That Thursday, I said some provocative things about Catholicism and Orthodoxy in relation to the first-century church. To be clear, my point wasn’t to disparage practices like infant baptism or Marian devotion, just to make a historical observation that these were not practices of the first-century Christians. These were later developments. Justifiable and beautiful developments, but developments nonetheless.
That I would point out such things goes to my denominational location. I’m a member of the Churches of Christ. Our movement is primitivist. That is, we’ve always sought the simplest and earliest expressions of first-century Christianity as the optimal template for church life, organization, belief, and practice. Anything, therefore, that shows up later in Christian history, from the 2nd century on, we view with suspicion.
To be sure, the dream of primitivism is quixotic, historically and hermeneutically, but I’m a primitivist at heart. My ecclesial tastes are simple and minimalist. Which is one of the reasons I remain Protestant and likely won’t convert anytime soon to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. I find much within those traditions beautiful, profound, rich, wide, and deep. But I also experience them as ornamental, baroque, and filigreed in doctrine, liturgy, practice, and ecclesiology.
Take, for example, the doctrine of the real presence. So much theology gets piled on top of that question. When and where is Christ “really showing up” in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist?
My own tradition, the Churches of Christ, has been memorialist, denying the real presence. I find that sad and would love to recover a doctrine of the real presence within our tradition. Crucially, though, I don't judge the memorialist view as heretical or empty of spiritual power. Unlike so many online apologists, I'm not the Eucharist Police. For my part, my concerns about memorialism have to do with its metaphysical vulnerability toward disenchantment. So when I say I wish my tradition embraced the doctrine of the real presence I don't see this as moving from heresy to orthodoxy. I see it, rather, as deepening our mystical participation in the Supper. Good teaching shapes perception, and I'd like our people to see more in the Eucharist rather than less. Especially in the metaphysical vacuum of modernity. For me, this is more about spiritual formation than a concern about heresy.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think you need a lot of theological and liturgical machinery to affirm the real presence. I think it can be secured on primitivist terms, and in the simplest and plainest way possible.
Jesus said, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
That’s it. That’s my doctrine of the real presence. When two or three gather in the name of Jesus, and in my tradition we gather precisely to celebrate the Supper, Jesus is really present. The universal and holy catholic church is realized in that gathering.
Now, will Orthodox and Catholic readers find this view woefully inadequate, underdetermined, maybe even heretical? I expect they will. But I will confess, for my part, that I sense something idolatrous in the anxiety to secure the real presence through metaphysical and liturgical systems of consecration. The earliest Christians experienced the real presence as quite simple, straightforward, and plain.
When they gathered Jesus was simply there.
