Chapter 5: The Lord’s Supper
1. Under the old dispensation, what corresponded to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper?
The Passover. For its archeological particulars, one may consult biblical archeology. Here we only have to do with its dogmatic meaning as a sacrament.
2. From how many points of view can the Passover be considered?
Primarily from four:
a)As a sacramental meal of remembrance.
b)As a sacrifice with a sacramental character.
c)As a sacramental meal.
d)As a harvest feast.
3. To what extent was the Passover a sacramental meal of remembrance?
As we can see from Exodus 12:1–13, 21–23, 28, 43–51, the Passover was instituted at the liberation of the people out of Egypt. Thus it is a meal of remembrance of that, and when the children ask, “What do you mean by this service?” then the answer must be: “This is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt,” etc. (Exod 12:26–27). But we may not conclude from this that it was solely a memorial meal, tied to that fact as a historical fact. Rather, that fact itself had significance as a type. The liberation out of Egypt was a picture of liberation out of the slavery house of sin. In this way the memorial meal at the same becomes time a sacrament, for in the historical liberation out of Egypt Israel could not see anything else portrayed than the spiritual liberation that would be achieved by the Messiah. The name Pascha, then, refers to this, an Aramaic form of the Hebrew pesach, “overlooking” or “rescuing.” God says (Exod 12:13): “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” There was therefore in the Passover a sign and seal of God’s pardoning mercy. The firstborn of the Egyptians were struck down, but Israel was delivered from this and other punitive judgments, although Israel also certainly had deserved death.
4. In what respect was the Passover a sacrifice?
Although against the Roman Catholics the Reformed have sometimes disputed that the Passover was a sacrifice, one can nevertheless not deny that they were mistaken in this. They feared putting a weapon in the hands of Roman Catholics for defending their mass, which is a sacrifice. But wrongly. That the sacrament under the old dispensation was a sacrifice does not entitle one to the conclusion that it is so now. Christ is the only true sacrifice. The sacrifices of the Jews were only shadowy sacrifices. When the body came, the shadow ceased [cf. Col 2:17]. Therefore we now no longer have sacrifices. But the Passover lamb is certainly a sacrificial lamb in completely the same sense in which all the Old Testament sacrifices were sacrifices. As a sacrifice, it is a type. And since the sacrifices reminded that the true sacrifice was still to come and still had to be brought, so too did the Passover lamb. It portrayed the only sacrifice of the covenant Surety, but then as one that was still to come; hence also the bloody character of this sacrifice. With circumcision there was also blood. But with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, now that the true blood has flowed, there is no longer shedding of blood.
That the Passover was a sacrifice appears clear. In fact, it is called a Passover sacrifice (Exod 12:27). It is not so easy to decide what kind of a sacrifice it was. Some say a thank offering, others a sin offering, and still others a peace offering. Keil says it unites the meaning of the later sin and thank offerings; this appears to be correct. The meal reminds of the thank offering, of the sin offering, though not the offerer. But what was otherwise unconnected was here kept separate. The sacrifice upon which sin was put could still be eaten; it was still declared by God to be clean and holy. It is so with Christ too. As a surety He was fully a sinner, and yet He emerged from that sin-bearing completely clean, without sin, so that He could be true food for the soul. In the Passover, the sacrifice precedes the meal and leads to the meal. The suffering and the self-sacrifice of Christ form the basis on which fellowship with Him by faith is based.
The Passover lamb had a definite relationship to the household. The father of the house had to obtain it for his family. In Egypt (after that no longer) the blood had to be spread on the posts and the lintel of the door. And the father of the house himself had to do that. So in a certain sense, he was a priest. Later in Palestine, however, the blood was sprinkled on the altar by the priests.
5. What was the meaning of the Passover as a sacrificial meal?
The Passover lamb had to be eaten. It came to the table in its entirety. No bone in it could be broken. Also it was not boiled in water, but roasted or grilled. It is not possible to state with certainty the meaning of all these things, but without doubt all these features point to the unity of the church, which is grounded in the unity of Christ. That is why, as well, the Passover lamb may not be divided.
If it was not possible for one household to eat it all, more households could join together. Nothing of the meat could be taken outside the house. What was left had to be destroyed. Always eating the same meal already indicated a certain fellowship, but this comes out here very strongly in the eating of the one unbroken lamb. Further, the eating of the lamb had to take place with bitter herbs. On this point, the commemoration recalling Egypt and the general sacramental meaning coalesce. Without doubt the bitter herbs referred to the bitter Egyptian slavery (Exod 1:14). But that was not all. The bitterness of sin in the sinful life was thereby portrayed, and the thought that therefore resides in this is that eating of the meal of God’s grace is associated with eating of the bitterness of sin, that repentance accompanies faith.
For the Passover meal one must distinguish between what is based on a direct divine command and what on human authority was added to it later. According to divine command, the food consists of meat and bread. These are, at least for sinful man, ordinary foodstuffs. The bread had to be unleavened bread. This referred, for one thing, to the hasty exodus out of Egypt (Deut 16:3: “For you came out of the land of Egypt in haste”); for another, it also had a deeper symbolic meaning. The yeast (although also occurring with the opposite significance) is still in general a symbol of corruption. It is what is old, what must be purged from man (1 Cor 5:8; Matt 16:6, 12). That the Israelites were fed here with unleavened bread indicated as well how the new life, which was nourished sacramentally by God, was no longer a life of sin and corruption but a holy life in which sin could no longer have dominion.
Later, other features were added to these. These added features are therefore of importance, since they are connected with the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and so after the fact received a certain sanction from Christ. A cup of wine was poured at the beginning of the Passover and blessed with a prayer of thanksgiving by the father of the home. Then they drank from it one by one. After this, hands were washed and they ate some of the bitter herbs, while a passage was read out loud. Then a second cup of wine was poured. The son asked about the purpose of the meal; the father explained it to him (Exod 12:26–27). The Hallel was sung, as well as Psalms 113 and 114, after which the second cup was drunk. Only then came the actual meal. At its conclusion the father of the house washed his hands, thanked God, and took a third cup. This was also blessed and was called “the cup of blessing” par excellence (1 Cor 10:16). Finally, after this third cup was emptied by the guests, a fourth cup was poured. Again, the Hallel and Psalms 115–118 were sung. The father blessed this fourth cup with the words of Psalm 118:26, and one drank from it. Altogether, then, there were four cups.
It was not necessary that wine appear as a sign and seal in the Passover, for the Passover lamb called to mind directly the shed, the sprinkled blood. When, with the dispensation of the shadows, the Passover lamb as well fell away and only the thing signified, “our Passover lamb,” Christ, remained, it became necessary that there also be a visible sign for this aspect. Christ then linked Himself with the use of the cup just described. He took that cup from the Passover meal and made it to be the cup of the Lord’s Supper.
In the meal, Jehovah is the host. The father of the house, who leads, does priestly work, appears on behalf of Jehovah. Those sitting at the table are Jehovah’s guests. This appears most clearly from the fact that later the Passover is not killed and eaten in everyone’s house but in the sanctuary, thus in the place where Jehovah dwelt and to which He called and invited the people to Himself. Only those who were Levitically clean could sit at His table; the uncircumcised, who did not belong to God’s covenant people, were excluded. For the concept of the table, compare what the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 10:14–21.
6. Was the Passover also a harvest feast?
Yes, already before the institution of the actual Passover Israel celebrated a spring feast that was related to the natural benefits of God. This was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, to be celebrated from the 15th to the 21st of Abib or Nisan. On the second feast day, the 16th, the sheaf of the firstfruits of the new harvest was offered. On the first and the seventh feast days there were solemn gatherings of the congregation. All yeast had to be removed from houses and from within its borders. The name Passover was also given to this feast, as well as to the sacrifices that were offered at the feast (cf. Deut 16:2; Luke 22:1). This Feast of Unleavened Bread, in the meantime, also had a national-historical significance. It pointed back to the liberation out of Egypt and, to that extent, forward to the liberation that would be accomplished by Christ. In Egypt, Israel had begun its new existence. That was a type of the spiritual and holy existence of the people of God. And the fact that the feast commemorating that liberation was associated with the harvest by which the natural life of Israel was nourished, indicated in a tangible manner how the natural and the spiritual must permeate each other, how the former must also be sanctified by the latter. The creation and the re-creation are joined with each other here in the most intimate connection.
7. Does the second sacrament of the new dispensation have a specific fixed name like the first?
No, the name “baptism” is fixed and is also retained by everyone. With the Lord’s Supper it is otherwise. There are various names in use for it, by which sometimes the theoretical view one has of this sacrament is clearly reveals itself. The most common are:
a)“The Lord’s Supper” (Deipnon Kyriakon). It is called a “supper” because it was instituted and celebrated for the first time in the evening. This of course is connected with the institution of the Passover as a sacramental meal, which had to be partaken of in the evening (Exod 12:8). Also, meals in the temples of idols were generally called “evening meals” by pagans since they were generally eaten in the evening. And in Middle Eastern lands the evening meal was the principal meal, otherwise than with us. That it was eaten in the evening is therefore not essential for the Lord’s Supper. It is called the Lord’s Supper because the Lord Christ, the institutor, is the thing signified, the object of this sacrament.
b)“The table of the Lord” (trapeza kyriou, 1 Cor 10:21). This is to be understood as a metonym. The table stands for everything that belongs to it and is used from it. The table of the Lord stands in opposition to the table of idols. Evidently, then, it is the table at which people have fellowship with the Lord and realize a close unity of life with Him and witness to that realization (cf. v. 20). By eating in the temple of idols, the Corinthians would have witnessed to desiring to have fellowship with idols.
c)“The breaking of bread” (klasis tou artou). Some wish to have this refer exclusively to the Lord’s Supper. It is, however, likely that wherever it occurs in the New Testament what is meant is the communal love feast plus the Lord’s Supper that followed it. In the apostolic church, then, these two meals were regularly celebrated together, so that the one inevitably turned into the other (Acts 2:42; 20:7, 11; 27:36).
d)“Thanksgiving,” “Blessing” (Eucharist, Eulogia). The apostle says, “The cup of thanksgiving that we bless with thanksgiving” (1 Cor 10:16). Here the apostle alludes to the blessing that is pronounced over the cup and by which it is set apart for sacramental use. “To bless” means “to devote,” for by the blessing that comes upon something, it is intended for something. Eucharistein is something else again. It is said of Christ that, both before distributing the cup and before dispensing the bread, He “gave thanks” (Luke 22:17, 19; Mark 1:23; Matt 23:27; 1 Cor 11:24). This was a thanksgiving that to a certain extent recalled the thanksgiving or the prayer of thanks in the Passover meal. Over the third cup was indeed said: “Blessed are you, O God, our eternal King, who has caused its fruit to come forth from the earth, who has made the fruit of the vine.” There is thus a double blessing, a blessing of God and a blessing of the sign.
e)The terms mentioned thus far have a scriptural origin. But there are also others: for example, synaxis, “bringing together,” because the sacrament is administered in the public gathering of the church; leitourgia, “ministry,” because it constitutes a part of the ministry of what is holy; thusia, “offering,” in the first period of the church, not because the Lord’s Supper was considered to be a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ, but because at the occasion of the celebration one brought an offering of charity through his alms or also gave bread and wine.
