by

Clifton D. Healy

The Lord’s Supper, also known as Holy Communion and the Eucharist, has, regrettably, been a point of contention, a doctrine around which schism has been built, since the Reformation. This is terribly sad. There are almost as many notions of the Eucharist as there are churches. The Orthodox churches claim the bread and wine are, by the Eucharistic prayer, the body and blood of Christ. Roman Catholics make a similar claim, but they go further than the Orthodox in defining as exactly as can be done, how the bread and wine become the body of Christ. Anglicans, something of a middle way between Roman Catholics and Protestants, have taken an approach similar to that of the Orthodox, though there are differences of belief among the Anglican churches. Some believe, as many Protestants do, that the bread and wine are just that, bread and wine. Nothing more, nothing less. However, they do function as symbolic of fundamental mysteries, the incarnation, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Protestants, what is important is the historical and spiritual reality symbolized by the Eucharist. Orthodox and Catholics, and some Protestant denominations, practice closed communion. If one is not a member of said church, one may not partake of the Communion. Generally, most Protestant churches practice an open Communion: given proper teaching about the Lord’s Supper, whether or not one participates, or should participate, is left to the individual, his or her conscience, and God. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and some Protestant churches, such as my own, practice at least weekly Communion. The majority of Protestants practice Communion monthly, though some observe it quarterly.

With such a state of chaotic contradiction in belief and practice about the Lord’s Supper, it’s no wonder the churches are so divided. At least all churches can agree that minimally what the Lord’s Supper symbolizes is the main point of the Gospel. That something so central to our faith could be an occasion of so much schism is more than sad. It’s obscene.

My own journey to better understand the reality about the Lord’s Supper began in the early months of 1990, while I was a student minister serving two yoked congregations near Mound City, Kansas. I had had plenty of opportunity over the preceding several years to read and ponder Jesus’ and Paul’s words dealing with the Eucharist. As I began to reflect on the differences within my heritage churches in the interpretative methods with which they handled texts relating to baptism and those relating to the Lord’s Supper, I began to wonder if the things Jesus and Paul had to say might be better taken at face value.

Of the four topics which I’ve investigated in this section "What I Have Learned," this particular essay was both the easiest and the most difficult to write. It was in some ways the easiest, because the New Testament passages are so clear about this. We Protestants come to them with a host of anti-Catholic presuppositions and are then forced to offer alternative explanations to what the texts so transparently say. The result is an uncomfortable similarity to the Gnostics of the early Church. This will become apparent later in this essay when we look at Irenaeus of Lyons’ teaching on the Lord’s Supper.

I grew up with a Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Ulrich Zwingli was a Protestant Reformer who taught against a sacramental understanding of grace, especially those understandings surrounding baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There was nothing behind or under the essence of the bread and wine. Similarly the teaching of my churches was against what they took to be Roman Catholic excesses with regard to the Lord’s Supper. So we were taught that the bread was just bread, the grape juice just grape juice. (Yes, we used grape juice instead of wine.) Most of all the Lord’s Supper was definitely not a resacrifice. Jesus died once for all. He could not be sacrificed again every Sunday. Communion, therefore, was an exercise in remembrance. We remembered the historical events. We made absolutely sure we observed the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Even though we had what can be fairly called an anti-sacramental view of the Eucharist, we nonetheless celebrated it with great solemnity.

One enormous benefit I received from this teaching was the practice of contemplation of the meaning and efficacy of the Lord’s Supper. We remembered what Jesus had done and what that meant. We recalled his words telling us that he would come again. We examined ourselves so as to confess our sin and guilt to God in prayer. We did not fail to serve it weekly, but if anyone felt that their spiritual state was such that they could not appropriately join in the Lord’s Supper, they were encouraged to refrain.

What was so unusual, however, within the parameters of the Stone-Campbell churches’ own commitments, was how this was completely inconsistent with the hermeneutic with which we concluded that immersion was an essential aspect of salvation. We took the New Testament texts at face value when we read in Acts 2.38 that the purpose of baptism was for the remission of sins and the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit. When Paul in Romans 6 indicated that baptism was a participation in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, we did not say that it was "only a metaphor." When Peter in his epistle indicates that the flood was a symbol of the "baptism which now saves you" we took that literally. But when Jesus referred to the bread and wine as his body and blood, we responded with "It’s only a metaphor."

