Although Christians celebrate their sacramental meal, the Eucharist or Holy Communion, with bread and wine, the ways they use that food and drink are sometimes distinctly odd. Paper-thin wafers unlike any bread you will find elsewhere, and fortified wine you'd never otherwise drink, are often the order of the day.
Someone has irreverently but tellingly remarked that "the problem isn't believing that they're the body and blood of Christ, it's believing that they're bread and wine". There is more to be said about these forms, and some of it has already been addressed here.
The contemporary Anglican liturgy with which Percy is most familiar cites the words of the apostle Paul at the "fraction" or breaking of the bread at the Eucharist:
"We who are many are one body in Christ, for we all share in the one bread" (1 Cor 10:17).
All eucharistic rites known to the writer have some provision for the breaking of the bread, which is a feature not only of the Last Supper stories understood by Christians as instituting the Eucharist, but also of other feeding stories in the Gospels, such as the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the risen Jesus' meal with disciples at Emmaus. The Acts of the Apostles uses the phrase "the breaking of the bread" as a way of referring to the earliest communal meals celebrated by the Christian community. The great twentieth-century liturgical scholar Gregory Dix saw this as one element of a four-fold pattern characterizing eucharist rites: bread is taken, blessed, broken and distributed.
The participant in the Eucharist may often receive something in their hand that shows no sign of this. Although many worshipping communities have moved to adopt forms of bread that really can be broken, others continue to use individually-stamped wafers which say nothing either about the "one bread" or the meaning of its brokenness. The fraction is then practiced only with the "priest's wafer", a slightly larger bread that allows visual communication of the fact that (some) bread is broken - but then also underlines clerical privilege in a not-too-subtle way.
The apostle's affirmation that we share from the one bread is not a mere liturgical rubric, but an observation about the character of sharing and communion. Participation with others in this one bread is a kind of solidarity with them of a profound and serious kind, with implications for love and justice. Augustine of Hippo commenting on this same text from 1 Cor says, strikingly, "be what you see, receive what you are" (Serm. 272).
These implications are not removed by the failure of our liturgical symbols to convey them adequately, of course. But liturgical practitioners have an obligation to ask whether their practices go beyond mere repetition of accepted custom, or maintenance of a certain sober dignity, to allow adequate reflection of their core message.
Percy is not one of those liturgists of whom it is joked that they, unlike terrorists, do not negotiate. There are more serious matters for the Church than the aesthetics of bread - such as the hunger of many in the world, who have insufficient bread of any kind. However the Church has opportunities to connect its liturgy with the needs of the world, and should take them when it can.
What to do with the bread, then?
Percy suggests a hierarchy of desired elements which might be considered according to the need, capacity and tradition of a congregation.
Ideally, all might eat of literally one bread, as Paul says. A single loaf ("loaf" can be interpreted broadly), from which all can share, represents the ideal most adequately. This could have drawbacks if, say, large crusty pasta dura-style bread were consecrated in one piece and most of it were left over. Percy assumes a sufficiently traditional piety (and respect for the rubrics) to allow reverent consumption of the whole. But not all loaves are as large or as crumbly as others. Many smaller congregations could, for that matter, use the large forms of traditional wafer bread now readily available, or pita-style bread that can readily be broken, shared, and cleaned up without much waste.
Second, whether or not all can realistically share from the one loaf, all could receive broken bread. Use of just a few loaves (including large wafers) does not diminish the symbol too greatly. At least here there is an sign that the body of Christ is something shared.
Last, Percy's intention is not to disparage those who will, for some mixture of practical reasons, maintain the use of individual wafers for the congregation. Perhaps those who maintain this position should be particularly careful to ask whether they otherwise embody the apostle's point. If we really are the body of Christ, we had all better be doing something about it.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Date of Easter
The quirky study of the chronology of the Passion recently published by Sir Colin Humphreys claims that his "discovery" that the real date of the crucifixion was April 3rd solves the problem of the variability of Easter. Of course, as soon as Humphreys adds "Easter Sunday should be the first Sunday in April", you realize it was never going to be quite that easy. The first Sunday in April might well be before April 3rd, after all?
The date of Easter has been controversial almost ever since there has been an Easter. In the second century, at any rate, the first serious dispute erupted when Christians in different parts of the Mediterranean realized they had been interpreting the meaning of Jesus' death in two different ways. One group simply continued to celebrate Passover, but with the new meaning provided by the passion and resurrection of Jesus. This practice gave precedence to the lunar calendar which provides the months of the Jewish year, and on which observance of Passover must be based. Since they celebrated on the 14th day of the month Nisan (or its local equivalents), these Christians became known to others as Quartodecimans, "fourteenthers".
The other practice suggested that the days of the week, which roll forward independently of months and years, also needed to be accounted for, since Jesus was raised on the first day of the week, Sunday. Hence the celebration should be on the Sunday after the celebration of Passover. This pattern won the day, doubtless at some cost to the sincere and reasonable commitments of the losers, as well as with the loss of the more immediate connection with Passover - in fact, a desire to distinguish the now predominantly-gentile Church from Judaism may have been influential in this process.
The relationship between months and years, as well as months and weeks, has made the date of Easter complex. Since months in Roman reckoning lost their connection to the phases of the moon but were calculated variously according to local customs, it was deemed necessary to specify that the date of Easter not fall before the equinox (as well as to reiterate that it was a Sunday) - this was one of the results of the famous Council of Nicaea. Hence the familiar pattern: Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon (the 14th day of the lunar month) after the vernal equinox. However since the equinox and/or the moon might be observed differently depending on your location, the problem did not go away entirely until standardized tables were developed and circulated.
This held as a more or less universal way to set the date of Easter until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the West in the 16th century. The Eastern Churches generally retained the older Julian calendar, with the result that Easter can again be on different days in the eastern and western Mediterranean, and elsewhere. Attempts to find a common date continue, but conservative elements of the Eastern Churches have already fulminated and split over modest attempts to re-align the calendar.
