The Problem with Pansacramentalism
Long-time Shipmate re-enters the Forums, seeking help from Orthodoxen here, and Orthodox-adjacent shipmates, please.
AIUI, Orthodoxy maintains a powerful sense of Creation-as-Sacrament, e.g. Schmemann, and the return offering of all Creation in the Divine Liturgy: "Thine own of thine own we offer unto thee, on behalf of all, and for all". However, the world is also perfused with natural 'evil', such as predation, parasitism, cancer and earthquakes, that seems to render parts of Creation opaque to a pansacramental vision.
I'm wondering about the various ways that, after Darwin, Orthodoxy seeks to reconcile this paradox?
AIUI, Orthodoxy maintains a powerful sense of Creation-as-Sacrament, e.g. Schmemann, and the return offering of all Creation in the Divine Liturgy: "Thine own of thine own we offer unto thee, on behalf of all, and for all". However, the world is also perfused with natural 'evil', such as predation, parasitism, cancer and earthquakes, that seems to render parts of Creation opaque to a pansacramental vision.
I'm wondering about the various ways that, after Darwin, Orthodoxy seeks to reconcile this paradox?
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We don't try to reconcile paradox. We live with it.
Christ as fully God and fully human.
Paradox.
We aren't the only Christians who live with paradox of course. I'm not saying we have a monopoly on doing so.
But sometimes other people raise questions we don't even bother to ask. We are annoying that way. 😉
It's a paradox. Get over it already.
It's a paradox. It's part of Holy Tradition. Enjoy it.
You get the picture.
Perhaps another Orthodoxen or Orthodox-adjacent sacramentalist will come up with a more satisfying answer.
Someone told me the other day that they'd heard of someone who'd asked an Orthodox Christian why they needed icons.
'Because we need icons,' came the reply.
It's a similar thing here. I really don't see why this should be an issue pre or post-Darwin. 'Matter matters.' Through the Incarnation God entered Creation. 'What is not assumed cannot be healed.'
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Therefore Creation is sanctified. Even the nasty bits will ultimately find their fulfilment in Christ. It's all in 1 Corinthians 15. There's your answer.
And it's a great question by the way.
Although God is already working in and through even the messed up bits we are led to understand.
We live between the now and the not yet.
I'm not sure we have to be full on sacramentalists to hold that. This was very much an emphasis back in my charismatic evangelical days, even if we did topple into an over-realised eschatology at times.
It just sounds like basic 'Mere Christianity' to me, whether Big or small O / o orthodox or heterodox.
But back to the OP ... I'm pretty sure there are parallel or similar eucharistic formularies in the RC and possibly other more sacramental churches like the Anglicans.
'Lord, we have this bread / wine to offer ...' etc?
'Fruit of the vine and work of human hands ...' and so on.
I'm unfamiliar with Lutheran liturgies but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find references like that or to the ultimate transformation of all creation in Lutheran liturgies too.
With echoes or parallels in some Methodist or Presbyterian liturgies too, I suspect.
Are the examples intrinsically evil, or is it that we ascribe moral value to them because we put ourselves at the centre of everything. If I'm a parasite and nature has provided a host then that is a good thing.
From a web search: Pansacramentalism refers to a strong emphasis on the importance and efficacy of the Christian sacraments for achieving salvation and conferring grace.
I gather it is more involved than that. There are many slightly different terms.
@Alan29 : I concur, hence the scare quotes around 'evil' in the OP.
@HarryCH : The sort of pansacramentalism I have in mind here holds that the every material thing in creation is not merely a revelation about God, but a revelation of God, parasitic wasps included.
I take it that the 'groaning' of creation (Rom 8.22) can no longer safely be attributed to a historical Fall. Rather, it seems that if all materiality is imbued with sacramental potential, such potential might still be latent, unrealised, obscured, veiled, by the operations of a only-way, self-organising universe ... or something. I warm to Orthodoxy's hospitably expansive pansacramentalism, but struggle to affirm that in the light of the waste and suffering built-in to evolutionary processes.
We all know the Mother Julian of Norwich quote, 'All shall be well ...'
@Arethosemyfeet yes, of course. I like that eucharistic prayer.
Something I would emphasise though, is the inherent goodness of Creation. God saw that it was good.
That applies whether we see the Fall as a literal historical event or take it in a more metaphorical or symbolic way.
There's also a synergia thing going on. As @Lamb Chopped reminds us, we are offering everything up to God, the good, thr bad, the indifferent - and in particular those things that are currently out of kilter.
We can have an overly dualistic approach to these things if we aren't careful. Whatever Christian tradition we inhabit - and indeed beyond Christianity as a whole - it behoves is to adopt a more holistic approach.
And this should impact how we live.
There are several approaches I can use to try to explain this, but I think the best way to explain it is through the Hiddenness of God (Deus absconditus)
God's ways in creation are often opaque, paradoxical and not fully reconcilable with human expectations of goodness.
I can say
[*] Creation is good.
[*] Creation is broken.
[*] God is present in both.
[*] We live in the tension.
The world is charged with God's presence, but Christ alone determines where grace is promised. Thus, we hold only two, possibly three sacraments.
The Eucharist (where the elements of bread and wine become the body and blood).
Baptism (where water combined with word imparts salvation)
The third is confession and absolution.
Of course, other traditions hold more than 3 sacraments. Not going to debate that here.
Or even a literal event in some way that happened beyond, not all time, but the kind of time we consciously relate to. Maybe time itself, as we (consciously?) experience it, was one of the things that got broken in the Fall. Death and pain and all the bad things in this world could have worked backwards through time itself, so in one sense there was a perfectly good Creation, and in another sense we and the world we live in have never known a world without death and pain and corruption, but when God resurrects it all in the new Heaven and new Earth, all will be as it should have been -- or technically better (the Fortunate Fall) -- than as it was/was supposed to be.
I believe that it was real in some way, but I suspect that the only way our minds can conceive it (as our minds are now) is in the form of the symbolic story of the man and the woman in the garden with the serpent and the fruit.
As 'maximalists' we Orthodox go for the full set ... 😉 - But it seems to me that we could hold a 'pansacramental' approach irrespective of whether we have three or seven or however many else.
The principle we are discussing here is the extent to which 'fallen' Creation can feature in our sacramental theology.
My answer would be: fully.
That's the point of sacraments in the first place.