Baptismal Unity and Separated Suppers
Several theologians from the time of the Reformation and forward have noticed the shift in the understanding of the church that took place between the earliest centuries and a later age. This is a transition that is reflected, fossil-like, in the later (and current) sacramental practices of Roman Catholic priests. Thus the very word “sacrament,” which literally means “holy thing,” has a story, an etymology, a family history, so to speak. As J. N. D. Kelly has pointed out, “While the technical terms for sacrament were to be μυστήριον in Greek and sacramentum in Latin, there are no absolutely certain instances of their use before the Alexandrian fathers and Tertullian respectively.”1 Indeed, the employment of this term, sacramentum, since it is not, after all, found in the pages of the NT, marks a considerable transformation from the first century to the institutional church of later centuries, changing from a charismatic conception of the body of Christ marked by gifts and charisms, as the Holy Spirit willed in sovereign freedom, to an institutional body that ever underscored the significance of office. For example, reflecting on the difference between conceiving the Lord’s Supper as a rite and as a sacrament, Emil Brunner during the early twentieth century observed: “[This] Sacrament belongs just as much to the institution of the Church as the fellowship-meal belongs to the Ekklesia.”2 The transition from the Lord’s Supper understood as a fellowship meal to the reality of the sacrament of the Mass, a much later development, marks a world of difference.3 Brunner went on to point out that “the Lord’s Supper is never brought together with Baptism under [the] one co-ordinating concept [of sacrament]”4 in the NT.
This initial observation, however, is not offered to deny the significance of the sacraments in the life of the church, an employment that is affirmed by both Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, but simply to underscore the ongoing problem of anachronism in this area, especially when Rome repeatedly reads back later historical realities into the first century in confusing and inaccurate configurations. To cite just one example, it is clear that Christ established not the “sacrament of the Mass” and all that this entails, as the Catechism would have it, but rather the fellowship meal of the Lord’s Supper, which is quite a different thing. This last point is doubly important once it is realized that the development of the early rites of the church (which were indeed established by Jesus) into its later sacramental life is strongly associated with the change in framework—again from a more charismatic to a more institutional model—that likewise marks the transition from elder or presbyter to priest.
At the outset it is also helpful, for the sake of the clarity of the following discussion, to distinguish between the larger category of “the means of grace” and the more particular subset of sacraments (e.g., of the Lord’s Supper and baptism) through which grace, in the form of the presence of the Holy Spirit, can be communicated to believers. Thus the broader class of the means of grace would also include such things as praying, attending church, hearing the Word of God preached, fasting, having fellowship with other Christians, and engaging in works of charity and mercy, especially among the poor, the least of all. In this mix of the means of grace, sacraments would still, of course, have a special place since the early practices that eventually resulted in their later institutionalization over time were indeed established by Christ. What is more, the sacraments have a sign (as well as a significance) associated with them (water for baptism; bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper), and they carry nothing less than the very promises of the gospel expressed in concrete and tangible ways, and which are received in grace, as Luther himself well understood.5
Baptism
Baptism is well attested in the earliest periods of the church. Jesus Christ himself, for example, not only was baptized by John the Baptist but also, in submitting to this ritual, affirmed John’s call for both repentance and a genuine washing and renewal among the Jewish people. Therefore the Roman Catholic Church is surely correct in declaring the necessity of baptism for all Christians, especially in light of Peter’s response to the question posed to him at Pentecost, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). To this the leading apostle replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). Beyond this, the necessity of baptism (surely a challenge to both Quakers and Salvationists) is further attested through the voice of Jesus present in the Gospel of Mark: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
Even today, as the Catechism puts it, “Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians.”6 Baptism, which has such a rich and deep history, is shared by nearly all Christians regardless of theological tradition. Baptism is therefore rightly the basis upon which to affirm the broad unity of the body of Christ regardless of differing parts or members, as the apostle Paul himself declared in his own day: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:13). In this last verse, Paul underscores the transcendent unity of the gospel (as he did also in Gal. 3:28), which is grounded precisely in one Lord and one Spirit. Such a liberating understanding, going beyond all tribalism or provincialism, is likewise reflected in Paul’s call to harmony with respect to the Ephesian church: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6).
Given the very nature of baptism, as articulated by the apostles Peter and Paul, it remains the sacrament that even today holds enormous promise for a genuine ecumenism, marked by filial affection, holy love, and generous care, in the abiding recognition of a common Lord and Spirit. Accord at this level is one of the most broad-based unities of all. Indeed, the Catechism rightly affirms these realities, on one level, in its recognition that “Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit.”7 Nevertheless, immediately after citing this salient material, which does indeed celebrate the genuine unity already present in baptism and among the baptized, the Catechism then adds to this language, making a move that once again marks not the oneness of the church but bespeaks its particularistic, all-too-Roman divisions: baptism is “the door which gives access to the other sacraments.”8 The problem with this last statement, however, is that baptism, this emblem of unity, is in fact only the gateway to the other sacraments for Roman Catholics, not for the Eastern Orthodox and certainly not for Protestants, as chapter 8 has already clearly demonstrated. Roman provincialism once again rules the day, even at this basic and very gracious level. Indeed, for many baptized, professing, holy Christians, who acknowledge one Lord and one Spirit (sometimes even in the midst of suffering and persecution), the way to giving formal and public expression to such a unity, precisely at the Lord’s table, is now barred. What is this, then, but to turn Peter and Paul’s very good counsel on its head? Indeed, by the time the Roman ecclesiastics and canon lawyers are done with the codes that are now applied to those “other” baptized Christians, such restrictions must necessarily reflect back upon the nature of baptism itself—precisely as a purported genuine door, a gateway to the Lord’s Supper, for example—and thereby leave it now in a very distorted state. Baptism has thus been caught up in a larger, alien structure in which its proper unifying voice cannot be heard. What has been given with one hand has been quickly taken away by the other.
Moreover, some Protestants, due to their ongoing fear of formalism that they discern in the Roman church, are concerned with the matter of an ex opere operato (literally, “by the work worked”) understanding, at least on some level, as it pertains to the relation between baptism and the new birth. That is, some take exception to Rome’s language that the sacrament of baptism, to quote the Catechism, “signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one ‘can enter the kingdom of God.’”9 Can we then assume, with sound biblical and theological justification, that anyone being baptized is at that point born of God? The biblical reference of this catechetical observation is John 3:5, in which Jesus taught Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” As a first-century Jew, Nicodemus would have likely understood the reference to being born of water (though he was baffled by the reality of being born in the Spirit) as pointing to natural birth10 (which is indeed very watery!) and not to Christian baptism, as the Catechism would have it. Another option would be that Nicodemus may have had in mind the Jewish ritual of baptism for gentile converts.
