Sacraments with the Fathers

I picked up this book while at the Assembly in May and read it while on holiday.

Christopher A Hall Worshipping with the Church Fathers, pub IVP.

I obviously didn't read the blurb on the back because when I started I found the book wasn't what I expected or had hoped for. Not that I was disappointed, just surprised.

I guess I had expected a study of worship, both public worship and private patterns of worship as practiced by the church fathers, and found something different. Hall offers three sections: the sacraments, prayer, discipline (by which he means the call to the desert).

In the first section on the sacraments I really struggled to get over the allegorical interpretations of many passages. Sometimes a loaf of bread is just a loaf of bread, not an allegorical reference to the eucharist!

For example, on p. 39 we read of Gregory of Nyssa teaching that "the method of our salvation became effectual not so much as a result of instruction ... as by means of the flesh which [Christ] assumed ... therefore it was necessary that a means shuold be devised by which there should be in what is done by the follower some kinship and likeness to the leader."
So since in human flesh Christ died and was raised, so in baptism our human flesh shares in his death and resurrection. Now, I think this is right, Rom 6:3-4, but the way of getting there feels a bit strange.

On infant baptism and whether an infant will grow into Christian initiation, we are not to withhold baptism but to trust in God - p. 47. Gregory of Nazianzus teaches that infant circumcision is a model for infant baptism, see Col 2.

I found it helpful to read such comments and notice that the father's were answering the same questions we face when engaging in sacramental ministry, either as those leading a congregation or those worshipping in a congregation.

In general a helpful section and good beginning to this book.