Brother Paphnutius - an ongoing parable (Part VII)

"And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body." (Mk. 14:22)

 

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Uncertainty

366 A.D. - the Egyptian desert (early winter)

Br. Paphnutius loves the Book of Common Prayer and quantum physics (the whimsical irony of neither one of these having been conceived in his lifetime being completely beside the point!). In its American edition of 1928 there is a prayer that includes (on pg. 37 for those following along at home): "Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions." If in his own day, the Gnostics and the Arians were the loudest of the divisive, just imagine what he would think if he could see the state of Christianity in the 21st century!

At the least(!), these divisions are at their heart a disagreement over what particular texts mean as we read them in the Bible. And that got Paphnutius thinking, 'what happens when someone reads something from the Bible? Do they bring their own biases and individual ways of thinking?' (Yes.) 'Will any one person ever have enough information to be able to read it in isolation?' (Not likely.) 'Are the decrees of the Council of Nicaea an accurate representation of what appears in the pages of the Scriptures?' [Paphnutius is banking on it, with good reason (cf. the rhetorical point immediately preceeding this one).]

So, when reading the Bible, is it simple or complex? Neither? Both?

How's about this? Let's say, for argument's sake, that it is "ontologically simple" yet "theologically and literarily complex".

Let's see how Paphnutius breaks this down using the text quoted at the head of this article. It is indeed ontologically simple. Jesus, acting prior to the surety of His Crucifixion and Resurrection (which is, by the way, the WHOLE POINT of the entirety of Scripture) begins His fulfillment to the Passover act by means of the chabûrah meal [in order that it might be subsequently repeated regularly (see Gregory Dix) - that whole bit about fulfilling, not abolishing, the Law being entirely germane here].

Thus the "take, eat" of the Last Supper is ontologically simple.

But there is all sorts of other stuff going on here. This account was written down (and has been translated through) multiple languages and textual recensions of (generically slight) different readings so that words such as "take", "eat", "do this", "remembrance" "my body" cannot simply be taken at face value but must be looked into through cultural anthropology, literary analysis (including etymological development), their relation to the rest of the narrative in context, the teaching of the Fathers of the first centuries A.D. (remember that bit about not being able to work in isolation?!), and other means.

Consider this as well. The "communions of antiquity" (Rome, Orthodoxy, Miaphysite), the Reformed bodies (Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, etc.), and the modern movements (non-denominational, revivalist, prosperity, etc.) cannot agree on what this verse means.

Thus the "take, eat" of the Last Supper is, at the same time, theologically/literarily complex.

The point (yes, there is one) is that this is a pretty important specific subject (as it is mentioned not only by all 4 Gospels, but also in Acts and the Pauline Epistle to the Corinthians) so we (at bare minimum) need to keep our thinking clear (even if, as seems likely, there will never be entire agreement).

In our thinking, perhaps Heisenberg can help clear away some of the mental jetsam that is such an obstruction:

"As an example, he considered the measurement of the position of an electron by a  microscope. The accuracy of such a measurement is limited by the wave length of the light  illuminating the electron. Thus, it is possible, in principle, to make such a position  measurement as accurate as one wishes, by using light of a very short wave length. But...the  Compton effect cannot be ignored: the interaction of the electron and the illuminating light  should then be considered as a collision of at least one photon with the electron. In such a  collision, the electron suffers a recoil which disturbs its momentum. Moreover, the shorter  the wave length, the larger is this change in momentum. Thus, at the moment when the  position of the particle is accurately known, Heisenberg argued, its momentum cannot be  accurately known." (see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/)

Phew! What?!?

Simply this. Delving too deeply into the complexity, we can (and have) gotten quite lost and shifted the point (which is indeed to "take, eat" not "look, dispute"). Exclusively relying on the simplicity (particularly when such is conceived in modern terms such as plain, unadorned, easy to understand and not in a philosophico-theological construction of non-compartmentalisation and evident teleology) moves us to where some are at today [i.e. drowning in a sea of Nominalism (of their own making!)].

[Now, if you will excuse him, Br. Paphnutius is off to attend Sunday Liturgy so that he might "take" and "eat".

To be continued...