The idea of a fixed date is therefore doomed to founder on the lack of agreement that would arise among Christian groups. A fairly serious attempt to fix the date of Easter was made in the UK in 1928 but was abandoned as impractical - it is no closer to being realistic or appealing today.
There are, I suggest, at least three reasons Colin Humphreys' suggestion will be quickly ignored. One has already been given, i.e., that any fixed date will only find limited acceptance. A second is that his research is unconvincing, based on mistaken premises about the character of the Gospels as history and about related issues concerning Jewish sources. Third and most important, I suspect, is that Easter is not commemoration of an "anniversary" - it is the Christian interpretation of a feast more ancient than the death of Jesus, from which Jesus derived part of the meaning of his death. The obscurities of calculating this date are a reminder of the world from which this feast comes - not one of bank holidays, but of harvests, full moons, and the remembrance of ancient liberation.
Happy Easter.
The date of Easter has been controversial almost ever since there has been an Easter. In the second century, at any rate, the first serious dispute erupted when Christians in different parts of the Mediterranean realized they had been interpreting the meaning of Jesus' death in two different ways. One group simply continued to celebrate Passover, but with the new meaning provided by the passion and resurrection of Jesus. This practice gave precedence to the lunar calendar which provides the months of the Jewish year, and on which observance of Passover must be based. Since they celebrated on the 14th day of the month Nisan (or its local equivalents), these Christians became known to others as Quartodecimans, "fourteenthers".
The other practice suggested that the days of the week, which roll forward independently of months and years, also needed to be accounted for, since Jesus was raised on the first day of the week, Sunday. Hence the celebration should be on the Sunday after the celebration of Passover. This pattern won the day, doubtless at some cost to the sincere and reasonable commitments of the losers, as well as with the loss of the more immediate connection with Passover - in fact, a desire to distinguish the now predominantly-gentile Church from Judaism may have been influential in this process.
The relationship between months and years, as well as months and weeks, has made the date of Easter complex. Since months in Roman reckoning lost their connection to the phases of the moon but were calculated variously according to local customs, it was deemed necessary to specify that the date of Easter not fall before the equinox (as well as to reiterate that it was a Sunday) - this was one of the results of the famous Council of Nicaea. Hence the familiar pattern: Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon (the 14th day of the lunar month) after the vernal equinox. However since the equinox and/or the moon might be observed differently depending on your location, the problem did not go away entirely until standardized tables were developed and circulated.
This held as a more or less universal way to set the date of Easter until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the West in the 16th century. The Eastern Churches generally retained the older Julian calendar, with the result that Easter can again be on different days in the eastern and western Mediterranean, and elsewhere. Attempts to find a common date continue, but conservative elements of the Eastern Churches have already fulminated and split over modest attempts to re-align the calendar.
The idea of a fixed date is therefore doomed to founder on the lack of agreement that would arise among Christian groups. A fairly serious attempt to fix the date of Easter was made in the UK in 1928 but was abandoned as impractical - it is no closer to being realistic or appealing today.
There are, I suggest, at least three reasons Colin Humphreys' suggestion will be quickly ignored. One has already been given, i.e., that any fixed date will only find limited acceptance. A second is that his research is unconvincing, based on mistaken premises about the character of the Gospels as history and about related issues concerning Jewish sources. Third and most important, I suspect, is that Easter is not commemoration of an "anniversary" - it is the Christian interpretation of a feast more ancient than the death of Jesus, from which Jesus derived part of the meaning of his death. The obscurities of calculating this date are a reminder of the world from which this feast comes - not one of bank holidays, but of harvests, full moons, and the remembrance of ancient liberation.
Happy Easter.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
By the Book: The Bible as Artefact in Christian Liturgy
The arrival of various hand-outs, bespoke orders of service and other small pieces of printed liturgical ephemera brings good and bad things to liturgical practice. Percy is not sure why, in an otherwise environmentally-sensitive context, there is so little thought given to the paper being consumed, for one thing. Yet there is no doubt that having all the elements needed by the congregation for full participation in one single printed form makes for ease of use and engagement.
Many will also point out that the full provision of the lections - assigned readings from the Bible - in such forms assists their reading and understanding by the people. It is also probably a reasonable hedge against the temptation to leave something out, which I have commented on elsewhere!
Yet some readers might well raise the objection that these photocopied excerpts are a poor substitute for the use of a Bible.
I tend to agree, if perhaps not for the same reasons as some of my more protestant readers. I do not, for instance, think it is particularly necessary or even helpful to bury one's head in either a Bible or a pewsheet when Scripture is read at the Eucharist. The Bible is designed to be heard as well as read, and the liturgy assumes a community willing to open ears, as well as eyes, to what the Word might reveal to us.
In fact for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians have not been literate, let alone owned Bibles; and hence, while we may be glad this is not the case for the average follower of Percy's thoughts today, it suggests that any view of liturgy or of Christianity that makes "Bible reading" an essential discipline is questionable, historically and theologically as well. Christians have heard the Word first and foremost, and the liturgy reflects this.
Yet the Book itself has a liturgical place which should not be lost. In classical protestant worship as well as in liturgy of self-consciously catholic traditions, the Bible has been not merely a source of the day's readings but a visual symbol, a key object in the work Christians do when coming together to remember, listen, pray and praise the God of the Bible. That Book ('B' for emphasis) is not the various books (i.e, Bibles) individuals might bring to Church, even if their contents are the same; for the Christian does not - should not - engage with the Bible as a personal tool of revelation via private judgement, but as the corporate gift of challenge, encouragement and more.
