I RENAEUS , A UGUSTINE AND THE ‘A NTI S ACRIFICE ’ OF E THICS

Having argued at length that the dominant biblical category for Jewish and Christian worship is sacrifice, Chauvet acknowledges this idea is deeply ambiguous and should be carefully understood. As noted above, Chauvet begins with the transformative newness of Christ and the Spirit. The sacrifice of Jesus brought to fulfilment the priestly and sacrificial system of old covenant. His death marked nothing less than the completion of the Jewish cult, ‘sacrificing of the sacrifices.’124 As both high priest and perfect sacrifice, Christ’s self-giving love offers direct access to the Father. Through the Spirit humanity is invited into a new relationship with the Father – not a servile relation, but a filial one. ‘It is in giving thanks, in giving back to God God’s own Grace, Christ given in sacrament, that we are given back to ourselves, that is, placed or replaced in our status of sons and daughters and thus reconciled.’125

For Christians, this eucharistic return-gift of adoration and action is characterised by the tension between cult and ethics that cannot be reduced to a simple opposition, which offers ‘either a sacrificial regimen with ethical abdication or an ethical regimen of responsibility.’ By contrast, the newness of Christian sacramentality demands a different theological grammar beyond the old binary discourse of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘non-sacrifice.’126 To this end, Chauvet proposes a third term to describe Christian worship: ‘anti-sacrifice.’127 Of this he writes, ‘The anti-sacrificial regimen to which the gospel calls us rests upon the sacrificial, but it does so to turn it around and thereby to redirect ritual practice, the symbolic point of passage that structures Christian identity, back toward ethical practice, the place where the ritual practice is verified.’128 This ‘anti-sacrifice’ paradigm is thus essential for understanding the connection between the Eucharist and the ethical practice of Christian discipleship. To clarify this connection, Chauvet turns to Irenaeus and

124

Ibid., 298.

125 _{Ibid., 311.} 126

Ibid., 290. ‘“Sacrifice,” writes Chauvet,’ is a term that has a bad reputation in many Christian circles. Among the terms belonging to traditional Catholic vocabulary, it is without doubt one of the most suspect today. All by itself it calls up symbolically an entire “world,” a world of a past not all that remote when, through the medium of the catechism and the Christian model proposed there, it functioned as the cardinal notion of the Church-as-institution.’

127

Ibid., 307. Chauvet’s theology of sacrifice is informed by a critical engagement with René Girard (see Symbol and Sacrament, 303-310). For a discussion, see Ambrose 2001, 279-296; Vondey 2008, 54-56; Kirwan 2009.

128

Chauvet’s argument that the Christian ‘anti-sacrificial’ system ‘rests upon the sacrificial’ has interesting resonances with the work of Jonathan Klawans. See Klawans 2005, 213-246 and 2011, 106-117. On the limits of Girard’s theory of sacrifice, see Klawans 2005, 17-48.

123

Augustine. It is here that we discover the extent to which Chauvet’s sacramental ethic is inextricably bound up with the works of mercy.

4.5.1 I

In his classic work Adversus Omnes Haereses, Irenaeus argues that whilst there continue to be sacrifices in the church just as there were among the Jewish people, the sacrificial system has been essentially and irreversibly changed.129 Chauvet observes that for Irenaeus, the Christian oblation ‘is the major teaching moment where we learn to make our own the very attitude of Jesus, that is, to pass from the Adamic attitudes of slaves, imaginatively considering the divine power as booty to be plundered, to the attitude of sons and daughters, content to allow God alone to be God and to acknowledge ourselves as God’s creatures, the gracious fruit of God’s paternal love.’130

Sacrifices offered to God in the freedom of Christ are not given in order to meet some fictive need in God. Rather, they are means by which we declare our dependent need for God. The offering is not one of compulsion or coercion or guilt. It is a response to the grace and love of God. ‘For it is by recognizing that of ourselves we have nothing to offer,’ continues Chauvet, ‘and that we can offer nothing to God that does not come from God as a gift […] that we cease to be “sterile and ungrateful”; from being “a-charistoi,” we become “eu-charistoi.” We turn from being ungrateful to being gracious; and becoming gracious toward God requires that we become gracious toward others.’131 With identities come vocations; to be a child of God is to undergo a permanent process of letting God be God and to discover oneself matured into gratitude.