The word mysterium [“mystery”], which stood for secret, religious ceremonies and for the sacraments in general, was also applied to the Lord’s Supper in particular.
Finally, the word “mass” (missa), used by the Latins. Missa is originally nothing other than the word that was spoken to dismiss the gathering. “After the sermon,” Augustine says, “let the catechumens be dismissed; the believers shall remain.” These catechumens should not be present for the sacrament and the sacrifice connected to it. After the celebration of the sacrament, the believers were also dismissed, and the minister said: “Ite, missa est” [“Go, dismissal is made”]. It is not difficult to see how the word “mass” naturally had to transfer onto the ceremony that was closed by two such “masses” [“sendings”].
We note that the word “communion” is taken from 1 Corinthians 10:16: “The cup of thanksgiving that in giving thanks we bless, is it not fellowship (communion) in the blood of Christ?”
8. In the first period in the Christian church, what was associated with the Lord’s Supper?
The love feast, the so-called agape. This was an ordinary meal at which food was eaten and at the same time witness given to the unity of all believers in the Lord. The Passover meal, the pagan sacrificial meals, had their influence here; also the custom of gathering together in a house of one of the brothers supported this practice. Paul speaks explicitly about these love feasts in 1 Corinthians. Initially they preceded the celebration of the Lord’s Supper itself. Later, it appears, it was determined, in order to prevent abuse, that the Lord’s Supper must come first and only then the love feast. Indeed, already in Corinth the situation had occurred that people, hungry or drunken from eating the agape, proceeded to the celebration of the holy sacrament of the Lord. Paul alludes to this when he says that a man must examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
9. Where is the institution of the Lord’s Supper described for us?
We find it described in the first three Evangelists, Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and again separately in the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11. John speaks of eating the Lord’s Supper before the Passover (13:1–2 and following), but not of the institution of the sacrament.
First of all, we observe that the cup of Luke 22:17 is not yet the cup of the Lord’s Supper but the cup of the Passover meal, probably the first of the four. Jesus says: “Take this, and distribute it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” It has been asked whether the Lord first let the entire Passover meal run its course in order then to replace it with the new institution, or whether He has let the one flow into the other. The latter is certainly the most probable. The Passover meal will have transitioned imperceptibly into the sacrament. In the hands of the Lord, the sacrament of the old dispensation changed, as it were, into the sacrament of the new dispensation. According to Luke (22:20) and Paul (1 Cor 11:25), Jesus took the cup of the Lord’s Supper after eating, that is, after eating the Passover meal (meta to deipnēsai). This also involves then that the taking, the breaking, the distributing of the bread, took place during the Passover meal. Now we have seen above how the eating of the Passover meal took place between the second and the third cup. So it will have been the third cup that was taken by Christ and made into the cup of the New Testament; compare also verse 26 in Matthew: “Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread.” Thus, that part of the Passover meal that followed the third cup was of itself omitted here.
In the words of institution, as they are given by the three evangelists, agreement in substance prevails, with some differences in form. As to their completeness, more or less, we can maintain that the four complement each other. Concerning the small difference in form, one must bear in mind that in inspiring Scripture, the Spirit of God could render the words of the Lord in various ways, according to what appeared useful to Him, without the meaning really having been changed. When we take everything together, we get: “Take, eat; this is my body, which is given/broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
And with the cup: “Drink of it, all of you. For this is my blood, the blood of the new covenant (or This cup is the new covenant in my blood), which is poured out for many/you for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
It is certain that Paul, too, received the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, not by tradition but directly by revelation from the Lord, as that was the case with his gospel in general (cf. 1 Cor 11:23; Gal 1:13).
Before the Lord said these things with respect to the bread, He “took,” He “thanked,” He “broke,” He “gave.” Matthew says that He took “the bread,” the others that He took “bread.” The former indicates the unleavened bread that was used in the Passover meal. From the latter, however, we see that this bread was not considered unleavened but ordinary bread. Later the Roman Catholic Church returned to unleavened bread (that is, to the Old Testament).
That Jesus “took” bread means that He set it apart for sacramental use, and indeed for this new sacramental use. The same thing took place by the act of “blessing” (eulogēsas, Matthew and Mark), “giving thanks” (eucharistēsas, Luke and Paul). It has already been noted above that giving thanks and blessing are two aspects of the same thing. The prayer of thanks is offered to God, the blessing is meant for the element. In the Passover meal, too, God was thanked and the bread, which He had caused to come from the earth, blessed. Here God is thanked, and the sign and seal of that spiritual bread that derives not from nature but from his dispensation of grace for us, blessed. It is of course not possible to determine what words the Lord spoke in this giving of thanks. That 1 Corinthians 10:16 is used is not to be disparaged, but there Paul does not say to us that the Lord spoke these words with the cup or that He said such words with the bread. The bread thus replaces the Passover lamb as sign and seal. Now that the true lamb was about to be slain, the lamb as a type had to cease. The Passover lamb also had a national significance that recalled the liberation of Israel out of Egypt, but from now on the national aspect in the administration of the covenant of grace disappeared. Bread is ordinary and universal foodstuff found everywhere. One may also note how the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and also, in part, the Lutheran doctrine makes this replacement of the lamb by bread inexplicable. If it had had to do with an eating of the Lord’s flesh and the blood with the mouth, then the animal flesh of the lamb would have been a much more fitting element than the plant-based food of bread. But in the fact that bread was chosen there is then also, on the contrary, an intimation of how here we have to do with a sign and seal of a higher spiritual eating of faith with the mouth. He “broke” it (cf. Acts 2:42; 1 Cor 10:16). The Jewish father of the household also broke the bread in order to be able to distribute it. But here this breaking has a deeper significance. This is evident: (1) from the fact that all three Evangelists and Paul have: He “broke” it. (2) That Paul says, “The bread that we break, is that not the fellowship of the body of Christ?” that is, the breaking of the one loaf of bread refers to the fellowship of the saints in the one body of Christ. (3) Because it reads: “which is broken for you,” with respect to the body. The breaking of the bread is thus an essential element of the sacramental act that may not be omitted. It refers to the breaking of the body of Christ in His suffering for our good. And therefore it is to be condemned when the Roman Catholic Church distributes the unbroken wafer. Luther initially held to the necessity of breaking the bread, but subsequently ceased doing that. The Socinians also insist on the breaking of the bread.
He “gave”: that, too, belongs to the action. Christ takes the lead with us. First He gives and then we receive. The one who administers the Lord’s Supper gives it in Christ’s name, to himself too.
Following these four actions, or rather the first three, follow the last accompanying words: “Take, eat.” The bread is thus already consecrated bread. It does not first become that by the following words: “This is my body.” The Roman Catholics generally maintain that the consecration takes place by the latter words, which then the priest need only murmur to himself softly. The Reformed say that the consecration is not located in these specific words but in the preceding activity as a whole—more specifically, in the giving of thanks or blessing.
Taking is an act that has significance, as does eating. Both are conscious acts, and they picture the conscious exercise of faith. Here we have the imperative mood: “Take, eat.” Thus the word of command in the institution of the Lord’s Supper. First addressed to the apostles, this word of command comes through them to all the disciples of the Lord as well. But this word of command does not merely have an external sense. That the communicant must take the bread into his hand and into his mouth is something so self-evident that there is no need of a separate command. Rather, implicit in this command is its symbolic sense as well: take with the hand, eat with the mouth of faith. The faith that is required here is a willing faith. One comes to the Lord’s Supper, certainly in obedience to the command of the Lord, but surely in willing obedience. Actually, at this point the views regarding the Lord’s Supper already begin to diverge. The Roman Catholics and the Lutherans act as if it did not say “take, eat,” as if faith had nothing to do with the receiving of the spiritual benefits.
The word of command is followed by the word of promise, for here, too, in the sacrament these two must be next to each other: “This is my body.” These words have led to conflict among the churches:
a)The view of Carlstadt that by touto, “this,” Jesus would have indicated His body, must naturally be rejected. With touto nothing else can be meant than the bread, which was spoken about directly before this. Carlstadt appealed to touto as neuter, which otherwise should have been houtos, since artos is of course masculine. But that was entirely unnecessary. Something like bread can be regarded by us as a thing, neuter. The Lord therefore means: “This thing, this bread, which I have here in my hands, is my body.”
b)The Roman Catholic view: “This thing, which possesses the accidents and the outward characteristics of bread, is my body,” that is, by transubstantiation it has become my body in its substance. This view is based on or at least is defended by the literal interpretation of the word “is.” But if the Lord spoke Aramaic, as then is to be assumed, the copula was completely lacking. The Roman Catholics then also come into difficulty because they cause transubstantiation to take place by these words themselves. But how can that be? In the words by which something should take place, it would at the same time be presupposed that it has already taken place.
c)The Lutheran view: This is less literal than the Roman Catholic view. It acknowledges that it is a figure of speech and not literal language. But when one asks, “What figure of speech?” the answer is given: not a metaphor at any price, so that the words would come to mean “this thing signifies, symbolizes, and seals my body.” It must be understood differently, namely, synecdochically. This is my body therefore means: “Where you have this, you have my body. My body is in it, with it, under it.” The two are linked in such that the one can stand for the other, synecdochically. Therefore the touto is also already understood as referring to the real presence of the body of the Lord. The synecdoche exists both in the “this” as well as in the “is,” or really even more in the former than in the latter. “What I give you here (with, in, under the bread) is my body.” The “is” is taken as just as real as it is by the Roman Catholics; the “this” is understood differently than the Roman Catholics. For the latter, it is only apparently bread. For the Lutherans it is a composite entity, in which bread and Christ’s body are present together in a way that is conjoined locally.
The great objection to this is that the apostles would certainly not have grasped such a meaning. Such a synecdoche is not self-evident. When two things belong together naturally and always go together, then a synecdoche is easy to understand and no elucidation is necessary. But that was not the case here. Thus there ought to have been added a specific and extensive explanation if the Lord had wanted to be understood in this way by the apostles. Some then say that a miraculous enlightenment of their understanding by the Holy Spirit also accompanied these words of the Savior. This Lutheran view must also be rejected in its entirety because it is based on the untenable Lutheran Christology and leads to the banal teaching of a manducatio oralis (“eating with the mouth”). That teaching is banal; the idea that the body of another would be eaten by our physical mouth is abhorrent. Why would it not be? Must then food for our spiritual life be fed to us by our bodily organs? Such a conception is at home in materialism but not in teaching that clearly distinguishes between soul and body, as Scripture does everywhere.
d)The Reformed view is exegetically the only tenable one: “This thing (the bread) signifies my body.” That the apostles could understand. By that understanding one is not in the least forced into the Zwinglian view. Nowhere is it determined that we must derive everything that we know regarding the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper from that “is.” If that were so, then the explanation “signifies” would in fact carry us into the arms of Zwinglianism. But there are other data that teach us that more is connected with this “signifies,” about which further presently.
