For example, there's the oft-quoted comment of Flannery O'Connor's about the Eucharist. At a party one evening talk turned to the Eucharist and a person commented, "I think it is a lovely symbol." To which O'Connor replied, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it."
In the framework of this series, O'Connor was dismissing any vision of the Eucharist that had cut itself off from the Real, from the ontological layer. The Catholic doctrine in question here is transubstantiation, which Protestantism broke with.
The issue, though, is a bit more nuanced. Early on in the Protestant Reformation, there was a debate about the Eucharist, the "Sacramentarian Controversy." To one side were the Lutherans, who defended the Catholic-adjacent view of the Real Presence. On the other side were the Zwinglians, who defended a memorialist view. The point to note is that Protestant commitments to the Real Presence, like what the Lutherans were defending in the controversy, do strive to keep the Eucharist tethered to ontology. Christ is really, ontologically there in the sacrament. The memorialist view, by contrast, severs itself from the ontological, leaving only the moral and symbolic layers behind. The Eucharist becomes, in O'Connor's remark, "just a symbol."
Similar shifts happened with the sacrament of baptism. Ontological views of baptism describe how baptism changes reality. For example, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word." (CCC 1213)
Baptism as effecting "regeneration" highlights the ontological aspect of the sacrament. As the Catechism continues:
This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God." (CCC 1215)
Note how the description is ontological: Baptism "signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and Spirit." Baptism isn't merely a symbol. Baptism ontologically changes the world. Baptism actually brings about our new birth in Christ.
Like with the Eucharist, Protestants hold mixed views about baptism. Raised as I was in the Churches of Christ, our view of baptism was ontological. Like the Catholic view, we believed that baptism wrought an ontological change. Other Protestants, like the Baptists, hold to a more symbolic view of baptism, the sacrament severed from the ontological layer.
So, to be clear, Protestants are divided on the degree to which they tether the sacraments to the ontological. And some traditions, like my own, have mixed profiles. Our view of the Lord's Supper was symbolic, but our view of baptism was ontological. But in some Protestant spaces, both sacraments are symbolic. Consequently, untethered at they are from the ontological layer, we observe sacramental drift in these churches. The Lord's Supper is only rarely or intermittently celebrated, and baptism is delayed or ignored as something optional.
We're even seeing drift in traditions that embrace ontological views of the sacraments. The US Catholic Church recently went through a Eucharistic Revival because surveys revealed that increasing numbers of American Catholics did not believe in the Real Presence. And in my own tradition, our practices of baptism have become increasing symbolic, and therefore optional.
Stepping back, I believe we can see how sacramental drift contributes to Christian disenchantment. If there is nothing Real about the sacraments then is anything going at church Real? Are ontological realities being ontologically encountered in the church? Or is it all just moral uplift and therapeutic encouragement?
This ontological drift is one of the reasons why, I believe, evangelical churches focus so much on emotions. Without any connection to ontology you have to "feel something." And that "feeling something" tips you toward charismatic preaching and amped up praise services. Emotion has come to replace ontology, feelings now substitute for the Real.
In short, with sacramental drift comes ecclesial drift, church becoming decoupled from ontology. And as with the sacraments, if nothing Real is encountered in church then church becomes optional. When church becomes severed from ontological realities it reduces to moral pedagogy and therapeutic uplift. Which are good things. But we can get these moral and therapeutic goods from many places. We can listen to sermons on podcasts and stream praise music.
Given this sacramental and ecclesial drift, one of my big soapboxes has become reconnecting church to the Real. And we do this by pushing down through the moral and the symbolic to connect ourselves, the sacraments especially, to the ontological layer.
Because if it's all just a symbol, well, to hell with it.