There are in particular five relevant passages on this issue. There are the three parallel accounts of the Last Supper in Matthew, Mark and Luke; there is the hard saying in John 6; and there is the Pauline account of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. I will look at these texts in turn. The first three relevant pericopes are Matthew 26.26-29, Mark 14.22-25, and Luke 22.14-20. Each Gospel presents the same essential features. Jesus sends his disciples to procure a room in which he can celebrate Passover with his disciples. At that meal, he institutes what has come to be known as the Eucharist (from the Greek for Thanksgiving). Scholars debate whether or not this meal was an actual Paschal Seder, and which night this actually took place. These questions need not distract from the present concerns. What Jesus says and does, whether or not it took place in or as the actual Passover Seder meal, is institute a new observance. He told the disciples to do this in remembrance of him as often as they do it.

At issue are his words "This is my body," and "This is my blood." The fairly typical Protestant reaction is: This can’t be literally true, since he was in the flesh right then. His flesh was holding the bread which "is his body," and his blood flowed in the veins of the hands which held the cup full of wine which "is his blood." The bread could not, then, have been his body, nor the wine his blood. Obviously this was meant to be taken symbolically.

But Jesus didn’t say, "Now, when I say ‘This is my body’, I’m speaking metaphorically. I don’t mean it in a literal sense." He said simply, "This is my body, this is my blood." Furthermore, there are two other important texts to consider.

First is John 6.51-63. In this challenging passage, Jesus claims to be the bread of life, the bread come down from heaven. There is little doubt, in the way that John composes this passage, that the passages on Israel being fed the manna in the wilderness are to be evoked in our minds. Jesus claims several things in this passage: a) if anyone eats this bread, that one will live forever, b) the bread that is given for the life of the world is his flesh, c) if we do not eat of Jesus’ flesh and drink of his blood, we have no life in us, d) those who feed on his flesh and drink his blood have eternal life and will be risen in the last day, e) his flesh is true food, his blood true drink, f) whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood abides in Jesus and Jesus in him, g) those who eat this living food will not die as the Israelites ate the manna and died in the wilderness.

Clearly his audience took these words at face value, and were quite offended by it. Indeed, some of his own disciples stopped following after him on account of this "hard saying." Now Protestants have typically reacted to this passage with a similar argument about symbolism. The reactions of the crowd prove that they didn’t get it. Jesus couldn’t have really meant we would eat his flesh and drink his blood. After all, he goes on to say that it is his words that give life. So clearly, when we read that we are to eat his flesh, we are to think of his words as the bread from heaven. That is to say, we are to feed on his teachings and believe on him. That is what he meant by eating his flesh.

However, note what he said: the bread that is given for the life of his world is his flesh. It wasn’t his words that were nailed to the Cross. It was his incarnate body. He died that we might have life. He shed his blood for us. The bread that he is talking about here in John 6 is not his teaching, the bread is his flesh, his body. In other words, the bread and wine are his body and blood.

Bringing this home is our final passage to consider, 1 Corinthians 11.17-34. After first rebuking the Corinthians for using the occasion of the Lord’s Supper to create strife and discord, Paul reminds them of the tradition of the Lord’s Supper which the Lord himself had handed down to him and which he was passing on to them. He repeats the account of Jesus’ saying, "This is my body," and "This is my blood," and reminds them that this observance continually proclaims the central Gospel message until the Lord returns. Paul then goes on to point out these important considerations: a) whoever drinks the cup and eats the bread in an unworthy manner is guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord, b) one must examine oneself before eating and drinking, for if one fails to discern the body he eats and drinks judgment on himself, c) the reason many of the Corinthians are weak and ill is because they have failed to properly examine themselves.

The traditional interpretation of these verses notes that when Paul refers to the Corinthians "discerning the body," this is taken to mean they have failed to discern that the bread has become the body of Christ. They have failed to take seriously the mystery of grace that happens in the Eucharist, that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

Protestants interpret this passage, and the Eucharist, by saying that the elements of the bread and wine are symbolic. That is why Paul says that one must discern the body. Here he is speaking symbolically of the Church. When he uses the phrase "body and blood" he is referring symbolically to the Eucharist. When he speaks only of the body he is referring symbolically to the Church. In other words, he did not say one must discern the body and the blood. Rather, it was just the body. Given that Paul rebukes the Corinthians for divisions in their church both before and after this text, as well as throughout the first part of the letter, what he is actually rebuking the Corinthians for is that they were not properly discerning that their brothers and sisters whom they were mistreating were part of the Body of Christ, the Church.

This is obviously a persuasive argument. It takes into account the actual wording of the text ("discern the body") as well as the context of the letter itself (regarding the divisions, especially those mentioned in the immediate context). However, it does not pay close enough attention to all of the verses. For Paul very clearly talks about eating and drinking the Lord’s body and blood. Yes, there were divisions in the Corinthian church and these divisions were marring their observance of the Lord’s Supper. And it was precisely these divisions that were profaning the body and blood of the Lord, the elements of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.