At any rate, the Roman Catholic Church may actually be on more solid biblical ground than some Protestants have imagined. In a few important passages the NT does indeed assume that when people are baptized, they are renewed through the reception of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 6:3–4, for example, Paul strongly associates baptism and regeneration: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Add to this Peter’s pointed observation, “In it [the ark Noah built] only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also” (1 Pet. 3:20–21), and the picture that begins to emerge is that baptism is intimately associated with the renewal of regeneration in the biblical materials, as the Roman tradition has claimed all along. Though Luther essentially shared this judgment as well, he nevertheless cautioned in his own day, in his Lectures on Genesis, for instance, lest there be misunderstanding: it is not the sacrament itself that brings new life but the Holy Spirit who works through it as a suitable means of grace.11
A far more controversial area has to do with Roman claims (shared by some Protestants, by the way) regarding infant baptism as the preferred way of becoming a part of the body of Christ. The Roman hierarchy claims that “the practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church.”12 However, if this last statement accounts infant baptism as the normal practice of first-century Christianity, as readily practiced by the apostles themselves, then this claim is surely mistaken unless one commits the fallacy entailed in eisegesis. To be sure, the NT nowhere mentions that infants were baptized unless one reads one’s own assumptions and preferences with respect to this issue (actually indicative of a later date) into those biblical accounts that are of a very general nature, as found, for example, in Acts 18:8, where it is reported: “Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.” Indeed, it is difficult to find evidence of infant baptism before the time of Tertullian. This practice, eventually taken up by the church, came into its full stride during the fourth century, especially during and after the time of Constantine, when large numbers of people (and for all sorts of reasons) were flooding into the church. Here, as in so many other areas, Rome actually favors not the earliest practices of the church but those that have developed during a later period of time. That is, Rome prefers what historians can only recognize as an innovation.
In making infant baptism the usual way that one enters the church, well suited to an institutional understanding of the body of Christ, the Roman tradition, like so many others (some Protestant traditions included here as well), runs the risk of fostering nominal Christianity, whereby the very heart of the Christian faith, at least in its earliest phases, is mistaken for the priestly rituals that are performed at times regardless of the will, the knowledge, and even the faith of the recipient. As Gerald Bray points out, “Baptism was like vaccination; it worked whether the recipient was aware of what was happening or not.”13 In order to justify this practice, Rome advances two principal arguments.
First, the baptism of infants underscores the sovereignty of God. The grace of baptism is an utter gift to be received. Such an understanding is reflected once again in the words of the Catechism: “The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism.”14 However, this theological observation may actually be more in line with the monergism (emphasizing the work of God alone) of the magisterial Reformation than with the ongoing synergistic (divine and human cooperation) theological emphases of Rome. Moreover, if monergism is indeed operative here, then why not elsewhere in Roman Catholic theology?
Second, in order to justify the practice of infant baptism, Rome offers a comparison between the OT ritual of circumcision and the alleged NT practice of infant baptism.15 At first glance this analogy may seem to be apt (if one already assumes that infant baptism is scriptural), and even Protestant scholar Alister McGrath contends that “Paul treats baptism as a spiritual counterpart to circumcision (Col. 2:11–12), suggesting that the parallel may extend to its application to infants.”16 However, upon further examination this association of circumcision and infant baptism quickly falls apart, especially when the larger Pauline corpus is taken into account. It is, therefore, not descriptive of apostolic intent and judgment. Consider this: circumcision as practiced by the Jews (the heirs of the covenantal promises of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) flowed along familial, racial lines indicative of a chosen people. Not only was circumcision a “sign of the covenant,” as Genesis 17:11 puts it, but it was also the mark that literally and physically distinguished this chosen people from the gentiles. To be a member of a particular family in effect made one an heir of the covenant. One was born into a favored, privileged relationship with the Most High. This is not, however, how Christian believers, both Jews and gentiles today, are related to Christ.
To be sure, these relations between families, signs, and covenantal people are not descriptive of how a gentile stands with respect to the new covenant, as the apostle Paul so clearly explained in Romans 11:17–21. In this passage, gentiles are not the “natural branches” of the tree of redemption, so to speak; rather the Jews as the chosen people are. While it is true, as Paul observes, that natural branches have been broken off to make room for “a wild olive shoot” that has been grafted in, the latter stand only “by faith” and not by any sort of natural relation. Accordingly, being born into a Roman Catholic family, and almost immediately baptized, does not function in the same way as being born into the family of Israel and then circumcised. Paul makes an important distinction between the two covenants as well as between the standing of Jews and that of gentiles, as revealed in the following: “After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!” (Rom. 11:24). Hence infant baptism, as practiced by the Roman church as the nearly exclusive way to become a member of the body of Christ, must by necessity draw increasing attention to belonging to particular families (“the pious desires of parents and elders”), and even at times to distinct ethnic groups, in a way that improperly shadows the OT practice of circumcision. Such a practice, therefore, does not sufficiently celebrate the only possible standing for gentiles (and Jews as well in the new covenant) in the eyes of the apostle Paul, that is, by faith.17 The apostle reasoned: “You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either” (Rom. 11:19–21).18
The Lord’s Supper
The Lord’s Supper is the sacrament in which such great change is to be observed from the meanings of the original ritual to the accretions that bit by bit have been added over time by a priestly class that was determined, with all manner of supposed justifications, to transform the Supper in accordance with its own self-ascribed role. Martin Stringer has described this process as “a product of a long series of gradual changes.”19 For one thing, the Lord’s Supper, judging from its first occurrence, was not the reworking of the Levitical sacrifices in a new setting in which altar, office, and human action were some of the overriding themes. Instead, the Supper was quite literally a meal, a Passover, to which new meanings were added by Christ himself, suggesting that a much different covenant relation was now in effect.
