Covenantal Basis of Sacramental Validity

Tell me what you think. He seems to challenge the idea that Anglicans have this:

https://kabane52.tumblr.com/post/618126805954691072/the-covenantal-basis-of-sacramental-validity

 

Seems to me he is saying that any church comprised of baptised individuals who 'Call upon the name of The Lord - YAHWEH 'has valid sacraments.
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I think it is nonsense.

 

It is clear that our priests have Valid Apostolic Succession. There is an unbroken chain and they deliver the sacraments to us. No one else is allowed to do so and they are also given the ability to absolve sin.

 

Well right away, he seems to invoke ordination as a sacrament, which right away marks him as a Western (Latin) Christian who's now found a profession in Eastern Orthodoxy but has imported a lot of his Roman theology.

Second, he checks off all the marks of Roman apologetics: "I believe the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Roman Catholic Church have a valid priesthood and sacraments. The reason I say so is that the formal teaching of the Church of England after the Elizabethan reforms preclude the sort of priestly charism whose transmission is the essential purpose of the sacrament of ordination."

That argument structure, first listing the EO and RC churches, then saying that the priesthood had a some "charism" (Roman term), which the Elizabethan reforms somehow left behind (Roman claims mostly found in Bellarmine), is literally a RC apologetic format, word for word.

He doesn't state what the charism is, actually. The article abruptly ends before he finishes his point. But following the RC apologetic, the priestly 'charism' would have something to do with Eucharist as propitiatory sacrifice of God the Son to God the Father (!).

 

He also seems to forget that even Rome does not object to anything post 1662 in hte ordination right but says we lost it somewhere in there because of intent and form, that their own ordination rites now ape, but mentions nothing about the mingling of our lines from Orthodox and Old Catholics lines

 

https://kabane52.tumblr.com/post/629399916926648320/why-i-am-not-a-sacramental-rigorist

 

(With regard to the article linked in post #1) The writer records a question that was posed to him, then proceeds to ramble about on a tangential proposition about "calling on the name," and the final paragraph's assertions are conclusory and unsupported.

 

This has been real life for me. My parish has a couple who are mixed (ie. one is RC and the other is not). The local RC priests have poisoned the well enough that the husband does not receive our communion. The couple has worked out an arrangement where they go to 8 A.M. Mass at one of the Catholic parishes and 11 A.M. at ours. This man will go back in the kitchen and wash all of the coffee mugs and do other odd jobs around the church but he won't receive our communion. My rector is not the best at addressing the RC concerns. I sat down with the husband and explained our sacramental validity. That lasted about 2 weeks until the RC priests had changed his mind again.

 

What does the mans priest say?

 

All this 'valid sacrament' stuff is just so much superstitious bally hoo, in my opinion. What ever happened to "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them". And "I shall be with you until the end of the age".

Only if the RC or Orthodox churches say so I suppose. Their decision, not Christ's.
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Well, to look at the shoe on the other foot, if for some reason I find myself in a RC church (funeral or wedding) I will not receive their eucharist. I feel quite strongly about this, too, based on the doctrinal belief differences. So I guess I can appreciate the man's perception that a significant difference exists.

 

Nothing wrong with closed communion, which is a traditional Anglican doctrine. To abolish it in recent years was a sign of liberalism, not unlike women's ordination.

The sacrament is a deadly important thing, for all traditional Christians. Heck, even Calvin was willing to give his life in order to bar certain people from taking the sacrament. There is this famous image:



"Calvin refusing the Lord's Supper to the libertines, in St. Peter's Cathedral, Geneva"

There they are, drawing the swords, threatening to kill him, but he persists nonetheless.

Higher resolution:

 

Different issue though. We are dealing with unworthily receiving the Lords Supper in another thread elsewhere. These guys with swords are obviously demanding the Lord's Supper and are therefore firmly in the 'unworthy' category, and to equate women's ordination with violent Libertine behaviour is plain mendacity.
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I only raised it for the sake of comparison, to make a historic point: Even Calvin in Geneva was willing to risk his life for the doctrine of closed communion.

To explicitly require doctrinal adherence first, in order to permit (a few specific) people to receive the Sacrament has always been the historic position of Christians. Even Calvin did it, with the weak sacramentology that he had. Everyone with a stronger sacramentology than him certainly has had an even stricter approach to enshrining closed communion: the Lutherans, Anglicans, the Romans and the Greeks.

It is only in the recent decades that we've seen an abandonment of closed communion, which directly corresponds with other abandonments of historic orthodoxy, such as women's ordination. In other words, closed communion is the historic (and justified) position for all traditional Christians. Don't take modern liberal standpoints as your warrant; rather it is they that are unwarranted.

 

In fairness, Calvin refused communion to some locals whom he well knew were unrepentant of their sins; closing communion to them could be easily distinguished from a general "closed communion." If travelers (merchants, let's say) who were not locally known had attended this church, would Calvin have refused communion to them summarily? I don't know, but I hope not.

At first blush, one might protest that WO is a totally different matter (mixing apples and bananas!), but since an ordained female would certainly have been considered a sinful state of affairs back then, perhaps the comparison is more apt than it appears.

 

Tradition is not something that Jesus had a lot of time for. He was heavily into other things like loving one's neighbour and not being a religious hypocrit or bigot. The early church did not have 'closed communon' for anyone in the Christian community. They debated about whether to admit Gentiles and decided that was OK. If someone from Corinth turned up in Galatia they would have been admitted and if the local followers of The Way met in a house church run by a woman, that wasn't a problem either.

The problems all started when men in Christ's church started insisting on taking charge and still ruling the roost, (instead of being servants to their fellows), like they factionally did in Corinth and got told off for it by Paul.
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This is how 'Tradition' is built and maintained, even if it is on sand.
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Here's part of the problem: he doesn't go to just one parish. He circulates between 3. His favorite is the Vietnamese parish, which is the only one in town that has a reverent liturgy. The other 2 he goes to are Novus Ordo done badly. The priests trot out the tired old lines of "Anglicans are Protestants and don't have valid sacraments," "those ministers aren't even real priests," and "anyone who's not in communion with Rome doesn't have valid sacraments." Roman priests poorly formed even in their own tradition, since the magisterium recognizes the validity of Orthodox sacraments.

 

Not just possibly an invalid priest but also, judging from his bigotted behaviour, possibly even an invalid follower of Christ's teachings. That however would be a matter between Him and Jesus Christ when they eventually meet.
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