7. § 53. The Lord's Supper.
§ 53. The Lord's Supper.
. With baptism, the Lord's Supper comes as the second sacrament, which under the O. Test. had its model in the Passover. Just as among the Heathen, Num. 25:2, so also in Israel meals were often connected with the sacrifices [300]. Sometimes the sacrifices on the altar of burnt offering were wholly burned, but with others only a part was burned and the remainder kept for use, either by the priests alone at the altar, Lev. 2:3, 10,
6:16, 25-30, 7:1-10, 10:12, 13, for atonement, Num. 10:17; or by the officiating priest with his family in a clean place for his maintenance, Lev.
7:12-14, 31-34, 10:14; or by the offerer with his family and guests, provided Levitically clean, and outside the sanctuary, Lev. 7:19-21, Deut.
12:7, 12, 1 Sam. 9:13v., 2 Sam. 6:19. The meaning of these meals was that God came together with his people and, on the basis of the sacrifice brought and accepted, in joy united himself with his people. In this sanctuary God comes to the children of Israel and dwells among them, Ex. 20:24, 29:4246, 33:7, Num. 11:25, 12:5, 17:4, Deut. 31:15; He is the host, who yields up a part of the sacrifice brought to Him and invites his people to the meal;
whoever took part in it entered into covenant with Him. Participation in the Heathen sacrificial meals was therefore forbidden to Israel, Ex. 34:15; it was גצמד, a binding oneself to, an attaching oneself to the false gods, Num.
25:3, 5, Ps. 106:28; the apostles later forbade them to the Christians, Hd.
15:29, 21:25, or warned against them for the sake of the weak in faith, 1 Cor. 8:1v., 10:18v. As such unions of God with his people and also among one another, these meals bore a character of gladness and joy and not infrequently did give occasion to revelries and drunkenness, 1 Sam. 1:13,
Jes. 28:8, Spr. 7:14, but on the other hand also served as images and pledges of the highest joy in God, Deut. 27:7, Ps. 22:26v., Jes. 25:6, 62:8, 9, cf. art.
Opfermalzeiten in Herzog2. Such a sacrificial meal took place especially at the Passover. Many Protestants maintained over against Rome that the Passover was wholly and entirely absorbed in it, Moor V 322. Witsius, Oec. foed. IV 9, 6. But this is undoubtedly incorrect; the Passover was first of all a sacrificium and thereafter a sacramentum. In Ex. 12:27, 34:25 it is called a ֶזַבח for the Lord; the act that accompanied it is called ֲע ֹבָדה, Ex. 12:26; and the celebration of it is called in Num. 9:7 a bringing of a ָקְרַּבן to the Lord.
Further, the head of the household, after he had set apart four days before the feast, on the 10th of Abib or Nisan, a one-year-old, male, perfect [301] lamb, had to slaughter it on the 14th of that month between the two evenings and with a bunch of hyssop smear some of the blood on the two posts and the lintel of the house door, Ex. 12:3v. This blood served for atonement. In itself Israel, just as much as the Egyptians, had deserved death; but it is nevertheless not treated as Egypt, but by the Lord graciously saved from death and delivered from the land of bondage. For that, the blood had to be for a sign. When the Lord saw that blood on the house door,
He was reconciled, He laid aside his wrath and passed by sparing, (פסח, to
step over something, to pass by, Jes. 31:5, hence ֶּפַסח, πασχα), Ex. 12:13, 23,
27. Still more clearly the sacrificial character of the Passover appears from the manner in which it is later celebrated in Canaan. There the lamb is no longer slaughtered by the head of the household but by the Levites, 2 Chr.
30:16, 35:11, Ezr. 6:19; the blood is sprinkled on the altar by the priests, 2 Chron. 30:16, 35:11; the fat portions burned on the altar, 2 Chron. 35:14; and the meal held at the sanctuary, Deut. 16:2. But although the Passover is thus in the first place an offering, it is nevertheless not absorbed in that; it soon becomes a meal. After the lamb had been slaughtered between the two evenings on the 14th of Abib and its blood smeared on the house door or in later time sprinkled on the altar, it had to be roasted whole at the fire, without a bone being broken, with head, legs, and entrails, and then in the same night of the 14th of Abib eaten with unleavened breads and bitter herbs by all who were in the house, thus also by the women, but not by uncircumcised strangers, foreigners, or hired servants, in haste, with loins girded, feet shod, and a staff in the hand, in the house or later at the sanctuary, and what remained had to be burned with fire, Ex. 12:1-28, 4349, 13:3-9, 23:15, Lev. 23:5-14, Num. 9:10-14, 28:16-25, Deut. 16:1v. The Passover thereby took a wholly special place in the Israelite cultus; it was an offering but thereafter immediately passed over into a meal; it did not belong to the sin offerings, for it was eaten, nor also to the thank offerings, for atonement preceded the meal. Besides, it was instituted by God on a special occasion, before all other sacrifices, and bears a nature of its own; it is an offering for atonement and a [302] meal of fellowship with God and with one another; it is sacrificium and sacramentum at the same time. The N. Test. assigns to this Passover a typical significance, so that it is not only a remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt but also a sign and pledge of
the redemption from the house of bondage of sin and of fellowship with God in the promised Messiah. Jesus himself pointed to this, when he intentionally connected the institution of the Lord's Supper with the celebration of the Passover. But about the manner in which he did that there is no small difference. Some appeal to the Synoptics and say that Jesus on Thursday the 14th Nisan used the actual Passover with his disciples and on that occasion instituted the Lord's Supper. Others side with John, 12:1,
13:1, 2, 29, 18:28, 19:14, 31 and assert that Jesus on Thursday the 13th Nisan held an ordinary meal with his disciples and therewith washed their feet, and then on the 14th Nisan, the actual day of the feast, died as it were as Passover lamb. Whether one now conforms the Synoptics to John or John to the Synoptics; or leaves both unreconciled alongside one another; or also, on the ground of the testimony of the Quartodecimans in the second and third century, who for their practice, to celebrate the Christian Passover feast in the evening of the 14th Nisan, appealed inter alia to the apostle
John, denies the genuineness of the fourth gospel, cf. art. Passah, Herzog2 11, 270. Meyer on Joh. 18:28. Schäfer, Das Herrenmahl nach Ursprung und
Bedeutung 1897 S. 53-99. Zahn, Einl. in das N. T. II 309 f.; in any case there is agreement to this extent, that Jesus on Thursday evening held a meal with his disciples, died on Friday, and rose on Sunday. Even if now this meal had not been the ordinary Passover of 14 Nisan but held a day earlier, on Thursday 13 Nisan; then there would nevertheless be nothing against assuming that Jesus, who would die the following day and thus could not eat the Passover at the usual time with the Jews, used it a day earlier and in this way connected the Lord's Supper with it. For this latter is beyond all doubt. Both Paul, 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:24, 25 and the Synoptics have
Jesus institute the Lord's Supper in the closest connection with the
Passover; from the Passover table he borrows the bread and the wine, which must serve as [303] signs and seals at the Lord's Supper; while he at once takes over baptism from John, he waits with the institution of the Lord's
Supper until the last Passover feast and then causes the covenant meal of the O. Covenant to pass over into that of the N. Testaments; and all this finds no contradiction in John, because he is entirely silent about the institution of the Lord's Supper. And further, the date of Jesus' day of death on 14 or on 15 Nisan is completely indifferent for the fact that Jesus died as it were as Passover lamb. For not only does the gospel of John bring this out, 19:33, 36; but Paul also says expressly in 1 Cor. 5:7, that our Passover, namely Christ, has been slaughtered and that therefore the believers must purge out the old leaven of sin, and as ἀζυμοι, as new creatures, unmixed with unrighteousness, ought to walk. And in addition there is still this, that the lamb that is led to slaughter, Jes. 53:7, not improbably contains an allusion to the Passover lamb and thus in the N. Test. is applied to Christ,
Joh. 1:29, 36, Hd. 8:32, 1 Petr. 1:19, Op. 5:6 etc. Just as circumcision was a model of baptism and through the death of Christ passed over into that baptism, so the Passover pointed forward to the Lord's Supper and was thereby replaced according to the command of Christ. While, however, the Passover was still in the first place a sacrificium, the Lord's Supper has wholly lost this character. For the offering that was brought in the Passover has obtained its complete fulfillment in the death of Christ. And it is on the ground of that once accomplished and perfect offering that Christ establishes the new dispensation of the covenant of grace and invites and strengthens his disciples at his holy table.
2. After some had taken the lead in earlier times, the institution of the Lord's Supper by Jesus has, however, in recent years been very seriously
contested by Jülicher, Spitta, Mensinga, Brandt, Grafe e. a. As grounds they adduce that the words: do this in remembrance of me, are lacking in Matthew and Mark and occur only as a free addition of Paul in 1 Cor.
11:24, 25 and Luke 22:19; that some manuscripts, especially D, in Luke 22:19, 20 omit the words: το ἱπερ .... ἐκχυννομενον and thus know nothing of a giving of the body of Christ, of a doing in remembrance of him, and of the cup [304] of thanksgiving; that the gospel of John makes no mention of it and the other accounts differ strongly among themselves; and especially, that Jesus could not connect bread and wine with his death, much less could give them to be eaten as signs of his body and blood, but that these representations could first arise when in the congregation a certain view concerning the person and concerning the death of Jesus had been formed.
But all these arguments are of little force. For it is a fact that in the time when the gospel of John was written, the Lord's Supper was celebrated generally in the Christian church; the silence concerning the institution therefore can in no case proceed from ignorance. Likewise it is with Luke; the absence of the above-mentioned words in cap. 22:19, 20 cannot suppose that at that time one thought that at the last supper nothing else had happened than what is contained in these words: και λαβων ἀρτον εὐχαριστησας ἐκλασεν και ἐδωκεν αὐτοις λεγων τουτο ἐστιν το σωμα μου.
For then the action that then took place would be completely incomprehensible; the text in Codex D presupposes that on that occasion more happened and was spoken and is therefore either corrupt or in the most favorable case an incomplete account of what happened at the last supper. From the time of John and Luke we can ascend to that of Paul; and then it appears that this apostle proceeds from the supposition that the Christian church generally knows and celebrates the Lord's Supper as an
institution of Christ; indeed, he even says that he has received from the Lord and delivered to the Corinthians what relates to the institution of the Lord's Supper, παρελαβον ἀπο του κυριου, 1 Cor. 11:23. The time in which Paul received this instruction not παρα but ἀπο του κυριου, from the side of the Lord, undoubtedly coincides with that of his conversion, Hd. 9, and is thus only a few years removed from the last night in which Christ instituted his Lord's Supper. From that it follows that already in the very first years after Jesus' death the Christian congregation unanimously with all the apostles has known the Lord's Supper as an institution of Christ. This is more than sufficient to raise the truth of that institution above all reasonable doubt.
Another question, however, is how Christ instituted this supper and what He meant by it. And then it deserves [305] first of all to be noted that Jesus instituted His supper on the occasion of the Passover meal. The celebration of the Passover in Jesus' time had been expanded with all kinds of ceremonies and took place, in brief, in the following manner. As the feast approached, thousands upon thousands of Israelites went up to Jerusalem, bought a lamb there and had it slaughtered in the afternoon of the 14th
Nisan by the Levites in the forecourt; priests stood ready there, to catch the blood in silver and golden bowls, to pass these from one to another, and finally to pour them out all at once over the altar. Meanwhile, under the singing of the hallel by the Levites, the animals were hung up, stripped of the entrails, and the sacrificial pieces were brought by the priest in a vessel to the altar. After that, those who had presented the lamb for slaughter and whose number usually amounted to between ten and twenty men, took the slaughtered animal with them to a private dwelling and roasted it there, without being allowed to break a bone of it. The meal itself began with the
passing around of a cup and with thanksgiving; then bitter herbs and a dish of mash were brought to the table and consumed, and thereafter the lamb was set out with unleavened cakes. Before any of this was eaten, the father of the house, or later a reader, recounted the history of the exodus, the table companions began the first part, Ps. 113-114, of the hallel, Ps. 113-118, and the second cup went around. Only then did the actual meal begin. After its conclusion, the third cup was blessed by the father of the house and drunk out with the table companions. And the whole was then concluded with the pouring of the fourth cup, with the singing of the second part of the hallel,
Ps. 115-118, with the blessing of the fourth cup by the father of the house with the words of Ps. 118:26, and with the emptying of it by the guests reclining at table. These four cups were required at the meal, but sometimes a fifth cup still went around under the singing of Ps. 120-137, cf. Keil.
