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It would take too long within the confines of this lecture to examine the weaknesses of every one of these claims advanced by Dix, and so I must content myself at this time with the assertion that there is really no firm evidence from the period for this having been the standard practice of early Christians. Indeed we have precious little evidence that it was even one of the varied practices of the time, especially if we will stop reading Justin's account through the spectacles provided by later centuries. Because Dix's hypothesis sounds plausible, because it provides a simple and attractive way of teaching how the Eucharist evolved, and because it nicely fills in the yawning chasm of knowledge between the text of the New Testament and the descriptions of late fourth-century practice, we have all tended to fall for it, hook, line, and sinker, and to treat it as proven fact rather than the hypothesis that it was. On the contrary, what evidence there is for early eucharistic practice suggests that it persisted as a full meal far longer than we have tended to suppose;that it was quite varied in its order and details, and did not everywhere conform to the fourfold shape alleged by Dix; that the ministry of the word it included was also quite varied in character and was not necessarily inherited from the Sabbath synagogue service, which in the form that we know it is itself probably a later development than the first century of the Common Era; and that a single, lengthy eucharistic prayer at the heart of the rite, rather than shorter prayers over bread and cup separately, was slow to emerge, and may not have been universal until the Constantinian era effected a radical transformation of eucharistic practice.14 Thus what many Christian denominations now do Sunday by Sunday may be very far removed from what Christians of the first two or three centuries did, although it may have much in common with what Christians of the late fourth or early fifth centuries did. Let me say again, this does not make it illegitimate, any more than the changes introduced into eucharistic practice in the late Middle Ages or at the time of the Reformation made them illegitimate. It is a development by a living Christian tradition in response to the culture and circumstances of its age. And it can be argued that it was a very appropriate development for the late twentieth century church to adopt. Christians then needed to get behind the influences of the Middle Ages and the Reformation era that were continuing to dominate the theology and worship patterns of most major Western denominations, and seek something closer to an earlier point in their historical traditions, something they could see themselves as sharing with one another, and so facilitate the burgeoning ecumenical movement of that period. Nevertheless, the problem is that it has tended to be presented to congregations as a return to the very roots of Christian worship, rather than as the adoption of forms similar to those of several hundred years after Christianity's emergence. In order to convince ordinary clergy and worshippers to accept major changes in their worship, experts and church authorities gave the impression that what was being "restored" was a pattern very similar to what the apostles would have known, if not the very customs of Jesus himself. They were not engaging in a deliberate sales gimmick or confidence trick when they did this: the state of academic research of the period generally led to this rather naïve view. |
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