Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry A Review Essay

By Daniel J. Treier
Hans Boersma. Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. xii + 206 pp. $20.00, ISBN 9780802865427. In Heavenly Participation, Hans Boersma, one of todays leading evangelical theologians (and, in the interests of full disclosure, a friend to this reviewer), provides an accessible and compelling distillation of his recent project. The argument should be especially interesting for readers of this journal, since Boersmas book is perhaps the most theologically responsible version of a long-standing trend within Christian higher education: appealing to a sacramental worldview. Within literary and artistic circles in particular, this languagealong with its frequent sibling, an incarnational approach to culture and/or ministrygalvanizes teachers and students to affirm the goodness of Gods creation and to resist the prior evangelical tendency toward unhealthy dualisms. Including but also transcending these concerns, Boersmas account offers historical and ontological underpinnings for an appealing sacramental tapestry. The book unfolds in two parts, intentionally paralleling the exitusreditus, going out and returning, scheme that characterized the classic Christian-Platonist synthesis, according to which humanity participates in the shape of Christs life. Thus Part 1 narrates The Fraying Tapestry before Part 2 describes how to enable Reconnecting the Threads. An Epilogue concludes this call for the ChristCentered Participation of humanity and even all creation in the fellowship of the Triune God. Along the way, Boersma appreciatively expounds the thought of Nouvelle Thologie Roman Catholics in twentieth-century France, such as Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, and others, who were known for ressourcement. Opposing the dominant, scholastic Neo-Thomism of their day, which overemphasized and ossified the philosophical components of Thomas Aquinass thought, the ressourcement theologians called for recovering the full range and depth of classic Christian texts and practices. First in the narration of Part One, Boersma sketches the contours of the ontolDaniel J. Treier is Associate Professor of Theology at Wheaton College.

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ogy for which Nouvelle Thologie calls. A sacramental focus stems from Christian conviction concerning the real presence of Christ, the mysterious reality behind empirical appearances. The presence of Christ is not merely symbolic, utterly distinct from that which appears, but rather sacramental, so that the appearance participates in the reality itself. This is true of all creaturely things, which we are called to use rather than enjoy (so Augustine). The created order exists not for its own sake, but as a proximate means of enjoying participation in God. Hence Boersma does not simply concede, but instead celebrates, the classic Christian synthesis with carefully chosen elements of Platonism. Second, Boersma anchors creaturely participation in God Christologically sketching such a view from Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa. Third, though, comes the medieval unraveling of the tapestry culminating, finally, in the sixteenth century when nature and the supernatural separate. According to de Lubac, the Catholic Counter Reformation overreacted to Protestants by introducing a notion of pure nature, the state of humanity before the fall and apart from grace. Meanwhile the idea that people naturally desire the vision of God fell under suspicion. The result of this new Catholic thought was an increasingly disenchanted cosmos, in which creation is not necessarily ordered to the Creator. Fourth, therefore, modernity simply cuts apart the unraveling tapestry. Without accepting the entire program of Radical Orthodoxy, Boersma adopts its narrative of decline, according to which John Duns Scotuss affirmation of the univocity of beingthat in a like sense God and creatures existtragically reduced God to human concepts while simultaneously freeing up creation for independent consideration apart from God. William of Ockhams voluntarism, meanwhile, emphasized Gods absolute power to an extreme degree. Ockham also advocated nominalism, dispensing with Platonic Forms and, as a result, fracturing creations linkage to God in Christ. Such a narrative suggests that the Reformation and Counter Reformation involved reactions to a common set of preexisting problems, while their opposition further helped to bequeath modernity. The fifth chapter critiques younger evangelicals attempting to reweave the sacramental tapestry in misguided ways. Boersma acknowledges the perennial need for reformation but insists also that the Protestant Reformation must be viewed in tragic terms, since it tore apart the churchs sacramental unity. Neither Luther nor Calvin held a simply univocal view of language, or voluntarist freedom, or nominalism either, but still there were marks of these tragic influences. Today certain postmodern evangelicals latch onto the wrong elements of the Reformation for moving forwardmoving against reason, traditional morality, and church authority. Furthermore, optimism over Catholic-Evangelical rapprochement is misplaced, according to Boersma, given lagging momentum for Evangelicals and Catholics Together. The implications drawn in Part Two must be summarized more briefly, even as the rest of this review tries to address them. Boersma would reconnect threads of the sacramental tapestry in order to configure Eucharist as Sacramental Meal

Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental TapestryA Review Essay