Remarkably, some scholars have raised the question whether the meal over which Jesus presided shortly before his death was in fact a Passover, since there are problems of chronology here. Though the three Synoptic Gospels all agree that the Last Supper was a Passover, there is evidence in the Gospel of John to suggest, as I. Howard Marshall points out, that “the Jews had not yet celebrated the Passover at the time when Jesus had already concluded his meal.”20 Then Marshall goes on to make the case that since the meal which the disciples were sent to prepare is “clearly stated to be the Passover,” and also since Jesus presided in this setting because “he wished to celebrate the Passover,”21 it may be reasonably concluded that the Last Supper held by Jesus was “a Passover meal, probably held in advance of the official date.”22
Since the Lord’s Supper can, after all, be suitably described as a meal, even a Passover23 (which included the element of sacrifice by means of the slaughtered lamb), this fact clearly indicates that the actions of Jesus, in presiding, must in some sense be comprehended in terms of the rich salvific history of the Jewish people, which includes sacrifice, deliverance, and exodus. Indeed, the Passover in its historic setting was a common meal, celebrated by the Hebrew people, in remembrance of the mighty saving acts of God on their behalf. Everyone reclining around the table (though some in Exod. 12:11 were apparently standing) was equally the recipient of such mighty acts, ever mindful of the common heritage, and the meal therefore was marked by an atmosphere of praise, gratitude, and thanksgiving for the deliverance brought about by the Holy One of Israel.
The setting of the Lord’s Supper itself is likewise noteworthy and has often been depicted by artists throughout the centuries; Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, produced in the latter part of the fifteenth century, is perhaps the most famous. Yet the disciples were probably not gathered around the table, as Leonardo would have it, with all facing the eye of the beholder. At any rate, this supper, judging from the Gospel accounts, is clearly marked by the love of Christ for those gathered and by the very strong theme of fellowship.24 Again, Marshall indicates that Jesus transformed this particular Passover in some sense: “He saw it as an occasion of fellowship with his disciples, . . . and thus it took on the character of a farewell meal.”25 Luke’s account of the supper (22:14–21) reveals that the direction in which Jesus moves the elements as he grasps them and speaks of their new-covenant significance is not with great vertical lift,26 a priestly move, offering them up to the Father, for example, but a horizontal one in which they are divided and shared among those around the table, with Jesus saying of both the bread and the cup that they are literally “for you” (vv. 19–20).27 The direction was not upward but outward toward the disciples, suggestive of both giving and gift. Indeed, the setting of an upper room, the gathering around a table, reclining, the face-to-face interactions, the voices heard, the givenness of the elements, the “for you” language spoken by Jesus—all of this bespeaks fellowship, even communion, as the disciples shared an intimate, not public, setting with their Lord.
Before we chronicle how the early church understood the Lord’s Supper, beyond the Gospel accounts, it may be helpful (in order to see the significant contrast in one of its sharpest forms) to compare the original setting of the Lord’s farewell meal, with its strong theme of fellowship, with how the Roman Catholic Church understands the Supper today. We particularly want to highlight how that understanding is caught up in the much-later supervening structures of what the Mass had become over time, with its sharp distinction of roles as well as with its priestcraft and sacerdotalism. Thus, for example, in a way that basically repudiates the key element of the fellowship of the Supper, even today Rome still insists, after having been criticized by the magisterial Reformers,28 that “every priest retains the right to celebrate alone.”29 Yet in his own age, Luther insisted, “We can nonetheless readily abandon the private mass as something that we have not been commanded to do and that is a purely individual, fabricated, self-chosen, human doctrine and invention.”30 Indeed the priest by himself, off at some side altar while saying such a Mass, is not able, despite what priestly powers he supposedly possesses, to express in a very real and bodily way (only possible in the assembly of flesh-and-blood people who will both participate and consume, in a ministry at the very least for the church militant) one of the leading and undoubtedly necessary elements of the first Lord’s Supper, namely, fellowship. In this case priestcraft has driven fellowship away—or worse yet, the priests think that physical and bodily fellowship, a genuine assembly, is at times unnecessary. Inattention to the community of the faithful is spawned by a focus on priestly powers themselves, as reflected in Anthony Kenny’s observation on the anticipation and even the exhilaration that those same powers often bring to the minds of priests: “I have no clear memory of this celebration [of his first Mass], but I do recall most vividly the exaltation of the first months during which I had the power to say Mass. Normally a slow and sluggish riser, I would leap early out of bed, fully awake and full of excitement at the thought of the momentous act I was privileged to perform.”31
Second, the fellowship of the Lord’s table is likewise disrupted, at least in some sense, by the later ecclesiastical narrative that Rome prefers, which once again represents an innovation, one that celebrates not the equality of fellowship (in which no one is called teacher or master, as Jesus required) but the inequality of rank, of graded hierarchical distinctions, and of exclusive priestly roles. What some Protestants find so amazing, given the grace and beauty of the first Lord’s Supper, is that Rome must see itself as in a mirror, with all its preferred polity and hierarchical structures that took so much time to develop, even here at this special, sacred place. Accordingly, a document from Vatican II declares: “The people of God, when assembled for Mass, has an organic and hierarchical structure which is manifested in the various actions and different functions performed during Mass.”32 Moreover, in case the Roman Catholic faithful are not yet sufficiently informed concerning the attitudes and roles they are to embrace at this meal before their ecclesiastical “superiors,” Vatican II documents make this explicit: “The unity of this community, having its origin in the one bread in which all share (cf. 1 Cor. 10:17), is arranged in hierarchical order. For this reason it is necessary that ‘each person, performing his role as a minister or as one of the faithful, should do all that the nature of the action and the liturgical norms require of him, and only that.’”33
Again, this same council declared: “The hierarchical structure of the liturgy, its sacramental power, and the respect due to the community of God’s people require that the priest exercise his liturgical service as a ‘faithful minister and steward of the mysteries of God’ [1 Cor. 4:1].”34 Rome reads its own hierarchy into the Lord’s Supper so strongly as to insist that “the Pope is associated with every celebration of the Eucharist, wherein he is named as the sign and servant of the unity of the universal church.”35
This language of “hierarchical fellowship”36 employed by Vatican II may be considered an oxymoron by some of the Christian faithful today, especially when they have in mind the reality of the first Lord’s Supper. In his own early twentieth-century setting, Emil Brunner declared that when the Lord’s Supper is refashioned in this manner—such that the original rite has now become the sacrament of the institutional hierarchical church, intent upon reading its preferred structure and its particular polity into everything, even into the earliest of times—then this move can only mark a fundamental and not insignificant modification of what the church is in its essence or nature. As Brunner observed, “When the Lord’s Supper is conceived of as Sacrament, there takes place a fundamental sociological change in the structure of the Ekklesia.”37 This is a transition from soteriological equality (one Lord, one faith, one baptism) to hierarchical difference.38 This, then, is a hierarchy that actually transforms the Supper.
