VIEWING THE CHURCH

as Israel through Liturgy and Ritual

First Place, Student Essays in Christian Wisdom
The fourth annual Student Essays in Christian Wisdom competition attracted papers from a refreshing variety of sources, both geographical and ecclesial. H. Peter Kang, a student at Bexley Seabury in Columbus, Ohio, secured the top prize with his paper, Viewing the Church as Israel through Liturgy and Ritual, which THE LIVING CHURCH has published in this edition. The other winners: Second place: Hannah King, Redeemer Seminary, Dallas: The Gospel According to Hagar Third place: Bradley Keith Harris, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama: Christ the Reconciler: Unity in Creation, Scripture, and the Church We thank our judges for this years competition: The Rev. Michael Cover, a Lilly Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Valparaiso University and theologian in residence at St. Francis Church, Chesterton, Indiana Grace Sears, who has led The Order of the Daughters of the King in the United States, edited its magazine, The Royal Cross, and represented the Order in Malawi, England, and Brazil The Rt. Rev. Mark L. MacDonald, the Anglican Church of Canadas first National Indigenous Anglican Bishop The Editors

By H. Peter Kang
I n tr o d u ct i o n In this short essay I take up and develop an argument presented by George Lindbeck, longtime professor of historical theology at Yale University and prominent ecumenist, that the Church should view herself as Israel in such a way that she takes the Old Testament narratives of Israel to be constitutive of her identity. In the first section, I briefly re-present and rework Lindbecks argument, showing how it is both an attempt to address certain ecumenical and hermeneutic concerns and an attempt to repair a pernicious logic of supersessionism that is detrimental to the life of the Church. In the second section, I add my own supplement to Lindbecks argument by showing how the resources for viewing the Church as Israel are already present within the Churchs ritual and liturgical practices.
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I . W hy t o v i e w t h e C hu r ch a s I s r ae l : a n a rg u m e n t cured. According to Lindbeck, this can lead to a kind of a g a i n st s up e r se s si o n i sm self-righteous aggrandizement in which Church comIn the last forty to fifty years, Christian theology has munities build themselves up as the authentic or seen a flood of arguments against supersessionism. Untrue Church and must denounce other communities doubtedly, many of these arguments are motivated by as errant and forsaken because of their doctrinal errors. the Churchs history of morally abhorrent attitudes toThis only intensifies the problematic tendency toward wards Jews. While these arguments are certainly imschism within the contemporary Church and leads to a portant, what I think is most interesting about Lindsituation in which [w]eeping and rejoicing together bebecks argument is that its primary motivation is not an come impossible because each competing party takes ethical concern about Jewish/Christian relations; rather satisfaction in the failures of the others to the degree it is motivated by Lindbecks ecumenical and hermeneuthat these redound to its own advantage.2 tic concerns. In Lindbecks view, Christian theology In contrast, Lindbeck argues that the Church should needs to repair its problematic tendencies toward suview herself as a common people modeled after the persessionism because the logic of supersessionism itcommunity of Israel found in the Old self is detrimental to the life of the Testament. What Christians need is Church and her ability to read Scripture. an Israel-like sense of common peoThe term supersessionism has come plehood sufficient to sustain the loyal to mean several different things in recent oppositions that make possible the years and therefore I think it is actually persistence through time of those more helpful to talk about different kinds continuing and often bitter arguments of supersessionisms rather than try to without which otherwise divided group them all into one blanket category. communities do not survive.3 In this Here, I will address two kinds. The first is model, dissenting voices in the the view that because of its unfaithfulChurch would act more like the Old ness, Israel forfeited its covenantal status