(chapter 6); Tradition as Sacramental Time (chapter 7); Biblical Interpretation as Sacramental Practice (chapter 8); Truth as Sacramental Reality (chapter 9); and Theology as Sacramental Discipline (chapter 10). There is much wisdom in each of these elements; in fact, we should affirm most or all of what Boersma aims to promote in each case. But the question is whether the historical and ontological threads of this winsome theology fully hold together using sacramental language for the cosmos. Among fraying historical threads on which to pull is selective narration. This is somewhat inevitable given the volumes size; still, the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western churches makes nary an appearance, apart from a side note regarding complementary resources to be found in Orthodoxy, which never abandoned the sacramental worldview. One wonders accordingly about politics, churchly and otherwiseabout how integral various claims to be the true church were to the sacramental vision, and how integral various church-state syntheses were within the tapestry itself. Why, to be blunt, remain Protestant? Apparently because Catholicism equally contributed to the tapestrys unraveling. But why not Orthodoxy, then? William Abrahams canonical theism offers a seemingly compatible narrative, albeit with an earlier point of decline in the Great Schism thus pointing eastward. Boersma needs to address such questions, at least briefly. An even broader issue is the propriety of grand narratives in the first place. What would a skilled historian, attentive to both intellectual and social/institutional factors, make of Boersmas decline narrative? Such disciplinary integration need not denigrate de Lubacs care with sources or prevent theologians from making generalizations; probably we must defend the right to learn from history in ways that make specialists nervous. Yet, to this reviewers knowledge, woe-isnominalism (and so forth) narratives never consider adequately the panoply of factors that first prompted such intellectual moves. In other words, if the tapestry were so seamlessly wondrous, whence came its unraveling? Might a sympathetic, contextual account of nominalism and related intellectual developments lead theology somewhere besides the clutches of modern secularism? Moving beyond initially historical concerns toward more directly ontological or dogmatic questions, the most tantalizing thread involves the propriety of sacramental language for ontology as such. We should share Boersmas concern for greater attention to heavenly realities precisely in order to preserve our commitment to earthly goodness. The recent evangelical scorn for heaven relative to earthly new creation is an understandable overreaction against former dualisms. But now the overcorrection needs correction. And, to be sure, the language of mystery, participation, and sacrament has its vital place in Christian theology. One can enthusiastically endorse recovering a sense of divine mystery regarding the Eucharist, tradition, Scripture, and indeed all of Gods creatures. At that point, though, more ontological detail about such participationor at least clarity about what this would not meanis required. Yet the paramount linguistic question involves sacramental as an adjec-

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tive. Might one acknowledge the grace involved in creation more faithfully using concepts from Boersmas Reformed tradition (for example), such as covenant and fellowship, without risking the simultaneous anthropological alienation from and accommodation to modern culture that the Nouvelle Thologie could put into play? Broadly compatible approaches to the modern loss of theological nerve, from diverse sourcessuch as (in addition to Abraham) Michael Buckley, William Placher, and Kathryn Tannersuggest that Boersmas project is full of potential insight. Yet one could agree that the Reformation had its tragic side while also maintaining that Luther and Calvin were on essentially the right track, and that the insights of ressourcement thinkers ought to supplement and reshape Protestant thought instead of the other way around. At one point, Boersma virtually equates appeal to analogy with participation and sacramental language; however, the Reformed tradition likewise affirms analogy and develops a particularly Christological version thereof, while orienting participation and sacraments relationally toward covenant fellowship. (Indeed, the work of Todd Billings points to Calvins rich theology of participation.) In short, at some junctures, alternative readings of either Protestant or Catholic positions are worth noting. Boersmas presentation of de Lubacs axiom, The Eucharist makes the church, is in many respects wonderful. However, precisely because of participation language regarding the Lords Supper in 1 Corinthians 10, we must be careful not to overinflate its application elsewhere. To some degree, application of sacrament to baptism and the Eucharist is (providentially) an accident of history rather than scriptural usage; the Bible uses the equivalent terminology of mystery in other senses. The mysterious revelation formerly hidden is temporally new (accomplished in Christ) and ethnically expansive (incorporating the Gentiles), rather than visually unfolding (a spiritual reality behind the literal) or spatially uplifting (from earth to heaven). Though, as noted above, a broad sense of mystery pertains appropriately to Gods work in the world, the term sacrament has become attached to a specific set of churchly practices wherein God works by particular means of grace. According to Douglas Farrow and others, the ascension of Jesus further circumscribes the claims we should make about Christs presence in the church here and now, given all-too-frequent ecclesiastical tendencies toward political and theological self-inflation. The sacraments are particular mysteries regarding Gods presence in the world, and even the churchs participation remains mysterious, lest she be tempted simply to equate herself or any other creaturely reality with the locus of Gods kingdom. For most Protestants, moreover, baptism and Eucharist primarily or even exclusively share the biblical domain named by this category: they are divinely ordained rites of personal participation in the communion of Christs resurrected body. Distinctively proclaiming Christs death, baptism initiates, and the Eucharist maintains, this participation. Thereby the church confesses her union with Jesuss past work, her present unity under his inaugurated lordship, and her future reunion with the Head who now remains partially absent from his body.

Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental TapestryA Review Essay

For exactly the kinds of reasons to which Boersma points from 1 Corinthians 10, a truly sacramental view might maintain that the language of sacrament must be reserved for particular rites. Does the Eucharist imply that as humans are sanctified they sanctify the use of creaturely goods, so that by this self-offering they honor the Creator? Does this have implications for ones worldview? Certainly. But the expansion of sacramental and incarnational linguistic territory threatens to undermine the very Christ-centeredness for which Boersma appeals. The Incarnation is about more than a principle of affirming embodiment. The sacraments, while perhaps having more direct implications for the blessing of creaturely gifts before God, nevertheless also retain specific senses of divine mystery. Otherwise there is a danger that, if everything becomes sacramental, then nothing is sacred. Even so, Heavenly Participation offers an attractively written, bracingly argued, clearly presented account of how evangelical Protestants might appropriate an important strand of modern Catholic thoughtnot to mention the classic Christian tradition. Its author is a wise participant-observer of contemporary Evangelicalism, and the intricate detail of the books tapestry makes for a winsome display. The questions at stake deserve more time and space than we have here, and I look forward to ongoing dialogue. Almost thou persuadest me...; yet, for the moment, although sharing most of the authors aims and many of the books affirmations, I remain unable to adopt its core historical and linguistic framework.

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