The Early Church Weighs In
If our reading of the Lord’s Supper during its rise is accurate, then we should see the early church continuing this practice in what one scholar calls “a meal fellowship.”39 Indeed, when the evidence of the early church is consulted, in both the NT and some material from the Apostolic Fathers, this is precisely what is found. The practice of the first-century church was to meet in houses around a table to celebrate the Supper. By the time of the Didache (mid- to late first century) and of Ignatius (d. AD 107), the term Eucharist (literally, “thanksgiving”) was beginning to be used to describe the meal and to underscore the church’s vibrant gratitude and praise for having received the gift of the Son from the Father. However even before this later period, the Gospel of John affirmed that God the Father is the giver of the bread, that the direction of giving is from the Father to us: “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’” (John 6:32–33). The proper liturgical response, then, to the Father’s offer of the gift of the Son was and remains thanksgiving and adoration. Accordingly, Garry Wills describes the early Eucharist as “initially a literal meal, held most likely in the evening within a domestic ‘house church’ setting, with the contents of the meal provided by members of the assembly.”40
The strong emphasis on the Supper as a meal, with its eating and drinking, is easily discerned in Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthian church, some of whose members were engaged in “private” meals when they came together as the church, with the result that some were left hungry and others drunk (1 Cor. 11:20–22). So strong were the overtones of the Eucharist as a meal fellowship that in its earliest practice it often took place in concert with the Agape feast. By the latter part of the first century, however, as Andrew McGowan points out, this conjoined communal banquet was separated into “a morning sacramental ritual [and a] prosaic communal supper.”41 Moreover, with these transitions in place, the church’s meal was no longer the Passover meal that it was for Jesus and his disciples, and therefore “it was not bound by the Passover ritual.”42
One of the more important witnesses of the Apostolic Fathers, the Didache, ties together the eucharistic flavor of the Supper—its strong theme of thanksgiving, a commonplace by now—with the elements of a meal fellowship in this observation: “And after you have been satisfied with food, give thanks as follows: We give thanks to you, O Holy Father, for your holy name which you caused to dwell in our hearts and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you made known to us through Jesus your child; to you be the glory forever.”43 To the criticism offered by some scholars that this chapter describes a “transition to a full eucharistic celebration following the meal,”44 Paul Bradshaw observes: “What [this criticism] fails to explain . . . is why the author of the Didache should provide such detailed instructions and liturgical texts for this purely ancillary rite and yet pass over the Eucharist proper with hardly a word.”45 This fellowship meal that the Didache has described, then, was likely the Lord’s Supper celebrated during the mid- to late first century.
Beyond this, writing in the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr retains these emphases and begins to stress the role of “the president of the brethren” (who, by the way, is clearly not a priest, judging from the contents of this material), who presides at the table and thereby takes responsibility for the proper distribution of the bread and wine. Justin Martyr explains: “There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands.”46 Since the Lord’s Supper of the NT and the Eucharist of some of the Apostolic Fathers is so clearly a meal, it seems to follow that “the appropriate setting for the sacrament is a table, and the appropriate posture . . . is sitting.”47
The Lord’s Supper and Sacrifice
The early Eucharist, though clearly a fellowship meal, also embraced the idea of sacrifice, a theme that was present from the beginning and that was implied by the words of Christ himself, used in this special setting: “This is my body given for you” (Luke 22:19), and, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (22:20). Naturally, the sacrificial nature entailed in the Supper, whose prefiguring type is seen in the Passover lamb, can be variously understood. Thus it can take on a range of meanings depending upon how sacrifice is conceived, especially in terms of who or what is sacrificed (and there are so many options here, judging from the historical record). After this, of course, the question must then be addressed as to how the idea of sacrifice is related to the ongoing, strong theme of fellowship. There are at least three major possibilities: (1) The theme of sacrifice now predominates such that fellowship is in a very real way, despite claims to the contrary, subsumed under it. Tables are transformed into altars even though the language of tables is retained, and “presidents of the assembly” become full-blown priests. (2) The Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice but is simply a fellowship meal that offers the gospel promises through the tangible signs of bread and wine. Tables do not become altars, and priests never emerge. (3) Sacrifice is a distinct theme (describing the reality of the paschal lamb and Golgotha); however, it emerges within the context of the fellowship meal (though it is temporally distinct from it) in that the food and drink consumed symbolize the sacrifice on the cross, which forms the basis not only for the “for you” nature of the meal but also for the Communion, which would be impossible apart from a given (by God the Father), sacrificed Lord.
Though no one theological tradition perfectly fits any of the three options described above, Roman Catholicism does resonate in many respects with the first. Observe, for example, how Rome in its public documents employs the language of both altar and table, though a clear preference is given to the former: “The altar, around which the Church is gathered in the celebration of the Eucharist, represents the two aspects of the same mystery: the altar of the sacrifice and the table of the Lord.”48 The altar represents the two aspects of the mystery and thus does this double duty, so to speak, and not the table. Indeed, so many elements of the Mass, from the liturgical vessels used, to the words spoken, to the vestments of the priest, all underscore this same reality. However, gathering around an altar, in the ongoing practice of the Mass, is clearly different from the apostolic practice of sitting or reclining at the table. Indeed, these basic postures represent a world of theological difference.
