Saturday, August 3, 2013

"the question of the sacraments IS the question of the church drawing its life from Christ."

     "Why did Barth, a modern ecumenical theologian par excellence, not pursue the significance of the eucharistic liturgy as a decisive event in the becoming and being of the church?  Was it because he wanted to establish Jesus-history as 'the one and only sacrament' from which the church draws its life?  Though we cannot quarrel with this as a motive, it fails completely as an explanation, for the question of the sacraments is the question of the church drawing its life from Christ."

     Douglas Farrow, Ascension and ecclesia:  on the significance of the doctrine of the ascension for ecclesiology and Christian cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 251.