For this reason the actual use of literal physical books in liturgy is significant. The Book or Books from which Scripture is read liturgically should reflect that corporate and public function - meaning that above all, such Books should actually be used, and visibly.
How exactly the Book is used depends a great deal on the space and the specifics of the liturgy. A large Bible visible on an ambo or lectern makes a clear statement (and shouldn't be visibly pushed aside for a preacher's folder, pewsheet, or iPad). Visibly reading from photocopied sheets leaning against that Bible is also not a good look. Pewsheets are not intended as a hedge against biblical illiteracy, and if necessary readers should expect to be trained not only in how to read aloud, but in where in the Book to find what they are supposed to read.
In some contexts different Books are used, most obviously when a Gospel book or Lectionary is carried in procession. This makes a point about the (generally overlooked) centrality of the Gospels in the Christian canon for interpreting Scripture as a whole, and the proclamation of the Gospel to the world. There are quite a few places where the idea of this procession appeals just because it involves some pomp and circumstance, but where the point gets lost. Such a failure is ritualized, for example, where a plastic binder or the mere pewsheet gets hoisted by a deacon or other offender, to general bemusement. The liturgical proclamation "This is the Gospel of the Lord" is not meant to be so implausible.
Of course there are times when a set of readings has to be prepared for a set of readers, in ways that make the idea of endless bookmarks or post-it notes in one Book on the lectern impractical. In that case, there are various possibilities. The assembly of set readings in Lectionaries - not originally lists of readings only, but the actual texts - has a venerable history. Yet these books have traditionally been treated with the same respect and prominence as Bibles and Gospel Books, and there is no reason they can't be made or decorated to make their dignity match their amenity.
The basic principles about using books are thus those of the liturgy as a whole. The Gospel itself, Christ himself, are the centre. Our actions should make this as clear as possible, and we should minimize or avoid things which distract from what is important. The Bible is important. Words can make this clear, or undermine it; so too can objects and actions.
Many will also point out that the full provision of the lections - assigned readings from the Bible - in such forms assists their reading and understanding by the people. It is also probably a reasonable hedge against the temptation to leave something out, which I have commented on elsewhere!
Yet some readers might well raise the objection that these photocopied excerpts are a poor substitute for the use of a Bible.
I tend to agree, if perhaps not for the same reasons as some of my more protestant readers. I do not, for instance, think it is particularly necessary or even helpful to bury one's head in either a Bible or a pewsheet when Scripture is read at the Eucharist. The Bible is designed to be heard as well as read, and the liturgy assumes a community willing to open ears, as well as eyes, to what the Word might reveal to us.
In fact for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians have not been literate, let alone owned Bibles; and hence, while we may be glad this is not the case for the average follower of Percy's thoughts today, it suggests that any view of liturgy or of Christianity that makes "Bible reading" an essential discipline is questionable, historically and theologically as well. Christians have heard the Word first and foremost, and the liturgy reflects this.
Yet the Book itself has a liturgical place which should not be lost. In classical protestant worship as well as in liturgy of self-consciously catholic traditions, the Bible has been not merely a source of the day's readings but a visual symbol, a key object in the work Christians do when coming together to remember, listen, pray and praise the God of the Bible. That Book ('B' for emphasis) is not the various books (i.e, Bibles) individuals might bring to Church, even if their contents are the same; for the Christian does not - should not - engage with the Bible as a personal tool of revelation via private judgement, but as the corporate gift of challenge, encouragement and more.
For this reason the actual use of literal physical books in liturgy is significant. The Book or Books from which Scripture is read liturgically should reflect that corporate and public function - meaning that above all, such Books should actually be used, and visibly.
How exactly the Book is used depends a great deal on the space and the specifics of the liturgy. A large Bible visible on an ambo or lectern makes a clear statement (and shouldn't be visibly pushed aside for a preacher's folder, pewsheet, or iPad). Visibly reading from photocopied sheets leaning against that Bible is also not a good look. Pewsheets are not intended as a hedge against biblical illiteracy, and if necessary readers should expect to be trained not only in how to read aloud, but in where in the Book to find what they are supposed to read.
In some contexts different Books are used, most obviously when a Gospel book or Lectionary is carried in procession. This makes a point about the (generally overlooked) centrality of the Gospels in the Christian canon for interpreting Scripture as a whole, and the proclamation of the Gospel to the world. There are quite a few places where the idea of this procession appeals just because it involves some pomp and circumstance, but where the point gets lost. Such a failure is ritualized, for example, where a plastic binder or the mere pewsheet gets hoisted by a deacon or other offender, to general bemusement. The liturgical proclamation "This is the Gospel of the Lord" is not meant to be so implausible.
Of course there are times when a set of readings has to be prepared for a set of readers, in ways that make the idea of endless bookmarks or post-it notes in one Book on the lectern impractical. In that case, there are various possibilities. The assembly of set readings in Lectionaries - not originally lists of readings only, but the actual texts - has a venerable history. Yet these books have traditionally been treated with the same respect and prominence as Bibles and Gospel Books, and there is no reason they can't be made or decorated to make their dignity match their amenity.
The basic principles about using books are thus those of the liturgy as a whole. The Gospel itself, Christ himself, are the centre. Our actions should make this as clear as possible, and we should minimize or avoid things which distract from what is important. The Bible is important. Words can make this clear, or undermine it; so too can objects and actions.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
The Bible
This page links to posts concerning the liturgical use of Scripture, Lectionaries, and related matters.
In Read It! Percy laments the tendency to omit set lections at eucharistic celebrations.
In By the Book the use of the Bible in liturgy as an actual book, as opposed to pewsheets, plastic folders etc., is discussed.
In Read It! Percy laments the tendency to omit set lections at eucharistic celebrations.