Our view, which is similar to the third option above, does not deny the sacrificial relations or connections of the Lord’s Supper but simply maintains that they must be appropriately understood, in line with the nature of the meal itself as instituted by Jesus and with the earliest understandings of the church. In the Didache, for instance, the sacrificial language that does emerge is a “sacrifice of thanksgiving,”49 as is evident in the following: “And coming together on the Lord’s own day, break bread and give thanks, confessing beforehand your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.”50 Moreover, Colin Bulley points out that when Justin Martyr employs the vocabulary of sacrifice in terms of the Supper, he has in mind the “offerings of praise and thanksgiving for blessings received,”51 and Irenaeus, for his part, has in view “the bread and wine being like the OT offering of the firstfruits.”52 Beyond this, Tertullian viewed the Eucharist “as one Christian sacrifice among many,”53 Bulley continues, “and probably saw its sacrificial aspects as involving thanksgiving and, less clearly, the gifts the faithful offer when the eucharist is celebrated.”54
The Roman Catholic view does indeed acknowledge the practice of the early church to consider sacrifice in terms of both celebratory thanksgiving and the offerings of the people (“The Holy Sacrifice . . . includes the Church’s offering”55), but this is a less prominent note, especially after the third and fourth centuries, when the role of the one who presided at the Supper was transformed into that of a priest with all sorts of supposed powers. With these transformations in place, the original meal—which was rich in the meanings of the Passover, as well as the communion that emerged through receiving the gift of the Son, offered directly by the Father—became something remarkably different. A meal and a fellowship that required no priest, in a way similar to the original Passover, by the third century became a reworked Levitical sacrifice (going back to the shadows) in which a priestly class, separated and distinguished from the rest of the body of Christ, took on a sacerdotal role that Jesus had never offered his disciples on Maundy Thursday. Thus in line with this ancient transformation of the Supper, Vatican II declared more recently: “The Church, the spouse and minister of Christ, . . . offers him to the Father and at the same time makes a total offering of herself together with him.”56 Again, “The Church . . . offers the immaculate Victim to God the Father, in the Holy Spirit.”57
Observe the change in direction with this significant modification of the Supper. Instead of the leading note being from the Father through the Son and to the church, a movement that evokes abundant joy and thanksgiving, a veritable Eucharist, it is now a movement from the Roman Catholic priest who offers Christ to the Father as a sacrifice. So stark is this shift from the divine sovereign action in the one framework to the human, priestly action in the other that even Rome must quickly modify it and not allow this particular meaning, though repeatedly affirmed, to stand alone. Accordingly, the human priestly role is seen in concert with that of the divine Jesus. In other words, the claim is quickly made (but upon what basis?) that the priestly role of Christ is shared by Roman Catholic clergy: “The Church, the spouse and minister of Christ, performs together with him the role of priest and victim.”58 In the Mass, then, the Roman priest offers up Christ to the Father. But if the Father has already given the gift of the Son, which is abundantly evident at Golgotha (“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness,” Rom. 3:25a, emphasis added) and celebrated in the Supper with thanksgiving, then why is the gift returned?
Though the Lord’s Supper is not itself a sacrifice, nevertheless we do not deny that the once-and-for-all oblation of Christ at Calvary, with its rich meanings of propitiation and atonement, is indeed proclaimed through this meal. Like Marshall and other Protestants, we affirm that “no sacrifice takes place in the Lord’s Supper, but the sacrifice of Jesus in dying on the cross is proclaimed to sinners”59 by means of the Supper. This is a crucial distinction that Rome repeatedly obscures. If such is the case, then it seems to follow, as Luther argued in his own day,60 that the Lord’s Supper offers the new covenant in a very tangible way, as a sacrament, through the signs of bread and wine, and this is precisely what the bold proclamation of the gospel, animated by the Holy Spirit, offers in an invisible way through the Word. Therefore, to make a sharp distinction between these two ways the gospel is presented depends on affirming that a clear, distinct priestly role was given by Christ to some in the church and not to others, a claim that constantly begs for what evidence could possibly sustain it. Indeed, McGrath cautions against creating a New Testament priesthood out of Old Testament materials:
Whereas the Old Testament used the term “priest” (Hebrew: Kohen) to refer to an official who was set apart from the rest of the community in order to carry out certain duties associated with worship and sacrifice, this specific term is not used to refer to Christian ministers in the New Testament. Rather, the term “priest” is used to refer to Jesus Christ, who is seen as the fulfillment of the Old Testament ideal of a priest or to the church as a whole exercising a “priestly” ministry. Christians as a group are referred to as “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9).61
This significant issue will be addressed, though in a slightly different way, in chapter 10, in which the claim that the Roman Catholic priest during the Mass acts in persona Christi will be thoroughly examined. If this role falters, then that failure will, no doubt, have considerable implications for the very notion of the Roman priesthood as well.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that “from the beginning Christians have celebrated the Eucharist and in a form whose substance has not changed despite the great diversity of times and liturgies.”62 However, for the sake of a proper chronology in this area, informed by the intricacies of historical development, it must be pointed out that the manner in which the elements of the Supper have been understood, specifically in terms of the bread and the wine, has changed considerably over time. Put another way, Rome’s view of the elements today, surely a liturgical innovation, is by and large best comprehended against the backdrop of the developments that took place from the ninth century onward. To illustrate, in AD 831, Paschasius Radbertus, a monk at the monastery in Corbie, produced a liturgical work, On the Body and Blood of the Lord, that reified the presence of Christ in the Supper by localizing the Savior in the elements. Earlier some of the church fathers, such as Ambrose in the West (“Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when Christ’s words have been added, it is the body of Christ”)63 and Cyril of Jerusalem in the East (“We beseech the merciful God to send forth His Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him, that He may make the bread the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ”),64 had little difficulty, for their part, in referring to the elements of the Supper as the body and blood of Christ. Paschasius, however, developed this idea to such an extent, underscoring its miraculous nature (“so that as from the Virgin through the Spirit true flesh is created without union of sex, so through the same, out of the substance of bread and wine, the same body and blood of Christ may be mystically consecrated”),65 that he sparked a spirited response from his fellow monk Ratramnus of Corbie. Others who disagreed sharply with Paschasius’s twist on things included John Scotus Eriugena and Rabanus Maurus, both also in the ninth century, and Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century, theologians of no small standing.
Centuries later, with the reintroduction of the works of Aristotle into Europe, the thread developed by Paschasius was given new meaning in light of the philosopher’s technical distinctions between substance and accident. Thus an accident, as medieval clerics understood it, exists in another just as the color gray exists in a particular stone, apart from which (as its basis or substance) the gray of the stone has no existence. However, a substance, in contrast to an accident, does not exist in another. Now when such a well-worked distinction was applied to a liturgical context, after the pronouncement of Christ’s words of institution by the priest, what remained was utterly, substantively the body and blood of Christ, though the elements still appeared to the senses as having all the characteristics or “accidents” of bread and wine in terms of such things as smell, taste, and feel. This form of the teaching was propounded as dogma, required to be affirmed by all the faithful, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, headed up by one of the most powerful popes of all, Innocent III. The first constitution of this council, the confession of faith, stated: “His [Christ’s] body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood.”66
Later, during the sixteenth century, Trent took up this teaching and declared, contrary to the magisterial Reformers, both Luther and Calvin: “There is made a change of the whole essence of the bread into the body, and of the whole essence of the wine into the blood; which change the [Roman] Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.”67 So controversial was this idea by this point that Trent, in a very defensive posture, thundered eleven decrees of excommunication that were now associated with this particular teaching.68 This view of the elements of the Supper, which would likely surprise many Roman Catholic laity even today if it were explained to them in considerable detail, is nevertheless articulated in the current Catechism in the following words: “Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity.”69 Simply put, the bread is no longer bread: it simply appears to be so; instead it is utterly in essence the body of Christ. Again, the wine is no longer wine: it simply appears to be so; instead it is utterly in essence the blood of Christ. Such a teaching is by no means an article of the faith that characterized the ancient ecumenical church. Rather, it is that particular and much-developed doctrine, culled from its distinct historical location, upon which the Roman dogmatic apparatus, for all sorts of reasons, has landed.