Arch. § 81. Herzog2 11, 268-270. Probably Jesus now instituted the supper after the Passover lamb had been eaten, μετα το δειπνησαι, Luk. 22:20, at the third cup, the cup of thanksgiving. In doing so He takes of the ordinary bread and the ordinary wine that had been used at the Passover, and, according to the testimony of all four accounts, Mt. 26:26-29, Mk. 14:2225, Luk. [306] 22:19, 20, 1 Cor. 11:23-25, directly connects these with His death. There is not a single reason to call this into doubt; Jesus knew and foresaw His death and had already explained its significance more than once to His disciples, part III 354v. Specifically, He here conceives His death as an offering; for only thus are the words and actions to be explained that accompany the institution of the supper. The Passover had just been eaten, and that Passover had been the beginning and foundation of the covenant that God established with Israel in the wilderness; for it first, because the lamb was slaughtered and its blood shed and sprinkled on the
altar, served as an offering of atonement, and was then used for a sacrificial meal to signify the communion of God with His people. All this Christ transfers to Himself; He is the true Passover lamb, which by His death, by the breaking of His body and by the shedding of His blood, accomplishes atonement with God and lays the foundation of a new covenant. Jesus indicates this clearly by instituting the supper on the occasion of the Passover, by for that purpose making use of the bread and the wine of the Passover table, by not only taking and blessing the bread but also, according to all four accounts, cf. Hd. 2:42, breaking it, and especially also by the words that He spoke in doing so. While breaking and distributing the bread He said: τουτο ἐστιν το σωμα μου, Mt. Mr., τουτο ἐστιν το σωμα μου, το ὑπερ ὑμων διδομενον, Luk., or τουτο μου ἐστιν το σωμα το ὑπερ ὑμων, Paul (κλωμενον is lacking in the principal manuscripts and in others alternates with θρυπτομενον and διδομενον). And in giving the cup of drink
He said: πιετε ἐξ αὐτου παντες, τουτο γαρ ἐστιν το αἱμα μου της διαθηκης το περι πολλων ἐκχυννομενον εἰς ἀφεσιν ἁμαρτιων, Mt., τουτο ἐστιν το αἱμα μου της διαθηκης το ἐκχυννομενον ὑπερ πολλων, Mr., τουτο το ποτηριον ἐν τῳ ἁιματι μου το ὑπερ ὑμων ἐκχυννομενον, Luk., τουτο το ποτηριον ἡ καινη διαθηκη ἐν τῳ ἐμῳ αἱματι, Paul. The divergent readings sufficiently prove that Jesus, at the supper no more than at baptism, prescribed a fixed, unchangeable formula; it is even impossible to determine which words were literally spoken by Jesus Himself on that occasion; He did not determine what had to be said at the supper, [307] but He described what the supper was and had to be. And this is perfectly clear from the four accounts. Jesus has elevated the bread and the wine of the Passover table to signs of His body and blood, and indeed of that body and that blood as it would soon be given up in death as an offering of
atonement. The objection that Jesus' body on the cross was not broken into pieces like the bread, and that His blood there was also not poured out like the wine at the supper, and that therefore these images do not fit, is of little force. For Jesus proceeds from the Passover and from the O. Test. offering, takes over the action and terminology customary there, and applies these to His death. Therefore Luke and Paul add to the words: τουτο ἐστιν το σωμα μου the explanation: το ὑπερ ὑμων διδομενον or only το ὑπερ ὑμων.
Whether Jesus literally spoke these words in that way or not; in that sense He nevertheless meant it, when He indicated in the bread a sign of His body. It is a sign of the body of Jesus, as it is offered in death for the atonement of sins. Hence also, the significance of the second sign is described so much more broadly in all four accounts. In the offering, the shedding of blood is the main matter, Hebr. 9:22. The blood of Christ, of which the wine is a sign, is sacrificial blood, blood of atonement, which is shed for many, and thereby the beginning and inauguration of a new covenant. As Passover and old covenant, so supper and new covenant belong together. The cup of drink is therefore το αἰμα μου της διαθηκης or ἡ καινη διαθηκη ἐν τῳ αἰματι μου, i.e. covenant blood, Ex. 24:8, which as sacrificial blood was necessary and serviceable for the ratification of the covenant with God, or the covenant itself, which by that blood, because effecting and bringing about the forgiveness of sins, comes into being and rests therein. The disciples were sorrowful, dreaded the death of Christ and did not understand it; but Jesus here, at the institution of the supper, explains to them that that death is of benefit to them; through it, after all, that forgiveness and that covenant come into being, which in the O. Test. were foreshadowed and foretold; the time of promise is past, that of fulfillment breaks in; the old has passed away, behold, all has become new.
But Jesus does not leave it at that here. In the signs of [308] bread and wine He gives not only an explanation of His death, but He also communicates those signs for use to His disciples. According to Mt. Jesus expressly used the words λαβετε, φαγετε, and πιετε ἐξ αὐτου παντες; and although Mark mentions only the word λαβετε and Luke and Paul make no mention of all these words, yet on the basis of all the reports it is established that Jesus not only elevated the bread and the wine to signs of His body and blood but as such also handed them to His disciples and gave them to partake. After the passover had been used, Jesus instituted a new meal, the components of which were bread and wine, not on and for Himself, but as signs of His broken body and shed blood. Against this Spitta has objected that the eating of the slain body of Jesus and the drinking of His blood are "ebenso schaurige wie für ein israelitisches Bewustsein unverträgliche Gedanken". And therefore it has been thought that, even if Jesus designated bread and wine as signs of His body and blood, He nevertheless did not give them as such to His disciples to partake; that He only declared what would soon happen to Him, but not what His disciples would receive and enjoy; that the eating of Jesus' body and the drinking of His blood at that moment, when Jesus Himself sat at table, was not possible; that, if this partaking was the actual character of the Lord's
Supper, then the Lord's Supper later after Jesus' death had a different nature than at the institution; and that it matters so little with respect to the partaking of bread and wine as such signs, that until the middle of the second century, at least in the churches of Rome and Ephesus, the Lord's
Supper was celebrated not with wine but with water. There lies in these objections an element of truth. Even if the passover in the O. T. pointed to Christ, the eating of the paschal lamb was nevertheless not an eating of
Christ's broken body, as the partaking of the bread in the Lord's Supper now is. And the blood was indeed shed and sprinkled in the sacrifices of the O. Cov., but it was nevertheless never drunk. The representation that Jesus' flesh had to be eaten and His blood drunk was therefore for the Jews so strange that they took offense at it and left Jesus, Joh. 6:52, 60, 66. The institution of the Lord's Supper does indeed take place in connection with the sacrificial representations of the O. T. but nevertheless again goes beyond them. [309] The Lord's Supper is related to but not identical with the passover. As new to old covenant, as the sacrifice of Christ to that of the O. Test., so stands Lord's Supper to passover. The passover was a sacramentum on the basis of a sacrificium but in both parts a shadow and prophecy of the goods of the N. T. Now, however, by Christ the true and perfect sacrifice has been brought, and therefore on the basis of that sacrifice the communion with God in the Lord's Supper is much richer and fuller than it could be in the days of the O. T. The Lord's Supper is a meal, the essential meal of God and His people; a sacrificial meal, the sacrificial meal par excellence, where the believers partake of Christ Himself, as He has died for them. Jesus expresses that by giving bread and wine as signs of His broken body and shed blood to His disciples to partake. He gives
Himself not only for His own; He also gives Himself to His own. Cup and bread in the Lord's Supper are κοινωνια του αἰματος και του σωματος του
Χριστου, 1 Cor. 10:16. The above-mentioned objections further have force insofar as they clearly show that a Capernaite eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ is entirely excluded. The Lord's Supper, which Christ Himself, while He sat at table, instituted, is the same as what after His death has been celebrated in the Christian church up to the present day.
Bread and wine have no relation to the person of Christ without more, but
specifically to Christ as crucified. In them He sets His sacrifice before our eyes, but also makes us partake of it. And it is indeed precisely on that partaking that the Lord's Supper depends. Jesus gave the signs of bread and wine; He did not hold them in His hand, but He distributed them; He commanded His disciples to take them and to eat; and He added to it according to Luke (only in the distributing of the bread) and Paul (also in the handing over of the cup) the words: τουτο ποιειτε εἰς την ἐμην ἀναμνησιν. That these words are lacking in Mt. and Mk. proves in the least not that they either were not spoken by Jesus or were added to them by Luke and Paul in conflict with His intention. For in the eating and drinking of the bread and the wine as signs of Jesus' broken body and shed blood the doing in remembrance of Him is of itself included; the former is not possible without the latter. These words further do not imply that the Lord's
Supper is only a memorial meal, but they express that the whole Lord's Supper, which in its essence is a sacrificial meal and an exercise of communion with Christ, must take place in remembrance of Him. They do not describe the essence of the Lord's Supper but presuppose that Jesus will soon be absent and prescribe that then nevertheless the Lord's Supper must be celebrated to His remembrance, as a continual proclamation of His death, 1 Cor. 11:26. Therefore with Paul there also stand the words: as often as ye shall eat this bread and drink this cup, 1 Cor. 11:25, 26. The Lord's
Supper has been instituted by Christ as an abiding good for His congregation; it is a benefit, added to all other benefits, in order to signify and seal these. And it will remain until the return of Christ. His death must be proclaimed, until He comes. For the cross is and remains in this dispensation the cause of all blessings, the center of the remembrance of the congregation. Jesus Himself said that from now on, from the institution and
the use of the Lord's Supper onward, He would no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until He would drink it new with His disciples in the kingdom of His Father, Mt. 26:29, Mk. 14:25, cf. Luk. 22:16, 18. For He went to heaven, to prepare a place for His disciples. And only when He returns and will have taken His disciples to Himself, will He sit down with them at the wedding table of the Lamb and drink with them of the new wine, which the Kingdom of His Father in the new heaven and the new earth will yield. For that intervening time He instituted the Lord's Supper, as a remembrance of His suffering, as a proclamation of His death, as a means of His rich grace.
Cf. Cremer, art. Abendmahl I in Herzog3 1, 32-38 with the literature cited there and further also J. G. Boekenoogen, The origin of the Lord's Supper,
Amst. 1883. Rogaar, The Lord's Supper and its original meaning, Gron.
1897. Schultzen, Das Abendmahl im N. T., Göttingen 1895. Josephson, Das H. Ab. und das N. T., Gütersloh 1895. R. A. Hoffmann, Die
Abendmahlsgedanken Jesu Christi, Königsberg 1896. Holtzheuer, Das Ab. und die neuere Kritik, Berlin 1896. Schaefer, Das Herrenmahl nach
Ursprung und Bedeutung mit Rücksicht auf die neuesten Forschungen, Gütersloh 1897. Eichhorn, Das Ab. im N. T., [311] Leipzig 1898. Clemen,
Der Ursprung des h. Ab. Leipzig 1898. W. Schmidt, Chr. Dogm. 1898 II 466. Lichtenstein, Des Ap. Paulus Ueberlieferung von der Einsetzung des h.
Ab. Berlin 1899.
3. From the beginning this Lord's Supper occupied a prominent place in Christian worship. It was usually celebrated in a special assembly of the congregation on the Lord's day in the evening and in connection with an ordinary meal, above p. 216. Of the manner of this celebration little is known to us; only we know from Did. 9. 10. 14, that first a confession of sins took place, thereafter over the cup and over the bread separately a
prayer of thanksgiving was pronounced, then the meal was held and the whole was concluded with a thanksgiving. But in the second century there gradually arose throughout the whole church a separation between the ἀγαπαι and the εὐχαριστια. The former went their own way and soon degenerated, Zahn, art. Agapen in Herzog3; and the latter was transferred to the morning worship and brought into connection with the ministry of the word. Various changes accompanied this. The one worship service was soon split into two parts, of which the first, the ministry of the word, was also open to catechumens, penitents and unbelievers, but the second, the celebration of the Lord's Supper, was accessible only to the baptized. This latter acquired more and more a mysterious character, above p. 217; baptism and Lord's Supper became a μυστηριον, a sacramentum, Tert. adv.
Marc. 4, 34, and by this name as well as by all kinds of additional ceremonies were shrouded in a mysterious darkness. It is therefore also wholly wrong to interpret the conceptions of those first times according to the opinions which in the West were later, and especially in the 16th century, cherished concerning the unio sacramentalis. Scripture said that the bread is the body and the wine the blood of Christ, and this manner of speaking was adopted and understood and explained by each in his own way. An official interpretation was lacking; no dispute arose about it; and the question concerning the nature of that union of sign and thing signified did not arise; a realistic conor transubstantiation lay just as far outside the consciousness of that time as an exclusively symbolic or figurative meaning of the Lord's Supper. Symbol and thing were for [312] Eastern thinking much more intimately connected than for Western; we understand, says
Harnack, D. 6. I2 397 rightly, by symbol a thing which is not what it signifies, but then one understood much more by symbol a thing which in
one way or another also is what it signifies. It was established from the beginning in the Christian church that bread and wine were the body and blood of Christ; but the manner in which they thought of their mutual union is not clear and therefore susceptible of different interpretation. That holds for Ignatius, Smyrn. 7. Ef. 20. Justinus, Apol. I 66. Iren. adv. haer. IV 18, 5 and for many other writers. But the development of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper was led especially into a wrong track by the application of the idea of sacrifice. In the N. T. indeed the sanctification of the body, Rom.
12:1, prayer, Hebr. 13:15, cf. Op. 5:8, 8:3, beneficence and liberality, Hebr.
13:16, Phil. 4:18, are called a sacrifice, but never the Lord's Supper an offering. Now, however, in the first time the Lord's Supper was connected with an ordinary meal, and for that meal the more well-to-do members of the congregation brought along the necessary ingredients, bread, wine, oil, milk, honey etc., which were probably received by the deacons, placed for the bishop on main and side tables (the later side altars), served at the meal and thereafter destined for the maintenance of the ministers and for the support of the poor. These gifts received the name of προσφοραι, oblationes, θυσιαι, sacrificia, offerings, and were blessed by the bishop with a prayer of thanksgiving, εὐχαριστια. This conception was transferred to the whole Lord's Supper. After the prayer of thanksgiving that was spoken over the gifts, soon the Lord's Supper itself and also the two Lord's Supper elements were called εὐχαριστια, Did. 9. Ign., Philad. 4. Smyrn. 7. 8.
