Posted on 12/28/2008 8:28:44 AM PST by Gamecock
Could you explain the distinctive Presbyterian/Reformed view of the "Real Presence" in the Lord's Supper, and what it entails?
This is an old and interesting question. The reformers Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli took somewhat different positions on this in response to the abuses that were being taught by the Catholic church. The view of the Catholic church, which may be worth stating here as a backdrop, was that when the priest said the blessing the elements of bread and wine were mysteriously transformed into the body and blood of Christ. This was called transubstantiation. They saw Christ as, if you will, overly present in the supper, to the point of being offered up over, and over, and over.
Christ's sacrifice was given "once for all," and that was on the cross see Hebrews 9 and 10, especially Hebrews 9:24-28:
For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
The idea that Christ's "once for all" sacrifice on the cross was repeatedly "re-presented" in the Lord's Supper was rejected by all the major branches of the Reformation. Zwingli’s view is the closest to the modern evangelical view, though upon close inspection, it could be the case that he is somewhat misunderstood. Nevertheless, Zwingli is understood by many as teaching that the supper is a “memorial” to Christ’s death upon the cross. The issue of presence in the Supper is played down (at least in comparison to other reformers). The analogy of a wedding is used. The Lord's Supper is a visible reminder of something accomplished in the past, whether the person is present or not.
Luther had a heightened view of the presence of Christ in the supper, though I find him the hardest to really follow. He said, and Lutheran Catechisms (like “Luther’s Small Catechism”) still say, that Christ is present “in, with, and under” the elements. By this Luther wanted to suggest that Christ was “truly” in some way present in the Supper, even in the elements themselves, yet he did not want to go where the Catholic church had been on the supper. Certainly his sense of Christ’s essential presence could be argued as being stronger than that of Zwingli, but not as problematic as that of the Roman Catholic church. Still, the prepositions “in, with, and under” seem to skirt the issue, and I have not been overly helped by them yet.
Calvin, and those coming from his direction are the ones I do find to be the most biblical, clear, and helpful. While denying that the elements themselves are in any way changed, he argued strongly that Christ was truly present by his/the Spirit in such a way that we can and should believe that Christ is truly, “really” present. In other words, the “real” presence of Christ, is a uniquely spiritual presence. The Supper, according to Calvin and the Reformed tradition, is truly a unique meeting with the resurrected Christ who promises to nourish the souls of his people as they feed upon him by faith. The language of “feeding upon him” should not be misunderstood. I cannot say it any better than the Westminster Confession, so I’ll quote chapter 29, section 7:
Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.
Many books and dissertations have been written on this subject. You may wish to consult Given for You: Reclaiming Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper by Keith Mathison, published by P & R Publishing. It should be helpful.
Please let me know if I have helped or confused you! It is a tricky, but important question. The Lord’s Supper is a true, spiritual blessing to the people of God, and understanding the way in which Christ is really present in the Supper is important to seeing how our once-for-all sacrificed and resurrected Savior continues to give himself to his people.
Blessings in him.
ping.
Pong
Could you enlighten us as to the specific “abuses” taught by the Catholic Church...which most every Christian believed for 1500 years??
“I am the bread of life.....
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven.”
“If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and
the bread that I will give,
is my flesh,
for the life of the world.”
“The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying:
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus said to them:
Amen, amen, I say to you:
Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up in the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed:
and my blood is drink indeed.....”
(John vi:48-60)
“and whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke; and gave it to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat.
This is my body.
And taking the chalicem he gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying: Drink ye all of this.
For this is the blood of the new testament, which will be shed for many unto remission of sins.” (Matt. xxvi:26-28)
“And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread; and blessing, broke, and gave to them, and said: Take ye.
This is my body.
And having taken the chalice, giving thanks, he gave it to them. And they all drank of it.
And he said to them:
This is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many.” (Mark xiv:22-24)
(Luke xxii:19,20)
(1 Cor. xi:23-26)
But this doesn't square with St Paul who is quite clear on the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist....
1Cor:10:16: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (KJV)
A friendly objection.........
I was intrigued years ago to try to nail down Cranmer's eucharistic thought and am always interested in what others say on the matter.
One summation of Reform thought was, 'real presence in the believer', with the implication (in the Articles of Religion it's explicit) that "the wicked" do not partake of the Body and Blood but are guilty of abusing the sign of so great a thing.