Chauvet identifies in Irenaeus a profound theological insight about the purpose and implication of Christian sacrifice. In the Eucharist, Christians learn to receive the gracious gift of God with gratitude and to respond to God’s generosity with thanks and praise.132 But to recognise what God is doing for us in the Son, ‘is to be urged to be toward others as God is toward us.’ Chauvet concludes by noting how Irenaeus teaches that ‘the sacrifice that is pleasing to God is nothing else but, in imitation of Christ, obedience to God’s word and the practice of justice and mercy toward

129 Irenaeus 1885. 130 Chauvet 1995b, 311. 131 Ibid., 312. 132 _{Tillard 2001, 114.}

124

others. Such is the anti-sacrificial pasch which, in communion with the Pasch of Christ, the

Eucharist presents to us symbolically and enjoins us to live out ethically.’133

From Chauvet’s initial reading of Irenaeus, it is clear that ‘ethics’ in the broad sense represents a sacramental horizon within which Christians become a eucharistic people through loving service. Chauvet pushes this a bit further by identifying true sacrifice with ‘the practice of justice and

mercy.’ However, naming this general connection is the extent of Chauvet’s analysis. A second

look at the original passage in Irenaeus reveals something much more interesting. It is worth quoting at length:

Now we make offering to Him, not as though He stood in need of it, but rendering thanks for His gift, and thus sanctifying what has been created. For even as God does not need our possessions, so do we need to offer something to God; as Solomon says: “He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth unto the LORD.” [Prov 19:17] For God, who stands in need of nothing, takes our good works to Himself for this purpose, that He may grant us a recompense of His own good things, as our Lord says: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for

you. For I was an hungered, naked, and ye clothed Me; sick, and ye visited Me; in prison, and ye came to Me.” [Matt 25:34-35] As, therefore, He does not stand in

need of these [services], yet does desire that we should render them for our own benefit, lest we be unfruitful; so did the Word give to the people that very precept as to the making of oblations, although He stood in no need of them, that they might learn to serve God: thus is it, therefore, also His will that we, too, should offer a gift at the altar, frequently and without intermission.

The altar, then, is in heaven (for towards that place are our prayers and oblations directed); the temple likewise [is there], as John says in the Apocalypse, “And the temple of God was opened:” the tabernacle also: “For, behold,” He says, “the tabernacle of God, in which He will dwell with men.” [Rev 21:19]134

Of what does the ethical return-gift consist? How is this sacrifice given? In what sense can we understand it as received by God? Read in context, when Irenaeus speaks of the offerings Christians make ‘to God,’ he has the works of mercy specifically in mind. According to Gary Anderson, Irenaeus interprets Proverbs 19:17 as ‘a dramatic act of loving condescension on the part of God.’ In himself, God lacks nothing, and yet He makes himself available to us using ‘the altar and the waiting hand of the poor person as a means of approaching him.’135 Whereas Chauvet glosses over many of these details, Anderson emphasises that in this passage Irenaeus

133 _{Chauvet 1995b, 312.} 134

Irenaeus 1885, Against Heresies, 4.18.6. For a discussion, see Williams 1982, 9-12; and Tillard 2001, 113- 114.

125

combines (1) sacrificial oblation, (2) almsgiving as a loan to God (Prov 19:17), and (3) the depiction of the last judgment (Matt 25:31-46) in order to affirm the sacramentality of the merciful act.136 God is present in Christ and Christ is present in the poor. Therefore, to give to the poor is to lend to the LORD.Anderson concludes:

Irenaeus thinks of this “loan” not as a financial matter but as a liturgical act. Placing an offering on the altar is like putting money in the hands of a poor person. Just as God did not need the sacrifice of animals in the temple but desired that we give them to Him for our own benefit, so God does not need the alms we give but demands them from us in order that we might have some concrete means of displaying reverence.137

This analysis clearly shows that, for Irenaeus at least, the works of mercy are considered sacramental acts within the liturgy of the neighbour. What of Augustine?