Yes, Paul refers "only" to the body, when he says that those who fail to discern the body bring judgment on themselves. But how do they appropriate this judgment? By eating and drinking in a state of sinful division. One need not dispute the interpretation that the Corinthians, by their actions, were failing to live the reality that their brothers and sisters were members of the Body of Christ, the Church, just as they themselves were. Rather, it was this failure that profaned the Eucharistic elements. It wasn’t a matter that they failed to discern that these elements were the body and blood of Christ--though this is certainly the accepted interpretation--but rather that in their sinful behavior they profaned their partaking of the bread and wine, the body and blood of their Lord.

Among the earliest references to the Lord’s Supper is that in Ignatius’ of Antioch’s epistle to the Smyrnans. About AD 107, he writes, "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of his goodness, raised up again" (Ignatius of Antioch, Smyrnans 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, [hereinafter ANF] vol. I p. 89). Once again, at issue here is division among the members of the Church. Many were disobedient to the bishop are were creating schisms. Ignatius notes that having rebelled against the bishop, they also are absent from the Eucharist which the bishop celebrates as lead minister in the church at Smyrna. Ignatius underlines the gravity of their abstention: the do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior.

Justin Martyr lived from about AD 110-165 when he was martyred for the faith. In his two apologies he is both defending Christians from false charges (such as incest and cannibalism) and proclaiming the truth of Christian beliefs. Sometime in the middle of the second century, in his first Apology, he writes:

And this food is called among us . . . [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took brad, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "this is My blood;" and gave it to them alone." (Justin Martyr, First Apology 66, ANF vol. I, p 185).

The Christians were being accused of cannibalism because they claimed to be partaking of the flesh and blood of their Lord. Justin could have easily refuted the charge by simply stating that it was all a misunderstanding. They didn’t really eat flesh and drink blood. That was just metaphorical talk for participating in the saving work of Jesus Christ. Instead, he states the truth--which couldn’t have been very clear to his pagan reader--that by prayer the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ.

But perhaps the one who raises the stakes regarding the implications of what we believe about the Eucharist is Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus of Lyons (in what is now modern day France) lived from about AD 120-202. He was bishop of the church in Lyons, and was also a martyr, dying in the persecution of the Emperor Severus. He wrote his work Against Heresies, about AD 182-188. In the five books which make up Against Heresies, he refutes the teachings of the Gnostics, showing how they both are not apostolic and are inimical to the Christian faith.

There are a handful of texts in the fourth and fifth books which are germane to the discussion of the Lord’s Supper specifically.

He took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, and said, ‘The is My body." And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, He confessed to be His blood, and taught the new oblation of the new covenant; which the Church receiving from the apostles, offers to god throughout all the world . . ." (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV.17.5, ANF vol. I, p 484).

Irenaeus does not hesitate to anchor the Eucharist teaching in the incarnational and creational reality of the Gospel. The Gnostics, however, are not so oriented: "But how can they be consistent with themselves, [when they say] that the bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord, and the cup His blood, if they do not call Himself the Son of the Creator of the world . . ." (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV.18.4, ANF vol. I, p 486). In other words, because matter is separate from spirit and is evil, the Gnostics claimed Jesus could not have been flesh. Yet, they still mouthed the words over the cup and the load, "This is my blood; this is my body." Irenaeus shows that they were just mimicking words and didn’t believe the reality. "For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly . . ." (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV.18.5, ANF vol. I, p 486). Again, the Eucharist is not a denial of the spirit or a denial of the flesh, but the confession of their union in the God-Man, Jesus Christ. In fact:

if this [flesh] indeed do[es] not attain salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body. . . . He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body from which He gives increase to our bodies." (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, V.2.2, ANF vol. I, p 528).

Not to put too fine a point on it, Irenaeus says bluntly, "the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist of the blood and body of Christ is made . . ." (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, V.2.3, ANF vol. I, p 528).

He appears in these texts to be making a big deal out of the created nature of the bread and wine. He is stressing the inconsistencies of thought in the Gnostic heretics who wanted to maintain that salvation was not about created, worldly things but about spiritual matters. To stress the incarnational nature of the faith, Irenaeus points out that the Church believes what Christ said and the Apostles taught in relation to the Eucharist: the bread and wine by the prayer of the Eucharist are the body and blood of Christ. It’s not as though the bread and wine stop being bread and wine, but that just as Christ was of two natures, God and man, in one Person, so the bread and wine of the Eucharist have both the created matter (bread and wine) and the divine matter (the body and blood of Christ) united in one reality, the Eucharist.