One of the less important reasons I love this topic is that it touches on basic philosophical questions. What is "real"? What is "spiritual"? What is the difference between what a thing is, what it's made of, and what it's used for? Like that.
Anyway Merry Christmas to you.
>> overly present in the supper <<
If God isn’t as present as you could imagine, wouldn’t it be more wonderful if he were more present? And yet God is infintely good, so how could he be less present than we could imagine him to be? The problem is that we disrespect his presence so, that people cannot fathom that God could permit himself to be present, but he is.
>> By this Luther wanted to suggest that Christ was “truly” in some way present in the Supper, even in the elements themselves, yet he did not want to go where the Catholic church had been on the supper. <<
Luther didn’t seem to understand Aquinas. He thought the fact that it seemed like bread meant it wasn’t in some way the body of Christ.
Consider a hammer. If I pick something up that is very good at driving nails into wood, is it a hammer? If it was created for the purpose of driving nails into wood, is it a hammer? Or must it be made of a wooden shaft with an iron tap affixed to it to be a hammer?
The answers are yes, yes, and no. I may use a rock to drive nails into wood, but it’s not truly a hammer unless it is created for that purpose. Yet, if it achieves that purpose to which it was created, it is a hammer, even if it is made of plastic and some new ceramic compound, or even if it is in some new ergonomic shape. The *form* is not the *substance.*
Likewise, the host, once its substance has been changed, is created to be the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ, even though it retains the form of bread. Luther could not fathom that.
>> One summation of Reform thought was, ‘real presence in the believer’, with the implication (in the Articles of Religion it’s explicit) that “the wicked” do not partake of the Body and Blood but are guilty of abusing the sign of so great a thing. <<
And herein lies the distinction of the Catholic belief: that the presence of God depends not on the beliefs of the human who partakes in the Eucharist. The bible says: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
See, it doesn’t say that the Lord isn’t there because the person was a sinner. It says the unworthy doesn’t discern the Lord’s body, and he is damned.
What does one do if one is unworthy? How may he receive Christ? By acknowledging his sins: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of [that] bread, and drink of [that] cup.”
Is judging one’s own sins sufficient? No, Paul goes on to say that when we judge ourselves we aren’t judged: “For if we would judge ourselves, we are not judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” So judgment (in this sense) is beneficial, for it allows our chastisement and our betterment.
So, the unrepentant sinner and the repentant sinner both may eat of the flesh of Christ. The repentant sinner is saved by having consumed the body of the Lord, and thus being made more like God; the unrepentant sinner is damned by having desecrated the body of the Lord. But the Lord is present to each, not only to the repentant.
How could the alternative be true? How could the Lord be present and not present? (All things are possible with God, but where is there mention of such a thing in the bible?) This, then, is what “Catholic” means: that truth is universal, not subjective.
The word "real" is itself used variously, so that one person says a "real but spiritual" presence and another thinks that is a contradiction. One reason discourse is hard is the terms themselves seem to be moving targets.
AMEN! Scriptural and God-glorifying.
"And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. " -- Luke 22:19"Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness." -- Psalm 30:4
So unlike the error of Rome's pageant, filled with mysticism and tyranny.
Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion." -- Isaiah 41:28-29"For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word.
I agree and there is scriptural evidence to support this position.
But I think one could say that for "receptionists" the bread and the wine in the context of the service and of a prevenient grace in the recipient go to establish (or confirm or build up or something) the presence of Christ in the believer. In that view to "confect" the ordinance so that it is effective, a necessary ingredient is the believing recipient. And the presence of Christ is in the recipient, not in the bread and the wine as such.
Another metaphor is that the prayed over bread and wine in such a circumstance is, as it were, a catalyst to the presence (etc.) of Christ in the believer.
The RCC has held believers hostage to their doctrine by threat of excommunication if they did not believe this doctrine. The RCC has held believers hostage by the claim that only a priest has the power to administer communion. When the bible states that all believers are of a royal priesthood.
They can sure swim around, no doubt, I find a good cure for that is to keep them in context.
For example, regarding whether Christ's body is actually present in the Eucharist:
“For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
This is very clear about Christ's bodily presence in the Eucharist, and should help solve any doubts about the type of "real" presence the Scriptures mean.