Justinus, Apol. I 66, and it was also soon conceived as an offering that was brought to God by the congregation, Did. θυσια καθαρα, already with appeal to Mal. 1:11. This was still so long fairly harmless, as the Lord's
Supper was really regarded as a meal and the thanksgiving was made in the name of the whole congregation; the content of the offering was not the
body and blood of Christ but the gifts brought together by the congregation, so that in the first time one thus thought only of a thankbut by no means of an expiatory sacrifice. But there nevertheless lay in it a dangerous element, which in its time [313] would work wrongly, especially when it was strengthened by the clerical conception of the office. Already Clement compares the episcopi and diaconi with the priests and Levites of the O. T., describes their activity as a προσφερειν τα δωρα της ἐπισκοπης and brings their εὐχαριστια into connection with the O. T. θυσιαι, 1 Cor. 40-44. And when Lord's Supper and agapae, the offering of bread and wine for the Lord's Supper and the contributions for the maintenance of the ministers and the support of the needy, fell apart from one another, the Lord's Supper acquired more and more the character of an offering, which was brought not by the congregation but by the bishop, consisted not in its offering but in his thanksgiving and consecration, and had reference not to the gifts for but to the elements of the Lord's Supper, Justinus, Dial. 41. 70. Iren. adv. haer. IV 18, 5. This conception of the Lord's Supper as an offering now again had influence on the thought which one formed of the unio sacramentalis, just as conversely this on that. In proportion as the bishop was regarded as priest, the thanksgiving as consecration, the Lord's Supper as a sacrifice, the realistic union of bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ also had to recommend itself the more strongly. The symbolic, spiritualistic conception of Origen, which in the essence of the matter is also found with Eusebius Caes., Basilius, Gregorius Naz. e. a., in connection with the Eastern Christology with Cyrillus, Gregorius Nyss., Chrysostomus and Johannes Damascenus makes room for the realistic doctrine of the μεταβολη, μεταποιησις or transformation, which then later still passed over into the doctrine of the μετουσιωσις or transubstantiation, Damascenus, de
fide orthod. IV 14. Conf. orthod. qu. 107. Conf. Dosith. decr. 17, cf. Steitz, Die Abendmahlslehre der gr. K. in ihrer gesch. Entw. Jahrb. f. d. Theol.
1864 S. 409-481. 1865 S. 64-152. 399-463. 1866 S. 193-252. 1867 S. 211-
286. 1868 S. 2-67. 649-700. Kattenbusch, Vergl. Konf. I 410 f. Loofs, art.
Abendmahl in Herzog3 1, 38-57.
The development proceeded much more slowly in the West, although it later led to the same result. Cyprian indeed strongly brought the sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper to the foreground, but in it nevertheless saw only an imitation of what Christ in truth had done on Golgotha, Ep. 63, 2.
14. And although Augustine repeatedly, in the language of Scripture, calls the bread the body and the wine [314] the blood of Christ, yet in him there is still nothing to be found of the later theory of transubstantiation. On the contrary, Augustine makes as strong as possible a distinction between verbum and elementum, accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum; bread and wine are therefore called sacraments, quia in eis aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur. The sign is indeed often called by the name of the thing signified, but that occurs because it exhibits a likeness of it. Si enim sacramenta quendam similitudinem earum rerum, quarum sacramenta sunt, non haberent, omnino sacramenta non essent. Ex hac autem similitudine plerumque etiam ipsarum rerum nomina accipiunt. Sicut ergo secundum quendam modum sacramentum corporis Christi corpus Christi est, sacramentum sanguinis Christi sanguis Christi est, ita sacramentum fidei fides est, Ep. 23 ad Bonif. Bread and wine are similitudines, signa, commemorationes of the body and blood of Christ; Dominus non dubitavit dicere: hoc est corpus meum, cum signum daret corporis sui, c. Adam. c.
12. Christ is also no longer bodily with us, but has ascended into heaven; secundum praesentiam majestatis semper habemus Christum, secundum
praesentiam carnis, recte dictum est discipulis: me autem non semper habebitis, tract. 1 in Ev. Joann. If Augustine then also many times calls the Lord's Supper a sacrificium, he does not understand by that that Christ is again in truth, even if in an unbloody manner, offered; but then he calls it so because it is a remembrance of Christ's offering on the cross. Hujus sacrificii caro et sanguis ante adventum Christi per victimarum similitudinem promittebatur; in passione Christi per ipsam veritatem reddebatur; post ascensum Christi per sacramentum memoriae celebratur, c.
Faustum 20, 21. Christus se ipsum obtulit holocaustum pro peccatis nostris et ejus sacrificii similitudinem celebrandam in suae passionis memoriam commendavit, 83 qu. qu. 61. de doctr. chr. III 16. Or he also understands by the body of Christ that is offered in the Lord's Supper, the congregation.
How is, so he asks, the bread the body of Christ? and he answers: corpus Christi si vis intelligere, apostolum audi dicentem fidelibus: vos estis corpus
Christi et membra. Si ergo vos estis corpus Christi et membra, mysterium vestrum in mensa propositum est, mysterium Dei accipitis. And the bread is there the sign of that, [315] quia panis non fit de uno grano sed de multis,
Serm. ad infantes, cf. de civ. 10, 6. 22, 10. Therefore Augustine also does not weary of assuring that the use of the Lord's Supper in itself is not sufficient, that it is only for believers unto blessing but for others unto destruction, that the true eating of Christ's body consists in believing: crede et manducasti, Tract. 25 in Joann. and so passim, cf. Bibl. studii theol. apud
J. Crispinum 1565 p. 89-100. Dorner, Augustinus 263-276 etc. The doctrine of Augustine, by its powerful influence, for a long time still held back the full development of the realistic theory, and still dominated among the Carolingian theologians, but in the struggle of Ratramnus against Paschasius Radbertus and later in that of Berengarius against Lanfranc was
more and more pushed back and finally entirely replaced by the metabolic theory. The word transsubstantiation we encounter first in Hildebert of Tours † 1134, but he uses it in a sermon, so that it must then already have been fairly generally known, cf. Deutsch in Schürer's Theol. Lit. Z. 1898 col. 442. The matter that was expressed by it had already earlier been established. Berengarius had to sign the formula in 1079, panem et vinum... per mysterium sacrae orationis et verba nostri Redemptoris substantialiter converti in veram et propriam ac vivificatricem carnem et sanguinem
Domini nostri J. C. etc. And the Fourth Lateran Council 1215 determined that the body and blood of Christ in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transsubstantiatis pane in corpus et vino in sanguinem potestate divina, Denzinger, Enchir. 298. 357. This dogma presented to the dialectical spirit of scholasticism a series of problems concerning the nature, time, and duration of the change, concerning the relation of substance and accidents, concerning the manner in which Christ was present in both elements and in each part thereof, concerning the preservation and adoration of the host, etc., Lombardus, Thomas,
Bonaventura, Duns Scotus on Sent. IV dist. 8-13. Thomas, S. Theol. III qu.
73-83. c. Gent. IV 61-69. Bonaventura, Brevil. VI 9, cf. Schwane, D. G. III 628-661. Harnack, D. G. III 488-498 etc. Concerning the sacrament of the Lord's Supper Rome then teaches thus: the signs in this sacrament are unleavened bread and wine mixed with a little water. These elements are changed by the word of consecration into [316] the proper body and blood of Christ. When the Saviour, namely, at the last meal spoke the words: this is my body, this is my blood; then He not only for this one time caused bread and wine to be changed into His body and blood, but He at the same time therein appointed His disciples as priests and in the words that He
spoke laid a power for changing the substance of bread and wine. The administration of the eucharist is therefore the priestly work par excellence and may never be undertaken by anyone other than an ordained priest.
When the priest pronounces the words of consecration, the substance of bread and wine is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. For the bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist cannot be brought about by the fact that Christ leaves heaven and comes to dwell in the sacrament, for Christ is and remains seated at the right hand of the Father; nor can it be effected by creation, for then the bread would not be the proper body of Christ, not the same with which He was born of Mary and died on the cross; it can therefore occur only in such a way that the substance of bread and wine passes over into the substance of Christ's body and blood, approximately as the food that we consume is converted into a constituent of our body. The accidentia of bread and wine, namely the form, taste, smell, color, and even the nourishing power, do indeed remain after the consecration, but they no longer inhere in a subject; the substance of which they were the properties has been removed and replaced by an entirely different one, of which they are no properties, but which they only cover by their appearance for the eye. Since now Christ's body and blood cannot be separated from His human nature and this cannot be separated from His
Godhead, the whole Christ is fully present in each element and in each part of both elements. Therefore it is not necessary, although it is also not unlawful and sometimes to be permitted, that the eucharist be received sub utraque specie, for in the smallest piece of bread the whole Christ is nevertheless present. And this Christ is present in the elements from the moment of consecration until the time when they are consumed, thus also ante and extra omnem usum. The eucharist is therefore distinguished from
all other sacraments. For these are all completed by [317] the use; baptism, e.g., is only then a sacrament when the person is actually washed by it. But this is not the case with the eucharist. The formula that is spoken here is not directed to the recipient, but is directed to the element and serves to change this element into the body and blood of Christ. In the eucharist, therefore, the use, the communion, is secondary; it belongs to the perfectio but not to the necessitas of the sacrament. The sacrament of the encharist consists essentially in the consecration itself, in the transubstantiation thereby effected, in the action of the priest, that is, in the offering. The eucharist in Rome is not only a sacramentum, it is in the first place a sacrificium. When
Christ spoke the words: this is my body, He at that same moment offered Himself to God; and when He said: do that in remembrance of me, He therein ordained that His priests would repeat this offering from day to day,
Mal. 1:11. The offering that takes place by the priest in the mass is the same as that which was accomplished on the cross; it is not a mere image, symbol, remembrance of it, but it is completely identical with it, it is entirely the same offering, only with this difference, that that on the cross is a bloody and this in the mass an unbloody offering. For it is also the same priest who offers himself on the cross and who offers himself here, for Christ himself is he who, by means of the priest, offers himself to God and therefore through his mouth speaks the words: this is my body. Therefore the sacrifice of the mass is not only a praiseand a thanksgiving-, but also a true propitiatory sacrifice, no less rich in efficacy and fruit than the offering on the cross. While the eucharist as sacrament nourishes the spiritual life, preserves from mortal sins, remits temporal punishments, unites the believers and guarantees the future glory, as sacrifice of the mass it effects the remission of temporal punishments and the grace of repentance, not
only for those who attend the mass but also for the absent; not only for the living but also for those doing penance in purgatory. The mass is the center of the Roman cultus, φρικτον μυστηριον, tremendum mysterium. And because the whole Christ is bodily present in the elements of bread and wine, these must be carefully preserved, held forth to the people in a monstrance for adoration, on the [318] festum corporis Christi carried around in solemn procession, and they can also be administered to the sick in their dwelling and given to the dead as a viaticum. Cf. Trident. 13. 21.
22. Catech. Rom. II 2 cap. 4. Bellarminus, de sacr. eucharistiae 1. IV and de sacrificio missae, 1. II in volume III of his Controversiae p. 150-376.
Perrone, Prael. Theol. Lovan. 1841 VI 136-364. Möhler, Symbolik § 34.
Jansen, Prael. theol. dogm. III 408-596. Oswald, Die dogm. Lehre v. d. h.
Sakr. der Kath. Kirche 2e Aufl. 1864 I 301-584. C. Pesch, Prael. dogm. VI 238-399. Gihr. Das h. Messopfer, 6e Aufl. Freiburg Herder 1897 etc.
4. The Reformation unanimously rejected the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation and sacrifice of the mass, of asservatio, adoratio and circumgestio of the host, of withholding the cup and the use of the Latin language, but it soon diverged in the positive conception of the Lord's
Supper. Luther first taught that bread and wine were signs and pledges of the forgiveness of sins, which had been acquired by Christ's death and was received by faith. But he soon went back on this and maintained, especially since 1524 against Carlstadt and Zwingli, on the basis of the synecdochically explained words of institution, that the body of Christ, in accordance with the will and omnipotence of God and his own ubiquity, was really and substantially present in, with and under the Lord's Supper, just as his Divine nature is in the human nature and just as heat is in iron, and therefore was also bodily eaten by the unworthy, even though to their
own destruction, Köstlin, Luthers Theol. I 163 f. 290 f. II 116 f. 511 f. This doctrine passed over into the Lutheran confessional writings, ed. Müller S.
41. 164. 248. 320. 365. 499. 538. 645. 779, and was more broadly elaborated by the dogmaticians, Gerhard, Loc. XXI. Quenstedt, Theol. IV 176-255. Hollaz, Ex. 1103-1141. Schmid, Dogm. d. ev. luth. K. § 55. But many were already in the century of the Reformation of a wholly different opinion. Following the lead of Honius, cf. de Hoop Scheffer, Gesch. d.
Kerkherv. I 86v., Zwingli took the words of institution figuratively and explained the little word: is as means, just as everyone does elsewhere time and again, e.g. Gen. 41:26, Joh. 10:9, 15:1. Bread and wine in the Lord's
Supper are therefore signs of and [319] remembrances of the death of Christ, and the believers, trusting in this, partake in those signs of the body and blood of Christ. Zwingli decidedly combats the bodily presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, but by that he by no means denies that Christ is present in a spiritual manner for faith. On the contrary, Christ is indeed truly enjoyed in the Lord's Supper, as Joh. 6 clearly teaches, but Christ is present in the Lord's Supper in no other way and is enjoyed therein in no other way than in the word and through faith, that is, in a spiritual manner. This enjoyment of Christ consists in nothing other than trust in his death.
