems appropriate to begin with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). On the one hand, the bishops quoted and endorsed the findings of the Council of Trent 400 years previously, for instance that Christ ‘is present in the sacrifice of the mass,...“the same one now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross” ’.20 Crude statements also appear, as when priests are told to instruct the faithful ‘to offer to God the Father the divine victim in the sacrifice of the mass’.21 On the other hand, there are two new emphases, first that the Eucharist is not a repetition but a perpetuation of the cross, and secondly that the eucharistic offering is made not by priests but by Christ and his whole people together. For example, Christ is said to have ‘instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice...in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again’.22 Then the role of priests is stated thus that, ‘acting in the person of Christ (they) join the offering of the faithful to the sacrifice of their Head. Until the coming of the Lord...they re-present and apply in the sacrifice of the mass the one sacrifice of the New Testament, namely the sacrifice of Christ offering himself once and for all to his Father as a spotless victim’.23
One senses in these statements, both in what they say and in what they leave unsaid, the struggle to get away from the crudities of Trent. Yet the two new emphases are still unacceptable, for the offering of the cross cannot be ‘perpetuated’, nor can our offering be ‘joined’ to Christ’s. The ‘Agreed Statement on the Eucharist’ produced by ARCIC (the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) seems to back away even further from Trent. The commissioners not only decline to call the Eucharist ‘propitiatory’, but insist strongly on the absolute finality of the cross: ‘Christ’s death on the cross...was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. There can be no repetition of or addition to what was then accomplished once for all by Christ. Any attempt to express a nexus between the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist must not obscure this fundamental fact of the Christian faith.’24
What nexus is there, then, between the cross and the Eucharist? Recent suggestions have emphasized two main ideas, namely the eternal, heavenly ministry of Jesus and the church’s union with him as his body.
According to the former, Christ’s sacrifice is thought of as ‘prolonged’ (or ‘perpetuated’, as at Vatican II), so that he is conceived as continuously offering himself to the Father. Dom Gregory Dix, for example, developed this concept in The Shape of the Liturgy. He rejected the view that the death of Jesus was ‘the moment of his sacrifice’. On the contrary, he argued, ‘his sacrifice was something which began with his humanity and which has its eternal continuance in heaven’ (pp.242–243). R. J. Coates has explained the importance which this idea has for its advocates, namely that the church somehow shares in Christ’s continuous self-offering, whereas of course ‘the church cannot offer Christ at the earthly altar, if he is not offering himself at a heavenly altar’.25 But the New Testament does not represent Christ as eternally offering himself to the Father. To be sure, Father, Son and Holy Spirit give themselves to each other in love eternally, but that is reciprocal, and in any case is quite different from Christ’s specific historical sacrifice for sin. It is also true that the incarnation involved sacrifice, since by becoming flesh the Son both ‘emptied himself’ and ‘humbled himself’ (Phil. 2:7–8), and throughout his public ministry he demonstrated that he had come ‘not to be served but to serve’. But, according to his teaching and that of his apostles, the climax of his incarnation and ministry was his self-giving on the cross as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). It is this historical act, involving his death for our sins, which Scripture calls his sin-bearing sacrifice and which was finished once for all. Not only can it not be repeated, but it cannot be extended or prolonged. ‘It is finished,’ he cried. That is why Christ does not have his altar in heaven, but only his throne. On it he sits, reigning, his atoning work done, and intercedes for us on the basis of what has been done and finished. Richard Coates was right to urge us to maintain ‘the lonely eminence of the sacrifice of Calvary’.26
This is the theme of Alan Stibbs’ neglected monograph The Finished Work of Christ (1954). He quotes Michael Ramsey’s argument that since Christ is for ever priest and ‘priesthood means offering’, therefore in Christ ‘there is for ever that spirit of self-offering which the sacrifice of Calvary uniquely disclosed in our world of sin and death’ (p.5). Similarly, Donald Baillie maintained that the divine sin-bearing was not confined to one moment of time, but that there is ‘an eternal atonement in the very being and life of God’, of which the cross was the incarnate part (p.6). Over against such views Alan Stibbs shows that Christ’s self-offering for our salvation ‘is unmistakably represented in Scripture as exclusively earthly and historical, the purpose of the incarnation, wrought out in flesh and blood, in time and space, under Pontius Pilate’, and that ‘by this once-for-all finished happening the necessary and intended atoning work was completely accomplished’ (p.8). Could Christ not be continuously offering in heaven, however, the sacrifice which he made once-for-all on earth? Indeed is it not necessary to affirm this, since he is called in Hebrews ‘a priest for ever’? No. Eternal priesthood does not necessitate eternal sacrifice. Stibbs goes on to draw a helpful analogy between priesthood and motherhood:
Admittedly the act of offering was necessary to constitute Christ a priest..., just as the act of child-bearing is necessary to constitute a woman a mother. But that truth does not mean in the case of motherhood that henceforth, to those who resort to her as ‘mother’, such a woman is always giving them birth. Her act of child-bearing is for them not only an indispensable but also a finished work. What they now enjoy are other complementary ministries of motherhood, which lie beyond the child-bearing. Similarly with Christ’s priesthood his propitiatory offering is not only an indispensable but also a finished work....(Now, however) as with motherhood, beyond such successful discharge of the fundamental function of priesthood there lie other complementary throne ministries of grace, which the priest fulfils for the benefit of his already reconciled people (in particular, his heavenly intercession) (pp.30–31).
