Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update

Leithart begins the chapter with a brief history of Christians calling each other "judaizers" around the time of the Reformation. Catholics called Protestants judaizers, Protestants called Catholics judaizers, Protestants called other Protestants judaizers (a lot), and, never to be outdone, even some Catholics called other Catholics judaizers.

The ubiquity of this particular accusatory language during this timeperiod stems from the popularity of Augustine's "Contra Faustum," where ironically, it was Augustine who was defending orthodox Christianity against Faustus's charge of judaizing.

The chapter is long, the arguments are many and dense, and I will not rehash them here, other to note that Leithart argues persuasively that the Reformers fundamentally misunderstood Augustine's sacramental "visibilia verba" as "visible word," emphasizing the sensual importance of the sacraments and then correlating the "right partaking" of the elements with explanatory preaching, instead of "visible verb" highlighting the future-to-past conjugation of the sacraments as verbs of action (as highlighted last chapter) and what they can teach us through their transformations and fulfillments.

Augustine's answers to Faustus in brief:

1.) The sheer non-practice of Jewish rites (e.g., circumcision) is a witness that the fulfillment of these regulations has occurred.

2.) The Old Testament rites are fulfilled in Christ, meaning that they always pointed forward to Him. The rites didn't disappear, but conjugated to match the times.

3.) Israel's rites were many, complex, burdensome, and spoke of continued personal exclusion/estrangement with limited and veiled access to God. Conversely, Christian rites are few, simple, easy, and speak of inclusion/welcome in Christ.

Despite misunderstanding Augustine in their polemics, did the Protestants still have a point in their labeling the Catholics as Judaizers? Leithart (admittedly a Protestant) says "Yes" and for two reasons.

First, despite the historical circumstances that brought about these traditional Catholic practices, withholding the cup from the laity, emphasizing the holiness of the priests over against the commoners, and locating "the sacred" in relics, lands, and saints instead of in Christians themselves (individually and corporately), teach a pedagogy of exclusion and veiled access rather than inclusion and welcome.

Second, the virtually unchecked multiplication of complex man-made rites clashes with the simplicity of the few (two) mandated by Christ in New Testament, binding consciences to what God has not commanded.

That being said, even if Catholics can still meaningfully be accused of Judaizing, Leithart believes that Protestants (Evangelicals in particular) can meaningfully be accused of Manichaeism. By spiritualizing the rites to the point of nearly extirpating the actual necessity of the acts themselves, all but ignoring or downplaying the Old Testament foundation for the New, and denying/ignoring the doctrine of the Totus Christus they implicitly carry on the dualistic tendencies explicitly prevalent in the old heresy.