Spiritualiter edere corpus Christi nihil est aliud quam spiritu ac mente niti misericordia et bonitate Dei per Christum. And whoever thus enjoys Christ by faith and then comes to the Lord's Supper, he enjoys Him there also sacramentaliter in the signs of bread and wine. In the Lord's Supper we therefore confess our faith, we express what we continually have in Christ through faith and enjoy from Him; and we do that in remembrance of Christ, for the proclamation of and thanksgiving for his benefits, Zwingli,
Opera II 1 S. 426. II 2 S. 1 f. III 239. 326. 459. IV 51. 68. Soon there arose
between the German and Swiss Reformation a rupture and dispute, which was not settled by the religious colloquy at Marburg and by the mediating efforts of Bucer on the Reformed and Melanchthon on the Lutheran side.
They did not understand one another; on both sides it was acknowledged that Christ truly, with his Divine and human nature, with his own body and blood, was present in the Lord's Supper and was enjoyed, but one attached a different meaning to this "true" presence. When Calvin appeared, there was already no reconciliation to be thought of any more, even though he too, with his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, took a position between and above both parties. For Calvin decidedly stands on Zwingli's side, insofar as he altogether rejects every bodily, local, substantial presence of Christ in the signs of bread and wine; for such a presence is in conflict with the nature of a body, with the true humanity of Christ, with his ascension, with the character of the communion that exists between Christ and his own and differs as far as heaven from an unprofitable oralis manducatio. But further
Calvin does not feel satisfied by Zwingli; he has especially two things against his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, 1o that Zwingli lets the gift of God in the Lord's Supper retreat far too much behind what the believers do in it and thus conceives the Lord's Supper one-sidedly as an act of confession, and 2o that in the eating of Christ's body he sees nothing else and nothing higher than believing in his name, trusting in his death.
Therefore Calvin further places himself on Luther's side and says that Christ, although not bodily and locally, is nevertheless truly and essentially, with his whole person, also with his body and blood, present in the Lord's
Supper and is enjoyed. Not about the fact, only about the manner of that presence does there exist between him and Luther a difference. And the eating of Christ's body in the Lord's Supper does not dissolve into
believing, into trusting in his death. The eating is not one with the believing, even though it always comes about only through believing, but it is rather its fruit, just as in Ef. 3:17 the indwelling of Christ in us indeed takes place through faith but is nevertheless distinct from that faith. Calvin is evidently concerned with the unio mystica, with the communion of the believers with the whole person of Christ. This does not first come about through the Lord's Supper, for Christ is the bread of our soul already in the word, but it is nevertheless bestowed upon us in the Lord's Supper illustrius and in the signs of bread and wine sealed and confirmed. In the Lord's Supper there is a communion not only in the benefits but also in the person of Christ, and again not only in his Divine but also in his human nature, in his own body and blood; and this communion is called an eating. This therefore consists neither in a bodily descent of Christ from heaven nor also in a mixtura vel transfusio carnis Christi cum anima nostra, but in an elevation of our hearts heavenward, in a union with Christ through the H. Spirit, in a communio in his body, as a consequence of which Christ spirat e carnis suae substantia vitam in animas nostras, imo propriam vitam in nos diffundit, Inst. IV c. 17 and further C. R. 37, 461-524. 681-688 etc. cf. my essay on Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper in de Vrije Kerk 1887 bl. 459-487. Calvin's presentation is not in every respect clear, especially not as regards the communion in the very flesh and blood of [321] Christ and the life flowing from it. Utenhove therefore not without reason requested him, when he dealt with the Lord's Supper, to refrain from more or less obscure expressions, Pijper, Jan Utenhove, Leiden 1883 bl. 40. And thus there was also in the confession and doctrine of the Reformed churches and theologians indeed a difference of expression. Some, such as Bucer, sought rapprochement to the Lutheran presentation and said that the body of Christ
substantialiter, quoad substantiam, was present in the Lord's Supper, M.
Vitringa VIII 265. 299. But the main thought of Calvin, that in the Lord's Supper through the H. Spirit a spiritual communion is exercised with the person and thus also with the body and blood of Christ and that the believers are thereby nourished and refreshed unto eternal life, has been taken over into various Reformed confessional writings, Tigur. Gall. 36.
Belg. 35. Cat. Heid. 75-80. Scot. 21. Helv. II 21. Westmon. 29, and has become common property of Reformed theology, Beza, Tract. Theol. I 30.
206. 211. 259. II 121. III 148. Martyr, Loci Comm. 445. Zanchius, Op. VII 387. VIII 517. Junius, Theses theol. disp. 52. Ursinus, Tract theol. 359. a Lasco, Op. I 190. 549. Polanus, Synt. theol. VI 56. Bucanus, Instit. theol.
649. etc., cf. M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 266. Heppe, Dogm. 471.
But soon opposition nevertheless arose against this Calvinistic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The expression in the Conf. Gall. 36, that Christ nourishes us and makes us alive de la substance de son corps et de son sang, aroused in the Swiss churches no slight misgiving. In the year 1572 they addressed the national Synod in France with a request for alteration of these words, but found no hearing. Yet with many the objection continued to exist, and this increased when Bossuet in his Exposition de la doctrine de l'église cath. sur les matières de controverse 1671 sought support in it for the Roman doctrine of the Lord's Supper, M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 302 sq.
Gradually the Zwinglian conception again gained ground, according to which the eating was nothing other than believing and the communion with Christ nothing other than the acceptance of his benefits, Ostervald,
Verhandeling v. d. geopenb. godsd. 1742 bl. 385. The relaxation of discipline promoted this externalization of the Lord's Supper and caused one to see in the sacraments only signs of an external covenant, [322] to
which all who lived without giving offence had right and claim, Swarte, van Eerde, Janssonius, cf. Ypey en Dermout, Gesch. v. d. Ned. Herv. Kerk III 612. Thus the way was prepared for rationalism, which repeated the thoughts of Socinians, Remonstrants, Mennonites etc., cf. M. Vitringa VIII 2 p. 1014 sq. and in the Lord's Supper saw nothing higher than a memorial meal, act of confession, and moral educational means, Wegscheider, Instit.
§ 178. 179. Through Schleiermacher, who rejected not only the doctrine of the Romanists, but also that of the Socinians etc. and recognized those of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin all as orthodox, there nevertheless awoke an endeavor to maintain the Lord's Supper as an objective means of grace and to ascribe to it a strengthening of the communion of life with Christ. This, however, took place in very different ways. Some proceeded from the Lord's Supper as a symbolic act and act of confession but added to it that the believers therein testified that they accepted Christ as having died for them, Doedes, Leer der Zal. § 144v. Ned. Gel. 502. Heid. Catech. 352.
Others conceived it as an act of the church, but one which according to God's ordinance serves, by an ethical and psychological way, to strengthen faith in the forgiveness of sins and the communion with God, Lipsius,
Dogm. § 853. Biedermann, Chr. Dogm. § 927. Pfleiderer, Grundniss § 156.
Many Vermittelung theologians reject the Lutheran consubstantiation and manducatio oralis, and approach the doctrine of Calvin, when they say that Christ is present in the Lord's Supper in a spiritual manner, just as in the word, and communicates himself and his benefits (forgiveness, life, spiritual power, blessedness) to the believer, Kahnis, Luth. Dogm. II 339.
Dorner, Chr. Gl. II 848 f. Müller, Dogm. Abhandl. 467. Ebrard, Dogm. § 545. Nitzsch, Ev. Dogm. 567-569. Schmidt, Chr. Dogm. II 471. 478. The old-Lutheran doctrine was again presented by Scheibel, Rudelbach,
Philippi, Kirchl. Gl. V 2 S. 260 f. and by the neo-Lutherans further supplemented with the theosophical conception that Christ through bread and wine nourishes not only the soul but also directly the body, by healing the diseases of the body and strengthening the new man of the resurrection, who in secret has been created through baptism, Martensen, Dogm. § 265.
Thomasius, Christi Person u. Werk II3 327. 341, Hofmann, [323] Schriftbeweis II 2 S. 220. Vilmar, Dogm. II 245. Frank, Syst. d. chr. Wahrh.
II2 290. Rocholl, Spiritualismus und Realismus, Neue Kirchl. Zeits. 1898, cf. Luther himself in Köstlin II 163. 516. In the English church finally the ritualistic party more and more adopted the doctrine and usages of the Lord's Supper from Rome, Wilberforce, The Doctrine Of The Holy
Eucharist 1853. Pusey, The presence of Christ in the holy eucharist 1853 cf.
Ryle, Knots untied 1886 p. 205. Williams, The crisis in the Church of England, Presb. and Ref. Rev. July 1899. On the history of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper there further treat the dogma-historical works of Hagenbach, Münscher-v. Coelln, Harnack, Schwane etc., the articles
Abendmahl, Transsubstantiation, Messe in Herzog2.
Abendmahl, Eucharistie in Herzog3. Rückert, Das h. Ab., sein Wesen u. seine Gesch. in d. alten Kirche 1856. Ebrard, Das Dogma v. h. Ab. u. seine Gesch. 2 Bde
1845/6. Stahl, Die luth. Kirche u. die Union, Berlin 1859. Kahnis, Dogm. II 360-438, and further literature in Dorner, Chr. Gl. II 848. Luthardt, Komp. d. Dogm. § 72.
5. In Scripture the Lord's Supper is designated by the names δειπνον κυριακον, 1 Cor. 11:20, τραπεζα κυριου, 1 Cor. 10:21, κλασις ἀρτου, Hd.
2:42, 20:7, ποτηριον τον κυριου, 1 Cor. 11:27, ποτηριον της εὐλογιας, 1 Cor. 10:16. And the church later added to these many others, such as ἀγαπη, because in the earliest period the Lord's Supper was connected with a love-
feast; εὐχαριστια, already in Did. 9. Ign. Smyrn. 7. 8. Just. M. Apol. I 66, because the believers at the Lord's Supper gave thanks to God for the gifts of his grace; εὐλογια, because over bread and wine, by thanksgiving and praise of God, the blessing was pronounced; συναξις, κοινωνια, because the believers, coming together at the Lord's Supper, exercised fellowship with one another; προσφορα, θυσια (ἁγια, πνευματικη, μυστικη, ἀναιμακτος etc.), because the believers brought along the ingredients for the meal and offered them to God, or because the Lord's Supper was an image and remembrance of the offering of Christ on the cross; and furthermore still δειπνον μυστικον, εἰωχια, ἐφοδιον, viaticum, λατρεια, λειτουργια, φρικτον μυστηριον, tremendum mysterium, sacramentum corporis et sanguinis
Domini, sacramentum altaris, missa, derived from the missio catechumenorum after the conclusion of the didactic part [324] of the religious service etc. Although Luther still continued to speak of sacramentum altaris, Art. Smalc. III 6. Cat. maj. 5, the Protestants in general gave preference to the name sacra coena or coena Domini and also held fast in this, that the Lord's Supper was an essential meal. Some Roman theologians, such as Maldonatus on Mt. 26:25, did indeed remark against this, that the expression δειπνον κυριακον in 1 Cor. 11:20 did not refer to the Lord's Supper but to the meal which was held after the Lord's Supper and was offered by the richer members of the congregation to the poorer,
M. Vitringa VIII 10; yet the Lord's Supper was held not before but after the ordinary meal, v. 21 and is included under the expression, if not exclusively then at least also. But even if this were not the case, the incorrectness of the designation would by no means thereby be proved. For the Lord's Supper is, according to the tenor of Scripture, an essential meal. The connection with the agapae, the institution on the occasion of the Passover meal, the
components of bread and wine, the eating and drinking thereof—everything points to it, that in the Lord's Supper we have to do with an essential meal, and that we may never remove this character from it. But it is a δειπνον κυριακον, a meal of the Lord. Jesus is its institutor and in this too fulfilled the will of the Father, to do which was his food. The Lord's Supper, like baptism, is of divine origin and must be so, in order to be able to be a sacrament; for God alone is dispenser of grace and he alone can bind its dispensation to means ordained by him. And Jesus institutes this Lord's
Supper specifically as mediator; in it he appears as prophet, who proclaims and explains his death; in it he acts as priest, who has given himself up for his own on the cross; in it he comes forward as king, who freely disposes over the grace acquired and gives it to his disciples to enjoy under the signs of bread and wine. And like the institutor, so he is also the host and the minister of the Lord's Supper; he himself takes the bread and the wine, blesses them and distributes them to his disciples. And host and minister he was not only when he bodily sat at table with his disciples; but he is and remains everywhere and always, where his meal is celebrated. Every Lord's
Supper, administered in accordance with his institution, is a δειπνον κυριακον. For Christ is institutor not [325] only by example but also by precept. It is a meal in remembrance of him, 1 Cor. 11:24, for proclamation of his death, v. 26, for communion in the body and blood of Christ, 1 Cor.
10:16, 21, 11:27. In the Lord's Supper Christ comes together with the congregation and the congregation with Christ, bearing witness to their spiritual communion, cf. Op. 3:20. The minister, who blesses and distributes bread and wine, therefore does this in the name of Christ and is only an instrument in his hand. Because Paul in 1 Cor. 10:16 speaks in the plural of those who bless the cup, and Tertullianus, Exhort. ad cast. 7 says, ubi
ecclesiastici ordinis non est consessus, et offert et tingit sacerdos, qui est ibi solus; sed et ubi tres, ecclesia est, licet laici, some, such as Grotius,
Salmasius, Episcopius e. a., asserted that, if a priest or teacher was lacking, the Lord's Supper might also be administered by an ordinary member of the congregation. But this opinion lacks sufficient ground. In Mt. 28:19 the administration of baptism is at the same time entrusted with that of the word to the apostles; they with the teachers are dispensers of the mysteries of God, proclaimers of the mysteries which God has revealed in the gospel of Christ, 1 Cor. 4:1; stewards of God, who have to dispense his grace, 1 Cor.
