‘This is my blood of the new covenant.’ So go the words of institution regarding the wine in the Christian practice of the eucharist. But if this rite engages with a new covenant, it stands to reason that one would look to the old covenant to understand the contours of the new. David Stubbs’ excellent book offers a retrieval of typological conceptual frameworks from temple worship for deepening Christian engagement with its central act of worship. As Stubbs puts it, ‘Drawing bold lines of connection from the Lord's Supper back to the temple and its worship sparks our imaginations and guides our understanding of the Eucharist’ (p. 339).
Stubbs probes five domains of investigation: (1) the temple itself, (2) the daily, weekly and monthly sacrifices, and the three pilgrim feasts of (3) Pesach/Passover, (4) Shavuot/Pentecost and (5) Sukkoth/Booths. These five domains, in turn, yield five theological conceptual ‘pressures’ (think of the pressure a potter applies to the clay on the wheel) that can shape eucharistic theology and practice: (1) God and God's kingdom are here, (2) we give thanks for God's creation and providence, (3) we remember Christ's sacrificial life and death, (4) we recommit ourselves to the New Covenant and (5) we celebrate with hope the feast to come. It is not as though these practices only and solely communicate these themes – there is certainly overlap or over-determination of these themes. Yet these themes comprise the heart of Stubbs’ typological retrieval project.
I found this to be a fascinating and engaging project. Stubbs’ presentation of the contours of temple worship and practice is detailed, yet often strikes the right balance between examination of minutiae and overly broad characterisations. Chapters follow a somewhat regular structure of an exposition of the Old Testament and Jewish data for one of the themes, followed by engagement with New Testament material and a brief survey of some early church interaction with these ideas, before finally elucidating the conceptual ‘pressure’ that this typology ought to place on Christian eucharistic theology and practice. This book is a presentation of temple practice, but it is a principled presentation, showing those aspects of temple practice that elucidate their main typological meanings that can then be brought to the theology of the eucharist. Stubbs is not advocating that Christians today restart temple sacrifices or commemorate the Feast of Booths, for example. Rather, he is advocating that the typological theological lessons that these temple practices teach be identified, highlighted and liturgically expressed in the eucharist.
Each of the themes noted above receives a thorough probing in each chapter and there are many subthemes that emerge out of these headings. What is unique about the eucharist, as Stubbs shows, is that all these themes, related to the whole calendar of Jewish worship, are present at every celebration of the eucharist. Each eucharist recapitulates type after type of theological frameworks from temple practices. A benefit of Stubbs’ book is that he continually has an eye for the practical, liturgical enactment of the theological theme under discussion. It would be reasonable, as Stubbs commends, to utilise a diversity of eucharistic liturgies, which can place an emphasis on certain themes for certain purposes or at certain times. Hence, more eschatological themes from the Feast of Booths can be drawn out during Advent; more creation and providence themes during Ordinary Time; or more sacrificial themes during Holy Week, for example.
My estimation of this book is overwhelmingly positive. I highly commend it to a diversity of audiences. This book will work very well in the seminary and divinity courses on sacramental theology, worship practices or the Jewish roots of Christianity. This book will also be of keen interest to Protestant ministers who are looking for ways to deepen the eucharistic practices of their congregations. Ministers could easily teach an adult education course on the Jewish backgrounds to the eucharist using this book and it will serve ministers well who are looking for liturgical frameworks to guide their congregations’ eucharistic practices.
Regarding this last point, I just offer this small pushback from my own Anglican tradition. There were a number of times when Stubbs would recommend a eucharistic liturgical practice to convey the temple theological point he was making, and I would think, ‘We already do that.’ For instance, Stubbs argues that most temple sacrificial practices are not propitiatory in nature and so an emphasis on penal substitutionary atonement motifs that dominate western eucharistic liturgies are disproportionately skewed. Rather, Stubbs contends, emphasis on Christus Victor atonement motifs in eucharistic liturgies would align better with temple practices that convey the victory of God over sin, evil and death (p. 240). However, every Sunday in the liturgy I use the celebrant says, ‘By [Christ's] resurrection he broke the bonds of death, trampling Hell and Satan under his feet’ (2019 ACNA Prayer Book). There is no need here to write a new liturgy; rather all that is needed is to highlight existing places in our liturgy where the themes Stubbs elucidates are expressed. Of course, in many Protestant circles, there are not theologically rich eucharistic liturgies with which to work. For Protestants in these traditions, Stubbs’ practical instructions on how liturgically to express the theological principles he gleans from the temple will be very helpful. So, for the Protestant with a lack of liturgical material, this book will be immensely beneficial to creating eucharistic liturgies. For the Protestant with a deep well of eucharistic liturgies, this book will serve as a jumping off point for catechetical engagement with those liturgies.
Finally, one cannot cite everything and authors have to make decisions about which texts to engage, still there were a few recent texts on eucharistic theology missing from Stubbs’ examination the engagement with which would have been really interesting (especially George Hunsinger's The Eucharist and Ecumenism, David Grumett's Material Eucharist and my own, An Incarnational Model of the Eucharist). Nevertheless, this is an excellent resource that I hope will shape eucharistic theology and practice for years to come.
