Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Tim Miller's avatar

Fascinating. I grew up Catholic, went through lurches into atheism, agnosticism, to liberal Christianity with a little Buddhism thrown in, and in 2019 started going to a little Episcopal church which reminds me a fair amount of Catholic church when I was a kid including some of the sacred magic. In the last 5 years, I've become immersed in process theology (PT) and open and relational theology (ORT), and this gives me an interesting way of looking at sacred magic. In PT/ORT, God is not omnipotent but instead tries very hard to reach us through lures and persuasion. But we are almost always oblivious of God's lures, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. A big struggle (for me and people like me) is to try to open ourselves to God's lures, since God is always luring toward the good, the beautiful, the truly valuable. Prayer helps, and meditation of course. But sacred practices and rituals and activities that might involve elements of scared magic can really help too. And what could be more magic than really getting in touch with God's lures? And then acting on them, spreading love to everyone around you if you can?

Expand full comment
Dana Ames's avatar

Richard, these material things have the capability of being transmitters of God's power. The thing is, we ask God blessing on the water, wine, oil, bread - or in the case of the dirt, we give thanks for the grace (working of the Holy Spirit) received. We ask the Holy Spirit to "make the change" - in the case of the Eucharist - or drive out any adverse spirit or power from the person being baptized as well as the waters of baptism, or that the baptismal waters are made "the waters of the Jordan". Anointing oil in Orthodoxy is blessed by the country's senior bishop, or comes from the oil in lampadas burning in holy places (the tombs of saints, in front of icons known to have miracles associated with them, inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as examples), for which we give thanks for consolation of the association with holiness, even if nothing "magical" happens. Same thing with relics. (I read something recently, the question "Is there an expiration date past which the Holy Spirit cannot work through people?")

In the case of the Sacraments, priests are set aside to minister and offer/lead the prayers asking the Holy Spirit to do these things, and we trust God to give them the grace (the Holy Spirit working in them) to make the prayers effectual. That doesn't mean that laypeople can't pray, or that God doesn't meet them outside these structures. In Orthodoxy, as well as in the Catholic Church, a layperson can administer baptism in case of danger of death, but that's not the usual way things happen. But this is the way things have been handed down from the most ancient expressions of Christianity.

For the most part, non-sacramental Protestants baptize, celebrate the Lord's Supper and anoint simply because those things are enjoined in the Bible, because Jesus and Paul and James said to. There is no explanation or theology as to why. The ancient forms of Christianity have handed those things down along with the explanations and theology. In other words, ecclesiology is in play here, as well as the understanding of what "salvation" means. It's not magic for the sake of something magical.

Dana

Expand full comment
8 more comments...

No posts