“This is my body,” says the Lord. Soma, “body,” is the organic whole, and to that extent the blood is already included. And yet the blood comes separately later under the sign and seal of the wine in the cup. Why does the Lord not say “flesh” (sarx)? Apparently because here the emphasis must fall on “broken,” “given.” Now if “flesh” were said, then we would have before us flesh torn out of its organic context. “Body” causes us to think immediately of the yet-unbroken corpse that is then broken violently. The breaking must be specifically the breaking of something whole, not merely a distribution.
In a very striking way the words “broken for you”/ “given for you” in Luke and Paul complement each other. In the one (“broken”) is the manner, in the other (“given”) the origin of what is about to happen with the Lord’s body. With “broken,” one thinks instinctively of Isaiah 53:5, 10. With “given,” we think of John 6:51. Neither of these aspects should be lost sight of. First of all, it is a broken body that is signified and sealed. That is, fellowship, by imputation, in the suffering and the suffering merits of Christ occupy first place here. The judicial precedes. To eat and drink Christ means, in the first place, to receive His merits by faith. But that broken body is also “given” to us. He gives it away, gives it away to us, in order that soon we would also truly have fellowship with Him by faith—not just with His merits but also with His person as Mediator, as Mediator become flesh.
In Luke and Paul still follows finally: “Do this in remembrance of me.” With “this” is meant this eating (and drinking) of the bread as sign of my body (cf. 1 Cor 11:26–29). The Roman Catholics understand “do this” as spoken to the priests, so that in the institution of the mass the institution of the sacrament of priestly ordination is included, as if it had meant: “As I now bring and effect and hand the sacrifice to you, do likewise, and as priests perform this sacrificial ritual authorized by me for that purpose.” The passage does not at all suggest something like this.
The bread must be eaten “in remembrance of me.” Thus: in order to remember Him and keep His memory alive. This, however, is not to be understood in the personal sense—that one ought to think about Him as one thinks of a distant friend—for the Lord had already given the promise that He would be where two or three were gathered in His name. It is a meal of remembrance, but a meal of remembrance as the Passover was. There, too, the Israelites were to think back on the liberation out of the house of slavery in order, then, at the same time to enjoy the blessing and nurturing that was opened for them by this liberation. It is like that here. It is obvious that the disciples will have the Lord present with them. But they had to focus their remembrance specifically on the cause of this gracious presence, on the source from which all these spiritual blessings flowed, on the suffering of the Lord. As Christ is present in heaven as glorified Mediator but still His sacrifice brought in humiliation is constantly held in memory through His intercession, so in the faith-consciousness of those who are His this sacrifice must always be the starting point from which their fellowship with Him begins. His glory grew out of His suffering; enjoying the former can only grow out of remembering the latter. Paul therefore also calls this eating and drinking in remembrance of the Lord “a proclaiming of the death of the Lord until he comes.” From remembrance flows proclamation. So the Lord wills in fact to have the sacrament viewed as a public, external confession. Still, this comes afterward. It is not the first and only purpose, but only one purpose.
We come now to the cup. “Likewise, the cup,” both Luke and Paul say. This is a strong reason over against all wishes to have the Lord’s Supper celebrated sub una specie [under one kind], as Rome does. Implicit here is that the same thing was done by Jesus with the cup that occurred first with the bread: “take,” “give thanks,” “bless,” “give.” In Matthew and Mark the giving of thanks is also stated. However, it is not also said explicitly that Jesus poured out or poured the wine into the cup. And yet the analogy with the broken bread, upon which so much emphasis was put, causes us to expect that. One should be careful to note, however, that subsequently it is said not of the wine (the sign) but of the blood (the thing signified) that it is poured-out blood. Luke even says with a distinctive construction: “This cup … that is shed for you.” Although one cannot now say that as the bread ought to be broken, so also the wine ought to be poured out before the eyes of all, still as much should be retained such that the flowing of the wine, in drinking, is a sign and a seal of the bloodshed of our Lord. The distinction here is in the fact that the bread in itself does not yet recall the breaking of the body, and therefore must still be broken deliberately; the wine, in contrast, already by its particular appearance recalls the breaking, so that being poured out visibly is no longer necessary.
Why the double sign of bread and cup next to each other? Various answers have been given: to supplement the idea of sustenance with that of refreshment; to show, along with sustenance, the enhancement of life. As bread sustains life, so wine elevates life since it makes the heart of man glad [Psa 104:15]. The principal reason, however, resides in this: The separating of flesh and blood, of bread and wine, places before our eyes, in the most vivid way, how we have to do here with a suffering, crucified Savior. It has been noted that in the Old Testament the drinking of wine was missing, not only at the Passover meal but at all sacrificial meals. In contrast, pagans drank wine at such occasions.
Which wine is meant? Red or white? Mixed or unmixed? In Palestine wine is usually red, and it would have been red wine that Jesus took from the Passover table. But this is not essential, and nowhere are we told with even one word that it must be red wine. The latter surely portrays the blood better than white wine. According to later sources, mixing of water with the wine was prescribed for Passover, and soon a symbolic meaning was sought in this. It referred, it was said, to the union between Christ and His own. They were the water, and He was the wine, and the two were mixed together as one (Cyprian). Others find here a symbol of the union between the divine and the human natures of the Mediator. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek [Orthodox] Church mix wine with water. Against this practice: (a) It is very uncertain that at that time the wine of the Passover meal was mixed with water. (b) If it did happen and were of significance, it would have been explicitly mentioned, as with the breaking of the bread.
“Drink of it, all of you” (Matt). “And they all drank of it” (Mark). Calvin rightly observed that these words seem to condemn in advance the error of the Roman Catholics. They all must drink of the cup. With the command to take bread and eat it, this “all of you” is lacking. This omission here must have its special significance. Some say: Jesus did not say “all of you” with the bread because He wanted to give Judas a cue to refrain from eating or to withdraw, and now that he had nonetheless taken the bread, he also had to take the wine, to his judgment. It is not impossible that there is this consideration for Judas. From John’s Gospel one could draw the conclusion that Judas left before the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. But the words of Luke (22:21) are decisive in this regard. Judas did partake of the Lord’s Supper (so also Calvin and many Reformed interpreters). It is natural to find in this a proof that, in admitting or refusing to admit to the Supper, those who administer the Lord’s Supper in Christ’s name must not act according to a subjective criterion but according to an objective criterion. The subjective criterion that Jesus had was infallible, for His divine omniscience showed Him clearly who Judas was. Still, He did not unmask Judas before but after the Lord’s Supper, and in a completely objective manner treated him as an apostle among the apostles. This is something, however, from which in no sense does it follow that someone should gain confidence from Judas’s behavior to go and sit at the table of the Lord with unconfessed and unforgiven sins in his heart.
For Roman Catholics, the communio sub una specie (withholding the chalice from the laity) is consistent with the doctrine of transubstantiation. The Council of Constance issued this highly remarkable declaration: “Although Christ instituted it after the meal and administered this venerable sacrament to His disciples under the double signs of bread and wine, nonetheless the authority of the holy Canons … has established that such a sacrament ought not to be celebrated after the meal, and ought not to be received by believers who have previously eaten.” Only the celebrant priest takes the chalice; the rest of the priests and the laity receive the wafer. In a few cases the Church makes exceptions to its rule, such as for civil rulers, cardinals, etc.
Exegetically, Rome appeals to 1 Corinthians 11:27, “So, then, whoever eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.” Here, then, “or” is understood disjunctively and viewed as proof that in the apostolic church communion under one sign occurred—wrongly. What is spoken of here is not the use of one element but an unworthy manner of use that need happen even for only one element to make someone guilty. By the Roman Catholic separation the meaning of the sacrament is lost. If drinking is not added to eating, the breaking of the body of the Lord does not come to light; our nourishment is not complete.
The words of the promise with respect to the cup are: “This is my blood, that of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew, Mark). “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke and Paul). In treating the doctrine of the covenant it has already been pointed out what these expressions recall. The blood of the new covenant points back to the blood of the old covenant (Exod 29). The latter was covenant blood as a type; the former is the real covenant blood. The making of the covenant with Israel was, as it were, by these two facts: the slaughtering of the Passover lamb and the formal, solemn confirmation of the covenant with accompanying sacrifices. The wine in the cup is this blood of the new covenant. The “this” can again not refer to anything else but the wine. When Luke and Paul say “this cup,” the content of the cup is meant, that which is to be drunk, as Scripture speaks elsewhere of the drinking of a cup. Here “is” also means “signifies.” But at the same time implied here is that the wine, as sign and seal of the covenant blood, from now on takes the place of all the typical sacrifices that followed one after the other under the old dispensation. Here is the end of ceremonial service. The covenant will not be made again with sacrifices but with bread and wine.
Had not this blood that was portrayed by the wine also been the blood of the old covenant? Had it not taken away sin throughout all the centuries, even before it was shed? Without doubt. And still here the Lord calls it the “blood of the new covenant.” Thus it occurs here in the specific sense as it only occurs in the new and not in the old dispensation, namely, as actually shed, with all then that is further connected with it. The wine did not portray blood that still had to be shed but blood that was already shed. Indeed, the institution of the sacrament here was anticipatory, pointed ahead, looked to the time when Christ would have suffered. While the blood of Christ had exercised its retrospective power from the beginning of time and had brought about the redemption and the justification of the pious, it began now to work in a more glorious and powerful way now that it was actually shed. Now came the removal of the dividing wall between Israel and the Gentiles; now came the outpouring of the Spirit. The bloodshed of the Mediator marked the dividing line between old and new covenants. As shed blood, His blood could thus be called preeminently the blood of the new covenant. The Form for the Lord’s Supper: “Finally, by His death and the shedding of His blood, the new and eternal testament, the covenant of grace and reconciliation was settled, when He said, ‘It is finished.’ ”
Luke and Paul have: the cup is the new covenant by means of his blood. The blood is, in general, as blood of the Mediator, the essence of the covenant of grace. In that the covenant of grace has its validation, its stability. Only in this blood can God and man come together and live together. The blood is, in particular, as shed blood, the essence and the validation of the New Testament dispensation of the covenant of grace. All that is specific to the New Testament dispensation derives from this blood. Thus both things can be said: the cup was the covenant of grace through the means of the blood, and the cup was the new covenant (= the New Testament dispensation of the covenant of grace) by means of the blood. Here the emphasis is on the latter, but at the same time the former is included in it.
This blood was “shed for many/for you for the forgiveness of sins.” As with the bread, this also points ahead. There it was: “my body that is given/broken.” It is no longer blood that is about to be shed, but the shedding is now present. “For you” means “on your behalf,” “for your benefit” (hyper, Luke; peri, Matt and Mark). One should pay attention to “for many,” “for you.” Not, then, for all. There is evidently a restriction. But for all who appear at the table, the Lord here says, “for you.” For they come there as those who seek their salvation in Christ as His disciples. And for all of these He has shed His blood. Even with Judas there is no intention here to exclude him from it. The Lord says in general: for you. In “for many” there is without doubt a reminder of the wide scope that the administering of God’s covenant of grace would take in the new age in contrast to the national particularism of the old dispensation.
