Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The Wafer Wars

Opening hostilities in the Wafer Wars commenced when a renegade monk by the name of Sensibilius published a commentary on the Gospel of John in which he suggested that the words, “I am the true bread,” should be interpreted figuratively rather than literally.

His book was immediately placed on the index, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was promptly burnt at the stake.

That seemed to put an end to the matter, but his contraband commentary became the subject of learned disputations, and this—in turn—merely raised more meddlesome questions.

If the Son was a loaf of bread, then who was the Baker, and when did he come out of the oven?

After much agitation, the Council of Holy Dough solemnly decreed the dogma of the eternal fermentation of the Son.

However, the Western Church took it upon herself to amend the decree. The amended text of the Council now decreed the double fermentation of the Son.

This led to a schism between the One True Church of the West and the other One True Church of the East.

In the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople soon has his own crisis to deal with. For centuries, Eastern liturgy specified that the sacred baker add the salt after the flour, but before the water.

This was in accordance with The Booke of Julia Chylde, in the Slavonic version. Unless the ingredients were added in the prescribed order, the sacrament was invalid.

However, the Slavonic version was a translation of the long lost Nubian version. A monk at St. Catherine’s recently discovered the misfiled copy of the Nubian version.

Upon inspection, church authorities found, to their chagrin, that in the Nubian version the baker was to add the salt before the flour, but after the water.

Church authorities tried to suppress the discrepancy, but word got out. Soon the One True Church of the East was rent between the pre-Saltine faction and the post-Saltine faction, depending on which recipe was deemed to be the canonical recipe.

One pre-Saltine baker was charged with sacrilege for surreptitiously adding the ingredients in the wrong order. As punishment, he, his wife, and their eleven children were stuffed into a giant puff pastry and heated in his own oven.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Nubian version also contained a variant reading of Ps 103:12. For centuries, the Church had used this verse as a prooftext for unleavened communion bread. In the Slavonic version, it read, “as far as the yeast is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Now, however, they found out that the original reading was “east” instead of “yeast.”

This was a matter of extreme delicacy, for it meant that generations of devout communicants had been receiving mere bread. When word leaked out of this revelation, lay believers began to practice proxy communion on behalf of the dead—in hopes of redeeming their loved ones from the lake of fire.

Meanwhile, the other One True Church of the West was fighting the Wafer Wars on another front.

Charles the Short, lord of the Holy Roman Empire, needed to form a military alliance with the king of Saxony to defend his border along the Palatinate. And to do that, he needed to arrange a marriage between his only daughter, Princess Crumbcake, and Duke das Brot, nephew to the king of Saxony.

But the nephew to the king of Saxony was already married, so he needed to annul his marriage.

However, Pope Obnoxius III needed to form a military alliance with the Palatine king to defend the eastern flank of the papal estates. And he couldn’t grant an annulment to the king of Saxony without offending the Palatine monarch.

On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to offend the king of Saxony since he needed his troops to defend the western flank of the papal estates.

To further complicate matters, Princess Crumbcake was a secret disciple of the Cinnamonians. This was a sect that ardently believed the wafer should be made of cinnamon bread.

After all, if the Savior was literally bread, then what sort of bread was he? Princess Crumbcake’s theological judgment was admittedly swayed by the fact that she had a sweet tooth.

By contrast, the Duke was of the firm conviction that banana bread was the only true communion bread. After all, the true bread came “from above,” which is true of banana trees, but hardly true of wheat fields.

Pope Obnoxius III convoked the Second Council of Holy Dough to hammer out a compromise. By handing out a preferment here and a preferment there, Pope Obnoxius was able to secure the votes necessary to pass an infallible decree.

But his compromise provoked a peasant revolt. For generations the peasantry had been led to believe their liturgy was the true liturgy. To go to Mass one day and suddenly hear new words and see new rites left them deeply shaken. They boycotted the new Mass. They threatened to do violence to the village priest unless he recited the old Mass. Civil war was close at hand.

Pope Obnoxius laid the countryside under edict. For a while, there was a thriving black market in old communion wafers, consecrated under the old rites. At its peak, a wafer might go for as much as a milk cow and two guinea hens.

Families huddled behind barricaded doors during the witching hour, for fear the bowels of perdition would open wide and swallow them whole now that they had no digested wafer to ward off evil spirits.

But as time went on, people began to notice...well...they began to notice that time went on. Things that go bump in the night were no bumpier than normal. Death by ritual Satanic murder remained well within the actuarial mean.

It slowly dawned on people that maybe Sensibilius was right all along.

22 comments:

  1. I'm in the movie theater, watching the premiere showing of Steve Hays's new film, "The Wafer Wars."

    The theater is packed. I'm looking around at where the high churchmen are sitting. They are not laughing. Their eyebrows are furrowed. Lips pursed and downturned. Nostrils flaring.

    Yet the rest of the theater is laughing. The high churchmen become more angry because of the giggling laughter.

    I feel sad for the high churchmen. They do not have the joy of the Lord.

