Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Sacraments Are Essential to Our Being

The Assistant Bishop of North Carolina is the Rt. Rev. William Gregg (PhD) who has done a lot of work on Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. I offer this from Bishop Gregg:

What emerges with regard to the sacraments is how deeply Hooker regarded them to be of the esse of the Church. One may rightly argue that the sacraments are, in terms of the Church's capacity to be and become what God calls it to be and become, the hinge. However the Church may be organized and necessary, one comes into the Church through a sacrament, Baptism. One is sustained in the living of baptismal faith through the sacrament of the Eucharist. Without the sacraments, there is no participation in the life of the Father through the Christ in the Spirit. Therefore, we may conclude that the ecclesial life for which Hooker is arguing is accessed and sustained through the sacraments, and has meaning precisely as sacramental.

The strong emphasis on the importance of the Incarnation is foundational to this concept of the Church and sacrament. The Church, in a general sense and through the particular sacraments, is the explicit mode and means of Christ's presence in the world, and of human access to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit, and hence to salvation. To claim for the Church an essentially incarnational nature, is, in effect, to claim that the Church itself is the primary sacrament. We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that Hooker's concern for polity and law is generally sacramental as well. That is, through the earthly means of law and polity, guided and ordered rightly by the Spirit, the Triune God becomes present really and concretely, though not corporally.

Through this rightly ordered Church which, therefore, is most fully able to convey God's grace and presence, the grace of reconciliation and participation in the life of the Father through the Son in the Spirit is made available and effective for God's people. Participation in Christ is specifically realized and sustained through the sacraments which are a part of the right ordering of the Church.

It was Hooker's intention in Laws to write a document which reflected in its form and content the possibility of a reasonable (intellectually acute and responsible) Church. His conviction was that such a Church subsisted in the Church of England in his day. I would argue that he also clearly believed that the vitality of the polity of the Church both liturgically and judicially, was defined, enlivened, and sustained through God's presence and work through the sacraments. The sacraments were for Hooker effective instruments, and therefore, critically important points of real mystical contact with God. He is clearly successful in his attempt in terms of his intention (at least in the possibility of a reasonable Church, even if perhaps not the Church of England), and in developing a sacramental ecclesiology which becomes explicit and focused in the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist.

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