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  • Rethinking Baptism in an Open Table Theology

    by Bob Cornwall

     
    Baptism             In a previous post I argued for the adoption of a completely open Eucharistic Table. I made this argument on the basis of Jesus’ own practice of Table Fellowship. In the practices of most American congregations, at least Protestant ones, the Table is completely open. That is, rarely does a congregation bar a person from taking Communion. They may suggest that it is open to believers and may even suggest that children refrain from taking communion if they’re not baptized, but other than that it’s open. The rationale for this practice is more pragmatic than theological. We want to be nice and and hospitable, but is that enough? As for me, I would like to have a theological foundation for my practice. I hope to explore these ideas in more depth over the next few years.  One of the components of this conversation is the role of Baptism. If you open the Table to all-comers, what does that do to Baptism, which has traditionally functioned as the entry point into the community and the prerequisite to receiving communion?[ene_ptp] I would argue that the connection between Table fellowship and Baptism emerged in the second century, probably for good reason, but it doesn’t lie in the New Testament. Of course, silence is not the best evidence. Nonetheless, I have not found evidence that first century Christians required Baptism prior to admission to the Table. So, could Baptism function in a different way than we’ve typically understood?
    I need to state up front that I am part of a tradition that practices Believer’s Baptism, though we also practice “open membership.”  By that I mean we affirm the Baptisms of those who come to us, even if they were administered differently than is true of our own practice. In other words, if you were baptized as an infant, we won’t immerse you before we accept you as a member.  Now, I was born into the Episcopal Church, and thus I was baptized as an infant, and later Confirmed. On that basis I would have been welcomed into full fellowship as a member of a Disciple church. However, before I ever became a Disciple, I was rebaptized, as a teenager, at a church camp. I did this because I was looking for a sense of confirmation that my new-found commitment to Christ was real. I wanted to have it sealed. This decision, this need for a sealing event in my spiritual life, led to an ongoing struggle with my own baptismal theology. I finally recognized that my issue may have had more to do with my Confirmation experience than my Baptism (I even wrote a lengthy article for Church History on 18th century Anglican Confirmation practices), but nonetheless I have thought often about the meaning of the church’s baptismal practices and theology.
    What then is the connection between Table fellowship and Baptism, if we practice an Open Table? What role should baptism as a sacrament play in our faith journeys? I would like to argue that Baptism is that sacramental event that signals one’s desire to enter into a deeper covenant relationship with God and with God’s people.
    In Acts 2, Baptism functions as the point at which one enters a redemptive relationship with God. Peter suggests that Baptism follows repentance, and is the key to the reception of forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit (though in Acts 10, the mark of the Spirit comes before Baptism).  In Romans 6 it is through Baptism that one identifies with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. Paul connects the symbol of Baptism to our identity as people linked into Christ’s death and resurrection. To be baptized in this scenario is to have died to sin, and have been raised to new life in Christ. Now the reality is that in this earthly life sin’s hold on our lives remains present. I am by no means perfect in my discipleship or my life practices. I get angry. I say things I shouldn’t. I’m selfish. I can even be mean-spirited (hopefully not very often). At the same time, I am a new creation, to draw from Paul’s language in 2 Corinthians 5.
    Baptism is understood to be a once in a life-time event. We don’t need to continually go through ritual baths to purify ourselves, while the Table is understood to be an event that we participate in regularly. I would argue for weekly communion, at the very least. The Table then functions both as entry point, and as the point at which we are nourished by the Bread of Life (John 6). But once again, Jesus didn’t require the crowd who gathered to share in the feeding of the 5000 to be baptized before receiving bread and fish.
    I’m still working this out. I don’t have all the answers. But, if we’re going to practice an Open Table, then we need to consider the consequences of this practice for Baptism. That is, if we’re going to affirm the sacramental importance of Baptism, then we need to figure out how it functions in our faith journeys. Baptism must be more than simply a naming rite. It needs to be more than simply a rite of passage into adulthood. For those communities that practice infant Baptism, they, like we Believer Baptist types, might need to strengthen their Confirmation practices that often parallel our baptismal practices.
    With this brief introduction I invite you to consider with me what it means to baptized in the 21st Century. This will become, I believe, increasingly important since the numbers of persons in our society having no previous Christian connections begin to enter our congregations. Paedobaptist types will need to figure out how to embrace growing numbers of adults who haven’t been baptized as children. Believer Baptism types will need to address the difference between the experiences of our children who have grown up in church and those who are coming in for the first time. Parents can determine when a child takes communion. The same is not true for an adult!
    What is the meaning of Baptism in an Open Table community? That is the question of the day!
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  • Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy (John Spong) — A Review

    by Bob Cornwall

    [Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared in “Ponderings on a Faith Journey,” Bob’s personal blog, on March 7, 2016.

