Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update
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.
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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 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.
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.)
In this chapter, Leithart zooms forward to the rise of Christian Liberalism focusing on Schleiermacher (the Father of Liberal Theology), Kant, Hegel, Brunner, Bultmann, and Harnack to show how, regardless of the instantiational differences among their respective theologies, Liberalism categorically developed around two key pillars: the "inwardness tradition" and a Marcionite understanding of the Old Covenant's relationship with the New.
Whether it's Schleiermacher recasting Christianity as entirely inward such that it becomes the pursuit of an inward experience of God, Kant claiming that OT Yahwehism wasn't a religion just a community formed around a collection of laws, or Hegel casting the Old Testament as the antithesis of the New in his dialectic model of philosophy, (etc.) modern Liberalism is tied up with straight, unfiltered Marcionism. Harnack taught the same in his seminal lectures entitled, "What is Christianity?" which traced the origin, history, and basis of Liberal Theology, and he even openly praised Marcion for being far ahead of his time in his book, "Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God" (1924).
How does one meaningfully confront Liberalism, then? One must confront Marcionism head-on, striking at the core of its spiritualizing and OT denying tendencies by grounding the Church in its sacramental view of all reality (material as well as spiritual) and deliberately formulating its sacramentology from the whole of Scripture, both Old and New.
The Church, though, has been unable to fully do this. Wrapped up as it is in mysticism and semi-Marcionism itself, it lacks the weapons to properly confront the threat.
Leithart spends the rest of the chapter showing how Christian theologians over the last fifty years have come to both recognize the problem and begun to address it. Here he is especially appreciative of Henri De Lubac's "Social Gospel" and N.T. Wright's insistence that the Gospel is indelibly publicly political in nature. This is a good start to addressing the blindspot, but it needs to be carried on, worked out, and pressed in further.