Things Heard: e62v3
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at
9:29 am
- The dark side of the desire for knowledge.
- Once a year? Once a quarter? That’s seems surprising and perhaps a little troubling to me.
- Two blogs recommended.
- Good or bad? A gedanken-experiment.
- I think that’s not quite right, I’m betting Israel fears an Arab neighbor getting nukes too.
- Awsome lede dude.
- Where mustang still means mustang.
- Game theory and Treasury.
- Seeing Christ in the mirror.
- Women in charge.
- Rationalism as foreign policy in a world that uses its whole brain (and admittedly sometimes uses the other “half”).
- American Babylon, a review.
- A MTB view of the Hell of the North.
- Verse as prayer.
- What’s next, “if Czechia won the war?”
- Superstar slavery?
- Stimulus.
- Mr Summers, corruption? A view that it was not.
- The arrow of time.
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re: the Once a year/once a quarter question…
Our church, for what it’s worth, celebrates communion once a month, in the strictly religious sense. However, we break bread with one another, thanking God, on a much more regular basis, a few times a week for some of us.
This source you reference says that Acts 2:42 tells us that the early church did communion once a week. Acts 2 says:
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.
I’m not sure where he got once a week out of that. Acts 2: 46 says:
Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.
My point is that I fear we sometimes project our modern traditions back upon the Bible, rather than seeking to find out what the Bible had to say in its own time and context and see how that applies to us. I’m not at all sure that the Bible teaches that the early church observed anything like what we have made of communion.
It is a newer tradition. Not necessarily a bad one – I sure love our vibrant joyful communion observances – but let’s not pretend that what Acts tells us is anything much like what we’re doing. Their communions, according to what the Bible actually says, were more just part of regular meals that they happened to share together, since they were often living communally at the time.
“As OFT as you do this, do it in remembrance of me…”
I think it is good to see more equality in the work place. I don’t think we are still were we need to be, but hearing about #10 makes me smile.
Dan,
Well, the early church was Sacramental, Liturgical, and Episcopal. One a week? “As oft as you do this” … is more than once a week. Many parishes have Eucharist daily in Lent. See here for example (for reference every liturgy has communion).
Have you read the Didache? It was written in the middle of the first century 50 or 60. Why is the Bible your only resource?
Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t “project our modern traditions back upon the Bible” it preserves the traditions from the first centuries today.
I’m not the one that said “Once a week,” that was your source. It was his comment that I was questioning where he got that.
I agreed. I’m the one that pointed to “as oft as you do this.” I think we agree. I’m just not of the mind that it was as ritualistic then as it is now. It was more of an organic part of life and fellowship and supper. At least that is how it seems in context of the Bible.
And no, I have not read the Didache and I’m not especially familiar with Eastern Orthodoxy, either, for what it’s worth. I was commenting on that your source’s comments, not Eastern Orthodoxy.
Dan,
Sorry, I’m a fairly recent convert and as a consequence am sometimes overzealous. 🙂
Dan,
But then again, zeal for the faith is a good thing, no?
As to “why is the Bible my only source,” it isn’t, but it sure is the way I was raised and I hold it dear. So, when you say the early church was “Sacramental, Liturgical, and Episcopal,” I’d have to ask what you mean by those terms.
Being raised Baptist and having most of my education in the Baptist/Anabaptist traditions, I may not be familiar with what Eastern Orthodoxy means by those terms. None of them are especially biblical, I will note – at least in the sense I’m familiar with the words (and actually, I have no idea what you even mean by saying the early church was “episcopal” – that they had bishops?).
,I>But then again, zeal for the faith is a good thing, no?
So long as it doesn’t consume you…
Dan,
“Take up your cross and follow me” shouldn’t consume you? Why not?
That was sort of a joke, based on the scripture…
His disciples recalled the words of scripture, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”