“For the forgiveness of sins” (Matt). This is not to be understood as if there were no forgiveness in the old dispensation. Here the primary benefit of the covenant of grace is placed in the foreground, as that belongs to the essence of the covenant of grace (cf. Jer 31:33–34: “But this is the covenant.… For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more”). One can ascertain a difference here between the old and the new dispensation only to the extent that in the former a reminder of sin takes place again and again (Heb 10:3), and now God makes the promise that He will no longer remember sins at all, will also no longer remember them through sacrifices (cf. Heb 8:12–13).
Finally, in Paul we still have: “Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” By this the institution of the Lord’s Supper is shown to be an institution that is for all times—not for that one meal, but for the future as a whole, “until He comes” (1 Cor 11:26). “As often as” clearly presupposes that it will not occur infrequently, although there is no express stipulation how often it should take place. In this there is latitude.
10. How can you briefly show what is included in these words of institution?
a)In the Lord’s Supper there is a signifying of the suffering and death of the Lord (the “broken body” and “shed blood”).
b)This suffering and death appears here as the foundation of the covenant of grace (“the new covenant in my blood”).
c)At the same time, however, this signifying is also a sealing of the covenant of grace on the side of God (“for you”).
d)At the same time there is consent here on the side of the believer, by which he again and again enters into the renewal of the covenant (“take,” “eat,” “do that,” “drink of it all of you”).
e)At the same time this covenantal fellowship is also a public profession of the Lord, a proclamation of His death, a remembrance of what He has done for His own (“do this in remembrance of me”; “proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes”).
f)At the same time the exercise of this covenantal fellowship has as its purpose the nourishing of the spiritual life of believers. The sacramental covenantal action is also a meal. This resides in the fact that the Lord has given the bread and the cup. As one prays for the blessing of God on earthly food before eating it in order that it may serve the purpose for which He has ordained it, so, too, in connection with this sacramental food it is blessed and blessing prayed for.
11. What questions should be discussed further in relation to the Lord’s Supper?
a)In what sense are the body and blood of Christ received in the Lord’s Supper?
b)What are the major departures from scriptural teaching on this point?
c)Who ought to come to the Supper of the Lord?
d)How is the Roman Catholic mass to be adjudged?
12. Give an elucidation of the first question.
We have already seen how the signs of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper set before our eyes the Mediator as suffering and dead. We have also seen that taking and eating are simply scriptural expressions for believing. Thus in the Lord’s Supper our faith is directed to the suffering and dead Mediator. And to eat His body and to drink His blood would be nothing else than to appropriate in faith the merits of His suffering and His dying. That, then, has in view fellowship in being right with God. It is to the grace of justification that the Lord’s Supper points as a means of grace. This grace is sealed to us, and our faith, which takes possession of this, should be strengthened.
Without doubt, this is the purpose of the Lord’s Supper. The fact that here Christ appears before our eyes under the signs of broken bread and poured wine is already sufficient to show that. The question is only whether one can stop with this consideration. Or is there more that takes place in this sacrament than such an application of the merits of Christ by faith? If now, for the time being, we leave aside Roman Catholic and Lutheran teaching, then it appears to us that in the Reformed church itself there has been an effort to give a still deeper sense to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We will (a) highlight historically which views have been formed in this regard; and (b) inquire after the scriptural grounds on which this view is based.
13. Who among the Reformed took the least mystical viewpoint with respect to the Lord’s Supper?
The Reformer Zwingli. He said: “To eat the body of Christ spiritually is nothing other than with our spirit and our understanding to trust in the goodness and the grace of God through Christ.” What distinguishes this view consists of two things: (a) The eating is solely an eating of faith; that is, it is done by an exercise of conscious faith. (b) It is an eating, not so much in an exercise of mystical fellowship with the living Christ, as an eating that consists in looking to the saving events of the suffering and the death of the Lord.
14.Did Calvin also remain committed to this point of view?
No, he went further than Zwingli. Our fellowship with Christ is not only a fellowship with His merits by imputation; it is a fellowship of life through the action of the Spirit of Christ. Where this is once established, it must necessarily follow that bread and wine are not simply signs of what Christ has done in His person, but at the same time are signs of what Christ is for us now as the living Mediator who still possesses our nature. Our eating and drinking, then, is also more than an exercise of justifying faith; it is a sign of the mystical fellowship of life that we as members of His body have with Christ, the Head. Calvin says [Institutes, 4.17.10]: “We conclude that our souls are fed by Christ’s flesh and blood, just as bread and wine feed and sustain physical life. For the sign would not correspond with the thing signified if souls did not find their nourishment in Christ.… And although it seems unbelievable that the flesh of Christ should penetrate to us through such a great distance to become food for us, let us bear in mind how far the secret power of the Holy Spirit extends beyond all our awareness … since He (Christ) pours his life into us, just as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow.… The thing signified is offered and presented there by Him to all who … sit …, although it is received with benefit only by believers.” This is substantiated with an appeal to 1 Corinthians 10:16.
Further, Calvin distinguishes between: (1) the physical signs; (2) the spiritual truth. To explain what the spiritual truth is, he says, attention must be given: (a) to the meaning; (b) to the substance or matter; (c) to the power or fruit that follows from both.
The meaning resides in the promises, which are entwined to some degree in the sign. The substance is Christ, with His death and resurrection. The fruit consists of redemption, justification, sanctification and eternal life—in brief, all the benefits. Further, it is expressly said that to receive Christ by faith is not solely to receive Him by the intellect and the imagination. For, says Calvin, redemption and justification are only to be obtained by true fellowship with Christ.
The starting point for Calvin is no different than for Zwingli. We only eat Christ properly, then, when we eat Him as crucified and lay hold of the power of His death by an animated sense. It must begin with a conscious exercise of faith. But it does not remain there. Both from the side of Christ and from our side in appropriation, there is something more. From the side of Christ: Christ, as a living Mediator, has in Himself the power of His death and the resurrection as something eternal and immortal. He is not a dead Christ, but a living Christ who was dead. As exalted Mediator, He has at His disposal the fruits that have grown from His suffering. From our side: We not only have fellowship with Christ through the conscious life of faith but also in a mystical way. The others (Zwinglians) say: the eating amounts to believing. Calvin says: one eats Christ’s flesh by believing, and such eating is a fruit and effect of faith; it is a result of faith, not faith itself. Thus it is not an eating with the mouth but in fact an eating of faith—an eating, however, such that it is not only a judicial application of conscious appropriation, but also effects a mystical bond with Christ.
The question now arises: How did Calvin think of this real communion with the flesh and blood of Christ? He says [Institutes, 4.17.9]: it is more than sharing in His Spirit. As the Logos, Christ is already the fountain and origin of life. Additionally, by His incarnation He has become the fountain of life in a new sense. After His resurrection, the flesh, the human nature of Christ, is saturated with the fullness of life. That means, John 5:26, “He has given to the Son also to have life in Himself.” Ephesians 1:23; 4:15; and 1 Corinthians 6:15 are also cited.
Still, the Spirit has a work to do here. It is not necessary that the flesh of Christ descend from heaven to us. The power of the Spirit overcomes all barriers. This is a mystery. How can flesh become life to our spirit? The power of the flesh and blood of Christ is applied to us by the Holy Spirit. In a certain sense it is a miracle.
This conception of Calvin is found most clearly in the French Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Scotch Confession. Our [Belgic] Confession says (article 35): “In order to assure us that, as certainly as we receive and hold this sacrament in our hands and eat and drink the same with our mouths, by which our life is afterwards nourished, we also do as certainly receive by faith (which is the hand and mouth of our soul) the true body and blood of Christ our only Savior in our souls, for our spiritual life.… In the meantime we do not err when we say that what is eaten and drunk by us is the proper and natural body and proper blood of Christ. But the manner in which we partake of the same is not by the mouth but the spirit through faith.”
Our [Heidelberg] Catechism speaks less forcefully, but maintains the same principle. See questions 75 and 76. In both, two things are clearly distinguished and placed side by side: (a) the appropriation of the merits of Christ by faith; (b) the imparting of the fellowship of life and union with Christ through the Holy Spirit.
15. What were the scriptural grounds upon which this teaching was built?
The principal ground was found in what the Lord says in John 6:53–58: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” [v. 53]. “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” [v. 55]. And verse 51, “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” It may be asked, What is meant by all these expressions? When Jesus spoke in this way, was He thinking specifically of the mystery of the Lord’s Supper, or did He speak in a entirely general way?
Over time this question has been given very different answers, and there are almost as many views of these words as there are explanations of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper. The majority has answered: Christ is not speaking here of the Lord’s Supper (so many church fathers, Luther, Calvin, and the Formula of Concord). The latter says that only a spiritualis manducatio, a spiritual eating, is spoken of here; and the Lutherans maintained, as is known, that in the Lord’s Supper there is more, a oralis manducatio, an eating with the mouth, with the physical mouth. “There is, therefore, a twofold eating of Christ. The one is spiritual, of which Christ treats primarily in the Gospel of John, chapter 6, which does not otherwise occur than in the Spirit and through the gospel” [Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 7, paragraph 61]. It is not difficult to point out what underlies this Lutheran polemic against the exegesis that understands John 6 of the Lord’s Supper. It then emerges too clearly here that it could not be denied how eating Jesus’s flesh and blood takes place only by faith. And the Lutherans do not want that; Luther did not want that. Unbelievers also eat Christ’s flesh and blood with the physical mouth. Therefore here in John 6 something else must be meant, namely, spiritual eating, which is only attributed to believers. This is certainly a remarkable phenomenon; realistic robustness that on the one hand thinks that on the issue of the Lord’s Supper it must insist on the most literal sense of every syllable and that here, on the other hand, explains the much stronger expressions—eating of flesh and drinking of blood—in a completely spiritual way of appropriation by faith.
Along with those who will not think of the Lord’s Supper in any respect here are also those who understand the words exclusively of the Lord’s Supper. That is another extreme that Calvin already contested—against, it seems, some Lutherans of his time (Institutes, 4.17.7). The words sound completely general, and nothing necessitates us to think specifically of the sacrament. Calvin says correctly [Commentary on John 6:54]: Christ speaks of the perpetual eating of faith. But he adds: “At the same time, however, I agree that nothing is said here that is not signified in the Lord’s Supper and truly imparted to believers. Therefore Christ has willed that the holy Supper be a seal, as it were, on this preaching. And this is the reason why in John there is no mention of the Lord’s Supper. And therefore Augustine follows the right order, when, in explaining this chapter, he does not mention the Lord’s Supper until he comes to the conclusion. For there he teaches that this mystery is represented in a symbol as often as the churches celebrate the holy Supper.”