In By the Book the use of the Bible in liturgy as an actual book, as opposed to pewsheets, plastic folders etc., is discussed.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Resisting the Alleluia Creep: A Guest Contribution
[This post comes by kind favour of the Revd Michael Povey, of Sarasota, Fla, USA. His blog can be found here.]
There’s a story that sometime around 1980 a Pentecostal Christian attended an Episcopal Church with her friend from work. During the sermon, the visitor began to utter a few fervent “Alleluias” in accordance with her heritage.
A frosty man seated in front of her turned around and glared. “We don’t say “Alleluia” in the Episcopal Church”, he hissed.
Her Episcopalian friend squeezed her hand and said in a loud whisper “Oh yes we do, it’s on page 366 in the Prayer Book”.
Indeed the 1976/79 Book of Common Prayer offers Episcopalians the chance to express fervent alleluias; indeed “double alleluias”. We do so between Easter Day and the Day of Pentecost (The Great Fifty Days), at the dismissal. At that point the Deacon exclaims: “Alleluia. Alleluia. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. Then the congregation responds with “Thanks be to God. Alleluia, Alleluia”.
It’s an exciting affirmation of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus it is a powerful liturgical moment which the Prayer Book reserves to those “Great Fifty Days”, which we observe as “Extraordinary Time”.
Many congregations are now, (aided and abetted in many cases by their Cleric) extending that “double alleluia” to “Ordinary Time”. In some places the double alleluia is becoming the year round norm.
The alleluias are often shrieked out, in a manner which Alan Greenspan might describe as irrational exuberance, or which I would call congregational self-congratulation.
This bothers me. So I was heartened to learn that a friend of mine, a Priest who lives in Maine is similarly bothered.
I suspect that we each would say that our “botheration” is rooted in this: “If the extra-ordinary becomes ordinary, then that “extra-ordinary” is sadly diminished.
That concept is not reserved to matters liturgical. Most Americans enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday as an extra-ordinary day marked in particular by the foods we eat. But if on every Thursday of the year we feasted on turkey with chestnut dressing, sweet potatoes, peas with onions, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin or pecan pie (etc, etc) then the fourth Thursday of November (in the U.S.A.) will cease to have its particular meaning.
And so it is in the matter of the “Alleluia creep”.
In some places the “irrational exuberance” leads to the congregational recitation of a triple alleluia, each one being uttered louder than the previous.
The American Prayer Book wisely reserves a triple alleluia to only one liturgy (so far as I am aware). It is in the Liturgy for Christian Burial. There we hear these faith filled words “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia”. We are thereby “thumbing our noses at death” – so to speak.
I respect and honour the biblical wisdom of the American Prayer book which restricts double Alleluias to Easter, and triple Alleluias to Burials. That prayer book wisdom is meet and right.
Indeed it is meet and right to resist the “Alleluia creep”. What do you think?
[Feel free to respond below, or at the original post here]
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Date of Christmas
[A version of this essay, somewhat liberally edited, was published in 2001 in Bible Review, now rolled into Biblical Archaeology Review, where it has a startlingly large online exposure each Christmas. What follows is close to the copy actually submitted, less a few footnotes!]
Most have heard the explanation that Christians appropriated a pagan festival, date and customs and all, and simply renamed or reinterpreted it for their own purposes. The truth is rather different, and more complex.
Christmas as such was not celebrated in the first couple of centuries after the birth of Jesus. Mark’s Gospel, apparently the earliest written, does not narrate Jesus’ birth. Interest in Jesus’ human origins emerges in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which provide well-known but quite different accounts, and continues in second-century apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James, which claim to elaborate on the details that might have occurred to the curious - everything from Jesus’ grandparents to his education.
This “human interest” angle did not reflect or immediately spur a ritualized observance of the events, however. For the purposes of ordering worship and time, the last climactic events of Jesus’ ministry were far more interesting to the first Christian communities than the poignancy of his beginnings. Since Jesus’ last great conflict with the Roman authorities and their collaborators had taken place around Passover, his death was from a very early stage interpreted along lines suggested by the great Jewish festival, and his resurrection celebrated annually in some relation to it. As we shall see, however, this kind of observance may have had its own impact on the eventual emergence of the Christmas feast.
Most prominent among other early Christian festivals were the commemorations of martyrs, echoes of this Easter motif of noble death and eternal life, continued into the life of the persecuted Church. Celebrating the anniversaries of the deaths of heroes like Polycarp of Smyrna (d. 155?) or the young African convert Perpetua (d. 203), offered hope of resistance to the pagan authority that had taken their lives but made them effective imitators of Christ. These feasts were actually referred to as “birthdays,” but somewhat ironically. Origen of Alexandria (165?-264?) could write scornfully of the custom of celebrating the actual anniversaries of human birth (Hom in Lev. 8) as a pagan idea.
The observance of Christmas as a feast appeared only rather later, in the fourth century, or perhaps at the end of the third. The proliferation of holidays that allowed Christians to go through the year in connection with the life of Jesus has often been seen as linked to the end of persecution. In the fourth century particularly, evidence such as that of the pilgrim Egeria, who visited the Churches of newly-Christian Jerusalem, documents the emergence of a complex sanctification of time still reflected in the Christian calendar today.
The fourth century also saw greater emphasis placed by Christians on God’s personal presence in Jesus throughout his life - the “incarnation” or enfleshment of God, as teachers such as Athanasius of Alexandria put it. While this was not a new doctrine, fierce debates about the specifics, reflected in documents such as the Nicene Creed (325/380) indicate how Jesus’ own conception and birth could become matters of even greater concern and curiosity in popular belief, and ritual also.
Yet the choice of a specific date for this new feast, appearing centuries after the event it commemorated, is curious. The lack of specific information about the timing of Jesus’ birth has never kept the enthusiastic and the ingenious, ancient and modern alike, from speculating about the exact date of the first Christmas. Extracting supposed hints from the Gospels about issues such as the time of year, however, involves the risk of asking questions they were not attempting to answer - even the year of Jesus’ birth is somewhat unclear.