Testament prophets who were unas Gods chosen people and was reshakably committed to the commuplaced, by way of a new covenant, with nity and who constituted a loyal opthe Church. The second is the view that position, not an adversarial one.4 Lindbeck the New Testament supersedes the Old The prophets of the Old Testament Testament in the sense that the full meaning of the Old always remained wedded to the community of Israel, Testament is fully disclosed in the New Testament. In even when they were sent to denounce Israels behavthis form of supersessionism, the Old Testament serves ior. The fact that the prophets did not secede from the merely as a long (and perhaps unnecessary) prologue to community to form their own religious fellowships is dithe real story of the Bible that begins in Matthew. Both rectly connected to the idea of election. No matter how of these forms of supersessionism are detrimental to the errant her ways, Israel is and will always be Gods cholife of the Church. sen people. It is the prophets job to direct that people The first is problematic for the Church because it to the correct path, not to promote schism. According supports a triumphalist logic of replacement that exacto Lindbeck, without the concept of a common elect erbates the schismatic nature of intracommunal dispeoplehood, the difficulty of recognizing groups that agreements. This logic is structured on the idea that the are seen as deeply in error as part of Gods chosen peoIsraelites forfeited their status as Gods chosen people ple is greatly increased.5 Moreover, he writes, Unless because of their lack of faithfulness and refusal to propelection is irrevocable for Israel, Christians cannot see erly recognize Jesus as the messiah. The Church, then, their communities as the prophets saw Israel, as the replaces Israel as Gods chosen community by being the adulterous spouse whom the Lord God may cast off for community that faithfully discerns and responds to a time but has irreversibly promised never to cease lovGods action in the world.1 ing, never to divorce.6 This unshakable election allows The danger of this logic is that it suggests that elecfor the possibility of doctrinally disagreeing parties to tion is predicated on a communitys faithfulness. If elecstill view each other as common members of Gods chotion is contingent on the faithfulness of the community, sen people, instead of forsaken opponents. this means that Church communities could then forfeit Lindbecks argument against the second form of sutheir own elect status if they wander astray. This, in persessionism is that we fail to properly recognize turn, produces a kind of anxiety over election because Christ if we do not read the gospel stories about Christ any form of errant behavior or belief would mean sevin dialogue with the Old Testament. According to Linderance and rejection from relation with God. Election beck, the gospel story of Christs life, death, and resurthus becomes something that needs to be constantly serection is also, in some sense, a retelling of the story of
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Israel. Every reading of the gospel is also a rereading of some other biblical text. In Lindbecks words, the Bible must be seen as a cross-referencing, interglossing semiotic system.7 This does not displace the centrality of Christ in Christian biblical interpretation. Lindbeck still maintains that the whole Bible must be read in light of Christ, but Christ must also be read in the light of the whole Bible. Thus, to summarize the argument, to know Christ we must hear the gospel, but to hear the gospel correctly, we must interpret it in light of its relation to the Old Testament Scriptures. Finally, for the Church properly to read the Old Testament Scriptures, she must read the stories of Israel as her own stories. In short, to hear the gospel message about Christ properly, the Church must learn to view herself as Israel. The next question, of course, is How? Lindbeck does not answer this question. In the following section I will argue that the resources for recovering the identity of Israel are already present within the ritual and liturgical practices of the Church. I I. Ri tu a l a n d Li t ur g y a s a m e a n s fo r i n h a b i ti n g t h e id entit y of I srael The ability to self-identify as members of Israel follows directly from our membership in the body of

