Down By the Riverside

 

 

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more.

refrain

I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.

Gonna stick my sword in the golden sand;
Down By the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna stick my sword in the golden sand
Down by the riverside
Gonna study war no more.

Continuing from last Thursday’s BLOG post:

Bonhoeffer doesn’t suggest how he thinks the Christian establishment, the Sanctorum Communio will shake off its 2000 metaphysical years or exactly what the Christian life might look like without the church, but his emphasis clearly is on reverence for “the person” as a demonstration of reverence for God. The message is clear:  If you want to find God, you will find God in people not in a metaphysical place out there somewhere in the Cosmos… and not necessarily in church.

Bonhoeffer’s dissertation referenced in Thursday’s post was from his days as a seminary student in Germany.  Sanctorum Communio, the title of his dissertation has a much broader focus than the sacrament which is variously called “The Lord’s Supper,” “Communion,” and “Eucharist.”  Theologians generally and Christian institutions specifically have arrived at an interesting variety of conclusions about what the liturgical rite of communion in church represents. Some have concluded that God is literally in the bread and in the wine, that it magically (perhaps mysteriously is a kinder way to put it) becomes the body of Jesus, the Christ, and because Jesus is believed to be God the Son, when a communicant participates in the rite, if all the requirements have been met, actually meets, eats and drinks God. Transubstantiation is the word used to describe the mystery. 

Some church communities consider the elements to be unchanged physically in the rite of communion, but that the elements, while still just bread and wine, have the body and blood of Christ metaphysically present alongside the unchanged elements.  The theological doctrine is called consubstantiation. 

The Protestant churches which don’t subscribe to either transubstantiation or consubstantiation doctrines but “serve communion” believe the elements are purely symbolic, with the symbols described in a variety of ways as important in bringing the individual communicant close to God.

Communion of Saints, Sanctorum Communio, as a theological doctrine addressed by theologians through the ages has more to do with how the saints, the Christians, relate to each other than with a rite in the mass or in community worship.  Consider the three quotes from theologians from the 20th Century: William Temple, Paul Tillich,  and Joseph Fletcher.

“There is only one ultimate and invariable duty, and its formula is “Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.”  How to do this is another question, but this is the whole of moral duty.

———William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury (1942-1944)

Mens Creatrix (“The Creative Mind”) an essay published in 1917

“The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete. . . . The absolutism of love is its power to go into the concrete situation, to discover what is demanded by the predicament of the concrete to which it turns.  Therefore, love can never become fanatical in a fight for the absolute, or cynical under the impact of the relative.”

——— Paul Tillich,

Systematic Theology, Volume I, p. 152

“Only one ‘thing’ is intrinsically good; namely, love; nothing else at all.”

———Joseph Fletcher

Situation Ethics, p. 57

The simple, easy to understand requirement for living correctly in community, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,”  often gets lost in liturgy, ritual, and rhetoric. 

It is interesting to wonder what would happen if absolutely everybody in the whole world, regardless of religion, race, or nationality, could manage for just one day to agree to to set aside all doctrine, all religious laws, all ritualistic practices in favor of the simple “Love your neighbor as yourself” requirement.