When the feast of Christmas emerged, there were two dates, December 25 and January 6 (now the Feast of the Epiphany) kept in different parts of the world; the first was mainly observed in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, and the second in places further East such as Egypt and Asia Minor. In time, each of these competing dates was transferred to the other areas too; December 25 prevailed as the primary commemoration of the birth of Jesus, and January 6 became associated with the story of the coming of the Magi (Matt 2:1-12). The period between – the twelve days of Christmas – became a holiday season, preceded by the fasting period known as Advent.
Both these dates were fairly close to the winter solstice - December 21 in our modified Gregorian calendar. Mid-winter festivals were common - the Romans had their Saturnalia, and peoples of northern and western Europe had similar holidays. In 274 CE the Roman Emperor Aurelian had established a feast of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) on December 25 itself. When one of his successors, Constantine, converted to Christianity just a few decades later, imagery and popular practice associated with these pagan observances were easily and readily adaptable to the Christian holiday that took their place.
Ancient Christian authors of the time had already noted this connection between solstice observances and Christmas – Church fathers such as Ambrose reveled in using the imagery of Christ as true “sun,” using the natural symbolism to its full potential while vaunting over fallen gods of the old order. For these, however, the coincidence was not a deliberate or recent piece of calendrical engineering, but a providential sign.
In more recent times, however, the parallel came to be treated as key to explaining the choice of an actual date. The idea first appears in a gloss on a 12th century manuscript, explaining not the origin of Christmas but its transfer from January 6 (taken by the scribe to be the real date) to December 25, because of the solstice holiday.1 Scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spurred on by new studies of comparative religion, seized upon this conjunction as a complete explanation for the Christian feast. Since these dates were clearly not related to the birth date of the historical Jesus, which was unknown, were they not thinly-veiled pagan festivals, appropriated and Christianized only superficially?
Yet the holiday itself and “knowledge” of the dates appear a little too early to work with this theory.
In the first few centuries, the persecuted Christian minority had at least as great a concern to distance itself from the most important and public of pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, the games, and holidays. It was in the fourth century and after, following the conversion of the first Christian Emperor Constantine and the resulting “peace of the Church,” that strategies shifted more clearly to accommodation and Christianization of pagan practices.
Yet the first evidence for Christmas as a feast seems to be slightly too early to make sense as one instance of newly-triumphant fourth-century Christianity. It had already developed by 300 or so at least; about a hundred years after that time, bishop Augustine of Hippo refers to the Christmas observance of a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who celebrated Christmas (December 25), but not Epiphany (January 6). The Donatists had split from the wider Church in 312. In the East meanwhile, theologians and preachers of the late fourth century were working hard to introduce the December 25 date on top of the well-established January 6 feast (Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem).
The second and more telling problem for the idea that the actual date of Christmas is taken from pagan solstice festivals is that while actual liturgical feasts of the incarnation were indeed late, the dates might have been identified much earlier. Clement of Alexandria, a Christian teacher who wrote around 200 – long before anyone suggests celebration of Christmas as a holiday – knows of a tradition dating Jesus’ birth to January 6 (Strom. 1.21.145).2 So in some places at least, there was certainly an interest not just in birth stories, but in the date of Jesus’ birth, long before the Christmas feast emerged.
There is no exact equivalent of this early evidence when it comes to December 25, which was to become the prevalent Christmas date in western provinces first. Yet there was speculation as far back as 200 by the Carthaginian Christian writer Tertullian about the date of Jesus’ death that landed on the surprising and suggestive date of March 25 (Adv. Iudaeos 8) – later to be kept as the Feast of the Annunciation, the point of Jesus’ conception.3
Is there a connection? The key to understanding the emergence both of January 6 and December 25 as specific dates for Jesus’ birth seems – strange as it may seem initially – possibly to lie in the dating of Passover and of Jesus’ death. Tertullian had calculated that in the year Jesus died, March 25 was, according to the Roman calendar, the day the lambs for the Passover Seder were slaughtered (Nisan 14). Following the chronology implied by the Gospel of John, Tertullian took this also to be the date of Jesus’ death.
In provinces further to the East, efforts to establish the date of Easter each year (and not just the first Easter) had led Christians to seek a firmer place in the solar Julian calendar for their Christian celebration. Instead of using the Jewish lunar calendar to find Nisan 14, they chose the fourteenth day of the first Spring month (‘Artemisios’) in the local Greek calendar – April 6 to us. The loyalty of these eastern Christians to their custom of keeping Easter on the actual fourteenth day rather than on the Sunday following (as others then held, and eventually all Christians came to practice) became a major debate within the Church - they themselves were sometimes referred to as “Quartodecimans,” “Fourteenthers.”
So in the eastern provinces we have evidence not only for a birth date for Jesus on January 6, as Clement indicates, but for Easter exactly nine months before. This may shed light on the December 25 date as well. These two dates for the Passover when Jesus died, March 25 and April 6, are of course nine months before the original eastern and western dates for Christmas. The implication is fairly clear, if odd: second-century Christians in different areas had apparently calculated the birth of Jesus on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day – and had come up with two close, but different, results. These calculations preceded any clear evidence for the actual liturgical celebration of Christmas – but may have been there, already “known,” when the interest in Jesus’ birth led to establishment of a festival.
Aside from the wildly complicated calculations involved, the connection between Jesus’ conception and death seems strange to modern readers, at least as history. Yet it was not so odd in ancient terms. Rabbinic writings reflect a similar belief that the great events of creation and salvation had taken, and would take, place on the same dates. The Babylonian Talmud preserves the view that the world was created, the Patriarchs born, and the world would be redeemed, all in the month of Nisan (b. Rosh Hashanah 10b-11a). This sort of speculation could go back as early as the second or third centuries. Thus the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on chronology, continuing such Jewish models; Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he was to die, and born nine months later.