9:17, Tit. 1:7. Undoubtedly with these mysteries one must think first of all of the word of the gospel. But the sacrament follows the word and is always connected with the word. The apostles in Jerusalem exercised there the ministry of prayers and of the word, Hd. 6:4; at the breaking of bread, Hd.
20:7, 11, Paul conducts the word; the pronouncing of the thanksgiving at the Lord's Supper was a part of the ministry of the word and thus entrusted to the teacher, even though it, like the breaking of the bread, is presented in 1 Cor. 10:16 as an act of the congregation, Sohm, Kirchenrecht 69.
According to Did. 10, 7 the εὐχαριστειν accordingly belongs to the prophets, according to Ign. Smyrn. 8 to the bishop, according to Just. Apol.
I 65 to the προεστως, while the deacons therein rendered their service and handed bread and wine to the communicants, cf. Suicerus, s. v. διακονος and συναξις, Voetius, Pol. eccl. I 756-751. Moor V 638-641. M. Vitringa
VIII 1 p. 327 sq. This close connection of the administration of the Lord's Supper with that of the word proves that the minister acts in the name [326] of Christ and is active as steward and dispenser of his mysteries. The Lord's
Supper is a meal, of which Christ is the host.
Furthermore, the idea of meal in the Lord's Supper comes out very strongly in the food and the drink which are distributed and enjoyed in it.
Just as the water in baptism, so the signs of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper have not been chosen at will or by chance. In the sacrifices of the O.
Test. flesh and blood were the main thing, because they typically pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But the Lord's Supper itself is no sacrifice but a memorial of the sacrifice on the cross and expresses the communion of the believers with that sacrifice. Therefore Christ chooses no flesh and blood but bread and wine as food and drink in the Lord's Supper, to make known that it is no sacrifice but a meal, a meal on the ground of, in remembrance of, for the exercise of communion with the crucified Christ.
And for that purpose the signs of bread and wine are eminently suitable; they were in the East the ordinary constituents of the meal, they are still easily obtainable everywhere and at all times, they are the principal means of strengthening and gladdening the heart of man, Ps. 104:15, and are an eloquent symbol of the communion of the believers with Christ and with one another, M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 43. In addition, it is indifferent whether the bread consists of wheat, rye, or barley and the wine bears a white or a red color; whether the bread, according to the usage of the Greek church, is leavened or, according to that of the Roman church, is eaten unleavened; and whether the wine, according to the doctrine of the Armenian Christians, is used unmixed or, according to the definite pronouncement of Trente XX c. 7, mixed with water. Christ has determined or prescribed nothing of all this. The Reformed even did not hesitate to say that, in case bread and wine were decidedly lacking, also another food and drink, e.g. rice and bread, might be used as signs in the Lord's Supper, Voetius, Pol. Eccl. I 732. 738.
Moor V 575. M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 46. But thereby arbitrary deviation from
the institution of Christ has not yet been declared permissible. Just as in this time, so also in the first centuries there were some Christians (Tatianen,
Severianen, Gnostieken, Manicheën, Aquarii) who, from an ascetic principle, replaced the wine with water at the Lord's Supper. But we must not [327] be wiser than Christ, who has expressly ordained the wine as a sign of his blood, and whose command in this has been followed by the Christian church at all times, M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 71-78. For the assertion of Harnack, that the custom of using water at the Lord's Supper was fairly general in the first and second century and still had to be combated in the fifth century; and that also Paul himself, speaking of the cup of drink, does not definitely think of a cup with wine, has been sufficiently refuted by Zahn, Brot und Wein im Abendmahl der alten Kirche, Erlangen 1892, cf. also W. Schmidt, Christl. Dogm. II 465. Likewise the practice of the Roman and Lutheran Christians is to be disapproved, to administer the bread in the form of a wafer (oblie, oblata, because the believers formerly themselves offered the necessities for the Lord's Supper; hostie, hostia, because the bread is a sign of the sacrifice of Christ). For although the quantity of the bread, just as little as the quality, is determined, yet the character of a meal must be preserved, and this is almost entirely lost with the use of a small, round wafer, Voetius, Pol. Eccl. I 733. M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 49. Finally, the place and the time in which the Lord's Supper was instituted and formerly celebrated also clearly bring out that it is an essential meal. For Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper on the occasion that he reclined with his disciples at the Passover table. And in the first time the Lord's Supper, in connection with an ordinary meal, Hd. 20:7, 11, 1 Cor. 11:21, in the public assembly of the congregation, 1 Cor. 10:17, 11:18, 20, 21, 33, and daily or at least every Sabbath, Hd. 2:46, 20:7, was celebrated. Only gradually was
the Lord's Supper detached from the agapae, transferred from the evening to the morning worship service, administered outside the assembly of the congregation also to the sick and dying in their houses, celebrated as mass wholly outside and without an assembly of the congregation, and the use of the Lord's Supper for the believers fixed at three, or at a single time per year as a minimum, Trid. sess. 13 can. 9. Although now some Reformed were of the opinion that the Lord's Supper in very special cases might also be administered to the sick in their dwelling, but then nevertheless in the presence of others, Calvijn bij Henry II 210. Voetius, Pol. Eccl. I 764, they nevertheless generally held fast the thought that it, as a part [328] of the cultus publicus, belonged at home in the assembly of the congregation and might not be celebrated privately. And although practice has proved stronger than doctrine and the celebration of the Lord's Supper is usually limited to six or four times in the year, Dordr. 1578 art. 73. Midd. 1581 art.
45. 's Grav. 1586 art. 56. Dordr. 1618 art. 63, yet it was originally the wish of Calvijn to celebrate it at least once per month, Kampschulte, Joh. Calvin
I 460, cf. a Lasco, bij Dalton 383. Voetius, Pol. Eccl. I 758-767. 801. 802.
Moor V 660 sq. 671 sq. M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 406-414. If baptism, as incorporation into the Christian church, already ought to take place in the public assembly of the believers, then this applies still much more to the Lord's Supper, which essentially is a δειπνον, συναξις, convivium and includes not only a communion with Christ but also a communion of the believers. Therefore the determination of the character of the Lord's Supper finally concentrates wholly around the question whether it must be administered on a table or on an altar. Jesus and his disciples were reclining at a table when they used the Lord's Supper, and the first Christians also knew nothing of an altar. But gradually the distinction between the Oldand
the New-Test. dispensation was lost; the meeting place was changed into a temple, the minister into a priest, the Lord's Supper into a sacrifice, and the table into an altar. In the Roman and Greek church the whole cultus is governed by this view; the Anglican church adopted it for the most part and now inclines toward it more and more; the Lutheran church retained the altar and regarded it as an adiaphoron. But the Reformed restored the scriptural idea of the meal of the Lord also in the table of the Lord's Supper.
For the difference between the cultus of the O. and of the N. Testaments consists in this, that temple and altar, priest and sacrifice are no longer on earth but in the heavens. The Jerusalem that is above is the mother of us all,
Gal. 4:26; there Christ, the eternal High Priest, has entered in for us, Hebr.
6:20, after he by one sacrifice had brought about an eternal redemption, 9:12, to appear before the face of God for us, 9:24; and there the Christians have their sanctuary, into which they enter with boldness in the blood of Jesus, 4:16, 10:19, 12:22. Here on earth we have only [329] a mutual gathering, in which there is no place for any sacrifice, 10:25. The only altar of the Christians is the cross, on which Christ has brought his sacrifice,
13:10, cf. 7:27, 10:10. From that altar, that is, from the sacrifice brought thereon, they eat, when by faith they have communion in Christ and his benefits. The believers have no other sacrifice to bring than sacrifices of praise, that is, fruit of lips that praise his name, 13:15. The Lord's Supper is a sacrificial meal, a meal of the believers with Christ on the ground of his sacrifice and therefore to be administered not on an altar but on a table.
Certissimum est, everti Christi crucem, simulac erigitur altare, Calvijn, Inst.
IV 18, 3. Voetius, Pol. eccl. I 792. Moor V 659. M. Vitringa VIII 1 p. 414.
Herzog3 art. Altar.
6. The Lord's Supper is thus an essential meal, but as such nevertheless has its own, spiritual meaning and destination. Christ has instituted it, not in order that it should feed us bodily but in order that it should feed us spiritually. Before He distributes bread and wine, He blesses both and says that the bread is His body and the wine His blood; as such, as His broken body and shed blood, bread and wine must be taken and enjoyed by His disciples. The materia sacramenti, the thing signified in the Lord's Supper, is thus the body and blood of Christ, as it has been broken and shed in His sacrificial death for His church unto forgiveness of sins, that is, the crucified and dead Christ with all the benefits and blessings acquired by His death, ipse Christus cum omnibus suis beneficiis, Heppe, Dogm. 466. 467.
In the moral, rationalistic conception of the Lord's Supper this meaning does not come into its own. For 1o the Lord's Supper is indeed also a memorial meal, but it is this first on the ground of the fact that Christ has instituted bread and wine as signs of His body and blood. In the first place, in the Lord's Supper it is not a matter of what we do, but of what God does.
Before all else the Lord's Supper is a gift of God, a benefit of Christ, a means for His grace. If the Lord's Supper were nothing but a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the proper sense; only incidentally and indirectly would it then, just as prayer, be called a means of grace. The Lord's Supper [330] however stands on one line with word and baptism and is therefore first of all, like these, to be regarded as a preaching and assurance of God's grace to us. 2o Christ does not elevate bread and wine in general to signs of His body and blood, but He does this specifically with respect to that bread and that wine which He holds in His hand and imparts to His disciples. And He does not say that in that bread and that wine they have merely to see His body and blood, but
He expressly declares that they must take, eat, and drink both as such. He makes it a meal, in which the disciples enjoy His body and blood and thus enter into the most intimate communion with Him. That communion does not consist in this alone, that they sit together at one table, but they eat of one bread and drink of one wine; indeed the host offers under the signs of bread and wine His own body and blood as food and drink for their souls.
That is a communion which far surpasses that in a memorial meal and act of confession. It is not merely a remembrance of, not a reflection on Christ's benefits, but it is a most intimate bond with Christ Himself, as food and drink unite with our body. 3o In the Lord's Supper we receive indeed no other and greater, but yet also no lesser benefits than in the word. Now
Jesus, Joh. 6:47-58, has expressly said that in the word and through faith we eat His flesh and drink His blood and thus receive eternal life. Even if in Joh. 6 there is not directly mention of the Lord's Supper, yet it may and can serve for the explanation of this second sacrament. Through the word and in faith we obtain such an intimate communion with Christ, with His body and blood, as arises between the food and him who enjoys it. And this is the doctrine not only of Joh. 6, but of the whole of Scripture. The word does not bestow that communion in a literal sense, nor does faith either, but God has bound Himself to impart to him who believes His word His communion in Christ and all the benefits connected therewith. Calvin therefore rightly remarked against Zwingli that the eating of Christ's body and the drinking of His blood does not dissolve into believing. Believing is a means, a means even that is temporal and once passes over into seeing, but the communion with Christ, which thereby arises, goes [331] much deeper and endures into eternity. It is a unio mystica, which can be made only somewhat clear to us under the images of vine and branch, head and body, bridegroom and bride,
cornerstone and building, cf. deel III 556. And it is this unio mystica which is signified and sealed in the Lord's Supper.
The Christian church has maintained this unio mystica in the Lord's Supper almost unanimously; Greek and Roman, Lutheran and Reformed
Christians are therein agreed with one another, that in the Lord's Supper an objective and real communication takes place of the person and the benefits of Christ to every one who believes. But among themselves they differ greatly concerning the manner in which that communication occurs. The former are not satisfied, unless the body and blood of Christ are also physically and locally present in the signs and are received and enjoyed by the bodily mouth. The Reformed, however, teach that Christ in the Lord's
Supper is indeed truly and essentially communicated to the believers, but in a spiritual manner and in such a way that He could be received and enjoyed only by the mouth of faith. And for that Scripture supplies abundant proofs.
1o In the words τουτο ἐστι το σωμα μου the subject τουτο can refer to nothing else than to the bread, which Jesus holds in His hand. The predicate is το σωμα μου, and thereby denotes the very body of Christ, which He assumed from Mary and surrendered in death for His own. The copula is ἐστι, which Jesus in the Aramaic did not utter at all but in any case connects two disparate concepts, bread and body, and thus cannot be a copula of actual being. Thus ἐστι here must have significative, figurative meaning, for disparatum de disparate non potest praedicari nisi figurate. The sentence contains a tropus, and this lies not in the subject or in the predicate, but, as Zwingli rightly perceived, in the copula ἐστι, just as is so often the case in Scripture, e.g. Gen. 17:13, 41:26, 27, Ex. 12:11, Ezech. 5:5, Luk. 12:1, Joh.