The second emphasis of what I have called more ‘moderate’ positions is related to the thoroughly scriptural teaching that the church is the body of Christ, living in union with its head. But this biblical doctrine has come to be developed in an unbiblical way, namely that the body of Christ offers itself to God in and with its head. This notion has been widely held. A popular exposition of it was given by Gabriel Hebert in 1951; it influenced the Anglican bishops who assembled at the 1958 Lambeth Conference:
The eucharistic sacrifice, that storm-centre of controversy, is finding in our day a truly evangelical expression from the ‘catholic’ side, when it is insisted that the sacrificial action is not any sort of re-immolation of Christ, nor a sacrifice additional to his one sacrifice, but a participation in it. The true celebrant is Christ the High Priest, and the Christian people are assembled as members of his body to present before God his sacrifice, and to be themselves offered up in sacrifice through their union with him.27
In endorsing this, the Lambeth bishops added their own statement, that ‘we ourselves, incorporate in the mystical body of Christ, are the sacrifice we offer. Christ with us offers us in himself to God’.28 William Temple had earlier written something almost identical: ‘Christ in us presents us with himself to the Father; we in him yield ourselves to be so presented.’29
What is important about these last statements is that there is no question either of Christ’s sacrifice being repeated or of our offering him. Instead, it is Christ the head who offers his body with himself to the Father. The ARCIC Agreed Statement says something similar, namely that in the Eucharist ‘we enter into the movement of Christ’s self-offering’ (pp.14, 20), or are caught up into it by Christ himself. Professor Rowan Williams (now Archbishop of Canterbury), a widely respected contemporary Anglo-Catholic theologian, has expressed his view that this, namely ‘our being “offered” in and by Christ’, is ‘the basic fact of the Eucharist’.30
Other suggested reconstructions attempt to mingle not our sacrifice, but either our obedience or our intercession, with Christ’s. Professor C. F. D. Moule, for example, stressing the koinōnia by which we are ‘in Christ’, united to him, has written that ‘the two obediences – Christ’s and ours, Christ’s in ours and ours in Christ’s – are offered to God together’.31 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, on the other hand, the so-called ‘Lima Text’ (1982), which is the fruit of fifty years’ ecumenical discussion and claims ‘significant theological convergence’, focuses on intercession rather than obedience. Declaring that the Christ events (e.g. his birth, death and resurrection) ‘are unique and can neither be repeated nor prolonged’, it nevertheless affirms that ‘in thanksgiving and intercession the church is united with the Son, its great high priest and intercessor’,32 and that ‘Christ unites the faithful with himself and includes their prayers within his own intercession, so that the faithful are transfigured and their prayers accepted’ (II.4).
What can be objected to, it may be asked, in such statements as these? They deliberately avoid the three ‘obnoxious elements’ in traditional Roman Catholic documents which I mentioned earlier. Once it has been firmly established that Christ’s self-sacrifice is unrepeatable, that the Eucharist is not propitiatory, and that our offerings are not meritorious, must Calvary and Eucharist still be kept apart? After all, the New Testament calls us priests and summons us to offer our eight ‘spiritual sacrifices’ to God. It also sets Christ’s self-giving love and obedience before us as the model to which we should aspire. So what could be better or healthier than to allow our self-offering to be caught up in his? Would not the perfection of his compensate for the imperfection of ours? More than that, as Vatican II put it, would not ‘the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful’ then be ‘made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ’?33 Is this not appropriate and reasonable? Would it not be perversely obstinate to object?
I am afraid there are real and grave objections, however. The first is that, as a matter of fact, the New Testament authors never express the concept of our offering being united to Christ’s. What they do is exhort us to give ourselves (as a sacrifice) in loving obedience to God in three ways. First, ‘like’ Christ: ‘live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph. 5:2). His self-offering is to be the model of ours. Secondly, the spiritual sacrifices we offer to God are to be offered ‘through’ Christ (1 Pet. 2:5), our Saviour and Mediator. Since they are all tainted with self-centredness, it is only through him that they become acceptable. Thirdly, we are to give ourselves in sacrifice ‘unto’ or ‘for’ Christ, constrained by his love to live for him alone the new life-from-death which he has given us (2 Cor. 5:14–15). Thus, we are to offer ourselves ‘like’, ‘through’ and ‘for’ Christ. These are the prepositions which the New Testament uses; it never suggests that our offerings may be made ‘in’ or ‘with’ Christ. And if it were important to see our self-offering as identified with Christ’s, it is strange that the New Testament never says so. To be sure, it is ‘in Christ’ that we are justified, forgiven, adopted and made a new creation, but it is never said that we worship God ‘in’ Christ, in union with him, joining our praises with his. Even when we shall join the heavenly host in worship, and our self-offering is at last purged of all imperfection, – even then our praise is not said to be united with Christ’s. No, he will remain the object of our worship; he will not become our fellow-worshipper, nor shall we become his (see Rev. 4 – 7).
