Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update
Andrew Meredith
is on page 36 of 452
Chapter 1
"Framing" Sacramental Theology: Trinity and Symbol
I was surprised that the opening essay immediately addressed and correlated two otherwise unrelated lines of thought that have been bouncing about in my brain for the last week or so. (One from my reading of "Practicing the Way" and the other from the study of the Gospel of John that I'm currently leading.)
— Jan 10, 2026 12:59PM
"Framing" Sacramental Theology: Trinity and Symbol
I was surprised that the opening essay immediately addressed and correlated two otherwise unrelated lines of thought that have been bouncing about in my brain for the last week or so. (One from my reading of "Practicing the Way" and the other from the study of the Gospel of John that I'm currently leading.)
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Andrew’s Previous Updates
Andrew Meredith
is on page 247 of 452
Chapter 7
Semiosis and Social Salvation (Mostly) in De Doctrina Christiana
In this exceedingly dense philosophical/theological essay, Leithart examines Augustine's understanding of signa and res (signs and things), how Augustine's understanding of these ideas informed his theology, and how various aspects of his theology then grate against one another.
— Jan 17, 2026 02:54AM
Semiosis and Social Salvation (Mostly) in De Doctrina Christiana
In this exceedingly dense philosophical/theological essay, Leithart examines Augustine's understanding of signa and res (signs and things), how Augustine's understanding of these ideas informed his theology, and how various aspects of his theology then grate against one another.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 200 of 452
Chapter 6
Marcionism, Postliberalism, and Social Christianity
Marcionism is the heretical teaching that the Old Testament is not the Word of God and therefore has no authority over the Christ's church. Thus, all that matters for a "Christian" today is the New Testament, while the Old can and really ought to be safely disgarded.
— Jan 16, 2026 02:48AM
Marcionism, Postliberalism, and Social Christianity
Marcionism is the heretical teaching that the Old Testament is not the Word of God and therefore has no authority over the Christ's church. Thus, all that matters for a "Christian" today is the New Testament, while the Old can and really ought to be safely disgarded.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 174 of 452
Chapter 5
Old Covenant and New in Sacramental Theology New and Old
The Gospel of Mark begins with John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (v.4), and this brought throngs of people (all Judea and Jerusalem) out to see him. An eschatological kerygma that begins with baptism seems peculiar to us, but apparently not so to the first century Jew.
— Jan 15, 2026 02:54AM
Old Covenant and New in Sacramental Theology New and Old
The Gospel of Mark begins with John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (v.4), and this brought throngs of people (all Judea and Jerusalem) out to see him. An eschatological kerygma that begins with baptism seems peculiar to us, but apparently not so to the first century Jew.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 137 of 452
Chapter 4
More Than a Dainty Sip: Old and New in Augustine's Contra Faustum
The title comes from a Manichaean's (Faustus) charge that Christians were guilty of wanting to uphold the Scriptural authority of Old Testament but didn't quite know what to do with it, and so they contented themselves with only "taking a dainty sip" because it's all they could handle. He encouraged them to just abandon the OT altogether.
— Jan 14, 2026 03:15AM
More Than a Dainty Sip: Old and New in Augustine's Contra Faustum
The title comes from a Manichaean's (Faustus) charge that Christians were guilty of wanting to uphold the Scriptural authority of Old Testament but didn't quite know what to do with it, and so they contented themselves with only "taking a dainty sip" because it's all they could handle. He encouraged them to just abandon the OT altogether.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 94 of 452
Chapter 3
Conjugating the Rites: Old and New in Augustine's Theory of Signs
As just about every theological loci, for better or for worse, modern-day Sacramentology inescapably dwells within Augustine of Hippo's indomitable shadow.
— Jan 13, 2026 06:13AM
Conjugating the Rites: Old and New in Augustine's Theory of Signs
As just about every theological loci, for better or for worse, modern-day Sacramentology inescapably dwells within Augustine of Hippo's indomitable shadow.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 68 of 452
Chapter 2
Embracing Ritual: Sacraments as Rites
This chapter is largely a condensed, less polemical reproduction of the first chapter of Leithart's "The Baptized Body" (down to some 1-to-1 identical paragraphs) with some different emphases to match the trajectory of the current work. "The Baptized Body" revolutionized my view of the sacraments, and I enjoyed and agreed with his points here as I did there.
— Jan 11, 2026 08:58AM
Embracing Ritual: Sacraments as Rites
This chapter is largely a condensed, less polemical reproduction of the first chapter of Leithart's "The Baptized Body" (down to some 1-to-1 identical paragraphs) with some different emphases to match the trajectory of the current work. "The Baptized Body" revolutionized my view of the sacraments, and I enjoyed and agreed with his points here as I did there.
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Most interesting thought: Modernism, with the untraversable chasm it posits between the spiritual and the material (and the resultant outer and inner man), is a direct consequence of the memorial-only sacramentology that Zwingli either started or continued (depending on who you ask). Once God's love and grace were divorced from actually being tangibly given and received in the sacraments, the sacramental nature of creation also began to unwind slowly.
Second, how the perfect divine Image of the Father, the Son (Logos), took the form of the ectypal image of God, man, to become the ultimate historical symbol (the "last" word, as it were; Heb 1:1ff) of the Father to mankind concerning the nature of Himself, the highest communication that can be comprehended in our finitude.
The essay, of course, uses these data points along with the truth that we are only always "persons-in-community" like our Triune God (i.e., there is no "real me" lurking underneath my relations of Christian, husband, father, son, brother, employee, etc. "I" am at least the sum of these relations and more) to posit that salvation, if it is to be a real Fall-reversing, curse-undoing, humanity-saving salvation, must be a social salvation.
Thus the Sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, actually accomplish what they represent. To give the example Leithart gives, Baptism, performed by Christ Himself through His ministers (normally), is the initiation rite by which a person who is relationally outside the visible Church (the Mother and Ark of Salvation) is brought relationally into the Church communion, thus bringing about a very real change in "who they are."