4.5.2 A

Chauvet concludes his account of sacramental ethics by looking at key passages from Augustine’s

City of God 10.5-6.138 Like Irenaeus, Augustine argues that God has no need of human offerings. On the contrary, sacrifices are offered to God for human benefit. For Augustine, the eucharistic

sacramentum is the ‘visible sacrifice, that is, the sacrament or sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice.’139 _{This ‘invisible sacrifice’ is nothing less than ‘the obedience and love with which Christ} delivered himself over to the Father and to humankind, offering with himself all humanity whose brother he had become.’140 The Eucharist is a visible participation of the true sacrificial self-giving of Christ on the cross. However, in communion with Christ, this true sacrifice also includes ‘our own lives given to others through the exercise of mercy.’141 Building on Augustine, Chauvet contends that the church itself is ultimately offered to God through Jesus Christ; her many

136 _{Ibid. Gregory (2010) observes that ‘After Irenaeus the association of Prov 19:17 and Matt 25:31-46,}

whether for Christological or ethical purposes, is an exegetical commonplace’ (211-212).

137

Ibid., 166 (emphasis added).

138

For a discussion of mercy and sacrifice in Augustine, see Grabowski 1957, 29-63; Fitzgerald 1989, 445- 459; Gordon 1993, 290-297; Ramsay 1993, 226-259; Cameron 1999, 290-296; Fitzgerald 1999, 557-561; Von Heyking 2001; Brown 2002; Leithart 2003a, 5-28; Williams 2004, 17-27; McCarthy 2005, 23-48; Finn 2006; Hofer 2008, 285-300; Louth 2008, 291-304; Allen & Morgan 2009, 119-170; Gregory 2010; Leithart 2010, 326-331; Ayres 2012, 416-428. 139 Chauvet 1995b, 312. 140 Ibid., 313. 141 _{Ibid., 313.}

126

members are declared one body from the one bread. ‘The sacramental sacrifice is that of “the whole Christ” (Christus totus), Head and Body.’142

From these brief comments, it is clear that Chauvet’s reading of Augustine already lays the groundwork for a sacramental interpretation of Christian charity. Whilst Chauvet acknowledges the significance of this sacrificial ‘exercise of mercy,’ he does not follow Augustine’s work to its logical conclusion.

Augustine begins by surveying various philosophical critiques of sacrifice in search of a more adequate language to describe faithful worship (10.1). Augustine notes that typical Latin terminology – latreia, cultus, religio, eusebius, servitus – can refer to either human service or divine worship. Works of mercy are listed as acts of ‘piety’ (eusebeia) for another in need, but are considered religious acts when practised for God’s sake. He writes, ‘in common speech, the word [eusebia] frequently refers to works of mercy; and I suppose that this usage has come about because God especially commands the performance of such works, and declares that He is pleased with them instead of, or in preference to, sacrifices.’143

As the book progresses, Augustine develops this connection between mercy and sacrifice. In 10.3, he argues that Christians owe service [latreia] to God either through ‘certain sacraments or performed within our own selves.’ Christians (individually and as the church) constitute the true temple of God; the heart of each believer becomes an altar when it rises to God, and Christ is the High Priest interceding on behalf of the church:

We sacrifice bleeding victims to Him when we strive for His truth even unto blood. We offer to Him the sweetest incense when we burn in His sight with godly and holy love, and when we devote and render to Him ourselves and His gifts in us. […] We offer to Him upon the altar of our hearts the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of love. [Ps 50:16-17]

The heart of worship is loving God with all one’s heart, mind and strength. ‘We ought to be led to this good by those who love us,’ Augustine argues, ‘and we ought to lead those whom we love to it.’ By knowing oneself as eternally constituted in Love, and by loving the neighbour as oneself, one draws near to God. For ‘we approach Him through love, so that, when we reach Him, we may rest in Him, blessed because made perfect by the attainment of our end.’ To love the neighbour in

142

Ibid. Cf. D’Costa 2004, 268-269.

127

God: ‘This is the worship [cultus] of God; this is true religion [religio]; this right piety [pietas]; this the service [seruitus] which is due to God alone.’

In 10.5, Augustine compares the sacrifice of neighbourly love with the Jewish sacrificial system of the old covenant.144 He argues that the bloody sacrifices of the Old Testament are types and figures symbolising the true worship that God requires.145 According to the Psalmist, God does not desire the burnt offerings, but rather the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart (Ps 51:16-19). For Augustine, ritual sacrifice is a ‘visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice.’ The message of the Psalms and the Prophets is that ‘God does not require these sacrifices as such, but that He does require the sacrifices which they symbolise,’ to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). Under the old covenant, the worshipper could not draw near to God’s holy presence, but had to rely on an animal substitute and the mediation of the priests. Christ is the Lamb that was slain and the High Priest of the new covenant. In Christ, the worshipper can now ‘draw near’ to God by offering himself/herself as a living sacrifice, enjoined with the sacrifice of Christ.146 This self-offering for the sake of another is performed in works of mercy:

