Kind of…
I have a new post up at the Cafe. It floats around a number of recent discussions about food and meat production, but also about sacrifice and how we understand the Eucharist. There is a positive allergy to talking about the sacrificial element of the Eucharist among many protestants and post-Vatican II catholic types. Here’s a gentle nudge in that direction, positioning it in a way to help people understand the ancient concept of sacrifice and how it informs what we do and how we think.
Great post, Derek. Thanks. It’s certainly a good correction to the fear about sacrifice, but also a correction to the opposite (which I probably tend to): a fear that the sense of “family meal” is necessarily opposed to the Holy Sacrifice.
Thanks, Sam. Yes, it really is a both/and. I fear that a lot of our either/or fights about classical Christian symbols is because of a general ignorance around the backgrounds of the symbols. Learning the background helps us understand that, often, the issue is generated by modern assumptions about *both* options rather than the classical vocabulary in the first place…
Ach! Isn’t it funny how a thought like that can be? It has come to my attention–barely–but not given sufficient focus to wrangle out what I had seen. And I was just reading that passage in 1Cor this morning! Ch. 10.
It was a very good article, Derek. I’m almost convinced that I want my meat offered as a sacrifice rather than a product of a slaughter house. Of course, the whole concept of slaughter houses very nearly cures me of meat altogether.
Annie