10:9, 15:1, etc. Gal. 4:24, 1 Cor. 10:4, Hebr. 10:20, Op. 1:20 etc. And that in the words of institution such a tropus must be assumed, is proved still
further, in addition, from the fact that Jesus according to Luke and Paul with the second sign does not say: this wine, but: this cup is the new testament
[332] in my blood. Even the Romanists and Lutherans are compelled to assume a tropus here. 2o When the subject τουτο does not refer to the natural bread and to the natural wine, but already to the substance of Jesus' body and blood, which are hidden under the form or within the signs of bread and wine, then bread and wine have already been changed into Jesus' body and blood or have already taken these into themselves, before the words: this is my body, this is my blood, have been spoken, and they lose all the force and value which Romanists and Lutherans ascribe to them. For the transor consubstantiation has then not been brought about by those words but has already preceded them; and the words, on which so much emphasis is laid, contain nothing but a declaration of what already exists and came about earlier. Difficult, indeed impossible, is it then to say when and how the transor consubstantiation came about; for indeed there is mention of preceding blessing and thanksgiving, but the content thereof is not stated with a single word; we do not know at all what Jesus said in it and thus also not what we must say, in order to bring the transand consubstantiation about. And moreover, if Paul in 1 Cor. 10:16 says: the cup of blessing which we bless is communion of the blood of Christ, then he proceeds from the presupposition that the cup contains wine and not blood, for otherwise we could not bless it, and that it as such, as containing wine, by the blessing is communion of Christ's blood. 3o The words which Jesus spoke at the institution of the Lord's Supper are not intended as any fixed formula. That appears from the fact that Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul reproduce them in different reading and that the liturgical usage of the Christian churches exhibits all manner of divergence among themselves.
According to the Greek church the so-called epiklese, the invocation of the H. Spirit, belongs essentially to the words of consecration, Schwane, D. G.
II 810. Kattenbusch, Vergl. Conf. I 413, whereas according to Rome the transubstantiation comes about by the uttering of the words: hoc enim est corpus meum, where the little word enim has been arbitrarily inserted and the words: which is broken for you, have been arbitrarily omitted. Much less is it still to be proved that the words —suppose that it were fixed which were to be used— possess a [333] consecratory, operative, conversive power. For Jesus does not say: this becomes, but: this is my body and thus has already beforehand set the bread apart from common use and by blessing and thanksgiving destined it for a higher purpose. 4o When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, He sat bodily with His disciples at table. These therefore could not come to the thought that they enjoyed with the bodily mouth Jesus' own body and blood and could still much less eat that body itself and drink that blood. It avails nothing, to say with Philippi, that they über das Mass ihres gewöhnlichen Verständnisses durch den erleuchtenden
Geist emporgehohen wurden, K. Gl. V 2 S. 451, or with Hollaz, Ex. theol.
1119, that Jesus naturali modo sat at table but sacramentaliter gave Himself to be eaten. For not only is there nothing of this in Scripture, but the question runs precisely about the manner in which Jesus at the first Lord's
Supper gave His body and blood to be enjoyed and may not be answered with a petitio principii. If the manner in which Romanists and Lutherans with their transand consubstantiation imagine this enjoyment of Jesus' body and blood, is excluded by the first Lord's Supper or can be maintained therewith only by an appeal to a miracle or by all manner of evasions for which Scripture offers no ground, then it ought to be abandoned by the Christian who submits to God's word. And if at the first Lord's Supper no
transor consubstantiation and no manducatio oralis took place, then it may also not be assumed at the Lord's Supper which the Christian church after Jesus' death celebrates at His command and according to His institution. 5o
Just as much as with His bodily sitting at table, the transand consubstantiation is now in conflict with His bodily ascension and with His local abode in heaven. If indeed bread and wine at the Lord's Supper are changed into Jesus' body and blood or take these into themselves, that body must descend from heaven or already, according to the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity, cf. Kübel, art. Ubiquität in Herzog2, be present everywhere beforehand. In the latter case there is nevertheless again an act needed, by which the presence of Christ's body in the Lord's Supper is brought about in a special manner, for ubiquity is of course not sufficient for that; and therefore Luther, Brenz e. a., said that it is [334] still something else, wenn
Gott da ist und wenn er dir da ist. Dann aber ist er dir da, wenn er sein Wort dazu tut und bindet sich damit an und spricht: hie sollst du mich finden, bij
Kübel, art. Ubiquität in Herzog2 16, 123. 128. The word thus effects in Rome and in Luther such a presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper, that He is not only bodily in heaven but also on earth, present in the signs of bread and wine. And this presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper is moreover then still conceived in such a way, that Christ wholly, not only according to His divine but also according to His human nature, is present in every Lord's Supper, where and when it is celebrated; that He with His entire divine and human nature is present in each sign of the Lord's Supper, indeed in each particle of the bread and in each drop of the wine, totus in tota hostia et in qualibet parte. This now is an endless multiplication of Christ, which is in direct conflict with the doctrine of Scripture concerning His human nature, concerning His ascension and
concerning His abode in heaven. For certainly that human nature at the resurrection and the ascension is glorified but therefore not deprived of its essential properties of finitude and limitation, part III 414v. Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper precisely for His remembrance, because He goes away and soon will no longer be bodily with His disciples, as He elsewhere also expressly declares, Mt. 26:11. And at the ascension He went away and was taken up, Hd. 1:9-11, into heaven, which is a place, Joh. 14:2, 4, 17:24, Hd.
7:56, Col. 3:1, Ef. 4:10, Hebr. 7:26, to remain there until His parousie, Hd.
1:11, Phil. 3:20, 1 Thess. 1:10, 4:16. 6o But even if Christ were bodily and locally present in the Lord's Supper, one does not see to what this is necessary and serviceable. The benefit of the manducatio oralis is in no way to be demonstrated, cf. Köstlin, Luthers' Theol. II 516. Suppose even that we with the bodily mouth eat Jesus' own body, what benefit do we have from that? It is after all in the Lord's Supper a matter of this, that our soul, that our spiritual life, is nourished and strengthened. And this cannot by the nature of the case occur through the eating of Christ's body with the bodily mouth; for what we thereby eat passes partly into constituents of our body and is partly cast out. Newer theologians [335] have therefore come upon the thought that the manducatio oralis of Christ's body planted in us the germ of a new, of a resurrection body. But this conception runs wholly against Scripture and is the fruit of a false theosophy. Yet, if this fruit is not connected with the eating of Christ's body, there is no other to be indicated.
The manducatio oralis is useless and vain and in the ground, however much one combats it, Capernaite. The Capernaïtes could imagine no other eating of Jesus' flesh than with the bodily mouth, Joh. 6:41, 52. And even though
Romanists and Lutherans do indeed assume a spiritual eating of Jesus' body, they nevertheless connect this with, they nevertheless make it
dependent on, the bodily eating, without making the manner of that connection or the nature of that dependence in the least clear. Jesus, however, in the whole discourse which He holds against the Capernaïtes, intended nothing other than a spiritual eating, an eating by faith, and makes no mention for a moment of a bodily eating.
All the objections mentioned here apply to both Roman and Lutheran doctrine; against the former, moreover, the following are added. 7o
Transubstantiation is decisively contradicted by the testimony of our senses, by sight and touch, by smell and taste. And our senses have the right to have a say here, because bread and wine fall within their range and can and may be judged by them. They are also, if they observe accurately, just as trustworthy here as elsewhere, because otherwise sceptical nominalism stands at the door and all certainty of faith and of science disappears. Rome, too, must therefore yield to their testimony, but has devised the notion that the substantia changes and the accidentia remain the same. How this is to be conceived remains unanswered. At Cana the water became wine, but in such a way that substance and accidents changed. Accidents also cannot be thought of as separated from the substance and as resting in themselves, for then they cease to be accidents and themselves become substances.
Moreover, in the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper all accidents remain unchanged, both those perceived by smell and taste and those perceived by sight and touch; weight, solidity, colour, perishability, nutritive power, etc., everything remains; what then remains for the substance that can change and has changed? 8o Transubstantiation conflicts with the pair of signs that Jesus ordained at the Lord's Supper. Although even earlier, sometimes in the administration of the Lord's Supper in private homes, to the sick, to prisoners, to anachoretes, to virgines abstemiae, and in missis
praesanctificatorum only the sign of the bread was distributed, and conversely to minors, as still now in the Greek church, only the wine was administered; yet only since the twelfth century did the custom come into vogue of withholding the cup from the laity, and only the council at Constance in 1415 elevated this custom to ecclesiastical law. In spite of the opposition that was waged against it by the Hussites and the Reformminded, the council of Trent also attached its approval to the withholding of the cup and was led thereto gravibus et justis causis, Sess. 21. The synod does not enumerate these reasons, but they are nevertheless easy to surmise.
Apart from the reluctance of some to drink with others from one cup, the aversion to wine, the danger of spilling and thus dishonouring the sacrament, etc., the Roman church was moved to this withholding of the cup especially by the desire to elevate the priestly estate above the laity, and by the conviction that each sign and each part of it had been changed into the whole Christ, Oswald, Die dogm. Lehre v. d. h. Sakr. I 501.
Transubstantiation makes a second sign in the Lord's Supper entirely superfluous; in the bread alone and even in the smallest piece of it the whole substance of grace is already contained. Thereby the Roman church comes into conflict with a direct command of Christ, Mt. 26:27, against which its appeal to the conjunction ἠ in 1 Cor. 11:27 avails nothing, and at the same time, according to its own confession, with the custom of the Christian church in the first centuries. It knows how to defend itself only with the assertion that it possesses power to proceed in the distribution of the sacraments as it sees fit, Trid. sess. 21 c. 2. Conversely, the institution of the Lord's Supper under two signs is a strong proof that transubstantiation is not the doctrine of Scripture. Together, after all, they set before our eyes the crucified Christ and communicate Him to believers, not in a bodily but
in a spiritual manner, not in and under but at the same time with the signs; together they form one sacrament, as images and pledges of the one spiritual good, communion with Christ and his benefits.
9o Transubstantiation is finally also refuted by the idolatrous practices that have followed it. Even if the mass is prepared by the idea of sacrifice and priesthood, which was already early brought into connection with the Lord's Supper, it is nevertheless essentially built on the doctrine of transubstantiation first worked out in the Middle Ages. And this is equally presupposed by the asservatio, adoratio and circumgestio. Through the doctrine of the change of essence the Lord's Supper has passed over into the mass, and thereby has been wholly and entirely deprived of its original character. Although the communio, despite all kinds of restriction, has continued to exist, the mass has nevertheless become the centre of Roman worship. It is therefore nothing less than the most complete elaboration of the Roman thought that the church with its priesthood is the mediatrix of salvation, the God-man continually realising himself on earth. In the mass
Christ always and again and again repeats his offering on the cross; He offers himself therein essentially and truly, even if in an unbloody manner, and thereby effects with God that the fruits of his offering on the cross, which were acquired there only wholly in general and in the abstract, are now applied, cf. Trid. 22 c. 1, to all who live in the communion of the church, whether on earth or in purgatory, whether they are present at the mass or absent, whether they desire it for themselves or for others, for spiritual or bodily need, for forgiveness of sins and for the prevention or averting of sickness and accident, drought and flooding, war and cattle plague, etc. That is what Rome has made of the Lord's Supper of our Lord
Jesus Christ! Of grounds, which with such an important doctrine as the
mass ought to be present in abundance and unshakably firm, there is a complete and total lack. In Gen. 14:18, where Melchizedek offers Abraham bread and wine for refreshment, there is not a word about an offering, even though there follows immediately, not: for, but: and he (Melchizedek) was a priest of the most high God. Mal. 1:11 perhaps does not even deal with the future; but even if this is the case, this passage only describes in Old Test. forms that the Lord's name will be great among the Gentiles and that incense and a pure offering (ִמְנָחה, offering-gift in general) will be brought to him; and these forms are in the N. T. precisely replaced by prayer and by the spiritual offering of believers, Rom. 12:1. At the institution of the Lord's
22:19, but that Jesus thereby instituted the Lord's Supper as a sacrifice and elevated the disciples to priests is not in the least included in these words and is certainly not proved thereby, that the Hebr. עׂשה and the Lat. facere are sometimes used in the sense of offering. In 1 Cor. 10:21 Paul sets the table of the Lord over against the table of demons; but because the table of demons was an altar, it by no means follows from this that the table of the Lord is also an altar on which sacrifice must be offered. These are the principal and strongest proofs which the Romanists can adduce from Scripture for their doctrine of the mass. And scarcely stronger is their appeal to the church fathers, for they forget in doing so that these, applying the idea of sacrifice to the Lord's Supper, attached to it a wholly different sense than Rome later connected with it. And over against all these apparent arguments stands a series of proofs that place the unscriptural character of the mass in the clearest light. To the institution and the celebration of the Lord's Supper customary in the apostolic church everything that resembles the mass is utterly foreign. The eternity of Christ's priesthood, Hebr. 5:6,
7:17, 21-25, and the perfection of his sacrifice on the cross, Hebr. 7:27, 9:12, 28, 10:10, 12, 14 make a, even if unbloody, repetition of his selfoffering superfluous and unlawful; all benefits of grace, forgiveness, sanctification, redemption, the whole salvation, have been acquired by the offering on the cross and can neither need nor be supplemented. Indeed, because Christ once offered himself on the cross and surrendered himself in death, He cannot even do this a second time; his offering in death is not susceptible of repetition, Hebr. 9:26-28. His priestly activity does indeed continue in heaven, but nevertheless does not consist in any propitiatory offering but in his intercession and appearance before God's face on behalf of his people, Hebr. 7:25, 9:24; and in that intercession and appearance before God's face the offering accomplished on the cross always continues to work for the benefit of his own. Because Christ himself lives in heaven to pray for believers and in that intercession lets his offering continue to work, therefore there is no place for the repetition of his offering on earth, deel III 419v. His state of exaltation, his elevation above all suffering, pain and death, his royal dominion as head of the congregation are in direct conflict with a sacrificium propitiatorium and impetratorium, which He would still have to offer on earth every day and in thousands of places. However much
Rome may assert that the unbloody offering does not weaken the bloody one on the cross but makes it effective, in fact it is nevertheless a denial of the only offering on the cross; for a sacrifice that does nothing other than let one enjoy the fruits of another sacrifice is a palpable absurdity. If the offering on the cross is sufficient, others are superfluous; if these are necessary, the first is imperfect. And this is confirmed by Roman practice; the attention of the believer is diverted from Christ and his cross and directed toward the priest and his mass. For the least grace the Roman
Christian is dependent on the priest and on the church. He cannot do without them for a moment. In theory it is maintained that Christ has acquired all grace; but in practice grace is allotted successively, in bits and pieces, by the priest. The Lord's Supper has in the hands of Rome become a tremendum mysterium, which keeps believers in the state of minority, binds them for their whole life and well-being to the hierarchical priesthood and makes them kneel down in idolatrous adoration before a God of their own making. Cf. against the doctrine of transand consubstantiation: Calvijn,
Inst. IV 18. Beza, Tract. theol. I 211 sq. 507 sq. III 148 sq. Martyr, Loci Comm. IV c. 12. Ursinus op Heid. Cat. 78-80 en Tract. theol. 359-596.