Now one could ask whether Calvin has sought in the Lord’s Supper something else than is in John 6. Is there an eating in the Supper that is essentially different from this continual eating of faith? The answer must be in the negative. In John 6, too, Calvin already sees more than the conscious appropriation of the benefits of Christ by faith. He distinguishes eating and believing. While he emphasizes that eating is impossible without faith (against the Lutherans), on the other hand he does not wish to identify the two. He says, “What some deduce from this passage, namely, that believing in Christ is the same as the eating of Christ or of His flesh, does not have a sufficiently firm basis. For these two things differ from each other as what precedes and what follows, as coming to Christ and drinking of Him differ, for coming to Him is prior. I acknowledge that Christ cannot be eaten other than by faith; but the reason is because we receive Him by faith that He may dwell in us, and that we may be partakers of Him, and so may be one with Him. The eating, therefore, is a fruit or work of faith” (Commentary on John 6:47).
Still, Calvin does not think that the Lord’s Supper is in view here. The matter is the same, but the meaning was not directed to it. The reason he gives is that the Lord’s Supper was not yet instituted, and that it would have been uncalled for to speak of something that did not yet exist. But, in our view, this does not show that our Savior Himself was not thinking of the Lord’s Supper. More can be resident in His words than His listeners understood of them. But also, apart from that, one should ask whether the thought of partaking of flesh and blood really lay so far outside their comprehension that every allusion to it had to be unintelligible to them. Some have rightly made reference to the sacrificial meals. At them there was at least an eating of flesh, and in this eating of flesh there was religious fellowship. The Jews could have thought of that. That they did not think of it lay in their blindness to the deeper meaning of the Old Testament sacrament and the Old Testament sacrifices in general, and in their blindness to the significance of the Messiah as sacrificial lamb and food for the soul. It is true, “the drinking of the blood” must have sounded strange in their ears. That was something unheard of in the Jewish sacrifices.
When now we look further at the words closely, then it is apparent that there is more than one point of similarity. Christ is speaking specifically of a bread that He will give, and that is His flesh. That refers to something in the future, and causes us to think of the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, “which is given for you,” which has already been discussed in brief above. For that one can think of more than one “giving”: (1) A giving of sacrifices to God. The sacrifice was a giving, an offering up of self that happened willingly and derived its value from that willingness. (2) A giving of the presentation and offering in the word of the gospel, to which conscious faith responds. In this sense Christ gives Himself and imparts Himself to His disciples, as He also said at the institution of the Lord’s Supper: “Take, eat, drink, this is my body, my blood.” (3) A giving of impartation when He by His Holy Spirit actually becomes the spiritual life of believers. Here we are to think especially of the first giving, nevertheless such that the other two are connected as following directly from it. Although Christ had said “I am the bread of life” and speaks throughout this entire pericope in the present tense (cf. vv. 47–48, 50–51), still in this “will give” there is also a reference to the future. Although being the bread of life already, He would become that in a still deeper and special sense by giving Himself as living bread. That referred to His suffering, His death, and His glorification. And with that the institution of the Lord’s Supper was also connected, as we have already seen. Therefore we may say: The Lord speaks here in John 6 not only of a general sense in which He, as Mediator, is the source of life for believers, but He also speaks specifically of the sense in which He, as glorified Mediator, whose sacrifice has been brought, becomes a source of life for believers who are members of His mystical body. And because that was about to happen shortly and was at hand, He also instituted the Lord’s Supper on the night before His suffering. Both John 6 and the institution of the Lord’s Supper point to this one truth.
With this is also given the viewpoint from which the rest of the passage should be explained. One may focus one’s attention on the following points:
a)That the Savior can be our food and drink in a spiritual sense is connected with His incarnation. Hence the repeated speaking of “coming from heaven,” “eating of flesh and drinking of blood.”
b)This, however, is not to be understood as if, with the incarnation as such, our salvation was achieved in principle and eternal life guaranteed to us. The incarnation is necessary, but more is necessary. Here, as well as in the institution of the Lord’s Supper, it is a matter of what is given, the broken flesh. This also comes out clearly here in that the Savior speaks separately of flesh and blood. He speaks not only of His body but of His mangled body. The question why the Savior speaks in the Lord’s Supper of the “body,” here of the “flesh,” does not have to be discussed and decided here.
c)Christ as incarnate and as sacrificed Mediator is thus the spiritual food of believers. And the eating of Him as such must always proceed from faith. That is clear in verse 47: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me has eternal life.” The point of contact in us thus always resides in faith. And that faith must begin where the giving of Christ begins—that is, with His suffering and death. That is what comes first in our eating and drinking of Christ, that in faith we appropriate His merits to ourselves.
d)We believe with Calvin, however, that more is meant here than a conscious exercise of faith. There are three points on which one must fix one’s attention in order to see this: (1) Christ says not only that He is the bread of life but also that He is the living Bread (vv. 48, 51). (2) He speaks of a mystical fellowship of life resulting from this eating and drinking. “The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (v. 56). (3) That the Lord speaks of something very real is apparent from verse 57: “As the Father has sent me, and I live because of the Father, likewise the one who feeds on me will also live because of me.” And verse 54, “The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
From this it is apparent, it seems to us, how the Lord refers to a mysterious fellowship of life that, viewed from our side, proceeds from faith and cannot exist apart from faith, but that viewed from the Lord’s side must certainly have a still-deeper origin. Christ is the living bread that works upon us in an enlivening fashion, and in and with our believing gives itself to us so that nourishing power flows into the depths of our spiritual life. While we are in Him through our faith, He is in us and works in us through His Holy Spirit. As the Father had given it to Him to have life in Himself, so He wills to grant us life. And what He gives is eternal life, which no longer can die and must so completely transform and permeate our entire dead and corrupt nature that on the last day even the resurrection of the dead must follow as a consequent fruit.
One sees that these expressions are too strong to find a place in the Zwinglian conception. And without doubt we will thus have to acknowledge that there is something mysterious here, that mystical union with Christ is spoken of, and also that the Lord’s Supper is associated with it. But how is that mysterious nature to be formulated? We cannot do that; for if we could, it would have ceased to be a mystery. Read what Calvin says in this regard (Institutes, 4.17.7)—golden words in which emphasis is put on both the reality of the mystery and its incomprehensibility. One can say one thing or another about it only negatively.
We observe:
a)That faith does not focus on the Mediator as a historical person out of the past who suffered and died more than 19 centuries ago now, but on the living Christ as He still exists in our human nature. That has been already set forth in the discussion about faith. Thus, when our faith is focused on the flesh and blood given, then it certainly sees them in Christ as He now possesses the merits of His obedience. Our faith has to do with a living person in whom the powers and the fruits of historical facts are present, not with a historical fact in itself. That is too much lost sight of; and when losing sight of that, one presents the eating and the drinking only as living back into that historical fact, then one ends up inevitably in the Zwinglian view. Conversely, when it comes out clearly that there cannot and may not be any fellowship of faith in the suffering and death of Christ other than that focused on Him as a now-present and now-living Mediator, then one will see immediately that it cannot remain a spiritual fellowship in thought—that it must be a genuine fellowship of life.
b)That nevertheless faith in itself does not possess the power to grant us this real fellowship with Christ. That, too, has already been pointed out. The action here must come not from us but from Christ. The only thing that matters is that one distinguishes carefully and clearly. The Lord has bound our fellowship with Him to the exercise of faith. For us there is no other means to enter this fellowship or to be led deeper into it for our conscious life than the exercise of faith. Every other means is for us useless and illegitimate. And that applies both for the Word and for the sacrament. Viewed from our side, then, faith is in fact the access to eating, in principle the eating itself. Whoever does not have faith cannot eat; and to the same degree that someone has faith, he eats and drinks. But there is another aspect to the matter. We can no more bring about the life of Christ in us by our progress in believing than we can draw Christ to ourselves by faith at the beginning of our believing. In both cases it is Christ Himself who first binds Himself to us by His Holy Spirit, and only then from our side the bond of faith with Christ follows. In regeneration Christ bestows faith and, thus wrought, we believe. Similarly in the ongoing life of faith: by His Holy Spirit Christ maintains the fellowship of life between Himself and all His members, and because He does that, we exercise faith. So, our faith is both the means by which we appropriate that life for ourselves as well as the fruit of the bestowal of that life by Christ.
c)Therefore, the eating and the drinking of Christ in fact has a twofold sense: (1) It is partaking in and obtaining His merits by faith. (2) It is having fellowship with Him and obtaining more and more the life that is in Him.
However, one may not place these two next to each other loosely. The beautiful thing is just that in the institution of the Lord’s Supper and in John 6, they are connected so intimately. Both proceed from the breaking of the bread, the separation of flesh and blood, the giving of life. And both lead on from there to fellowship with the living Christ. From our side, then, there is first an activity with the living Mediator under the aspect of a high priest who has made sacrifice. By this activity of faith a bond with Christ originates, and from this bond with Christ there flows a more assured appropriation of the merits of the Mediator. The one leads of itself to the other. One can distinguish here, but one may not separate. The believer knows that he is in a bond of life with Christ, and by the awareness of this he is strengthened in the conviction that he partakes in all the benefits that are found in Christ. Mystical union is not the judicial ground, but is certainly the means of impressing deeply within the soul the thought that the only judicial ground for our life and our salvation resides in Christ (Calvin, Institutes, 4.17.2).
d)One should not think that this fellowship with Christ is only granted in the Lord’s Supper. It is a constant for believers that can never cease. The Holy Spirit does not withdraw entirely. Where He has once taken up His abode, He always keeps those who believe in Christ united with Him. Nor may one think that fellowship with Christ is tied to the sacrament in distinction from the Word. However the gospel of Christ comes to us, whether in Word or sacrament, it always still remains the means ordained by God for fellowship with the living Christ. Here too emphasis must be placed on the fact that the sacrament does not give any more than the Word, and the Word does not give more than the sacrament. They both give the full, whole Christ. The eating and the drinking can thus take place both apart from and in the Lord’s Supper. But this does not give us any right to spurn the institution of Christ. He has clearly willed that along these two paths fellowship with Him would be established and maintained. Not making use of the sacrament must impoverish spiritual life and cause it to deteriorate.
e)Eating and drinking are not constant activities, but take place only now and then. As it is in our natural life, so it is in our spiritual life. The fellowship of life with Christ is certainly never broken off completely, but there are still times in which it is especially strengthened. This happens through the means of grace. With the faithful use of them Christ wills to do for our spiritual life what happens for our natural life by eating and drinking. Something certainly occurs with the faithful use of the means of grace that continues to be at work in the future. It is not only that for a moment our conscious faith is strengthened and we feel that the quality of our life is elevated, but it is also the case that the wellspring of life is provided with new water by which the stream of faith can subsequently continue flowing. As one does not eat and drink for the sake of a momentary enjoyment of food and drink, so we do not go to the Lord’s Supper to be refreshed and comforted for a single moment but in order to obtain something on which one can feed and from which we can continuously draw strength. And as God has established a certain order and regularity in our natural life, so too in the sound spiritual life there will have to be a regular and ordered use of the means of grace that have been given us by God.
f)Thus far everything is clear and all Reformed theologians essentially agree. But now there comes a point about which complete unanimity does not prevail, and regarding which Calvin has gone further than anyone else. Calvin, then, teaches that there is not only a mystical union and that in the Lord’s Supper that union is maintained, strengthened, and nurtured by the Holy Spirit, but he has also endeavored to state more precisely how that is effected. He has presented this from two angles: Sometimes he speaks of an emanation of the power that is in the body of Christ on believers observing the Lord’s Supper; sometimes he speaks of an elevation of believers to Christ in heaven, where the glorified body of Christ is, by faith. Genevan Catechism, 1661: “I do not doubt that Christ makes us partakers of His substance, as is attested in the words and signs.… Since the body of Christ is in heaven, … He accomplishes this by the marvelous power of His Spirit.… We must raise our minds to heaven, where Christ is, … in these earthly elements He is sought in vain.” Here the second and the first conceptions are joined.
