Crucial to our account of the Christian faith is that through the Eucharist we participate in the sacrifice of Christ. This idea of eucharistic participation is shared by the theologians we have cited as our sources. Yet it is entirely unfamiliar, I suspect, to my fellow church-goers.
What do we (Evangelical Anglicans) believe about the Eucharist and its relation to the sacrifice of Christ?
One thing is clear. We don’t believe in the Catholic doctrine that the bread & wine become ‘literarily’ the body and blood Christ. That is the first thing anybody will tell you. But what do we believe? I haven’t, in twenty-five years of assiduous Sunday attendance, once heard a sermon on the subject. However, baptism, as the other major sacrament, may offer an illuminating parallel – and on the latter topic, my fellow-believers have considerably more to say. What we hear time and again is that baptism is ‘just a symbol’. This is a point that our leaders evidently feel it important to reinforce, lest we should get the impression that the ritual itself ‘makes you a Christian’. I rather suspect something of the same caution regarding the claims of ritual underlies our preferred versions of the eucharistic prayer. These petition that the bread and wine on the communion table ‘be for us the body and blood of Jesus Christ’. The implication, once again, is that the ritual reflects an existing inward and spiritual reality rather than bringing that reality into effect. Anglicans of an older generation will recall a phrase from the catechism of the 1662 prayer book, which has become lodged in our collective consciousness, and is the only other thing sure to be mentioned in this context: that the sacraments are an ‘outward and visible sign of in inward and spiritual grace’. When seen in this light, the implication of the ‘just’ in ‘just symbolism’ is that the operation of the ‘symbol’ is inward and spiritual rather than outward and material. Presupposed here is the possibility of a kind of truth that doesn’t concern things in the world, but is nevertheless valid for the individual.
To my knowledge, Roman Catholics share the same perception of a fundamental dichotomy of outward and inward, literal and symbolic, but assert with a vehemence matching that of their Protestant counterparts that the signification of the Eucharist is, not just inward and symbolic, but outward and literal. So far as the dichotomy itself is concerned, the assumptions of Catholics and Protestants are alike – as are those of most people, believers or non-believers. One occasionally encounters some who would deny the validity of non-literal types of meaning. But I suspect that that is a comparatively rare view. In fact, with the advent of post-modernism, the sphere of ‘just symbolism’ would appear to have reasserted its rights. Few people nowadays would question the importance of ‘what is true for you’. And there is one domain where those rights have never seriously been contested: the domain of poetic and creative imagination, where a kind of inward and subjective truth is almost universally acknowledged.
Are we then to understand the Eucharist, too, as ‘just symbolism’?
If you have read other posts on this site (especially those in this series), it will be no surprise to you that my answer to this is a very firm ‘no’. The dichotomy of literal and symbolic, outward and inward, is entirely at odds with the conception of religion and sacrifice I have been developing here. Instead, you may remember, I define religion in terms of identity and belonging, and in a manner consistent with the understanding of the human individual as a node in a relational network. On this view, religious signification is not primarily concerned either with states of subjectivity limited to the individual, nor with the kind of ‘outward’ phenomena that are the object of scientific enquiry (e.g. stars and atoms). Rather than either of these we are speaking of a kind of signification appropriate to collective phenomena of a social, political, or cultural nature. These are neither unique to the individual (subjective), nor ‘just there’ whether anyone believes in them or not (objective). They constitute a realm of in-between phenomena (between subjective and objective) that are real because people believe in them. We might call such phenomena inter-subjective.
So, if the Eucharist isn’t either ‘literal’ or ‘just symbolic’, then what is it? And where would we even go for a concept to frame its peculiar mode of signification? Is the symbolism of the Eucharist, as certain Catholics maintain, a type of signification exclusive to the Christian sacraments?[i]
Here, in summary, is the response I shall be defending here.
The Eucharist is an instance of what I am tempted to call ‘religious’ symbolism. By this I mean a mode of signification common to all religions to the extent they have not altogether succumbed to the influence of modernity. It is quite distinct from ‘just symbolism’, as we have described it. And, while still ultimately implicit in Christian practice and belief, it is a mode of signification that has become increasingly difficult to explain in the concepts and terms we habitually use – thanks to a conceptual shift brought about by modernity itself. Nevertheless, it is a mode of signification that can, for all that, be grasped intellectually, thanks to – if nothing else – the concepts and terms developed by social anthropology and religious studies in their analysis of belief systems outside the realm of modernity.
The answer to our initial question, then, is essentially ‘religious’ symbolism. I am unhappy with the term, however. It suggests that modernity is itself somehow ‘non-religious’. Actually, as I have made clear elsewhere, the practice of religion is as universal as the human need for identity – but takes different forms in modern culture. I propose therefore to refer to it, instead, as anthropological symbolism. Even this is not altogether satisfactory as it suggests that anthropology is exclusively concerned with study of non-modern forms of society and culture – which, of course, is far from being the case. But a term is necessary – and in the present context, the implications of a misrepresentation of anthropology are of relatively minor concern. Anthropological symbolism, then, will be term by which we refer to the mode of signification characteristic of other (i.e. non-modern) religions – including Christianity.
Of course, our analysis of eucharistic symbolism is not exhausted in the account of whatever aspects it shares with the symbolism of other religions. As we shall see, Christian symbolism is actually a rather peculiar – if not absolutely unique – type of anthropological symbolism. An account of the anthropological symbol, then, will constitute only the first stage of our enquiry. We will then have to specify those features of Christian symbolism that distinguish it from the symbolism of other religions. It is at this second stage of our enquiry that we shall call on liturgical studies in support of our theology of the Eucharist.
The existence of these liturgical studies raises the question why our investigation of the anthropological symbol is even necessary. If I hold the understanding of the theologians to be essentially correct, then, on the basis of what I have previously argued, I must also believe that their understanding of the eucharistic symbolism is an ‘anthropological’ one. If that is the case, why the need to explain anthropological symbolism? Would it not be simpler – in a non-specialist piece such as this – to cut to the chase and offer you the account of eucharistic symbolism to be found in the liturgical theologians – if indeed that account is a perfectly satisfactory one?
If the aim of this essay were simply to offer an intellectually coherent account of eucharistic symbolism for the benefit of fellow Evangelicals, then perhaps that would be my best course. Actually, however, my aims are considerably broader than that. I want to demonstrate, for any contemporary enquirer into Christian faith, the relevance to their lives of the eucharistic symbol as an alternative – and, potentially, more humanly valid – source of meaning to the non-Christian ones we so easily take for granted. For this, I need to make the case, in contradiction to everything our culturally-grounded commonsense may be telling us, that ‘just symbolism’ does not constitute the only conceivable type of non-literal signification. My hope is that the broader perspective opened up by the comparison with a wider range of religions and cultures will put the reader in a better position to appreciate that the eucharistic symbol of the theologians is not the complete oddity it might otherwise appear, but an instance of a type of signification (i.e. the anthropological symbol) common to practically every culture and civilization excepting modernity. This ought to lend it credibility in otherwise sceptical eyes. The great gift of social anthropology and religious studies is to bring us a side-long glimpse of ourselves as we might appear in the eyes of the cultural other – and, along with that, a greater sense of the particularity of a worldview with which we might otherwise wholly identify. And it is this liberation from the spell of the everyday that can open our mind to other possibilities.
[i] Weird examples of this kind of obfuscatory discourse are provided by E.L. Mascall, Corpus Christ, Longmans, 1953, pp.81-110