Olga Alexandrovna Rudaya master of theology, Theological Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria (der. Kolbino, 25a, Leningrad region, Vsevolozhsk district, Russia, 188680)
chri@yandex.ru
Rudaya O. A. Оn the Term Sacrifice of Representation in the Lutheran Liturgical and Theological Context, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2023, vol. 12, pp. 58–79.
doi: 10.24412/2308-0698-2023-12-58-79
Language: Russian
Theological glossary of different confessions in our country changes due to good-natured and expanding dialogue between representatives of traditional Western Christianity. The article deals with sacrifice of representation, one of the terms influenced by such tendency. The author reviews briefly the teaching on the sacrifice in the New Testament, in early Church fathers’ writings, as well as in Catholic and Lutheran theologians of later centuries in general. Recent notion sacrifice of representation however was coined in another way — it’s rooted in the so-called mysterial theology of German Benedictine Odo Casel, who was an influential precursor of the II Vatican Council. Confessional Lutheran theologians are almost unanimous in their rejection of such a way of speaking despite a great ecumenical appeal of the term. We can name reasons for a highly cautious position towards the idea as follows: unwillingness to speculate neither in temporal, nor in philosophical, theological terms, full adequacy of mere faith in Real Presence of the true Christ’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament, emphasis on catabatic perspective in the Sacrament. Furthermore, a Lutheran exegetical principle sedes doctrinae prevents from introducing any new theories not founded in the Holy Scripture into the Church’s theological discourse.
Key words: Eucharist, sacrifice of representation, the Book of Concord, Confessional Lutheranism, Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, Odo Casel, the Holy Communion, Sacrament, sedes doctrinae