Edible Words

Happy New Year, everybody!

May I take this opportunity to present to you a new website, Edible Words.

Neil Robbie and I have spent a year or so working on this. It’s not taken a year because it has been an enormous project – more because we’ve been fitting it into the time we can carve out from our other commitments. It is now at the stage where we think it is ready to roll out, go live, launch etc.

Basically, please visit the site, and read the home-page and the articles – they’ll give you a flavour. But here is the basic premise (written somewhat briefly, this being a blog, so there’ll be a few rough edges in this summary – as I say – read the articles!):

1. Evangelicals often downplay the sacraments in church life. We are accused of this by those of a more high-church persuasion, and they are right.
2. We refuse to be speared on the dilemma of “downplay the sacraments or become (theologically) high-church – which is it to be?” Instead we want to reclaim a long-standing evangelical heritage that remains theologically reformed whilst giving the sacraments a key place in church life.
3. So we don’t over-react to the frequent way in which evangelicals have replaced the sacraments with the word. Such an over-reaction would entail replacing the word with the sacrament! Instead we want to minister word and sacrament together such that they mutually inform and enrich one another.
4. So what role the sacraments? The sacraments can be considered to be “edible words”. They change us – as words do. But they change us as we eat them (or wash in them). They are not reducible to mere edibles (which would be a Roman ex opere operate view), nor are they reducible to mere words (which would be a Zwinglian memorialist view). Instead they are a real meal that the risen Christ left to feed his church with his word.
5. Which means that what we say when we administer the sacraments is of great importance. When we speak, we change things; the words we say affect our relationships with God and with one another. So the words we say as we baptise and share the Lord’s Supper affect the way in which those sacraments affect us.
6. So what should we say? Well Baptism and the Supper are, in some respects, the subject of the whole Bible. The whole Bible relates to God’s purpose to call a people to be his own, and then to feed and sustain that people. (See the Leithart article for a much better defence of that proposition). So we want to be allowing God’s words in Scripture to inform and address us.
7. So we want a biblical meditation. We want portions of the Bible to be opened up and left for us to turn over and to chew on.
8. Pastors are busy people. Preparing such meditations is time-consuming, especially for those of us new to this task. So we need to help each other. So why not have an online resource where we can share meditations we have written and used? Why not have a system of peer-review and feedback so that we can sharpen the helpfulness of these meditations for each other? Why not indeed? Why not Edible Words?

Like I say, please take a look. Then please take part. Sign up for an account (which is free – but please read the site FAQ on signing up with your real name) so that you can leave comments on the meditations you read. You can post your own then. Edible Words only works if those who benefit from the site play an active part. We can get out what we cumulatively put in.

Welcome to 2008. Welcome to Edible Words