    Used with permission.]

    SpongThe charge of heresy is a strong one. In the past charges of heresy could get one thrown out of the church if not worse. It’s probably not a word to be thrown around lightly. So, when a book arrives carrying the title Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy one will want to proceed with caution. When the person writing the book has been called a heretic himself, we might wonder what we’re in store for as we read. The question raised by the title concerns the way we ought to read the Bible. If to read the Bible literally is a Gentile heresy, what does that mean? In what ways did Gentiles introduce heretical ideas into the Christian community? In other words, how did Gentiles mess things up?
    The author of this book with a provocative title is John Shelby Spong, the long retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey. Spong has long been a provocative voice within the Christian community. He has regularly pushed boundaries with a “take no prisoners” attitude. On the positive side he has pushed the cause of women in ministry and welcoming LGBT persons into the life of the church. On the other hand, he has often used his position in the church to disparage those with whom he disagrees. And we see some of that in this book. Those who would hold the Bible, for instance, to be Word of God (a theological term) are said to be illiterate. He also suggests that ending the reading of Scripture in worship with the oft-used phrase “this is the Word of the Lord” is, in his words, “little more than the perpetuation of religious ignorance and religious prejudice” (p. 11) It would seem that his purpose in writing this book (and previous books) is to save Christianity from itself by making it intellectually acceptable.
    In many ways Spong is a restorationist. Like other Restorationists (my own tradition has a restorationist element), he wants to restore “true Christianity” so that it will be attractive to those who cannot abide a supernaturalist religion. In some ways Spong reminds me of Schleiermacher’s speeches to the “cultured despisers” of religion. But, whereas Schleiermacher’s vision of Christianity had a romanticist element, Spong at times seems closer to Enlightenment rationalists like John Toland and Matthew Tindal. While Spong embraces a Modernist vision, it has become apparent that we have entered a postmodern age that is better able to hold faith and reason in tension in a way that Spong doesn’t seem to embrace
    At the heart of this book is Spong’s rather eccentric reading of the Gospel of Matthew. It needs to be noted that Spong is not a Bible scholar, though he seems to want the reader to grant him that role. Rather, he is a popularizer of biblical scholarship. It appears that he is well-read in the biblical scholarship of the age and is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar (one needn’t be a scholar to be a fellow). There’s nothing wrong with being a popularizer. Like most preachers, when I enter the pulpit I do so as a popularizer of biblical scholarship.  I take biblical scholarship and bring its rewards to a congregation through teaching and preaching. I’ve even written a couple of books that exposit and interpret the Bible, but that doesn’t make me a biblical scholar (I do not have advanced degrees in the study of the Bible). With that said, we turn to Spong’s premise. That premise is that Gentile readers have misread the Gospels. They have read them literally, when the Jewish writers and recipients of the Gospels never would have understood them in that way.
    In many ways Spong is engaging in the never ending quest for the historical Jesus. The question is whether he has uncovered the historical Jesus or has simply looked down that proverbial well and has seen his own reflection. The way in which this reflection is cast will change with time, but the Jesus seen reflected in the waters of that well will likely be in sync with the vision of reality held by the one doing the looking! John Spong is no different than the rest of us.
    At the heart of the book is Spong’s desire to undo what he believes is an unwarranted and even dangerous atonement theology that emerged after Christianity became a Gentile faith. It is true that the atonement is a subject of deep debate in the present era (and really always has been). Nonetheless the cross remains central to the Christian faith, so the question that faces us is the role it will play in the life of the church. In order undo the harm he believes is perpetrated by an atonement theology that denies human worth, he wants to recast our reading of the Gospels.
    Those who have studied the Gospels likely know that they emerged late in the second half of the first century, decades after the death of Jesus. The only New Testament texts that predate the Gospels are the letters of Paul, which say very little about Jesus’ earthly life. The cross and resurrection are central in Paul’s thought, though there is little narrative given to these two key points. It is true as well that there is divergence in the Gospel narratives that must be accounted for. Scholars have been busy seeking to explain the points of agreement and disagreement.