The first conception is found in Institutes, 4.17.18, “as if He were present with them with His body … so that He clearly feeds them with His own body, the fellowship of which He pours into them by the power of His Spirit. In this manner, the body and blood of Christ are given and imparted to us in the sacrament.” In the Confessions, too, this conception has not remained entirely without resonance. Belgic Confession, article 35: “On the other hand, we do not err when we say that what is eaten and drunk by us is the proper and natural body and the proper blood of Christ. But the manner in which we partake of the same is not by mouth but by spirit through faith” (cf. French Confession, article 36).
Above all, one should make clear what is contained in this conception. According to it, there is a real communion with the flesh and blood of Christ. The spatial distance that there is between us and that body of Christ is filled in by the ubiquitous Holy Spirit. Not just Christ the God-man, the Mediator, but specifically the human nature of Christ exercises a mysterious activity upon us. There is a receiving, certainly not of the substance in a material sense, but nonetheless of the power of the substance of the body of Christ.
All Reformed theologians agree that in the expressions “This is my body”; “This is my blood,” there is a trope in the copula. “Is” equals “means and seals.” But some of them think that there is still another trope in the predicate, that “my body” and “my blood” intend to say as much as: communion with me, the sacrificed Savior. But Calvin chose to understand these words literally and not to discover a trope in the predicate. He insists on body and blood, and on true communion with them. Without doubt, on this point he stood closer to Luther than the other Reformed theologians. He held to a spiritual eating of a material thing.
The question now is, How is this distinctive view of Calvin to be judged? Does Scripture lead us to follow him as far as he has gone? To begin, we observe that of the two conceptions just mentioned, apparently only the one can be taken literally. When it is said that by faith we are elevated to heaven, where the body of Christ is, then this can only be a figurative use of language. Faith is something spiritual, and as such cannot effect a spatial movement. It cannot bring us near to the glorified Christ in a spatial sense as far as His body is concerned. It is otherwise with the other conception. No one who is appropriately humble and has a sense of mystery will presume to claim that by His omnipotent activity the Holy Spirit is unable to bring to us the power that radiates from Christ’s glorified body. That this is incomprehensible is beside the point here. Calvin observes correctly against this objection that we may not choose to measure the immeasurable greatness of the power of the Holy Spirit according to the measure of our understanding.
But there is another objection against the view of Calvin. If it is based on anything, then it must be on the literal explanation of the expressions “eating flesh,” “drinking blood.” Now, it is more than likely that in both the institution and John 6, these expressions refer to a real communion with the human nature of the Mediator, but nonetheless are to be understood symbolically to the extent they represent this human nature as flesh and blood, as corporeality. Surely, if the broken body and the shed blood stand for the suffering of the Mediator, then in that there is already a synecdoche. This suffering had a broader scope than the breaking of the Lord’s body and the shedding of His blood. Suffering in His soul was a primary part of it. The entire human nature of the Lord suffered, according to His soul as well as according to His body. And still that is represented by the sign and seal that points directly only to the bodily suffering. It is broken body and shed blood. But without doubt the reason for this inadequate representation is the following: Only the body can be shown under a sacramental action with a sensory image. When one speaks of a break-up of the soul or of a melting of the soul, then surely it is still always in bodily images. And where one must speak of something that occurred with HIs humanity as a whole, must speak using visible symbols, there that symbolic language is naturally connected with the visible, sensory side of human nature: flesh and blood. There not the suffering of the soul, but the suffering of the body is chosen as the starting point. Expressed still more generally: Since the sacraments are intended for our sense of sight, they are tied to that part of the thing signified that falls within our sense of sight—thus here on what has happened with flesh and blood. What distinguishes the appropriation of the sacrament also leads to the same thing. This happens in the Lord’s Supper by eating and drinking. But one can in fact only eat and drink something material. Hence the sign in the Lord’s Supper, in order to be of one part, must represent the body and the blood and not the soul.
Thus by a careful consideration we see how a figurative element is latent in this “my body” and “my blood.” Flesh and blood signifies not only what has occurred in that flesh and blood but also all that that has occurred in the human nature of which flesh and blood form the outward, visible side. If we confine ourselves first to judicial fellowship with the merits of Christ by faith, then we obtain: “This is” means “this signifies” (first trope: metaphor). “My body,” “my blood” means what has occurred in my body and blood (second trope: metonymy). “My body, which is broken for you,” “my blood, which is shed for you” means all my suffering that I have endured in my human nature and of which the breaking of my body and the shedding of my blood is the visible indication (third trope: synecdoche). “Eat,” “drink,” means “appropriate for yourselves the merits of this suffering in faith” (fourth trope: metaphor).
If we now give attention to the fellowship of life with the glorified Christ, about which we established that it takes place in the Lord’s Supper: here, too, “this is” means “this signifies.” Here, according to Calvin, “my body” and “my blood,” “which is given for you” mean, without any figurative meaning, “my glorified corporeality.” “Eat” and “drink” mean “appropriate for yourselves the power of this glorified corporeality by faith.”
One sees where the weak point is here. Flesh and blood are taken too literally, as if they must signify the flesh-matter and blood-matter substantially, materially, and did not stand for human nature in general. This cannot be. To have fellowship with the glorified human nature can be represented sacramentally by eating something that signifies a body and drinking something that signifies blood. But no one may conclude from this that this fellowship with the glorified Mediator was in the first place a fellowship with His body and blood. No more would one be able to maintain that fellowship by imputation with His suffering was in the first place fellowship only with His bodily suffering. But in His suffering we include the soul as well. So here, too. Eating the body and drinking the blood of the Lord are expressions that one should not force. Without doubt they have a reality as their basis, but that reality can be none other than the mystical fellowship of life, which believers also enjoy in the Lord’s Supper, based on the full human nature of the Lord. There is a fellowship with the Lord as possessing human nature, a fellowship of mystical life through the Holy Spirit, and not solely a fellowship of conscious faith. It is a fellowship that must be of such a nature that it would not be possible without the incarnation (becoming man) of the Mediator, and that to that extent also is certainly bound up with and based on the bodily, material part of the human nature of the Lord. But still, as well, it in no way terminates in the latter. Flesh and blood are not everything; they are merely one aspect. The soul is the other, and that is more than the flesh.
Further than this, it seems to us, we cannot go. We acknowledge that in the Lord’s Supper there is for the believing participant a true fellowship through the Holy Spirit with the Mediator become flesh and now existing in flesh. We acknowledge that this fellowship can take place in its full power only since the glorification of the flesh assumed, although previously there was certainly fellowship with the Mediator, who had not yet become flesh, through the Holy Spirit. We acknowledge that this fellowship does not proceed from us but in the first place from Christ, and that the Holy Spirit, as the entire Scripture teaches us, establishes and maintains the bond here between Christ and us.
But we do not know how this occurs further in detail, in what mysterious way the powers of life and of faith are conveyed and poured into us through the Spirit of Christ from Him, the Head. Is it substantially the same power of life that is at work in His glorified humanity or not? Does that power proceed from His soul or from His body, or from both? These, it seem to us, are all questions that are not capable of being answered. And when, nonetheless, one presses for answers, then the danger is very great that formulations will be devised that are exposed to all kinds of misunderstanding.
As is well known, a difference of opinion prevails regarding the real intention of Calvin. If he did not intend to take body and blood in a one-sided manner for the bodily elements of Christ’s human nature, but, by synecdoche, to include the soul, then the biggest objection is removed. But even then, it seems to us, this objection remains: How power radiates from the humanity of Christ and is brought to us by the agency of the Holy Spirit is described all too precisely here.
If, on the other hand, what is at issue is meant corporeally, then there are two big objections against it. First of all, the literal meaning of the words flesh and blood cannot be applied to the glorified humanity of the Lord. Paul tells us that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor 15:50]. It remains a body forever, but not a body of flesh and blood. The eating of flesh and blood must thus to that extent always be understood figuratively. And in the second place, one could expect from an action of His body only an effect upon our bodies. And that would be contrary to the tenor of Scripture. Throughout we are taught that the re-creation of our bodies does not begin here, that no seed of higher spiritual life has been put into our bodies, but that only after death and resting in the grave will the body be re-created at the resurrection. There can be no question of an action of the body of Christ in heaven on our bodies, nor of an action of His body on our souls either.
If it therefore appears that Calvin has gone quite far, on the other hand it cannot be pointed out enough how he has rightly rejected the Zwinglian view. We must hold fast to real fellowship with Christ in the Lord’s Supper. And that real fellowship may never be sublimated into a thinking about Christ or into a conscious activity of faith with Christ. Calvin saw that, and by his view he has protected the Reformed confession from falling into that error.
One point should be addressed still further. As a sacrament, the Lord’s Supper is directed to the life of faith. It serves to strengthen the life of faith. Now one could ask: What is the connection between it and the fellowship of life with the glorified Savior? In order to understand this properly, one must bear in mind that our faith does not exist in itself and is not detached from the spiritual life that is bestowed in regeneration. Rather, faith must be seen as the conscious aspect of this spiritual life. Therefore, everything that serves to strengthen this new life will also have a strengthening effect on faith. When Christ feeds us with His flesh and gives us His blood to drink, then in that feeding and the drinking, our faith, by which we appropriate Him and all His benefits, must inevitably develop. Approximately as in the natural increase of the power of life, a greater degree of hunger and thirst is produced. Not only faith in its activity but faith in its root is strengthened. And by that faith, the Christian lives consciously out of all the benefits of the covenant of grace. As little as in baptism is there reason here to limit the scope of this activity of faith. It is, in the first place, certainly focused on justification, the remission of sin, as our Form for the Lord’s Supper rightly begins with that. Anyone who would benefit from Christ in the Lord’s Supper without in first place and primarily availing himself of Him as High Priest, as Surety, as sacrificial lamb, would certainly miss its purpose. One must go back again and again to the broken body and the shed blood. But one need not remain there. We “share in all His blessings of life eternal, of righteousness and glory.” Thus the Lord’s Supper summarizes, as it were in one volume, the entire work of redemption. Here the source from which all blessings flow and the sum of all blessings themselves are compressed. It is the Lord who died and nevertheless lives into all eternity.