Chamier, Panstr. Cath. IV l. 6. Amesius, Bellarminus enervatus l. IV.
Rivetus, Op. III 339-376. Turretinus, Theol. El. XIX qu. 21. M. Vitringa VIII 769. Art. Messe e. a. in Herzog2. Hase, Prot. Polemik5 488-535 enz.
7. Even better than the Lutherans, the Reformed have purified the Lord's Supper from the Roman admixtures and restored it to its original meaning.
The Lord's Supper was, according to the institution of Christ, a meal, an essential meal, in which bread and wine were used as food and drink for the strengthening of the body, and above all served as signs and seals for the exercise of communion with the crucified Christ. [340] It is an ordinary, natural but at the same time an extraordinary, spiritual meal, in which Christ, the host, offers his own crucified body and shed blood as nourishment for our souls. Therefore, in that meal, which Christ has instituted, everything is important; nothing in it is without meaning; everything has a deep sense. In the first place, the signs of bread and wine are not chosen arbitrarily but are pre-eminently suitable to give us an idea of the spiritual food and drink which Christ in his death has prepared for our souls. In the second place, all the actions are significant which Jesus
performs at the institution of the Lord's Supper. He does not take the bread and the wine, as earlier at the Passover, from the hand of others, δεξαμενος,
Luk. 22:17, but He takes them himself from the table, λαβων, vs. 19, as proof that He is the host and disposes the food and the drink. He blesses
(εὐλογησας, Mt. 26:26, Mk. 14:22, alternating with respect to the cup with εὐχαριστησας, Mt. 26:27, Mk. 14:23, while Luk. 22:19, 20 and Paul, 1 Cor.
11:24, 25 have only εὐχαριστησας) the bread and later likewise the cup; under that blessing it is not to be understood that Christ asks from God a blessing over bread and wine, but the interchange with εὐχαριστησας proves that Jesus blesses God, i.e. praises and thanks for the gifts that have been bestowed by Him. The content of that praise and thanksgiving is not mentioned, but certainly did have reference to the gifts of creation, represented in bread and wine, and further especially to the gifts of grace, which would be acquired by the death of Christ and were offered to the disciples in his body and blood. By that thanksgiving already, bread and wine were set apart from common use and destined for a higher purpose, and at the same time the disciples were prepared for a right understanding of the significant words, this is my body etc., which Jesus would presently utter by way of explanation. Further, Jesus broke the bread, in which the Reformed rightly saw an action which, though not belonging to the essentia yet did belong to the integritas sacramenti; for not only is this breaking mentioned in all four accounts, but the whole Lord's Supper is named from it, Hd. 2:42; just as the breaking of the bread is necessary in order to make it enjoyable for the guests, so Christ must give his body in death, in order that it may be food for our souls, Joh. 6:51, 12:24. Finally, Jesus himself distributes the bread and the wine to his disciples, so that they would eat and drink thereof; He does it with the explicit words: λαβετε, φαγετε, πιετε
ἐξ αὐτου παντες, which most strongly condemn the Roman mass without communicants; the communio belongs to the essence of the Lord's Supper.
In the third place, the words are important which Jesus speaks at the distribution of bread and wine; when He gave the bread to his disciples, He said: this is my body, which is given for you, Luk. 22:19; and in handing the cup He said: this cup is my covenant blood, or the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you or for many for the forgiveness of sins. That these words possess a consecratory, operative power finds absolutely no support in the text of the accounts. But after Jesus, by the thanksgiving, has set apart bread and wine from common use, destined them for a higher purpose, and prepared his disciples, He now speaks the words: this is my body and blood. He does not say: let this bread become my body; He does not command and order, but He declares and explains. For it is a symbolic action that He performs; a spiritual meal that He institutes. And of that meal his body and blood, as it is given over in death, is the food and the drink.
All the signs, actions, and words in the Lord's Supper are directed thereto, that they point our faith to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, as to the only ground of our salvation. Yet for that reason the Lord's Supper does not dissolve into a meal in remembrance of Christ and his benefits. Under the signs of bread and wine Jesus in fact gives his own body and blood to be enjoyed; the Lord's Supper table brings about a true communion between Christ and the believers, a communion not only in the benefits but also and before all in the person of Christ, both according to his human and according to his divine nature.
On the reality of that communion there is, between Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Christians, no difference; in this respect they stand together arrayed against Zwingli. But they do differ among themselves
concerning the nature of that communion and concerning the manner in which it is enjoyed in the Lord's Supper. [342] Roman Catholics and Lutherans think that it cannot truly and fully come into being otherwise, unless they cause Christ to descend bodily from heaven to earth and eat and drink his body and blood, not only spiritually, but also with the bodily mouth. Over against this Calvin from the beginning onward and always again anew has laid the emphasis on the fact that the communion of believers with Christ, also according to his human nature, is spiritual in character, and that it comes into being, not because Christ descends bodily downward, but because we spiritually lift up our hearts upward to heaven, where Jesus Christ is, our advocate, at the right hand of his heavenly Father.
And this doctrine rests on Scripture and accords with the character of the N.
T. dispensation. For 1o the communion of Christ and believers is indeed so intimate and indissoluble that it is almost not to be expressed in any words and can be clarified only under images, such as of head and body, vine and branch, bridegroom and bride, to some extent. But it is nevertheless no pantheistic mixing or identification, no overflowing of substance, no unity of essence as of the three persons in the Trinity, no personal union as of the two natures in Christ. Christ and believers remain distinct; their personality is maintained; the unio mystica is a union of persons, be it then also not only according to their will and disposition, but also according to their being and nature. 2o This communion is effected by the H. Spirit, who dwells in Christ as the head and in believers as his members. There is no other way to become partaker of that communion. A physical union, such as transand consubstantiation with the manducatio oralis connected therewith wishes to bring about, is wholly vain and useless. Only the H. Spirit, who is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, can so unite human beings with
Christ that they have part in his person and benefits and are not to be separated from Him by any death or grave, by any world or satan. And therefore that communion is also always spiritual in character. It does indeed also include the human nature of Christ and believers according to their bodies. For Christ as mediator is not to be conceived without his human nature and He purchased believers not only according to their soul but also according to their body. Yet the union remains spiritual [343] in character, because it comes into being only through the H. Spirit. 3o The communion with Christ, which is strengthened in the Lord's Supper, is no other than that which also comes into being through the means of grace of the word. The sacrament adds no grace at all to that which is offered in the word; it only strengthens and confirms what has been accepted from the word by faith. When Roman Catholics and Lutherans therefore object that the communion with Christ in the Lord's Supper according to the Reformed conception is no true communion with the very body and blood of Christ, then against this it need only be remarked that the communion, assured in the Lord's Supper, is no other and cannot be other than that through the word. In exactly the same way as the human being is incorporated into Christ by faith, he is also strengthened and confirmed in that communion by the Lord's Supper. There is no other, higher communion. Whoever believes the word becomes Christ's property according to body and soul; and whoever receives the Lord's Supper in faith is assured and certified thereof.
The sacrament bestows no other grace but bestows the same grace, for the strengthening of faith, only in another manner. 4o Also among the Reformed, therefore, Christ is indeed truly and essentially, with his divine and human nature, present in the Lord's Supper, yet in no other manner than
He is present in the gospel. He is not bodily enclosed in bread and wine any
more than in the proclaimed word, but whoever accepts the sign in faith receives according to the ordinance of God true communion with the whole
Christ. Not in and under, but with the sign Christ bestows the thing signified, that is, himself with all his benefits. For while among Roman
Catholics and Lutherans grace is something thing-like and passive, which is even received bodily by the unbeliever, among the Reformed it is the personal, living Christ himself, who in the Lord's Supper communicates himself as spiritual food to believers, Müller, Dogm. Abh. 458. Present, therefore, according to the Reformed in the Lord's Supper He is not less, but much more strongly and truly than according to Rome and Luther, for He is present, not physically, locally within the signs but spiritually, as the acting Christ himself, in the hearts of believers, Aliud est praesentem
Christi substantiam, ut nos vivificet, in pane sistere; [344] aliud vivificam esse Christi carnem, quia ex ejus substantia vita in animas nostras profluit,
Calvijn, adv. Westph. bij Müller 443 cf. Conf. Angl. 28 en Ryle, Knots untied 235-254. 5o Therefore faith is an indispensable requirement for the reception of the sacrament. The truth of the sacrament does indeed not depend on that faith. For just as with the word, God has bound himself with the Lord's Supper to truly bestow Christ and his benefits upon everyone who believes. But the unbeliever naturally receives only the sign, just as with the word he hears only the sounds and does not become partaker of the thing itself that is indicated thereby. In order to obtain part in the promises and benefits of word and sacrament, therefore, an operation of the H. Spirit in the heart of the human being is necessary; and it is precisely this operation of the Spirit that outside of and in the Lord's Supper brings about and maintains the communion with Christ. 6o The benefits that are enjoyed in the Lord's Supper are easily to be derived from this. In the foreground
stands the strengthening of the communion with Christ. The believer is already partaker of that communion through faith and receives in the Lord's
Supper no other than that which he already enjoys through faith. But when Christ himself through the hand of the minister gives him under the signs of bread and wine his body to eat and his blood to drink, then by the H. Spirit he is strengthened and confirmed in that communion, and always more intimately united according to body and soul with the whole Christ both according to his divine and according to his human nature. For manducatio corporis Christi nihil aliud est, quam arctissima cum Christo conjunctio,
Junius, Theses theol. 52, 7. From baptism the Lord's Supper is in this respect distinguished, that baptism is the sacrament of incorporation, the Lord's Supper the sacrament of growth in the communion with Christ.
Through baptism we are buried with Christ in his death and raised up in his resurrection, and are thus passive; but in the Lord's Supper we ourselves appear acting, eat the body and drink the blood of Christ and thus are fed by his communion unto eternal life. But if we have part in the person of Christ, then we naturally also have it in all his benefits. Among these the forgiveness of sins is named in Scripture in the first place and with the greatest emphasis. [345] In the Lord's Supper Christ gives his body and blood as food for our souls, but that body and blood is such a food not, quia est corporea substantia, quo modo esset cibus corporalis sed quatenus corpus Christi est datum pro mundi vita, Junius t. a. p. Therefore body and blood are set before the eyes separately, each under its own sign, in the Lord's Supper. Therefore Christ says expressly that his body is given and his blood is shed for the forgiveness of sins. Therefore the meaning of the blood in the words of institution is elucidated and explained still more broadly than that of the body, for it is the blood that on the altar makes
atonement for sins. Even if Christ is now glorified, the communion that comes into being through faith and is strengthened in the Lord's Supper is and remains a communion with his crucified body and with his shed blood.
On the standpoint of transand consubstantiation this is impossible; there the dead Christ recedes behind the glorified one. But if the eating of Christ's body and the drinking of his blood is equal to intima nostri cum
Christo conjunctio, Bucanus, Inst. theol. 677, then this and every other benefit is exclusively a fruit of the death of Christ and therefore we are nourished only out of Christ because He was crucified for us. And among the benefits that Christ acquired by his death, then, the forgiveness of sins stands at the top. This benefit too is not bestowed for the first time in the Lord's Supper; for the Christian already possesses it through faith and has received thereof in baptism the sign and seal. It is therefore incorrect to distribute the different graces with Rome over the sacraments in such a way that each time in each sacrament a particular group of sins is forgiven and a particular grace is bestowed, for the forgiveness which the word, baptism, and the Lord's Supper offers us is always the same. The forgiveness which is communicated in the Lord's Supper therefore has absolutely not only reference to culpae quotidianae, to peccata venialia, Trid. sess. 13 c. 2. 22 c.
1. But it is the same full, rich benefit of forgiveness which is offered in the word, is accepted by faith, and is signified and sealed by the sacrament of baptism and the Lord's Supper. With this benefit it clearly comes out that the sacrament adds no new grace at all to the word; it gives the same grace only, for the sake of our weakness, in another manner, so that we might firmly believe and be healed of all doubt. With this benefit of forgiveness comes that of eternal life. The Lord's Supper is a spiritual meal, where
Christ feeds our souls with his crucified body and shed blood. The eating
and drinking thereof serves for the strengthening of the spiritual, eternal life, for whoever eats the flesh of the Son of man and drinks his blood has eternal life and is raised up at the last day, Joh. 6:54. It clearly appears from this that eternal life is a benefit that is bestowed upon the whole human being, not only according to his soul but also according to his body.