The Implications of This Medieval Doctrine
Once the change in doctrine offered by Paschasius and later developed by others became the official view of the Western church, it brought with it a number of implications that were not always clearly thought out by its defenders. First of all, and bearing in mind the original setting of the Lord’s Supper, if the elements are substantively the body and blood of Christ, then this can only mean, among other things, that Christ had two bodies. By this understanding, at the original Lord’s Supper Christ, with full bodily integrity, was holding the bread, which itself was fully another body of Christ (“Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species”).70 However, the formula of the ancient church, evident at Chalcedon, was one person with two natures, which means that Christ as the God/Human had only one body (even the Monophysites could agree on this last point): “We . . . confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body.”71 Thus this two-body teaching of Rome, which is an unavoidable implication of transubstantiation, is clearly an aberration and shows that the metaphors at the first Supper (“This is my body. . . . This is my blood”) have been pressed “to the point at which they cease to be metaphors.”72
Second, since Rome insists that after the words of consecration what arises is “the real and permanent presence of Christ under the Eucharistic species,”73 such a view is fraught with a number of troubling implications. Gary Wills, for example, has posed the predicament in this way: “The first miracle, how the wafer became Jesus, was to be followed by an obscure second miracle, how the wafer had to be ‘de-consecrated’ before it became an excretion.”74 Along these lines, Wills quotes Edward Schillebeeckx in observing that “there had to be a ‘reverse transubstantiation’ to separate Jesus from the ‘accidents’ of bread and wine before they were excreted.”75 And for those Christian thinkers who had raised this admittedly uncomfortable issue in the past, Rome responded once again with a bout of name-calling and branded such inquirers as heretics, as “Stercorantis from stercus, meaning ‘feces.’”76 It may be tempting to dismiss such questions as frivolous. The reality, however, is that such questions are perfectly serious if the doctrine of transubstantiation is taken as a sober truth claim.
Though the Roman Catholic Church understands the presence of Christ in four key ways—(1) “in the assembly of the faithful,” (2) “in the word when the Scriptures are read,” (3) “in the person of the priest,” and (4) “above all he is present under the eucharistic species”77—it has emphasized this last way, the claim of transubstantiation, especially by means of the “above all” language just cited. The question of how Christ is present in the church is not a minor issue but has all sorts of implications for Christology, revelation, ecclesiology, ministry, Christian discipleship, fellowship, evangelism, and Christian hope.
In emphasizing the fourth way just specified, Rome has unavoidably underscored the presence of Christ in objects—in species, as Rome puts it, with the cultic overtones and priestly associations of that term—and not in the persons, the very members of the body of Christ, assembled at the table. God as revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit marks Christian revelation in a magnificent way and gives it a distinct character. That is, the Christian faith has to do preeminently with persons without neglecting the importance of matter. Choosing otherwise here, offering a different emphasis, amounts to taking the wrong fork in the road, so to speak, with its accompanying consequences. The Christian understanding of revelation, via the witness of Scripture in its broadest sense, celebrates the precious truth that God is revealed as nothing less than personal, and the Christian Godhead is expressed best in terms of the relations of love evident among the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To turn away, at least in some sense, from this personhood (reflected in a relational way also in the imago Dei) and its relations, to face toward the object, the species, which as a metaphor was never intended to be the focus of attention—all this is in some sense to turn away from the by-now “weakened ‘mystical’ body of Christ.”78 Such a move fails to give sufficient value and attention to that presence of Christ toward which Communion itself ever points: in the assembly and fellowship of the faithful. We therefore heartily affirm the real presence of Christ in the Supper. However, Christ can only reign in the worshiping hearts of believers; he cannot reign in bread.
The additional twists and turns into which the doctrine of transubstantiation leads do not entail a careful exegesis of Scripture but are rather the outworking or the logic of considering the bread to be essentially the body of Christ. If such is the case, then the body of Christ in this form must now be worshiped. And this is precisely what Rome calls for, as is evident in the following: “The faithful should therefore strive to worship Christ our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.”79 Not only is the object still very much available to the senses (it looks, smells, tastes, and feels like bread) to be worshiped and adored, but great care must also be taken so that the clergy inculcates the proper attitudes of reverence and docility in the laity. To this end the parishioners are taught to genuflect or to bow deeply as a “sign of adoration of the Lord.”80 They are also instructed to kneel before the presence of the host, “since kneeling is itself a sign of adoration,”81 though the Anglicans apparently did not think so when they added the black rubric to the Book of Common Prayer during the reign of Edward VI.
At any rate, the worship of the host is ensured by placing it in the liturgical vessel designed for this purpose, the monstrance. This instrument often takes the form of a starburst in a suitable metal and can include precious stones, depending on the wealth of the church. A special, larger host is enclosed in a glass case at the center of this receptacle. The priest then places the monstrance prominently on the altar, and the laity are encouraged to sing, to offer prayers, and to engage in outright adoration and praise. Such liturgical practices that occur, for instance, during the rite of benediction have been more formally organized in a society created for this purpose and suitably called the Nocturnal Adoration Society. Here the Roman Catholic faithful assemble to adore “The Blessed Sacrament” throughout the night.
If the bread is, after all, literally and substantively the body of Christ, then it must be suitably cared for. The priests therefore must make sure that during the distribution of the elements nothing is dropped or spilled. Vatican II cautioned: “What you have allowed to drop, think of it as though you had lost one of your own members.”82 After the Mass the consecrated hosts can be placed in a tabernacle, often embedded atop the altar structure itself. The name “tabernacle” is reminiscent of the OT edifice, though the Roman Catholic structure is considerably smaller. Christ, so it is assumed, is placed in a small, dark, and at times cool or even cold box, depending on the temperature of the church. Given the logic of transubstantiation, it must surely be asked: “How is such an enclosure appropriate for the Savior, the Lord of Hosts, the King of kings and Lord of lords?” Bishops and popes have retired to better quarters.
