Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord's Table

by J. Todd Billings, Gerald L. Sittser (Foreword by)

Overview

"Celebrating the Lord's Supper," says award-winning author and theologian J. Todd Billings, "can change lives."

In this book Billings shows how a renewed theology and practice of the Lord's Supper can lead Christians to rediscover the full richness and depth of the gospel. With an eye for helping congregations move beyond common reductions of the gospel, he develops a vibrant, biblical, and distinctly Reformed sacramental theol-ogy and explores how it might apply within a variety of church contexts, from Baptist to Presbyterian, nondenominational to Anglican.

At once strikingly new and deeply traditional, Remembrance, Communion, and Hope will surprise and challenge readers, inspiring them to a new understanding of--and appreciation for--the embodied, Christ-disclosing drama of the Lord's Supper.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802862334
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	02/15/2018
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

J. Todd Billings is Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, and an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America. His other books include Calvin, Participation, and the Gift (winner of a 2009 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise), The Word of God for the People of God, and Rejoicing in Lament.

Table of Contents

Foreword Gerald L. Sittser ix

Acknowledgments xv

Abbreviations xix

Introduction: A Wager 1

Part 1 Functional Theologies and Desiring the Word 5

1 Salvation, the Supper, and the Drama of the Triune God 7

2 Embodied Perception and Delight in Christ 30

Part 2 A Catholic and Reformed Theology of the Supper 57

3 Reformed Doctrine and the Promise of the Supper 59

4 Does God Really Act through the Sacraments? 84

Part 3 The Supper and the Gospel in Remembrance, Communion, and Hope 107

5 Remembrance in Union with Christ 113

6 Communion in Union with Christ 137

7 Hope in Union with Christ 169

Conclusion 201

Bibliography 204

Index of Names 213

Index of Subjects 215

Editorial Reviews

Timothy George
-- Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
"Todd Billings is one of our leading interpreters of John Calvin. He has given us here a superb study of Eucharistic theology in the Reformed tradition. A call to think deeply about what it means to encounter Jesus Christ in Word and sacrament."

Scot McKnight
-- Northern Seminary
"A rich, thick, pastoral and theologically sensitive approach. . . . The Lord's Supper needs to be baptized into the Bible's most significant texts as well as into the riches of the deep traditions of the church. Todd Billings does just that! In Remembrance, Communion, and Hope we watch a sensitive Christian dip us into the death of Christ and then raise us up with Christ to discover a hope that swallows up death in victory."

Martha Moore-Keish
-- Columbia Theological Seminary
"Todd Billings has done it again. In the clear and heartfelt prose we have come to expect, he presents a constructive theological project in the 'catholic-Reformed tradition' that attends in equal measure to the importance of disciplined human action and to the sovereign and gracious activity of the triune God. Here he calls the church to renewal through deep engagement with the Lord's Supper as the 'true icon' of the good news of Jesus Christ, the form of the gospel that we can taste and see. Take this book and savor it. It will do you good."

Gregory W. Lee
-- Wheaton College
"In this richly devotional volume, Todd Billings commends the Lord's Supper as a source of nourishment for God's people, an essential practice not just for the church's remembrance of Christ but also for its sanctification. This vision draws from the wells of the Reformed tradition, yet it invites wide appropriation, illustrating the ecumenical fruit of theological retrieval from particular traditions. Billings's work displays the wide learning, sound judgment, and social conscience that readers have come to expect from his writings. This book represents 'Reformed catholicity' at its very best."

Michael Allen
-- Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
"Billings again teaches us regarding the multifaceted sum of the gospel. For many who have turned in recent years to a more sacramental piety, he alerts us to ways in which such practices ought always to express the gospel of Jesus Christ. For others who still find themselves holding the Supper at bay or struggling to see its significance, he suggests ways in which it promises a better grasp of the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of God. . . . This book will help you remember more gratefully, commune more alertly, and hope more resolutely when you come to the table to receive freely that great gospel promise--the gifts of God for the people of God."

AJ Sherrill
-- Mars Hill Bible Church, Grandville, Michigan
"Regular Eucharist reminds us what we are prone to forget: Matter matters. Billings clearly (and ecumenically) understands this enchanted world where God is showing up everywhere, particularly in the Eucharist. Readers of this significant work will walk away with an invitation to experience greater (re)formation through the sacramental imagination--an imagination demanding that we literally taste and see that God is, in fact, good."

James K. A. Smith
-- Calvin College
"We are creatures who hunger and thirst for God, which is why Jesus gives us bread and wine. In this audacious book, Todd Billings shows us why the renewal of the church begins around the table--how our union with Christ is deepened by communion. I hope this becomes the go-to textbook on the Lord's Supper in Protestant seminaries. Our spiritual lives and our witness will be richer for it."

Kevin J. Vanhoozer
-- Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
"Todd Billings here challenges churches in many confessional traditions to take up his Reformed catholic wager to theologize and see that the Lord's Supper is good, that reflecting on and celebrating communion are ways of being drawn more deeply into reality of the gospel, namely, life in Christ. The contents page sets the table, the chapters serve up the main courses, and the conclusion brings this theological feast to a sumptuous end."

From the Publisher