This account of the origins of Christmas as computed from the presumed date of his death was first proposed in modern times by Louis Duchesne, and has fairly recently been restated with nuances by Thomas Talley.4 While questions remain, and gaps in the evidence still allow different scholarly interpretations on this question as on so many others, historians no longer wheel out the explanation of Christmas as a borrowed pagan festival in an unqualified way.
The connection between the date of Christmas and the solstice did make the feast of the nativity more strategically important and possible. In the new world of a Christian empire, the fourth-century Church was not backward in appropriating symbols already known to pagans. The various forms of Christmas observance across time and space have always and obviously owed much to local traditions and lore that preceded or grew alongside Christian faith.
The actual date of Christmas could really derive more from Judaism than paganism, both in the relation between dates in Jesus’ life and death and the time of Passover, and in the notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of year. In this notion of God’s recurring redemption, we may perhaps be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood too.
1. A gloss on an MS of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (2nd ed.; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1991), 101-102.
2. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism – sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story – on the same date (Strom. 1.21.146). See further on this point Talley, Origins, 118-20, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923) 81-134.
3. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, 86 and 90-91.
4. Origines du culte chrétien (5th ed.; Paris:Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), 275-279.
Most have heard the explanation that Christians appropriated a pagan festival, date and customs and all, and simply renamed or reinterpreted it for their own purposes. The truth is rather different, and more complex.
Christmas as such was not celebrated in the first couple of centuries after the birth of Jesus. Mark’s Gospel, apparently the earliest written, does not narrate Jesus’ birth. Interest in Jesus’ human origins emerges in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which provide well-known but quite different accounts, and continues in second-century apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James, which claim to elaborate on the details that might have occurred to the curious - everything from Jesus’ grandparents to his education.
This “human interest” angle did not reflect or immediately spur a ritualized observance of the events, however. For the purposes of ordering worship and time, the last climactic events of Jesus’ ministry were far more interesting to the first Christian communities than the poignancy of his beginnings. Since Jesus’ last great conflict with the Roman authorities and their collaborators had taken place around Passover, his death was from a very early stage interpreted along lines suggested by the great Jewish festival, and his resurrection celebrated annually in some relation to it. As we shall see, however, this kind of observance may have had its own impact on the eventual emergence of the Christmas feast.
Most prominent among other early Christian festivals were the commemorations of martyrs, echoes of this Easter motif of noble death and eternal life, continued into the life of the persecuted Church. Celebrating the anniversaries of the deaths of heroes like Polycarp of Smyrna (d. 155?) or the young African convert Perpetua (d. 203), offered hope of resistance to the pagan authority that had taken their lives but made them effective imitators of Christ. These feasts were actually referred to as “birthdays,” but somewhat ironically. Origen of Alexandria (165?-264?) could write scornfully of the custom of celebrating the actual anniversaries of human birth (Hom in Lev. 8) as a pagan idea.
The observance of Christmas as a feast appeared only rather later, in the fourth century, or perhaps at the end of the third. The proliferation of holidays that allowed Christians to go through the year in connection with the life of Jesus has often been seen as linked to the end of persecution. In the fourth century particularly, evidence such as that of the pilgrim Egeria, who visited the Churches of newly-Christian Jerusalem, documents the emergence of a complex sanctification of time still reflected in the Christian calendar today.
The fourth century also saw greater emphasis placed by Christians on God’s personal presence in Jesus throughout his life - the “incarnation” or enfleshment of God, as teachers such as Athanasius of Alexandria put it. While this was not a new doctrine, fierce debates about the specifics, reflected in documents such as the Nicene Creed (325/380) indicate how Jesus’ own conception and birth could become matters of even greater concern and curiosity in popular belief, and ritual also.
Yet the choice of a specific date for this new feast, appearing centuries after the event it commemorated, is curious. The lack of specific information about the timing of Jesus’ birth has never kept the enthusiastic and the ingenious, ancient and modern alike, from speculating about the exact date of the first Christmas. Extracting supposed hints from the Gospels about issues such as the time of year, however, involves the risk of asking questions they were not attempting to answer - even the year of Jesus’ birth is somewhat unclear.
When the feast of Christmas emerged, there were two dates, December 25 and January 6 (now the Feast of the Epiphany) kept in different parts of the world; the first was mainly observed in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, and the second in places further East such as Egypt and Asia Minor. In time, each of these competing dates was transferred to the other areas too; December 25 prevailed as the primary commemoration of the birth of Jesus, and January 6 became associated with the story of the coming of the Magi (Matt 2:1-12). The period between – the twelve days of Christmas – became a holiday season, preceded by the fasting period known as Advent.
Both these dates were fairly close to the winter solstice - December 21 in our modified Gregorian calendar. Mid-winter festivals were common - the Romans had their Saturnalia, and peoples of northern and western Europe had similar holidays. In 274 CE the Roman Emperor Aurelian had established a feast of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) on December 25 itself. When one of his successors, Constantine, converted to Christianity just a few decades later, imagery and popular practice associated with these pagan observances were easily and readily adaptable to the Christian holiday that took their place.
Ancient Christian authors of the time had already noted this connection between solstice observances and Christmas – Church fathers such as Ambrose reveled in using the imagery of Christ as true “sun,” using the natural symbolism to its full potential while vaunting over fallen gods of the old order. For these, however, the coincidence was not a deliberate or recent piece of calendrical engineering, but a providential sign.