This topic is admittedly difficult for Roman Catholic and Protestant relations. What Roman Catholics view as a supreme act of adoration and worship, many Protestants understandably consider to be consummate idolatry, given their rejection of transubstantiation. Consequently, with Roman Catholics and Protestants just being themselves, thinking in accordance with their respective theologies, they will likely and necessarily give grave offense to each other. Protestants call transubstantiation idolatrous; Roman Catholics call that Protestant view sacrilegious. For our part, we believe that such an offense is unavoidable if the ecumenical discussion is open and remains rigorously honest and factual. In this particular area, then, there can be peace only if nothing of substance is discussed.
Furthermore, these significant differences in theological understanding cannot simply be chalked up to the Protestant reluctance to embrace doctrinal development over time, as John Courtney Murray had once implied.83 We, the authors, being a historian/theologian and a philosopher/theologian, both recognize the essential role of legitimate doctrinal development in the life of the church, an issue we will further explore in subsequent chapters. We affirm, for example, that the Council of Nicaea is as crucial today for the articulation of the proper Christian faith as it was back in the fourth century. This is not the issue. Rather, from our perspective, it is a question of embracing the transitions in doctrine that are clearly in accordance with the early, basic teachings of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and rejecting those that are not. Transubstantiation, in the judgment of most Protestants, quite simply turns Christian revelation on its head. It contains a self-propelled logic that takes the Christian story where it ought not to go. Consider this: whereas the death of Christ caused the temple curtain to be torn in two, from top to bottom, signifying that the way is now open between God and humanity (Matt. 27:51), the very architecture of Roman Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) churches (with its rails, gates, altars, sanctuary, and tabernacles), put in place by a misunderstanding of the Supper (most notably in the doctrine of transubstantiation, though Eastern Orthodoxy itself does not affirm this exact doctrine, certainly not in its Western form), suggests an ongoing inappropriate separation, though all of this division accords well with a priestly, sacerdotal role. Vatican II removed some of the rails, physically if not figuratively, but some of the older thinking lingered.
Again, whereas the death of Christ marked the fulfillment of the Levitical sacrificial system, rendering it obsolete (Heb. 8:13), this very problematic Roman Catholic doctrine, the development of the Middle Ages, places the Son of God in a tabernacle, reminiscent of old-covenant understandings that have been surpassed precisely in this death. Moreover, the apostle Paul clearly made the transition from the shadows of the OT temple to the living temple of the NT in 1 Corinthians: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple” (3:16–17, emphasis added).
Finally, transubstantiation (and its implications) contradicts the dying witness of the first martyr of the church. Indeed, as his blood was being spilled on that special day, after he had recounted so much of salvation history, Stephen, a deacon in the church, uttered the precious truth at the very heart of Christian revelation: “The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands” (Acts 7:48). The death of Christ rendered the tabernacle obsolete; Rome, however, brought it back—because its priests required it.
Protestants Barred from the Lord’s Table?
Interestingly enough, the doctrine of transubstantiation has led not to a celebration of the fellowship and unity of all baptized Christians under one Lord but to their ongoing division. To illustrate, although Roman Catholics are welcomed at a Protestant celebration of the Lord’s Supper (e.g., at a United Methodist table), that invitation is not returned. Here the body of Christ is visibly rent asunder for all the world to see. Rome’s justification for this ongoing exclusion, this schism, at the table of the Lord adopts an odd exegesis of a well-known Pauline passage. Roman Catholics justify the exclusion of Protestants from this sacrament by appealing to Paul’s words of warning in 1 Corinthians: “Those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves” (11:29). That is, since Protestants do not accept the “true” understanding of the sacrament (in other words, the Roman Catholic view), they fail to recognize or to discern “the body.” Indeed, Roman Catholics have even told Protestants that they must be vigorously excluded and separated from the Lord’s table in order to protect them from danger since they do not correctly discern the body. Schismatic behavior has hardly had such a confused theological grounding. Indeed, it took literally centuries for the doctrine of transubstantiation to emerge. The early church knew nothing of it.84 It is troubling then to divide the table over it.
This particular and contrived interpretation of Paul’s words is dubious and is therefore rejected by many scholars. In fact, many historians, theologians, and biblical scholars believe the “body” that must be recognized in the Lord’s Supper is the community of believers as the one body of Christ. This is what the Corinthian church, with its various divisions and their disregard for one another, failed to recognize. Peter Leithart convincingly argues that, ironically, it is precisely those who exclude other Christians from the sacrament of Communion who fail to heed Paul’s words of warning:
Otherwise, though, there are no valid grounds for excluding any believer from the Lord’s Supper. Christians of different traditions differ in their understanding of what happens at the Lord’s table, but those differences of theological formulation should not separate members of the corporate body from a common share in Christ’s eucharistic body. In context, Paul’s warnings about “discerning the body” (see 1 Cor. 11:29) do not have to do with the theology of the Supper but with factionalism in the church. Those who exclude other believers because of different beliefs about the Supper fail to discern the body.85
Since the table is the center of Christian worship and belongs to Christ, it must be open to all his disciples. It is also the center of church discipline, so flagrant, impenitent sinners must be rebuked and cut off from Communion if necessary. But Protestants who are in grace and are seeking yet additional grace, should be welcomed in any celebration of one Lord, one faith, one Spirit.
1. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1960), 193.
2. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 64.
3. Andrew McGowan understands this process somewhat differently but not in sharp contrast to the meaning suggested by Brunner. McGowan writes: “These assemblies [meal fellowships] . . . were of course the forerunners of what Christians have known as the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion or Mass.” See McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 19.
4. Brunner, Christian Doctrine, 64.
5. See Martin Luther’s treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in which he lays out the elements that constitute a sacrament, in Luther, Word and Sacrament II, LW 36:68. The Roman Catholic understanding of a sacrament, somewhat different, can be seen in the observations of Peter Lombard (1100–1160) who wrote as follows: “Something can properly be called a sacrament if it is a sign of the grace of God and a form of invisible grace, so that it bears its image and exists as its cause.” Cited in Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), Kindle edition, locations 13043–47.