That brings me to the second objection, which is surely the reason why the New Testament refrains from describing our worship as offered ‘in and with’ Christ. It is that the self-offerings of the Redeemer and of the redeemed are so qualitatively different from one another that it would be a glaring anomaly to attempt to mingle them. We need to go back to Cranmer’s distinction between the two sorts of sacrifice, ‘propitiatory’ (atoning for sin) and – though he did not use this word – ‘eucharistic’ (expressing praise and homage). It is vital to remember that Christ’s sacrifice was both, whereas ours are only ‘eucharistic’. The death of Jesus was not only a perfect example of self-giving love, as Abelard stressed, in which he gave himself to the Father in obedience to his will; he also gave himself as a ransom for us, dying our death in our place. He therefore died both as our substitute, thus sparing us what otherwise we should have had to experience, and as our representative or example, thus showing us what we ourselves should also do. If the cross were only the latter, it might have been possible to associate our self-offering more closely with his, in spite of the difference, much as he called God ‘Father’ and permitted us to do the same. But the cross was first and foremost a propitiatory sacrifice, and in that sense absolutely unique. We need greater clarity in disentangling the two meanings of the cross, so that we see the uniqueness of what Daniel Waterland often called ‘the grand sacrifice of the cross’34 and ‘the high tremendous sacrifice of Christ God-Man’ (p.37). Then we will conclude that it is not only anomalous, but actually impossible, to associate our sacrifices with his, or even to think of asking him to draw ours up into his. The only appropriate relationship between the two will be for ours to express our humble and adoring gratitude for his.
There is now an important criticism of this evangelical emphasis to consider. When we are thinking of our conversion, it is said, our sacrifices do indeed appear only as penitent and unworthy responses to the cross. But does not the situation change once we have come to Christ and been welcomed home? Do we not then have something to offer, which can be caught up into Christ’s offering? This is a point Archbishop Rowan Williams has made. He wants to retrieve ‘the idea that the effect of Christ’s sacrifice is precisely to make us “liturgical” beings, capable of offering ourselves, our praises and our symbolic gifts to a God who we know will receive us in Christ’.35 Again, ‘the effect of Christ’s offering is to make us capable of offering, to count us worthy to stand and serve as priests’ (p.30). Is it then necessary for the liturgy so to be constructed as to cast us in the role of unconverted unbelievers, and to recapitulate our salvation? Could it not rather regard us as being already in Christ, already God’s children, and then unite our thanksgiving to our Father with Christ’s self-offering on the cross (pp.26–27)? These questions are not without appeal. They make a substantive point. Nevertheless, I think they must be answered in the negative. For our offerings are still tainted with sin and need to be offered ‘through’ Christ, rather than ‘in and with’ him. Besides, his sacrifice not only towers above ours in quality; it also differs from ours in character. It is not appropriate, therefore, to mix the two. Nor is it safe. The pride of our hearts is so deeply ingrained and so subtly insidious that it would be easy for us to nurse the idea that we have something of our own to offer God. Not that Rowan Williams thinks so. He is quite explicit that we have nothing to offer before we have received. This being so, and granted our hungry human vanity, should not this truth be explicitly set forth in the Lord’s Supper? I agree with Roger Beckwith and Colin Buchanan, whom Rowan Williams quotes, that ‘all progress in the Christian life depends upon a recapitulation of the original terms of one’s acceptance with God’ (p.26). The liturgy must remind us of these, and not allow us to forget them.
Michael Green got this right in preparation for the 1967 National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele:
We never outgrow the fact that we are sinners still, totally dependent each day on the grace of God to the underserving. We do not come to offer; in the first place we come to receive. The very nature of a supper declares this. We are the hungry, coming to be fed. We are the undeserving, welcomed freely at the Lord’s Table.36
What can be said, in conclusion of this discussion of ‘eucharistic sacrifice’, about the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and ours? I think we have to insist that they differ from one another too widely for it ever to be seemly to associate them. Christ died for us while we were still sinners and enemies. His self-giving love evokes and inspires ours. So ours is always secondary and responsive to his. To try to unite them is to blur the primary and the secondary, the source and the stream, initiative and response, grace and faith. A proper jealousy for the uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice for sin will lead us to avoid any formulation which could conceivably detract from it.
I come back to where this chapter began. The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it. In this celebratory feast we are all participants. But what is it that we share in? Not in the offering of Christ’s sacrifice, nor even in the movement of it, but only in the benefits he achieved by it. For this costly sacrifice, and for the precious blessings it has won for us, we shall never cease, even in eternity, to honour and adore the Lamb.