    Spong offers us one particular take on this effort. He does so by popularizing a theory introduced in the 1970s by the British biblical scholar Michael Goulder that the Gospels are Jewish liturgical texts, which offer up the story of Jesus in terms of Goulder’s reconstruction of a Jewish liturgical year. It should be noted that Goulder’s theories have never been accepted by mainstream biblical scholars. Part of the problem with Goulder’s reconstruction, and thus Spong’s popularization of it, is that we simply don’t know enough of what occurred in synagogues to say anything definitive about how scripture might be interpreted. We especially don’t know how Jesus would have been understood in that context—except for what seems to be revealed at points in the Gospels. But, for me a more pertinent question that never gets answered is why Jewish synagogues would have been reconstructing the story of Jesus in the form of a Jewish liturgical calendar.
    Another aspect of Goulder’s view, which Spong takes up, is his rejection of the existence of “Q,” the sayings source that biblical scholars believe Matthew and Luke used in tandem with the Gospel of Mark to create their versions of the Jesus story. While there are a few scholars who reject what has become the accepted theory (sort of like the theory of evolution within biological sciences), it remains the accepted theory. In Spong’s view Matthew uses Mark, but then rewrites it in line with a Jewish liturgical year. He then suggests that Luke took Matthew and revised it for a more cosmopolitan Jewish audience. suggested that while Mark is the earliest Gospel, he rejected the idea of the existence of a sayings source (Q) that was later used by Matthew and Luke. Spong takes up Goulder’s view and suggests that we should reject Q and assume that Matthew was written in the context of the synagogue liturgy. He then suggests that Luke took Matthew and revised it for a different synagogue context. If we accept this theory, then we will read the Gospels through Jewish eyes. And here’s the kicker. If we adopt Spong’s view, then no Jew would have ever read the story of Jesus literally. That means there are few if any historical elements to the story. Of course, this leaves us with a largely mythical Jesus. There may have been a historical Jesus at the bottom of this story, a Jesus who did end up crucified, but beyond that we know very little, because Jews didn’t take such things literally. Or so, he says. In some ways Spong goes even further than most Jesus Seminar participants.
    I have to hand it to Spong, he is quite creative. His use of a liturgical calendar to create the story of Jesus seems rather ingenious, but for me he makes too many leaps of logic. While I think we do need to read the Gospels through Jewish eyes, I’m not sure that Goulder is our best guide. And while it’s clear (to me) that the Gospel writers did interpret Jesus’ life through an Old Testament lens that made use of figures such as Moses, I’m not sure that this requires us to make nearly everything metaphor. This is, in my mind, the heart of the problem in current discussions of the story of Jesus. It seems as if we face a choice between taking everything as literal history or everything is to be taken metaphorically. I’m also concerned that Spong shows no awareness of the power of oral tradition in the ancient world. The fact that the Gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus doesn’t mean that they do not reflect stories that were passed on with great care from the time of Jesus. If we reject the value of oral tradition we’re left with a Jesus who has very little to say to us. After all, these parables that mean so much to so many, have no connection to this character of Jesus. So why bother with him? In the end Spong did nothing to convince me that the long rejected Goulder thesis should be resurrected.  While we need to be careful with the influence of later traditions, I’m not so sure that we should call a literal reading a Gentile heresy.
    Yes, Jesus was Jewish. His teachings would necessarily align with Jewish thought. His earliest followers would have been Jewish, but over time the church took root within a Gentile context. It was natural for the church to recast the story in a way that would make sense, even as Spong himself seeks to do in order to make Christianity palatable to a modern skeptical audience. Besides,  I’m just not sure John Spong is the best guide to a modern reading of Jesus. While he offers a lengthy bibliography at the end of the book, he shows little engagement with an of these resources, most of which support the current theories of transmission. For a Jewish reading, maybe we would be better served by reading Amy Jill Levine than John Spong.
    I know Spong gets lots of attention. And that’s okay. The tent is broad. The Episcopal Church for that matter has always been rather broad theologically (and that goes back into the seventeenth century). Before Spong there was James Pike. He will have his day, but I just think there are better places to go if one wishes to find a balanced picture of the Gospels. For me, Spong’s book offers a rather sad picture. We’re not left with much to build a faith upon when everything becomes metaphor.
    I’ll admit that I’ve never been a fan of Spong’s. This book did nothing to convince me otherwise. I have no desire to separate him from the Christian community, but I do find his attitude toward those with whom he is at odds to be disappointing. Many of us seek to read the Bible in a critical but appreciative manner. We struggle with texts that espouse violence and oppression, at the same time many of us have found the Scriptures to be a place where we encounter a word from God. Thus, to say of those who speak of the Bible as the Word of God are “illiterate” is unnecessary. At the same time, if Spong can elicit from us a serious conversation about how we read the Bible, and read it responsibly, then perhaps he has done us a service.
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  • Dining at Jesus’ Table

