Sola Scriptura Sacramentaque

Using the work of Hilary of Poitiers and Robert W. Jenson, Charles Meeks investigates the relationship between the sacraments and Scripture, the Trinity, and the church and appeals for recovering the significance of the sacraments for the modern church.

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The practice of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist allow Christians to read Scripture in the context of the church and in unity with the Trinity. Charles Meeks argues here, however, that over the centuries since the Reformation, Protestant expressions of the church have often allowed the sacraments to assume a minor role that has led to a weakening of Protestant ecclesiology and a disconnection of these ancient rituals from the gospel. To unpack this reality, Meeks relies on the work of fourth-century bishop Hilary of Poitiers and modern theologian Robert W. Jenson to examine the relationship between the sacraments and Scripture, the Trinity, and the church. With Hilary, he retrieves a hermeneutic that starts from the interdependence of the sacraments with all aspects of Christian life, especially the way one reads Scripture, formulates theology, and understands what the church is and is not. With Jenson, Meeks applies this hermeneutic to the modern church in an appeal to recover a premodern sense of God’s relationship to time, and thus how the church relates to God through Word and Sacrament.