I’ve spent so much time with Irenaeus not because he is somehow infallible, but because he so clearly articulates what’s at stake for us as Protestants in our belief about the Lord’s Supper. Here was a bishop, on the western fringes of the Roman Empire, where heresy was gaining inroads into the Christian faithful. Rather than give in to the popular notions of the Lord’s Supper that were then gaining currency, he fought hard for the clear New Testament teaching, and the consensus of the Church, just as his fellow Christians Ignatius and Justin taught. By denying the material reality of the Eucharist, that the bread and wine, in the Eucharist prayer, become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, we Protestants are not much different than the heretical Gnostics Irenaeus fought against. Irenaeus could say to us: Why stop with just denying the New Testament teaching of the Eucharist? Why not simply deny the Incarnation as well. But instead, I think what he would say to us is: Since you believe the Incarnation, believe also what the Church has taught about the Eucharist from the beginning. And then he would do for us now what he did for the Church and for his Lord then, he would give his life over to a martyr’s death. Because so much was at stake.

When one adds the weight of the early Christians writings, as seen in Ignatius of Antioch, in Justin Martyr, and in Irenaeus of Lyons, to that of the fundamental texts in the Gospels and epistles, it is clear that from the New Testament, to the immediate successors of the Apostles, and down through the history of the Church, both Scripture and the Church have consistently taught that the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper are, in a special and mysterious way, the body and blood of the Lord. The Church did not attempt to explain it any further than this, assuming the reality as a matter of the Lord’s direct teaching, which the Church accepts on faith. It was only in the Western Church, and largely as a result of the medieval scholastic philosophical and theological movement, that attempts were made to define by human standards how this sort of reality could be. This has clearly been a mistake, and it is in large part this mistake against which Protestants have reacted.

While there are certain theological realities we can describe in limited ways within the confines of human language and reason, such as the fundamental doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, nonetheless these same eternal teachings of the Gospel remain essentially mysterious to us. There is enough that we can understand so that we can respond in reasonable faith, but there is much more that we can never fully grasp. How it is that the bread and wine become the body and blood of our Lord in the observance of the Eucharist, we can never fully know. It is a mystery. But it is no less true for all that.

Although this has been a fairly "easy" topic on which to write about, because the New Testament is so clear, it nonetheless has been incredibly difficult. At the time, in my student ministry days in 1990, that I was slowly coming to understand the Lord’s Supper differently from how I’d been taught about it, I began to realize that this was putting me in conflict with the very churches I was serving. That is to say, what I was coming to believe about the Lord’s Supper, was radically contradictory to what they believed. I began to pray each time I participated in communion, something similar to what Elizabeth I is said to have prayed, "Lord, I don’t really know what this is I’m receiving. But whatever it is, I want to receive it as it is, and worthily." As a result, I slowly came to a middle position between that which I had been taught and that which I have now come to believe based on a reexamination of the New Testament. At that time, I believed that the bread was just bread, and the wine (or grape juice) just wine (or juice). However, because it was the Lord’s Supper, Jesus was present among us in a very special way. Anything other sort of belief would have been far too "Roman Catholic."

But the more Scripture I have read, and the more I have read in Church history, the more clear it has become that an understanding of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ is just the teaching that was expressed in the Church in its earliest existence. I have come to an understanding of the Lord’s Supper as a mystery, that by grace Christ is especially present to us in the bread and wine, and that, in ways that cannot be explained, the bread and the wine became, in an act of grace, the body and blood of Christ.

Now this will make any Protestant worth his or her salt sweat bullets. Sure there are all the Roman Catholic bugaboos Protestants are nervous of, but it is more than that. Protestants such as myself are nervous about this sort of conclusion because it has implications for our own celebrations of the Eucharist. I will not here attempt to delineate whether or not an observance of the Lord’s Supper is valid without a validly consecrated bishop or a priest authorized by him. But I cannot escape asking: if we teach that about the Lord’s Supper that is in contradiction to what the New Testament teaches, does that put us in danger of eating and drinking judgment on ourselves? This is the sort of implication that Protestants like myself are fearful of asking.

Yet these are just the sorts of questions we must ask. We must face the truth of the New Testament and the consistent witness of the Church. For ultimately, it is these texts we claim as foundational and authoritative. The New Testament, and all the Scriptures, we claim to have been divinely inspired, God’s revelation of Christ to us. And it is Christ with whom we have to do. We can only follow the light we have, but follow it we must.

© 2002 Clifton D. Healy

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