The Lord’s Supper also points to the communion of saints. Our Form has that in view in the third place, with an appeal to the word of the apostle (1 Cor 10:17): “There is one bread, so we who are many are one body, because we all partake of the one bread.” The communion of saints experienced in the Lord’s Supper is based on communion with the Lord. Because everyone is joined to Christ, he is joined to believers. It is broken and nonetheless united bread, just because it represents the Mediator according to two aspects, according to two states.
16. In what sense can one now say that Christ’s body and blood are present in the Lord’s Supper?
This then concerns the question of sacramental union (unio sacramentalis). We have now seen what the sign is; we have also seen what the thing signified is. The sign is bread and wine; the thing signified is Christ the Mediator in the unity of His death and His life. But what is the relationship between these two, sign and thing signified?
a)It is not a material union, or, expressed more precisely, a change, as if the bread and wine ceased being bread and wine and flesh and blood replaced them (against Rome).
b)It is not a local union, as if the body and blood of Christ were joined in space through local proximity or contact with the signs. We may not say: In this location where you see the signs, you must also consider the substance of flesh and blood present (against the Lutherans).
c)It is not a notional union that only exists in the minds of believers. With a symbol I always associate the thing signified with my conception; I represent it to myself. But that is a thing thought, something figurative. In the Lord’s Supper that is the starting point in our conscious faith, but sacramental union does not terminate in that (against Zwingli).
d)It is a union by relationship (schetikōs). The thing signified is associated with the sign for the believing participant. It does not come through the sign itself. The sign serves only to bring its meaning and certainty to our consciousness. Only at this point, and only to that extent, is the sign an instrument for the thing signified, expressed more precisely, for an awareness of the thing signified.
e)Not the existence of the thing signified, but certainly its spiritual efficacy on the soul of the communicant is tied to faith. One must pay attention to this point, and in this regard make a precise distinction. There is a fellowship with the living Mediator as He exists in a glorious human nature for the believing participant. But what if the participant does not believe? The thing signified does not thereby cease to exist. Christ remains the same Christ. However, He is only active by His Spirit in the heart of the believer to bestow fellowship with Himself. Now everything depends on what one understands by the presence of Christ. If this means that the signs, as commissioned by Christ, are offered by Christ, and that the Holy Spirit, as God omnipresent, is present, ready to apply the thing signified, then Christ is also present in the Lord’s Supper for the unbelieving participant. If, on the other hand, it means that by the Holy Spirit fellowship with the living Savior is established, then Christ is not present for the unbelieving participant. The word “presence” has more than one meaning. It can mean that something makes itself felt and causes its action to be experienced. It can also mean that something is present.
Faith is required in order to enjoy the blessing of the Lord’s Supper, in order, in the sense just described, to receive the body and blood of Christ present (as active power). Still, one may not say that faith makes Christ present. Faith is the conditio sine qua non [necessary condition], but it does not perform a miracle; it does not draw the human nature of Christ down from heaven.
17. In what sense can one say that Christ is eaten in the Lord’s Supper?
From the connection in which sign and thing are related, it is apparent that it is not a question of eating with the bodily mouth. The eating occurs with the mouth of faith. But as such, nevertheless, it is real. It is a receiving of Christ into ourselves by the Holy Spirit. And to this eating of Christ there follows a being fed with Christ. To that extent Calvin is entirely right when he insists that believing and eating are not completely the same. We could say: Believing is the same as eating, but both are still followed by something else. If someone eats food, by that in itself he is not yet effectively fed. The energy resident in the food must pass into his blood and his body, and this one could call a second eating, an eating in a deeper sense, since not only the mouth but the bodily system as a whole appropriates the nutritional elements, and that in such a manner that they go into the flesh and blood. It is the same with the Lord’s Supper. We first eat with the mouth of faith. But following that eating of faith, an eating occurs in a deeper sense by our spiritual man as a whole when the life-giving power of the Lord, the nourishment that there is in Him, enters us, into the flesh and blood of the spiritual man—is identified with us. That eating is the fruit and result of faith, but, viewed in this way, still also more than faith.
18. Give a description of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
One should be aware that Luther did not always take the same position. At first, he acknowledged that the signs are mere signs and that faith, as a kind of miracle-working faith, thereby creates the reality of the thing signified. Later, he adhered to the word that comes in and with the signs, and had the sacrament be a seal of this word. But soon, in reaction to Carlstadt and others, he began to take the characteristically Lutheran standpoint. Now he insisted on the literal interpretation of the “is” in the words of institution, taught a local presence, and connected this teaching on the Lord’s Supper with his Christology. The Augsburg Confession expresses itself very modestly, so that the Reformed (e.g., Zanchi) did not hesitate to subscribe to its teaching on the Lord’s Supper as a whole. The body and blood of Christ, it reads there, are truly present in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed to the participants. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531) already speaks more explicitly: the body and blood are truly and substantially present. The Smalcald Articles go a step further: the ungodly, too, receive and take this body and blood. The Formula of Concord teaches that the words of institution must be understood literally. Not the consecration of men but the omnipotence of Christ makes the local presence to exist. The humanity of Christ is at the right hand of God, and the right hand of God is everywhere. The body and blood of Christ are not only received and eaten by the mouth of faith but with the bodily mouth, yet not in a Capernaitic sense. The points already mentioned above by other confessions are also confirmed. One knows that the Lutheran formula is: “in, with, under” the bread and the wine. To describe this doctrine non-Lutherans used the term consubstantiation, which, however, has not been approved by the Lutherans themselves. The term can be misunderstood, since it makes one to think of a fusion or coalescence of two substances. Only an accompanying is meant, and Lutherans protest against the term when one ascribes to them that they mean to confine the essence of Christ’s body and blood within the elements.
Regarding the efficacy of the manducatio oralis [oral eating], the views of the Lutherans also varied. Initially for Luther almost everything was focused on justification by faith, and he therefore also made this eating of the body and blood subordinate to that; thus in his Small Catechism. In the Large Catechism, he already went further. And in his private writings Luther even taught that from this body and blood a mysterious efficacy emanates upon our bodies, by which we become certain of their immortality. The flesh of Christ, being assimilated by us, re-creates our flesh (cf. Calvin, Institutes, 4.17.32 for something similar). But the Lutheran Church has not given confessional authority to this particular opinion, nor has the opinion of Calvin on this particular point entered into the Reformed confessions. The Formula of Concord places in the foreground as a fruit of the Lord’s Supper the “true comfort and the strengthening of weak faith.”
Lutherans have not made clear what they see as the difference between Capernaitic eating and the manducatio oralis. Luther had expressed himself rather crassly and spoken of a “biting with one’s teeth.” The Formula of Concord, on the other hand, says the Sacramentarians (i.e., Zwinglians and Calvinists) wrongly and against their better knowledge accuse the Lutherans of teaching a tearing of the body with the teeth and a consuming of the same like other food. It is unnecessary to subject the Lutheran doctrine to express criticism here. The foundation upon which it is based has been treated earlier, and with that treatment the doctrine itself falls. One must not think that the exegesis of the words of institution give rise to this doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. On the contrary, it was the view of the Lord’s Supper that led to the well-known exegesis of the words of institution. Both in Christology and in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper the same principle was at work in Luther—a principle that did not keep God and man separated sharply enough, and in the impulse for intimate union with God obliterated the boundaries of the two natures. Using Lutheran Christology, many Lutherans, or at least those who call themselves Lutherans, have also changed the old doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
19. What is the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper?
First of all, one must observe that according to Rome, what we call the Lord’s Supper includes two distinct things: (1) a sacrament; (2) a sacrifice.
These two are certainly connected to each other but still are not the same. They are two distinct actions. In the sacrament, something is given to us from God. In the sacrifice, we give something to God, through the hand of the priest. Since the Roman Catholic Church arrogates to itself the role of a mediatrix between God and man, it is in its nature to put much more emphasis on the sacrifice than on the sacrament. To give something from God to man is already a great deal, but for man to bring something to God is the proper work of the priest. The mass has thus become the most important part of the Roman Catholic worship service, around which everything is concentrated.
We speak here only about the Lord’s Supper as sacrament.
a)Its basis for Roman Catholics is the doctrine of transubstantiation. Through the words of consecration that the priest speaks, the entire substance of the signs is changed. The sensory “accidents,” such as color, smell, taste, etc., remain, but the substance is miraculously changed. These accidents thus exist entirely in themselves and have nothing to which they adhere, for as substance only the body and blood of Christ is present, along with everything that is inseparable from them. Indeed, where the body is the soul must also be, and where the soul is, the Godhead must also be. That is why the Church teaches that the whole Christ is present locally where the signs of bread and wine have been changed into the substance of the body and the blood. The result of this transubstantiation, further, is that now the whole Christ is present in each ostensible sign in itself. He is in the ostensible bread; He is in the ostensible wine. And so one only needs to receive one sign in order to receive the full Christ. Christ is the bread and the wine, or the wine and the bread are Christ, not only during their use, but that also remains so after the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (or the mass). This is one of the points where Lutherans also diverge from Rome. For Lutherans the local union is in effect only for the time of the administration of the sacrament. The Roman Catholics preserve the consecrated wafer, bring it to the sick, carry it around in processions, render to it religious veneration of the highest kind (latreia).
b)The practice of the Lord’s Supper. The celebrating priest drinks the chalice; the others receive and eat the wafer. Unleavened bread and mixed wine are used.
c)The purpose of the Eucharist is not to grant forgiveness of sins. The Canons of Trent oppose the view that sees the forgiveness of sins as the principal fruit of communion. In this, then, Rome again differs from both Lutherans and Reformed. The sacrament of penance is intended to first take away mortal sin, and that sin must first be taken away before one can attend the Eucharist. Only venial sins can be forgiven by the Lord’s Supper. The primary purpose lies in the mystical exchange of substances, by which it is not so much that Christ’s body and blood pass into us as that these rather re-create and change us, so that we become like Christ. The Catechism of Rome appeals to the words of Augustine: “And you shall not change me into you, as the food of your body, but you will be changed into me!”
d)The proof for this doctrine resides primarily, it is thought, in John 6:48–65. But, as Roman Catholics themselves acknowledge, here tradition is a more firm basis than Scripture, so that the Scriptural proof can be called almost superfluous. With John 6 Rome gains nothing. It is clearly taught there that this eating and drinking of the Lord is necessary to have life in one’s self, thus for salvation (v. 53). If then the reference here is exclusively to the Lord’s Supper (and it must be so, for, according to Rome, the eating in the Lord’s Supper is a completely unique eating), then that will imply that communing is necessary to have life. But Rome itself does not teach this. Life is given in baptism; in the Lord’s Supper it is assumed to be present; someone can be saved without this eating of the Lord’s Supper. In John 6, therefore, it cannot be exclusively a question of the Lord’s Supper.
Nor is tradition a firm basis here. The rule “quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus” [“what is believed always, everywhere, by all”] may not be applied here. One need only open a history of dogma to see the gradual development of the Roman Catholic doctrine disclosed.