In more recent times, however, the parallel came to be treated as key to explaining the choice of an actual date. The idea first appears in a gloss on a 12th century manuscript, explaining not the origin of Christmas but its transfer from January 6 (taken by the scribe to be the real date) to December 25, because of the solstice holiday.1 Scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spurred on by new studies of comparative religion, seized upon this conjunction as a complete explanation for the Christian feast. Since these dates were clearly not related to the birth date of the historical Jesus, which was unknown, were they not thinly-veiled pagan festivals, appropriated and Christianized only superficially?
Yet the holiday itself and “knowledge” of the dates appear a little too early to work with this theory.
In the first few centuries, the persecuted Christian minority had at least as great a concern to distance itself from the most important and public of pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, the games, and holidays. It was in the fourth century and after, following the conversion of the first Christian Emperor Constantine and the resulting “peace of the Church,” that strategies shifted more clearly to accommodation and Christianization of pagan practices.
Yet the first evidence for Christmas as a feast seems to be slightly too early to make sense as one instance of newly-triumphant fourth-century Christianity. It had already developed by 300 or so at least; about a hundred years after that time, bishop Augustine of Hippo refers to the Christmas observance of a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who celebrated Christmas (December 25), but not Epiphany (January 6). The Donatists had split from the wider Church in 312. In the East meanwhile, theologians and preachers of the late fourth century were working hard to introduce the December 25 date on top of the well-established January 6 feast (Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem).
The second and more telling problem for the idea that the actual date of Christmas is taken from pagan solstice festivals is that while actual liturgical feasts of the incarnation were indeed late, the dates might have been identified much earlier. Clement of Alexandria, a Christian teacher who wrote around 200 – long before anyone suggests celebration of Christmas as a holiday – knows of a tradition dating Jesus’ birth to January 6 (Strom. 1.21.145).2 So in some places at least, there was certainly an interest not just in birth stories, but in the date of Jesus’ birth, long before the Christmas feast emerged.
There is no exact equivalent of this early evidence when it comes to December 25, which was to become the prevalent Christmas date in western provinces first. Yet there was speculation as far back as 200 by the Carthaginian Christian writer Tertullian about the date of Jesus’ death that landed on the surprising and suggestive date of March 25 (Adv. Iudaeos 8) – later to be kept as the Feast of the Annunciation, the point of Jesus’ conception.3
Is there a connection? The key to understanding the emergence both of January 6 and December 25 as specific dates for Jesus’ birth seems – strange as it may seem initially – possibly to lie in the dating of Passover and of Jesus’ death. Tertullian had calculated that in the year Jesus died, March 25 was, according to the Roman calendar, the day the lambs for the Passover Seder were slaughtered (Nisan 14). Following the chronology implied by the Gospel of John, Tertullian took this also to be the date of Jesus’ death.
In provinces further to the East, efforts to establish the date of Easter each year (and not just the first Easter) had led Christians to seek a firmer place in the solar Julian calendar for their Christian celebration. Instead of using the Jewish lunar calendar to find Nisan 14, they chose the fourteenth day of the first Spring month (‘Artemisios’) in the local Greek calendar – April 6 to us. The loyalty of these eastern Christians to their custom of keeping Easter on the actual fourteenth day rather than on the Sunday following (as others then held, and eventually all Christians came to practice) became a major debate within the Church - they themselves were sometimes referred to as “Quartodecimans,” “Fourteenthers.”
So in the eastern provinces we have evidence not only for a birth date for Jesus on January 6, as Clement indicates, but for Easter exactly nine months before. This may shed light on the December 25 date as well. These two dates for the Passover when Jesus died, March 25 and April 6, are of course nine months before the original eastern and western dates for Christmas. The implication is fairly clear, if odd: second-century Christians in different areas had apparently calculated the birth of Jesus on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day – and had come up with two close, but different, results. These calculations preceded any clear evidence for the actual liturgical celebration of Christmas – but may have been there, already “known,” when the interest in Jesus’ birth led to establishment of a festival.
Aside from the wildly complicated calculations involved, the connection between Jesus’ conception and death seems strange to modern readers, at least as history. Yet it was not so odd in ancient terms. Rabbinic writings reflect a similar belief that the great events of creation and salvation had taken, and would take, place on the same dates. The Babylonian Talmud preserves the view that the world was created, the Patriarchs born, and the world would be redeemed, all in the month of Nisan (b. Rosh Hashanah 10b-11a). This sort of speculation could go back as early as the second or third centuries. Thus the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on chronology, continuing such Jewish models; Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he was to die, and born nine months later.
This account of the origins of Christmas as computed from the presumed date of his death was first proposed in modern times by Louis Duchesne, and has fairly recently been restated with nuances by Thomas Talley.4 While questions remain, and gaps in the evidence still allow different scholarly interpretations on this question as on so many others, historians no longer wheel out the explanation of Christmas as a borrowed pagan festival in an unqualified way.
The connection between the date of Christmas and the solstice did make the feast of the nativity more strategically important and possible. In the new world of a Christian empire, the fourth-century Church was not backward in appropriating symbols already known to pagans. The various forms of Christmas observance across time and space have always and obviously owed much to local traditions and lore that preceded or grew alongside Christian faith.
The actual date of Christmas could really derive more from Judaism than paganism, both in the relation between dates in Jesus’ life and death and the time of Passover, and in the notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of year. In this notion of God’s recurring redemption, we may perhaps be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood too.
1. A gloss on an MS of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (2nd ed.; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1991), 101-102.
2. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism – sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story – on the same date (Strom. 1.21.146). See further on this point Talley, Origins, 118-20, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923) 81-134.
3. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, 86 and 90-91.
4. Origines du culte chrétien (5th ed.; Paris:Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), 275-279.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Changing the Oils
While an ancient tradition, the Chrism Eucharist as presently known is a surprisingly recent addition to the ceremonies of Holy Week, arising from reforms of Pius XII in 1955 and innovations of Paul VI in 1970. In general, Anglican versions of it have unfortunately been based on these recent Roman rites, which reflect a quite specific understanding of priesthood and episcopate, not ancient or catholic practice.