Bear ICOR 11:21 and the surrounding verses in mind. Paul is expressing outrage or at least concern over the way at what purports to be but fails to be "the Lord's supper" each one eats his own food, so one is hungry and another drunk. AND then AFTER the verse you cite, Paul appears to sum up with a solution to the courtesy and inequity problem: namely wait for one another and don't use this meal to satisfy hunger.
Consequently, the argument goes, (advocatus diaboli here) "discerning the body" just means discerning that the congregation is united as members of one body in Christ and so one's comportment at the mass should show that one sees that.
I ask this because you say
The RCC has held believers hostage to their doctrine by threat of excommunication if they did not believe this doctrine.
Leaving aside the fact that there seem to be plenty of Catholics, some ordained, who do not believe it (alas!), so the threat of excommunication maybe doesn't loom quite so terrifyingly as you seem to suggest, do you think we have an obligation to permit people to teach what we don't believe? I personally wouldn't be surprised or outraged if I were booted out of a Presbyterian congregation for teaching the Rosary.
And again: WE say, Doctrine develops. We say we START back with Justin Martyr et al in saying that the bread is the Body, the wine is the Blood and over time we refine what that means and what can be said in a theological way about it. And then those on the other side say, "A-HA! See THERE? They HAVEN"T always believed this particular aspect in this degree of detail! A HA! So THERE!"
And we say, "But, we just got done saying we haven't always believed it in that degree of detail."
But the other side just keeps on saying "A HA! So THERE! Look at those awful Catholics: they actually have the nerve to think that what's important is important and to adMIT that their ideas have unfolded over time! And LOOK! Here's an instance of that unfolding! That'll show that what they say is wrong."
So I just shake my head. What the other side thinks is a devastating refutation of what we think is so often part of what we think! It's just weird.
The Christians at or about the time of the Church's only Sacrifice and their communicating thereof, kept great feasts: which continued long, for that the relief of the poor upon the common charges of the richer sort, and the charity and unity of all sorts were much preserved thereby, for which cause they were called αγαπου, that is, Charities, of the ancient Fathers, and were kept commonly in Church houses or porches adjoining, or in the body of the Church (whereof see Tertullian Apolog. c. 19.; Clemens, Alexand.; St. Justin; St. Augustine cont. Faust. li. 20 c. 20.) after the Sacrifice and Communion was ended, as St. Chrysostom be. 27. in 1 Cor. in imitio judgeth.
Those feasts St. Paul here calleth Coenas Dominicas i.e. Lords Suppers, , because they were made in the Churches which then were called Dominica, that is, Our Lord's houses. The disorder there kept among the Corinthians in these Church feasts of charity, the Apostle seeketh here to redress, from the foul abuses expressed here in the text:
And as St. Ambrose in hunc locum (this place), and most good authors now think, this which he calleth Dominicam coenam, is not mean of the Blessed Sacrament,
as the circumstances also of the text do give, namely, the rejecting of the poor. The rich men's private devouring of all, not expecting one another, gluttony and drunkenness in the same, which cannot agree to the holy Sacrament.
And therefore the Heretics have small reason, upon this place, to name the said holy Sacrament, rather, the Supper of the Lord, than after the manner of the primitive Church, the Eucharist, MASS, or Liturgia. -Original and True Douay Reims Bible 1582
Ver. 20. The Lord's supper. So the apostle here calls the charity [Agape] feasts observed by the primitive Christians; and reprehends the abuses of the Corinthians on these occasions: which were the more criminal, because these feasts were accompanied with the celebrating the eucharistic sacrifice and sacrament. (Challoner) Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
This fits the context quite well, because later St Paul says they should prove themselves before drinking of the chalice, refering to the agape: Gonzo's Commentary, Free Republic Press, 2008
33 Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If any man be hungry, let him eat at home; that you come not together unto judgment. And the rest I will set in order, when I come.
What sayeth thou, Oh your Dawgness?
1Cor:10:16: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (KJV)
Paul uses the term koinonia (fellowship, communion) to describe the relationship between the cup/bread and the blood/body of Christ. There is no necessary assertion of bodily presence in the elements in that relationship.
Paul’s words denote a sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified and nothing more. "There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other." (Westminster Confession of Faith, 27:2)
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