The doctrine of transubstantiation includes a physical impossibility. Accidents cannot exist without and apart from a substance. And here they are left entirely in the air. And that the same Christ—not, we say, according to His deity but according to His delimited human nature—would at the same time be in as many places everywhere where but one priest, by the act of consecration, calls Him to appear or to be present, is nothing less than absurd.
20. What views have been developed by modern theology regarding the Lord’s Supper?
Modern theology has the two natures in Christ fused into one divine-human nature. This divine-human nature, although individualized in Christ, is at the same time also a generic entity that can impart itself and propagate itself. It is not confined within Christ but flows over into the church and into all believers. There is no essential difference between the deity and humanity, the body and the soul of Christ. He must thus be imparted to us in His entirety if we are to receive His life. This does not flow into us in a material, sensory way, but in a spiritual way, since the bond with Christ is fixed at the center of our personality, which in itself is neither matter nor spirit, but a higher entity. The imparting of this substance of Christ takes place in the Lord’s Supper. It takes place not by the Holy Spirit but by Christ Himself. According to the Reformed view, mystical union is effected by the Holy Spirit, who dwells in Christ, the Head, and in us, His members. According to this modern view, it is effected and continually maintained by the inpouring and infusion of this divine-human essence.
One can find this theory in most modern theologians. Ebrard has worked it out in detail. It does not have a scriptural foundation. It is based on philosophical-pantheistic premises, and tries to maintain itself exegetically with what Scripture teaches in an entirely different sense regarding the mystical union between Christ and believers. This, as we saw earlier, is not a union of essence but a unity of life through the Holy Spirit.
21. Who should come to the Lord’s Supper?
Those who are members of Christ’s congregation and examine themselves, who can discern the body and blood of Christ. Thus:
a)Not the children before they have come to years of discernment. The Greek [Orthodox] Church has child communion, which for a long time has also been in use in the Roman Catholic Church. Appeal for that can be made to John 6:53, if one maintains that this eating and drinking of Christ is only to be received in the Lord’s Supper. But Rome does not maintain that the Lord’s Supper is necessary for salvation. Among the Reformed, there is almost no one who has spoken with uncertainty on this point. Musculus argued from baptism, but that argumentation does not hold. In baptism, the person appears in a completely passive way; he receives something. In the Lord’s Supper, in contrast, he comes actively, acting; he does something—takes, eats, drinks, does it in remembrance of Christ. It is required of those who come to the Lord’s Supper that they discern the body of the Lord and examine themselves. Children cannot do that. Children did join in eating the Passover at a very early age. But it cannot be proven that later very young children had to join in traveling to Jerusalem or to the place where the tabernacle stood to eat the Passover. In any case, the Passover and the Lord’s Supper are not on the same line such that what applies to the one also undoubtedly applies to the other. It is reported of Jesus that He went along to Jerusalem at the age of 12 (Luke 2:42).
It may be noted, however, that it is not the (old) Reformed practice and also not warranted by Scripture, when making profession of faith and participating in the Lord’s Supper is postponed to the age of 20. Years of discernment come earlier. In civil life one acts with discretion much earlier; why then in church life should one come to the Lord’s Supper so much later? Postponing participation for a long time has not benefited Lord’s Supper observance, since it has led to the illusion that life in the congregation according to God’s requirement is also possible for those who are completely grown up even when they do not go to the Lord’s Supper. Since profession of faith does not come at the beginning of independent living but in a certain sense in its midst, one begins to regard it as something unusual, as a crisis, as something for which something new must become apparent.
b)Not unbelievers, that is, those who by doctrine and life give offense in the church and who consequently by discipline must be kept from the table of the Lord. The church must exclude such people, for it is entrusted to it to be vigilant for the holiness of God’s covenant according to an objective standard. Hence the listing in our Form of the Lord’s Supper of gross and public sins, and the pronouncement that those who know themselves to be polluted with these sacrileges should absent themselves. Even if the church has not officially taken note of such sins, the person who knows himself polluted with them may not participate if he does not feel heartfelt sorrow for his sins and it is not his intention to improve his life.
c)Not unbelievers who lack saving faith entirely. But here one must distinguish:
1.Between the question of who the church should and may admit and the entirely different question of who possesses for himself subjectively the right go and to sit at the table, to eat and to drink. Regarding the first question, the church, also in the matter of the Lord’s Supper, does not have to make a subjective judgment about someone’s state but only to deal with members of the visible church who are improper in doctrine or life. The church should invite all such people to the Lord’s Supper and even insist that they shall come. It may never say: if you are unconverted and without faith, then you must stay away. Rather, it must enforce two things: the obligation of every member to come and the obligation of every member to come as a believer.
2.Between faith and faith. The faith that someone must possess in order to be able to come to the Lord’s Supper with a quiet conscience is not the assured trust of faith. Were that so, then only very few would be able to make use of this sacrament. Surely it has been instituted by Christ for all, even for the weakest believer among His believers. No one should ask himself: “Am I assured of my justification? Can I count on it that I am regenerated?” But surely: “Is there in me sorrow over my sin and a trust that takes refuge in my Savior, even if it is so little?” Whoever has, to him can be given. The smallest faith can be fed and increased at the Lord’s Supper.
d)Not true believers in every state. There is an unworthy eating and drinking that can take place, even for a true believer. That occurred in Corinth. In hunger and drunkenness one reached for the bread and for the cup. Thus, if a Christian is in a mood by which it is certain beforehand that he will not be able to hallow the institution of the Lord but will dishonor and profane it, then he may not attend. If such cases occur, everyone must decide for himself. According to 1 Corinthians 11, the believer, too, can eat and drink judgment upon himself. From this it is evident that the popular exegesis of this chapter is untenable. “Judgment” here does not mean “punishment,” much less “eternal punishment,” but “chastisement” sent by God upon His own so that they will not be condemned with the world (v. 32). Accordingly, the self-examination, which is required here, is also not so much an examination of oneself with an eye to the question whether one is regenerated or not, but rather an examination of the attitude that one takes towards God and His institution, so that one may move from a wrong attitude into a worthy one, and so eat and drink. The most painstaking self-examination must also end in this, according to Paul: in eating and drinking in the right state, in a humble attitude desirous of salvation.
22. What is one to understand about the Roman Catholic mass?
The sacrifice brought to God by the hand of the priest, after transubstantiation, consisting in the body, the soul, the deity of Christ, in the ostensible form of bread and wine.
On this point the Greek [Orthodox] Church has essentially the same view as the Roman Catholic Church. It too regards the sacrament as a sacrifice. The Roman Catholic Catechism says that the sacrifice takes place by consecration. If then the consecrated signs are preserved or brought to a sick person, then that is not a sacrifice but merely the Lord’s Supper. That the two ought to be separated, at least logically, also appears from the fact that the Canons of Trent deal with the Lord’s Supper in session 13, with the mass in session 22, thus with each in a separate place. There can be communion without the mass, at least in the same moment, although it appears that the mass with consecration must have always preceded. There can also be a mass without communion; for example, so-called private masses at which no participants are present.
The mass is an actual sacrifice. It does not differ in its essence from the sacrifice brought by Christ on the cross. That was a bloody; this is a bloodless sacrifice. But in both Christ is sacrificed.
Also, in both cases the priest is the same. Sometimes it is presented as if the officiating ministrant is the priest. However, it is emphasized by the Roman Catholic Catechism, among others, that it is the sacrificed Christ Himself who at the same time also does the work of a priest. This is to be so understood that Christ offers Himself through the ministry of the priest. They act for Christ in Christ’s name.
The mass, as repetition of the sacrifice of Christ, works in an essentially different way than a sacrament. Roman Catholics teach concerning a sacrament that it works ex opere operato [worked by the work]. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper of themselves do what they are said to do. The cross of Christ does not justify but merely opens justification, makes it possible, and hence the mass. It makes certain merits available that then, however, require a special application to become effective. Bellarmine makes a distinction between the sacrifice on the cross and the sacrifice of the mass. The former was meriting (meritorium), bringing about satisfaction (satisfactorium) and meriting salvation (impetratorium). The sacrifice of the mass is only the latter. It depends for its power on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, so that it is not entirely correct when Roman Catholics are accused of making the sacrifice on the cross insufficient. The sacrifice on the cross has, in the sense just described, infinite power, since it lends value to everything that happens in the name of the Church over the centuries. The power of the mass is limited, for otherwise there would be no need for many masses. The purpose of the mass is to obtain the remission of sins for the living and the dead, for individual persons and for believers in general, and to make it possible to store up merits for eternal life. For those who are in purgatory, masses can be celebrated by the Church if they themselves or their relatives have made money available for that purpose. Through these masses their stay in purgatory is shortened. This is an ever-flowing source of income for the Church.
23. What is the scriptural basis on which Rome thinks it possible to construct this doctrine?
As seen above, appeal is made to the words from the institution of the Lord’s Supper: “Do this,” etc. Thereby Jesus supposedly will have motivated His apostles and given them power to do what He Himself had just done, that is, to learn to effect transubstantiation. But, first of all, the entire view is based on the impossible explanation of the words, “This is my body,” as if that were a transubstantiating formula. If that is not the case, and every unprejudiced exegesis must acknowledge this, then what has been built on it also collapses—this strange institution of the sacrament of priestly consecration.
Furthermore, Roman Catholics say that Christ is priest according to the order of Melchizedek and therefore must continually repeat the sacrifice once brought by Him on the cross. But: (a) The point of comparison is not that Christ and Melchizedek sacrifice continually but rather that they do not have any successors in sacrificing, as the letter to the Hebrews says that with one sacrifice He has perfected forever all those who are sanctified [Heb 10:14]. Thus, just the opposite of what Rome maintains. (b) The comparison with Melchizedek carried through on this point must exclude specifically the priesthood of the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church.
An appeal is also made to Malachi 1:11: “ ‘But from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations,’ says the LORD of hosts.” The Vulgate has “sacrificatur” here. Even if this is correct, one may not take it literally. When Isaiah 19:21 says that in the future the Egyptians will serve the Lord with sacrifice and offering, in verse 19 that in that day the Lord will have an altar in the midst of the land of Egypt and a monument established at its border, then it occurs to no one to expect a literal fulfillment of these words. It is simply the Old Testament expression for the thought that Egypt will know and serve the true God. It is the same for Malachi 1:11.
Our [Heidelberg] Catechism calls the papal mass “an accursed idolatry.” This is accurate. If here what is not a sacrifice is offered to God as a sacrifice, and this thing sacrificed is venerated as God when it is not God, then one can find no other term for this than “accursed idolatry.” It has been said that Roman Catholics surely do not worship the wafer other than on the supposition that it really is their God. But every idolater does that more or less. No one worships a stone or a piece of wood with the thought that it is nothing more than wood or stone. Thus, if this excuse were valid, then one could no longer speak of idolatry anywhere.
The Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass is the consistent expression of the idea that the church must supply the things of salvation from its treasury to believers ex opere operato. If the one sacrifice of Christ was there as sufficient, then it would also follow that it would be accessible outside the church. But now it is not sufficient. The church must give it its efficacy. And thereby it becomes fully true, also even for the accomplishment of salvation: extra ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the Church there is no salvation].