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  2. "Opening hostilities in the Wafer Wars commenced when a renegade monk by the name of Sensibilius published a commentary on the Gospel of John in which he suggested that the words, “I am the true bread,” should be interpreted figuratively rather than literally."

    And what always just (figuratively) kills me is that high church types always accuse conservative evangelicals as being literalists and fundamentalists.

    Hypocrites! They are the hyper-literalists with their doctrine of Communion.

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  3. There is no reality higher than God, to which He Himself points at: that's the difference between Gnosticism with their Aeonic system, and typological and allegorical interpretation (St. Paul, the Alexandrians, and the Antiochians).

    And the problem with interpretation is not whether it's literal or figurative, but whether it's condoned by Tradition or not. Christianity was a creedal religion from its inception, and its theology is encoded in the Church's hymnography (lex orandi, lex credendi).

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  4. LVKA SAID:

    “There is no reality higher than God, to which He Himself points at: that's the difference between Gnosticism with their Aeonic system, and typological and allegorical interpretation (St. Paul, the Alexandrians, and the Antiochians).”

    Typology and allegory employ very different principles. St. Paul didn’t use allegory to interpret Scripture. At most, he used allegory to illustrate a point.

    “And the problem with interpretation is not whether it's literal or figurative, but whether it's condoned by Tradition or not.”

    No, the problem is whether “Tradition” is condoned by Scripture.

    There’s no such thing as “tradition” (singular). There are only traditions (plural). Diverse traditions. Divergent traditions. “Tradition” is the subset of traditions that your denomination happens to agree with.

    “Christianity was a creedal religion from its inception, and its theology is encoded in the Church's hymnography (lex orandi, lex credendi).”

    You’re equivocating (see above), and you’re redefining Christianity by later historical developments.

    Christianity was a revealed religion from its inception. Revelation, not tradition, is the touchstone of truth.

    The Bible contains creedal statements, and there’s nothing wrong with the church attempting to systematize the teaching of Scripture.

    But Christianity is self-defined by its revelatory source and standard, not by subsequent historical effects.

    Moreover, I don’t begin with the inception of Christianity. I begin with the history of redemption, recorded in the Bible, inclusive of the OT as well as the NT.

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  5. "Look at those men who have those perverted notions about the grace of Jesus Christ who has come down to us and see how contrary to the mind of God they are...they even distain from the Eucharist and prayer because they will not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins and which The Father in His goodness raised up... and so denying the gift of God, these men are doomed in their disputatiousness."

    Ignatious of Antioch, 106AD- disciple of John the Apostle, ordained by Peter

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  6. anne said...

    "Ignatious [sic] of Antioch, 106AD- disciple of John the Apostle, ordained by Peter."

    Well, Anne, that would make Ignatius the true Pope. That would make the bishop of Antioch the real Victor of Christ and legitimate heir to St. Peter's throne.

    In that event, I hope you don't submit to the antipope in Rome, who usurps the bishopric of Antioch.

    BTW, the quote seems to imply that all who deny the Real Presence are damned. Is that your position?

    Modern Catholicism doesn't regard all Baptists as hellbound, does it? In modern Catholicism, even a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist can be saved.

    So what church do you belong to? Clearly not the church of Rome.

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  7. Is it just me, or do quotes with lots of "..."'s in 'em make you go, "I wonder what was left out"?

    Then again, I suppose this is why I'm a Calvinist. No half-verse quotations will do when we have entire chapters of Scripture, even entire books, that make our argument for us. So a highly edited quote attributed to "Ignatious" makes me go ::YAWN::

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  8. BTW, I'm also curious as to what source the quote came from. It would be kinda like me saying:

    "A fool is a person who walkes up without knowing he went to sleep." -- Mark Twain.

    Now obviously you will have no difficulty proving whether this quote is legit or not, right?

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  9. I can't help it - "Pope Obnoxious III" makes me laugh.

    I'm gonna start saying that when I don't know which Pope it was at a given historical period.

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  10. uhm, and another thing: ... when exactly did Orth. fight amongst each-other or even created schisms over textual variations? :-\

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  11. Ignatius of Antioch-
    Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chap 6&7

    Can be accessed online at the Christians Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College

    http://www.ccel.org/ccel/scaff/an01.v.vii.vi.html

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  12. Lvka said:
    uhm, and another thing: ... when exactly did Orth. fight amongst each-other or even created schisms over textual variations? :-\

    ***************************

    uhm, The Wafer Wars isn't mean't to be historical. It's a satire.

    Of course, I realize that, as an Orthodox believer, the distinction between fact and fiction is pretty blurry, so I can appreciate your confusion.

    However, if you want a historical example, the schism ("The Old Believers") within the Russian Orthodox church over the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon did involve textual variants. So my spoof does have a real world corollary, both here and elsewhere.

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  13. And what textual variations would these be?

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  14. Lvka said...

    "And what textual variations would these be?"

    Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, p243.

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  15. Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, p243.

    One more answer like this coming from any of You and I'll soon be knocking an Your door with a sledge-hammer. (Do You like C++ pointer programming way too much, or are You a rich-kid that You always feel the need to imitate Your daddy and constantly refer me to Your "secretary", or what exactly is Your problem, man ?).