    by Bob Cornwall

                   [ene_ptp] Holy Week is upon us. One event in Holy Week is the gathering on Thursday to remember the meal Jesus shared on the night before he went to the cross. According to biblical tradition Jesus was participating in a Passover Meal (Luke 22:7-23). This meal forms the foundation for the Christian practice of the Eucharist. In most Christian communities, Jesus’ “words of institution” will be pronounced over the elements of bread and wine (or grape juice) whenever the community gathers at the Table for communion. The question that vexes the church is who should be invited to the Table.
    Since at least the second century a majority in the Christian community have assumed that only the baptized (or the confirmed) should come to the Table and partake. This makes this sort of a family meal, and the boundaries of this family are starkly drawn. It may be that on Holy Thursday, an invitation will be given and some in attendance will be purposely excluded. There are theological reasons for doing this, but I wonder whether they are true to the spirit of Jesus.
    Recently I participated in a Google Hangout session with our publisher Henry Neufeld. We talked at some length about the concept of the “Open Table.” I think that many churches practice an open table whether they advertise it or not. They do this by simply not checking the credentials of those who come. They might even issue an open invitation without thinking very deeply or very theologically about what it is they’re doing. In essence it is a matter of being nice. We’re going to have a meal and we don’t leave anyone out. But what is the rationale?
    I believe that we should practice an open table. I don’t think anyone should be excluded from the Table, and I don’t say this simply because it’s bad manners to exclude. I believe that this is true to the original spirit of Christian table fellowship. I will add, that I even believe that those who practice faiths other than Christianity should be invited to the Table. That maybe a fairly radical idea, but I think it represents good Christian theology.
    I believe we should practice an open table for several reasons. First of all, I believe that it is true to the Passover spirit. If you’re a Christian and you’ve been invited to a Seder, you have been included in their faith experience even if you’re not Jewish. Secondly, I believe this is true to Jesus’ own Table fellowship. Jesus never excluded people from the Table, unless they self-excluded. He was criticized for dining with undesirables, and often that dining experience resulted in a conversion experience. If we believe that Jesus is present at the Table, and I do, then he is the host, and if he was inclusive in his invitation list shouldn’t we be as inclusive? Much more needs to be said, but I think we need to do some hard thinking about this question. This is especially true for Table centered communities, like my own. Disciples of Christ practice frequent communion, by which I mean at least weekly if not more often. In the Disciples tradition, which is my own tradition, whenever we gather for worship we will likely share in Table fellowship
    The next question of sacramental interest has to do with Baptism. Traditionally baptism has been understood as the initiatory sacramental rite. First you get baptized, then you get to take communion. That became Christian practice as early as the second century, but I don’t believe that it is a New Testament practice. The two are never linked in scripture. So if we practice an open table, which means that the Table is the initiatory rite, what do we make of baptism? That question needs a lot of unpacking, and I don’t have space here to do that unpacking. However, if baptism is no longer the initiatory rite, then perhaps it serves as a point of confirmation of a deeper commitment to God. In other words, we get baptized when we’re ready to fully embrace the call to discipleship, a call that is first expressed at the Table.
    As we gather at the Table on Thursday evening, let us remember that our presence at the Table is a sign of God’s steadfast love. Therefore, as we gather at the Table, let us give thanks to God. That is, after all, the meaning of the word Eucharist!
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