In the Epistle dedicated to the Hebrews, the apostle says, “To do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” [Heb 13:16] And so, where it is written, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” [Hos 6:6; Matt 9:13, 12:7] nothing else is meant than that one kind of sacrifice is preferred to another; for that which all men call a sacrifice is only a symbol of the true sacrifice. Moreover, mercy is the true sacrifice […]. All the divine commandments, therefore, which we read concerning the many kinds of sacrifice offered in the ministry of the tabernacle or the temple, are to be interpreted symbolically, as

referring to love of God and neighbour.147

The good works of Hebrews 13:16 refer to a merciful praxis of generosity, hospitality and solidarity. Here, works of mercy are not mere piety, nor are they a symbolic gesture or figurative type. On the contrary, Augustine contends that when offered through Christ (Heb 13:15) to the glory of God the Father, works of mercy are acts of worship – the true sacrifices of the new covenant.

144

Cf. Augustine 1998, City of God, 20.24.

145

Leithart 2003a, 10.

146

I am indebted to Peter J. Leithart for this insight.

128

This point brings the argument to its culmination. ‘A true sacrifice,’ Augustine writes, ‘is every work done in order that we may draw near to God in holy fellowship’ (10.6). Therefore, a deed of loving kindness cannot be considered a sacrificial act of worship by definition, but only to the extent that it is offered with one’s body and soul as a ‘living sacrifice’ (Rom 12:1-2) for God’s sake. Augustine thus states that

true sacrifices are works of mercy shown to ourselves or to our neighbours, and done with reference to God; and since works of mercy have no object other than to set us free from misery and thereby make us blessed […] it surely follows that the whole of the redeemed City – that is, the congregation and fellowship of the saints – is offered to God as a universal sacrifice for us through the great High Priest Who, in His Passion, offered even Himself for us in the form of a servant, so that we might be the body of so great a Head.148

All Christians are given the vocation of priests to worship God in sacrifices of mercy – given materially to ‘the least of these’ (Matt 25), but received spiritually as unto Christ himself (cf. City

of God 20.24). As Lewis Ayres observes, ‘our “sacrifices” are not subsequent to Christ’s self-

sacrifice: rather, our sacrifices gain their effective reality from the fact that they are sacrifices that flow from Christ’s incorporation of Christians into his own life and sacrifice (and then into his resurrection).’149 For Augustine, this sacrifice of mercy is intrinsically bound up with Christ’s sacrificial offering of the church itself in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. ‘This is the sacrifice of Christians: “We, being many, are one body in Christ.” [Rom 12:5] And this is also, as the faithful know, the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, by which she demonstrates that she herself is offered in the offering that she makes to God.’150 Many readers of Augustine interpret this passage as an affirmation of eucharistic sacrifice. Whilst this theme is certainly present in book 10, Augustine’s primary focus is on the works of mercy as sacrificial acts of worship. In a discussion of the final judgment in City of God 20.24, Augustine returns to this relationship between mercy and sacrifice. He underscores the centrality of this

148

In his Flesh of the Church, Tillard (2001) unpacks the densely concentrated sacrificial imagery embedded in this passage: ‘In the “sacrament of the altar” the various “sacrifices” are thus together in osmosis. All of them are embraced by the sacramental presence of the paschal sacrifice which Christ offered “once for all” and in which all the forms of his own sacrifice found their fulfilment: “Sacrifice of good deeds and mutual help,” “spiritual sacrifice of a holy life,” “sacrifice of praise,” “sacrifice of the lips,” particularly sacrifice of one’s own life. Then, in virtue of their entering into the power of the paschal sacrifice of communion of Christ, the hearts and words of those whom the synaxis assembles form a unique and radically indivisible “sacrifice,” that of the church, body and head’ (124).

149 _{Ayres 2012, 424; cf. Leithart 2010, 329-300.} 150

Augustine 1998, City of God, 10.6. Ayres (2012) adds, ‘The sacrifice offered on the Christian altar is the church, because the community of Christians, the body of Christians, has been incorporated into Christ’ (424). See also Bradley 1995, 150; Bell 2002, 353.

129

point, writing, ‘works of mercy are the sacrifices with which God is well pleased, as I remember