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  16. Lvka said:
    Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, p243.

    One more answer like this coming from any of You and I'll soon be knocking an Your door with a sledge-hammer. (Do You like C++ pointer programming way too much, or are You a rich-kid that You always feel the need to imitate Your daddy and constantly refer me to Your "secretary", or what exactly is Your problem, man ?).

    *******************

    It's not my job to tutor you on your own theological tradition or church history.

    If you don't own the standard reference works, Google "The Old Believers."

    But I gave you a reputable source.

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  17. I've read the Wiki-article. There are different wordings in prayer- and service-books, ... but nothing in the vein of what You write. :-\

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  18. Lvka said:

    "I've read the Wiki-article. There are different wordings in prayer- and service-books, ... but nothing in the vein of what You write. :-\"

    Now you're moving the goal-post. You originally asked about textual variants. You need to get your schizophrenia under control.

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  19. Roman Catholics often cite the following passage from Ignatius of Antioch, which Anne has cited in this thread:

    "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again." (Letter To The Smyrnaeans, 7)

    Yet, earlier in the same letter Ignatius writes:

    "Yea, far be it from me to make any mention of them, until they repent and return to a true belief in Christ's passion, which is our resurrection." (5)

    Are we to conclude that Ignatius believed that Jesus' passion (or our faith in His passion) is transubstantiated into our resurrection under the appearance of remaining Jesus' passion (or our faith in His passion)? There's nothing in Ignatius that tells us much about his view of the eucharist. Catholics can't claim to know that Ignatius agreed with their view on this issue.

    Roman Catholics often assume transubstantiation or something similar to it whenever they see an opportunity to read such a concept into a text. I would suggest that people closely examine Catholic claims on this subject, because a lot of what's commonly asserted is incorrect. A "real presence" isn't equivalent to transubstantiation. A person can believe in some type of eucharistic presence without believing in the Roman Catholic view of the eucharist. Many church fathers held a view of the eucharist that contradicts the Roman Catholic view or could plausibly be interpreted in more than one way, not just in a Roman Catholic sense.

    A good online source on this subject is Philip Schaff's church history. See section 69 at:

    http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/2_ch05.htm

    And section 95 at:

    http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch07.htm

    I also recommend consulting Schaff's notes, since the notes cite additional passages from the fathers and cite other scholars confirming Schaff's conclusions. I don't agree with Schaff on every issue, and he doesn't include some arguments I would include, but his church history is good for a general introduction to the subject.

    Contrast what Schaff and other scholars have documented with claims like these made by the Council of Trent:

    "our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the last supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, He testified, in express and clear words, that He gave them His own very Body, and His own Blood; words which, - recorded by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by Saint Paul, whereas they carry with them that proper and most manifest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, - it is indeed a crime the most unworthy that they should be wrested, by certain contentions and wicked men, to fictitious and imaginary tropes, whereby the verity of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth, has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men" (session 13, chapter 1, "On the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.")

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  20. By the way, for those who don't know, the passage in question from Ignatius was written in response to heretics who deny the physicality of Christ. Any of the popular views of the eucharist, including the symbolic view, would contradict the denial of Christ's physicality that Ignatius was arguing against. The symbolic view maintains that the eucharist has reference to Christ's physical body, so both a Baptist who holds the symbolic view and a Roman Catholic who adheres to transubstantation could agree with what Ignatius wrote. While it's possible that Ignatius believed in some sort of physical presence in the eucharist, nothing in the passage in question tells us that he did.

    I've cited chapter 5 of that same letter of Ignatius as an example of how unnecessary the Catholic interpretation of chapter 7 is. Similarly, when Jesus says that the cup is the new covenant (Luke 22:20), He obviously doesn't mean that the cup is transubstantiated into the new covenant. A covenant isn't something physical, and surely all of us can understand how Jesus would use "is" in some sense other than transubstantiation. The same is true of Ignatius. Whether the eucharist represents Christ's physicality or is transubstantiated into it, either one contradicts a denial of Christ's physicality.

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  21. Uhm, ... You made it sound like Orth. used certain variations of Biblical manuscripts to create divisions among themselves in a Protestant manner, randomly extracting various diverging interpretations in a private, Protestant-like manner out of them. (The fact that the Old-Belivers sing twice Alleluia and cross themsleves with two fingers is not kinda what I was expecting to find: I already knew that).

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  22. Lvka said:
    Uhm, ... You made it sound like Orth. used certain variations of Biblical manuscripts to create divisions among themselves in a Protestant manner, randomly extracting various diverging interpretations in a private, Protestant-like manner out of them. (The fact that the Old-Belivers sing twice Alleluia and cross themsleves with two fingers is not kinda what I was expecting to find: I already knew that).

    ***************************************

    Actually, it's worse. Instead of using certain variants in Biblical manuscripts to create divisions among themselves in a Protestant manner, the Orthodox used used certain variants in liturgical manuscripts to create divisions among themselves in a Protestant manner.

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