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), par. 1271.
7. Ibid., par. 1213.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., par. 1215 (emphasis added).
10. Edwin A. Blum argues that one interpretive option is as follows: (1) The “water” refers to the natural birth, and (2) the “Spirit” to the birth from above. Blum, “John,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 2:281.
11. Martin Luther, e.g., wrote: “Baptism has the promise that it, together with the Holy Spirit, brings about the new birth.” See Luther, Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1–5, LW 1:228.
12. Catechism, par. 1252.
13. Bray, The Church: A Theological and Historical Account (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 120.
14. Catechism, par. 1250.
15. Ibid., par. 1150. The Catechism states: “Among these liturgical signs from the Old Covenant are circumcision, anointing and consecration of kings and priests, laying on of hands, sacrifices, and above all the Passover. The Church sees in these signs a prefiguring of the sacraments of the New Covenant.”
16. McGrath, Christian Theology, Kindle ed., locations 13569–98.
17. Not surprisingly, then, even the Catechism points out that infant baptism “requires a post-baptismal catechumenate.” See Catechism, par. 1231.
18. Karl Barth wrote at length of the difficulties entailed in infant baptism and he cautioned theologians: “To all concerned: to theologians, for unfortunately even theology has not yet realized by a long way that infant baptism is an ancient ecclesiastical error; . . . whether they can and will continue to bear responsibility for what has become the dominant baptismal practice, whether they might not and must not dare to face up to the wound from which the Church suffers at this genuinely vital point with its many-sided implications. . . .” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 194.
19. Stringer, Rethinking the Origins of the Eucharist (London: SCM, 2011), 193.
20. Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1980), 57.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 76.
23. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 24.
24. Marshall, Last Supper, 107.
25. Ibid. (emphasis added).
26. The elements were likely lifted a hand’s length above the table.
27. The change that came with Vatican II allowing the priest to face the people is but a small move in the direction of what the Lord’s Supper originally was.
28. In his treatise The Private Mass and the Consecration of Priests, Martin Luther observed: “Because you have been consecrated for no other purpose than for the private mass, that is, to act contrary to the word and ordinance of Christ, contrary to the intention and faith of the church, you are more desecrated than consecrated, and your consecration is much more futile and worse than the baptism of a bell and the consecration of a stone.” See Luther, Word and Sacrament IV, LW 38:156.
29. Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, par. 47, in The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, vol. 1 of Vatican II, ed. Austin Flannery (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011), 128 (emphasis added).
30. Luther, Word and Sacrament IV, LW 38:170.
31. Anthony Kenny, A Path from Rome: An Autobiography (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985), 101.
32. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, par. 257, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 190.
33. The Eucharist, par. 16, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 113.
34. Third Instruction on the Correct Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, par. 1, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 212.
35. Catechism, par. 1369.
36. Third Instruction on the Correct Implementation, par. 1, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 212.
37. Brunner, Christian Doctrine, 64.
38. In these observations we are not making the case that there cannot and should not be distinct roles in the church. Affirming the “priesthood of believers” in a way similar to Luther, we fully acknowledge that various members will be called to differing roles in the church. Such difference, however, does not constitute a hierarchy as Rome would have it. See Martin Luther’s treatise That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and Power to Judge All Teaching and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture, in Church and Ministry I, LW 39:305–14.
39. Gordon W. Lathrop, “The Reforming Gospels: A Liturgical Theologian Looks Again at Eucharistic Origins,” Worship 83, no. 3 (2009): 194.
40. Wills, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (New York: Viking Adult, 2013), 248.
41. McGowan, “Rethinking Eucharistic Origins,” Pacifica 23 (June 2010): 173.
42. Marshall, Last Supper, 111.
43. Didache 10.1, in The Apostolic Fathers in English, trans. Rick Brannan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2012).
44. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 26.
45. Ibid.
46. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1:185.
47. Marshall, Last Supper, 156.
48. Catechism, par. 1383.
49. Willy Rordorf, The Eucharist of the Early Christians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1976), 17.
50. Didache 14.1, in J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, trans., The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan, 1891), 234.
51. Bulley, The Priesthood of Some Believers: Developments from the General to the Special Priesthood in the Christian Literature of the First Three Centuries (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2000), 132.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 133.
54. Ibid.
55. Catechism, par. 1330.
56. Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, par. 3.c, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 103.
57. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, par. 55.f, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 176.
58. Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, par. 3.c, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 103 (emphasis added).
59. Marshall, Last Supper, 149.
60. See Luther, Babylonian Captivity, esp. 28–58.
61. McGrath, Christian Theology, Kindle ed., location 12878.
62. Catechism, par. 1356.
63. Gerald Bray, ed., 1–2 Corinthians, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: NT 7 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 112.
64. Edward Hamilton Gifford, “The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril: Introduction,” in S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, NPNF2 7:xxxvii.
65. William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, vol. 1, From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1988), 140.
66. Fourth Lateran Council: 1215, constitution 1, “Confession of Faith,” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum12-2.htm (emphasis added).
67. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, The Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 208 (emphasis added).
68. Wills, Why Priests?, 54.
69. Catechism, par. 1413.
70. Ibid., par. 1377.
71. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:62.
72. Marshall, Last Supper, 151.
73. Instruction on Facilitating Sacramental Eucharistic Communion in Particular Circumstances (par. “Piety and Reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament When the Eucharist Is Placed in the Hands of the Faithful”), in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 232 (emphasis added).
74. Wills, Why Priests?, 23.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. On Holy Communion and the Worship of the Eucharist Mystery outside the Mass, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 243.
78. Wills, Why Priests?, 58.
79. Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, par. 50, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 130.
80. Catechism, par. 1378.
81. Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, par. 34.b, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 122.
82. Instruction on the Manner of Distributing Holy Communion, in Flannery, Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 150.
83. Murray, The Problem of God Yesterday and Today (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 55.
84. Though the early church fathers such as Ignatius, e.g., affirmed that the bread of the Eucharist is the body of Christ, thereby affirming a real presence, much more is needed to propound a full-blown doctrine of transubstantiation, a teaching that took considerable time to develop. See Ignatius of Antioch, To the Romans 7, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1:77.
85. Peter J. Leithart, The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016), 181 (emphasis original). For scholars who interpret the text similarly, see Gordon D. Fee, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 558–64; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 200–203. Anthony C. Thistleton rejects this interpretation, as well as the popular Roman interpretation, in his First Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 186–89.