Remembrance, Communion, and Hope

Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table

J. Todd Billings

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

www.eerdmans.com

© 2018 J. Todd Billings

All rights reserved

Published 2018

isbn 978-0-8028-6233-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Billings, J. Todd, author.

Title: Remembrance, communion, and hope : rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table / J. Todd Billings.

Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017039680 | ISBN 9780802862334 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Lord’s Supper. | Mystical union.

Classification: LCC BV825.3.B55 2018 | DDC 264/.36—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039680

To Tim,

Colleague, Mentor, and Brother in Christ

Contents

Foreword, by Gerald L. Sittser

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: A Wager

PART 1

Functional Theologies and Desiring the Word

1. Salvation, the Supper, and the Drama of the Triune God

2. Embodied Perception and Delight in Christ

PART 2

A Catholic and Reformed Theology of the Supper

3. Reformed Doctrine and the Promise of the Supper

4. Does God Really Act through the Sacraments?

PART 3

The Supper and the Gospel in Remembrance, Communion, and Hope

5. Remembrance in Union with Christ

6. Communion in Union with Christ

7. Hope in Union with Christ

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Foreword

In June 2017 I traveled to Italy for two weeks with my wife, Patricia, and three close friends. Our itinerary included three days and two nights in Siena. Wandering the narrow streets of Siena late one afternoon, I happened upon a small art studio that displayed several icons in the front window. It was immediately apparent that this was no tourist shop selling cheap souvenirs. Intrigued, I stepped inside. The artist was working in solitary silence on a large altarpiece featuring Mary, the Mother of God. As the Orthodox say, she was “writing” the icon. When I entered, she lay down her brush, smiled, and welcomed me into her studio. We spent half an hour trying to converse about icons, she in Italian, I in English. We succeeded modestly in making ourselves clear, though our gestures were clearer than our words. The icon was beautiful—not as a Michelangelo painting is beautiful but only as an icon can be. It was mystically beautiful—otherworldly, mysterious, and mesmerizing. I found myself staring at the icon; before long I realized that the icon was staring at me, too, as if saying, “Your world is too small!”

Icons occupy a liminal space between two worlds. One is the fallen world where we live and where the subject of the icon played a specific and important role in her earthly life. The other is the heavenly world where God reigns as Lord and where the subject of the icon now lives, having died and undergone glorious ...