Wrongly some have derived from this that from Christ's body, which is enjoyed in the Lord's Supper, a direct operation proceeds upon our body, so that this is healed of all manner of sickness and weakness and in principle is re-created into a new resurrection body. It is understandable that especially on the Lutheran standpoint one came to this opinion; for if the manducatis oralis does not have this usefulness, it has no value at all. Yet the H.
Scripture teaches nothing concerning this. In 1 Cor. 11:30 Paul does indeed say that as a consequence of the dreadful misuse of the Lord's Supper in Corinth many sicknesses and deaths occurred; but this is clearly a κριμα, vs.
29, a punishment, which God caused to occur upon this misuse of the Lord's Supper, and proves not at all that use or a believing use of the Lord's
Supper also serves for the healing of the sicknesses of the body. Moreover, Joh. 6 may indeed be used for illustration of the Lord's Supper, but does not deal with it directly; and this chapter too teaches only that whoever by faith, even without the Lord's Supper, eats Christ's flesh and drinks his blood, has eternal life and will be raised up at the last day, cf. 6:40. Absolutely therefore not only through the manducatio oralis, but in general through faith the human being becomes partaker of eternal life and the hope of the resurrection. The H. Spirit, who dwells in believers, is the surest pledge for the resurrection of the body and the day of redemption, Rom. 8:11, Ef. 1:14,
4:30. But this Spirit of Christ does then indeed make use of the Lord's Supper, in order to strengthen the believer in the hope of eternal life and of
[347] blessed resurrection at the end of days. For where the soul has been healed, there the body also has been helped, Luther bij Müller, Dogm. Abh.
419. Praesentia corporis affert non modo indubitatam vitae aeternae fiduciam animis nostris, sed de carnis etiam nostrae immortalitate securos nos reddit, siquidem ab immortali ejus carne jam vivificatur et quodammodo ejus immortalitati communicat, Calvijn, Inst. IV 17, 32, cf. also bij Ebrard, Dogm. v. h. Ab. II 460, and further Philippi, K. Gl. V 2 S.
282 f. Müller, Dogm. Abh. 417. In this sense the Lord's Supper may be called φαρμακον ἀθανασιας, Ign. Ef. 20. Finally, the Lord's Supper also serves, as a memorial celebration and proclamation of Christ's death, for confession of our faith over against the world and for strengthening the communion of believers among themselves. In 1 Cor. 10:17 the apostle argues that the bread must indeed be communion with the body of Christ, for how could otherwise believers, who considered in themselves are many, be one? That unity comes into being only because they in the one bread have communion with the one body of Christ. Believers are one in Christ and therefore also among themselves. Just as from many grains of wheat one bread is baked and from many berries, being pressed together, one wine and drink flows, so all who by true faith have been incorporated into Christ are together one body; and that they confess at the Lord's Supper over against the world, which does not know their unity.
8. Just like baptism, the Lord's Supper has been instituted only for believers. Jesus used it only with his disciples. Whether Judas was still present at it or had left the room before the institution of the Lord's Supper cannot be said with certainty. Mt. 26:21-25, Mk. 14:18-21, Joh. 13:21-35 give the impression that Judas had gone away before that time, but Luk.
22:21-23 relates the discovery of Judas as betrayer after the institution of
the Lord's Supper in vs. 19. 20. It is, however, possible that Luke does not here adhere to the chronological order. But be that as it may, the question has no dogmatic importance. If Judas partook of the Lord's Supper, then he sat down as a disciple of Jesus; that is what he was, that is how he presented himself; what he inwardly deliberated in his heart against Jesus remained for his own account. M. Vitringa VIII 347. Likewise, later the Lord's
Supper [348] was celebrated exclusively within the circle of the congregation by the believers, Hd. 2:42, 20:7. Unbelievers did indeed have access to the assembly of the congregation in which the word was administered, 1 Cor. 14:22-24, but were excluded from that in which the agapae were held and the Lord's Supper was celebrated, 1 Cor. 11:18, 20,
33. Thus it remained also when gradually in the second century the Lord's Supper was detached from the agapae and took place in the same assembly as the administration of the word in the morning. The first part was accessible to all, but the second part began only when unbelievers, catechumens, the excommunicated, etc. had been removed. In this second part of the religious service the sacraments were administered; and it was an old and widely spread custom that those who, after completion of the catechumenate, were baptized, immediately thereafter received the Lord's
Supper. When infant baptism came into use, this custom was also followed with the children and moreover urged on by the prevailing exegesis of Joh.
6:53, according to which this verse applied to the Lord's Supper and this sacrament was therefore just as necessary to salvation as baptism. In the West, however, this custom, especially since the twelfth century, again fell into disuse and was gradually declared unnecessary by various synods, cf.
Trid. 21 c. 4. But in the Greek and other Eastern churches it remained in existence and even today the Lord's Supper is administered to newly
baptized children in the form of a little piece of bread dipped in wine, Art.
Kinderkommunion in Herzog2 7, 671. M. Vitringa VIII 368. 612. But the magical conception of the Lord's Supper had still worse abuses as a consequence. The original simplicity was lost amid all kinds of solemn ceremonies. Not only by self-examination, but also by fasting, washing of the hands, clothing, etc., the communicants had to prepare themselves for the Lord's Supper. The bread was first received with the bare hand, later in a linen cloth or a golden little dish, and later still, since the eleventh century, with the mouth and in a kneeling posture at the altar of the priest. The consecrated bread was not only consumed by the communicants in the church, but was also administered to the sick in their dwelling, given along to the dying as a viaticum, and considered useful for warding off all kinds of disasters and obtaining all kinds of blessings and benefits. Not only to the living but also [349] to the dead did the working of the sacrament extend. Already from of old there existed the custom to bring, not only for oneself but also for deceased relatives on their day of death, offerings and to pray for their soul. And when now the doctrine of purgatory had been established by Gregory M., the Lord's Supper was conceived as an offering of the very body and blood of Christ, and the participation of the congregation became less and less, then it soon stood fixed that the mass could effect, not only for present or absent living persons but also for the deceased in purgatory, a reduction of penances and temporal punishments,
M. Vitringa VIII 733. Herzog2 9, 623 f. All these corruptions made a return to Holy Scripture necessary, according to which the Lord's Supper is a meal, not capable of existing without guests reclining at table, and intended exclusively for believers. In order to proceed purely and to let Scripture in this respect fully come into its own, the Reformed usually posed two
questions: 1o who have a right to the Lord's Supper and must approach it, and 2o who must be admitted to the Lord's Supper by the church or must be kept away from it, Heid. Cat. 81. 82. The first question deals with the duty of the communicants, the second with the duty of the church and of its ministers. To the last question the answer was given, and according to Holy
Scripture the answer could not be otherwise than that the church had to keep away from the Lord's Supper all who, by their confession and their life, present themselves as unbelieving and ungodly people. The Lord's
Supper is a good of the church, given by Christ to his congregation and therefore to be enjoyed only by household members of the faith. The unbaptized, unbelievers, heretics, schismatics, public sinners, the excommunicated were thereby excluded of themselves. But the number of those who had a right to the Lord's Supper was restricted much more. In the first place, by the rejection of mass and purgatory, the administration of the Lord's Supper for the deceased was also abolished. In Scripture something of that sort is in fact not found with a single word. Paul does indeed speak in 1 Cor. 15:29 of such as had themselves baptized ὑπερ των νεκρων. But even if (which, however, is absolutely not proven, cf. Cremer3, 156) this passage had to be understood in such a way that at that time there were
Christians who had themselves baptized for the benefit of unbaptized deceased friends, even then the apostle makes use of this practice in no other way than [350] as a proof for the resurrection and leaves it standing without approval or disapproval. The church, at the council at Carthage 397, decisively condemned baptism for the dead, which was in use among some sects, and therefore can derive from it no argument for the administration of the Lord's Supper for the benefit of the deceased. In the second place, many
Reformed had an objection to the Lord's Supper being administered outside
the public assembly of the believers in a private dwelling to the sick and the dying, Musculus, Bullinger, Beza, Danaeus, Aretius etc., the Reformed churches of France, Scotland, the Netherlands etc. And indeed others, such as Calvin, Oecolampadius, Martyr, Zanchius, the churches of England,
Poland, Hungary etc., sometimes allowed this. But even then they nevertheless usually restricted it in such a way that a small assembly of believers had to be present and thereby every occasion for superstition was prevented or avoided, Voetius, Pol. Eccl. I 758. M. Vitringa VIII 356. Moor
V 660. In the third place, the children too are excluded from the Lord's Supper. Trent condemned only the necessity, but not the permissibility of the Lord's Supper for children. And on that standpoint, among the Reformed, Musculus also placed himself in his Loci Communes p. 471-473.
He adduced for that these grounds: that whoever possesses the thing signified also has a right to the sign; that children, who according to baptism can receive the grace of regeneration, can also without consciousness be nourished in that spiritual life; that Christ is the savior of his whole congregation, also of the children, and feeds and gives drink to them all with his body and blood; that the admonition to self-examination 1
Cor. 11:26-29 is not intended by the apostle as a general requirement. But all these grounds lose their weight over against these considerations: 1o in the O. T. there was a great difference between circumcision and passover.
Circumcision was prescribed for all children of the male sex, but the passover was celebrated, not immediately at the institution, but later in Palestine at the temple at Jerusalem; very young children were therefore of themselves excluded from it. 2o Likewise there is a great distinction between baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration, in which the human being is passive; the Lord's Supper is the
sacrament of the growing up in the communion of Christ, of the nourishment of the [351] spiritual life, and presupposes conscious, acting participation on the part of the one who receives it. 3o Christ instituted the Lord's Supper in the midst of his disciples, said to them all: take, eat, drink, and presupposes that they accept the bread and the wine from his hand. And Paul says that the congregation at Corinth came together in order to eat and gives no other impression than that only conscious, adult persons participate in the Lord's Supper. 4o In 1 Cor. 11:26-29 the apostle expressly sets the requirement that one examine oneself before the Lord's Supper, so that one may discern the body of the Lord and not eat and drink unworthily. This requirement is set quite generally, directed to all participants in the Lord's
Supper, and therefore of itself excludes the children. 5o Withholding the Lord's Supper from the children causes them to lack no single benefit of the covenant of grace. This would indeed be the case if baptism were withheld from them. For that can be done only by one who thinks that the children stand outside the covenant of grace. But with the Lord's Supper it is otherwise. Whoever administers baptism to children but not the Lord's
Supper acknowledges that they are in the covenant and partake of all its benefits. He withholds from them only a particular manner in which the same benefits are signified and sealed, because this does not suit their age.
For the Lord's Supper gives no single benefit which was not previously already bestowed in the word and baptism through faith.
This distinction between baptism and the Lord's Supper soon made a preparation for the worthy reception of the second sacrament necessary. In the apostolic time, when as a rule only adults were baptized, there was as yet no such preparation. Whoever heard and accepted the word of the gospel was immediately baptized and admitted to the Lord's Supper. But
when in the following century the transitions to Christianity became more numerous but also less reliable, the catechumenate gradually arose, which at first had to prepare for baptism and later, after infant baptism became general, for the Lord's Supper. In the Roman church this preparation gradually passed entirely into the sacrament of confirmation, which developed out of the laying on of hands originally connected with baptism and associated itself with an anointing. The Reformation rejected this sacrament, because it had no ground in Scripture, and put in its place [352] catechesis and the public confession, cf. Höfling, Das Sakr. der Taufe II 347 f. Bachmann, Die Gesch. der Einführung der Confirmation, Berlin 1852.
Caspari, Die evang. Confirmation vornehmlich in der luth. K. Erl. 1890.
Art. in Herzog2 8, 143. Thereby the transition was made from baptism to the Lord's Supper and the church at the same time preserved from degeneration. Calvin wished that, when a child had been sufficiently instructed in the catechism, it should publicly in the congregation make confession of its faith, in Bachmann t. a. p. 70. à Lasco desired that children who had become fourteen years old should make confession before the congregation and on the following Sunday go to the Lord's Supper; but those who lived badly were admonished and finally, in the case of continued obstinacy, at eighteen or twenty years of age cut off from the congregation, ib. 115. The Dutch Church Orders likewise prescribe a confession before the consistory or in the midst of the congregation, and sometimes still speak of a preceding examination before the consistory.
This theory ran pure: the children of believers are baptized as believers, then instructed in the truth, upon sufficient examination and after public confession admitted to the Lord's Supper or, in the case of unchristian doctrine or disorderly walk, after repeated admonition removed from the
congregation. According to this doctrine our ecclesiastical life is still to be arranged, even though it at every moment runs up against objections of practice. For pietism and rationalism are always inclined to separate what
God has joined together and, with contempt for the sacrament, to lay the emphasis on personal conversion or on ecclesiastical acceptance or confirmation. But the rule of the covenant is this, that the church raise up her youthful members, who are born as children of the covenant and by baptism are incorporated into her, to independent, personal confession and on that ground admit them to the Lord's Supper. Concerning the heart she does not judge and cannot judge. While she thus on the one hand keeps away from the Lord's Supper all who by confession or life present themselves as unbelieving and godless people, on the other hand she never desists from the earnest preaching that the Lord's Supper is instituted only for those who, because of their sins, are displeased with themselves, nevertheless trust that these are forgiven them for Christ's sake, and also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and to amend their life.
CHAPTER XI. On the Last Things.
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