Christ. To use imagery from Romans, through Christ, we, the wild olive branches, are grafted into the root of Israel (Rom. 9-11). And it is precisely our membership in the body of Christ that effects this unnatural change that allows us to claim the history of Israel as our own. Take for example Pauls statement to the Galatians: if you belong to Christ, then you are Abrahams offspring, heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). For the Jewish members in the church of Galatia this tells them nothing new; they are already descendents of Abraham. Yet for the Gentiles, Pauls statement tells them something quite surprising, for through Christ they are made the offspring of a foreign patriarch and receive the same promise as the natural heirs. In other words, by virtue of our being in Christ we are also adopted into the lineage of Abraham. How is it that these Gentiles come to be in Christ? According to Paul, through the incorporative action of the Spirit we are made members of Christ through the initiation of baptism. As he tells the Corinthians, in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13). Along this line of reasoning we can see that the ritual dimension of Christian life is inseparable from the Churchs ability to self-identify as Israel through Christ.
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Through baptism we are initiated into the one body of Christ and through Christ we are made members of the community of Israel and fellow heirs to Gods promise given to Abraham. Only in the context of baptism does it make sense for Paul to speak collectively to his brothers and sisters in the Gentile-filled church at Corinth about our ancestors who passed through the sea with Moses (1 Cor. 10:1). This initiation into Christ by way of baptism is strengthened through the unificatory nature of eucharistic celebration. As Paul tells the Corinthians: Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (1 Cor. 10:17). This brings us to the second question about how the Church can inhabit the biblical stories to the extent that they are viewed as constitutive of the Churchs identity. The Eucharist, I suggest, provides the Church with a primary means for inhabiting Scripture.8 By and through the Eucharist, the community is able to participate in the events of the gospel story Christs incarnation, life, death, and resurrection through a kind of liturgically structured dramatic performance. As ecumenist Susan K. Wood explains, the Eucharist is a dramatic performance but it is not play-acting because we ourselves assume the identity that we enact. According to Wood, in the celebration of the Eucharist, the scriptural narrative becomes autobiographical in such a way that the texts proclaimed are not just about a past event in salvation history, but recount the transformation that is taking place in us now.9 This transformation is the transformation that occurs through the Churchs performative participation in the events of the gospel narrative, through which the Church comes to be identified with those events. Thus, in the words of theologian Gerard Loughlin, the participants are enfolded into the scriptural story through their absorption of the story in and through its ritual enactment.10 Following Lindbeck, we can add that the gospel narrative is itself always a rereading of the Old Testament narratives of Israel. As such, our performative participation in the gospel narrative through the Eucharist is itself also a performative rereading of the story of Israel. Thus, with Origen we affirm that the Passover still takes place today and that those who sacrifice Christ come out of Egypt, cross the Red Sea, and see Pharaoh engulfed.11 Through our baptism into Christ we Gentile Christians are grafted into the root of Israel and adopted into the lineage of Abraham in such a way that we can view the narratives of Israel in the Old Testament as our own history. And, through the habitual practice of the Eu14 THE LIVING CHURCH AUGUST 18, 2013

charist, we are able to inhabit these scriptural narratives in such a way that they become constitutive of our identity as the Church. C onc lu sion I have argued for three main points. First, supersessionism is not only harmful to Jewish/Christian relations; the logic of supersessionism is also harmful to the life of the Church. Second, viewing the Church as Israel can help repair ecumenical and hermeneutical problems in the Church. Third, liturgy and ritual can provide a means for viewing the Church as Israel. H. Peter Kang is a senior M.Div. student at Bexley Seabury and a postulant for the priesthood from the Diocese of Louisiana, where he plans to return, after school, to assist the ministry of the Church within the states prison system. Mr. Kang thanks Peter W. Ochs for his guidance and encouragement: Mipnei tikkun olam (For the repair of the world).

1 For example, Martin Luther, in On the Jews and their Lies,

No tes

argues that the Jewish Diaspora and their continued suffering is an example of Gods wrath that shows first that they have erred and gone astray and second that they are surely rejected by God, are no longer his people, and neither is he any longer their God (Luthers Works, vol. 47, pp. 138-139). 2 Lindbeck, The Church as Israel in Jews and Christians: People of God, ed. Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 94. 3 Lindbeck, What of the Future? A Christian Response in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 2000), p. 364. 4 Ibid. 5 Lindbeck, Church as Israel, p. 92. 6 Ibid. 7 Lindbeck, The Gospels Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability in The Church in a Postliberal Age, ed. James Buckley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 235. 8 As Oliver Davies writes, The celebration of the Christian Eucharist is a primary way in which those who follow Christ come to inhabit Scripture (in The Creativity of God: World, Eucharist, Reason [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004], p. 128). 9 Susan K. Wood, The Liturgy in Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church, ed. James Buckley and David Yeago (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 106. 10 Gerard Loughlin, Telling Gods Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), p. 223. 11 Origen, Peri Pascha, 3.10, 3.20-25.