In the third and fourth centuries, by when oils had come to be widely used for anointing catechumens and the newly-baptized as well as the sick, they were all probably blessed according to need, in some cases by presbyters as well as by bishops. Oil of the sick, at least, could be also used by lay people from day to day at their own initiative, and Pope Innocent I and the Venerable Bede are among defenders of that tradition against the eventually-victorious clericalizing tendency more familiar today. Nonetheless the blessed oils are for the whole Church, not for clerics per se.
The idea of a Mass to celebrate the ministries associated with the oils emerged by the sixth century. While Medieval Roman liturgical books provided for the blessing of oils at the second of three Masses of Holy Thursday, in practice these blessings were often rolled into the rather full celebration of the institution of the Eucharist, the Mandatum.
The separate Chrism Eucharist was reintroduced in the Roman Catholic use in 1955, as part of reforms of Holy Week. Only in 1970 however did that Church add the renewal of ordination vows, which they and many Anglicans now treat as more fundamental to the rite than the blessing of oils. The readings provided in the Roman Rite and copied by many Anglicans (Isa 61:1-13; Rev 1:5-8; Luke 4:18-19) seem to be about ordination, not the ministries or sacraments associated with anointing.
The reason for this has much to do with inner-Roman Catholic politics; in the 1960s there were outbreaks of clerical disobedience especially in Europe, and the idea of renewing vows of loyalty to the bishop was taken up to address them. Apart from the fact that priests attended the Chrism Mass to receive the oils anyway, and were hence available for this ceremony, the connection has been built on the problematic idea that, as Pope John Paul II put in his Holy Thursday letter of 1997, clerical participants were gathering "round your bishop to commemorate with joy the institution of the priesthood in the Church." That is, Maundy or Holy Thursday is seen as much or more the founding of the ministerial priesthood as of the Eucharist. Some may find this astounding. I will merely say this is not a view all Anglicans will entertain.
It is doubly unfortunate then that the real purpose of the rite is often obscured, and what was originally a celebration for the whole Church with the bishop, not for the clergy alone or specifically, has become a sort of clerical love-in.
Anglicans could do this better, by going back to the roots of the liturgy and the meaning of the oils used for catechumens, for the sick, and at baptism. Some dioceses have extended the renewal of vows at the Chrism Eucharist to include deacons and lay ministers. This is attractive, but pre-empts the renewal of baptismal vows at the Easter vigil, which is the more important exercise (even for priests!).
More defensible might be a focus on specific ministries, lay and ordained, associated with the oils, and hence interpreting the newer aspect of the celebration through the older. The bishop might invite hospital chaplains and visitors, catechists and educators, to participate in this communal preparation of the oils which symbolize the formation and the healing of the Christian Church as a whole.
It might be too ambitious to suggest that the renewal of ordination vows be removed, but if it is included then this element should at least be handled more carefully as part of the whole Church's ministry and mission.
In the third and fourth centuries, by when oils had come to be widely used for anointing catechumens and the newly-baptized as well as the sick, they were all probably blessed according to need, in some cases by presbyters as well as by bishops. Oil of the sick, at least, could be also used by lay people from day to day at their own initiative, and Pope Innocent I and the Venerable Bede are among defenders of that tradition against the eventually-victorious clericalizing tendency more familiar today. Nonetheless the blessed oils are for the whole Church, not for clerics per se.
The idea of a Mass to celebrate the ministries associated with the oils emerged by the sixth century. While Medieval Roman liturgical books provided for the blessing of oils at the second of three Masses of Holy Thursday, in practice these blessings were often rolled into the rather full celebration of the institution of the Eucharist, the Mandatum.
The separate Chrism Eucharist was reintroduced in the Roman Catholic use in 1955, as part of reforms of Holy Week. Only in 1970 however did that Church add the renewal of ordination vows, which they and many Anglicans now treat as more fundamental to the rite than the blessing of oils. The readings provided in the Roman Rite and copied by many Anglicans (Isa 61:1-13; Rev 1:5-8; Luke 4:18-19) seem to be about ordination, not the ministries or sacraments associated with anointing.
The reason for this has much to do with inner-Roman Catholic politics; in the 1960s there were outbreaks of clerical disobedience especially in Europe, and the idea of renewing vows of loyalty to the bishop was taken up to address them. Apart from the fact that priests attended the Chrism Mass to receive the oils anyway, and were hence available for this ceremony, the connection has been built on the problematic idea that, as Pope John Paul II put in his Holy Thursday letter of 1997, clerical participants were gathering "round your bishop to commemorate with joy the institution of the priesthood in the Church." That is, Maundy or Holy Thursday is seen as much or more the founding of the ministerial priesthood as of the Eucharist. Some may find this astounding. I will merely say this is not a view all Anglicans will entertain.
It is doubly unfortunate then that the real purpose of the rite is often obscured, and what was originally a celebration for the whole Church with the bishop, not for the clergy alone or specifically, has become a sort of clerical love-in.
Anglicans could do this better, by going back to the roots of the liturgy and the meaning of the oils used for catechumens, for the sick, and at baptism. Some dioceses have extended the renewal of vows at the Chrism Eucharist to include deacons and lay ministers. This is attractive, but pre-empts the renewal of baptismal vows at the Easter vigil, which is the more important exercise (even for priests!).
More defensible might be a focus on specific ministries, lay and ordained, associated with the oils, and hence interpreting the newer aspect of the celebration through the older. The bishop might invite hospital chaplains and visitors, catechists and educators, to participate in this communal preparation of the oils which symbolize the formation and the healing of the Christian Church as a whole.
It might be too ambitious to suggest that the renewal of ordination vows be removed, but if it is included then this element should at least be handled more carefully as part of the whole Church's ministry and mission.
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