Question 78. Do then the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ?
Answer: Not at all (a): but as the water in baptism is not changed into the blood of Christ, neither is the washing away of sin itself, being only the sign and confirmation thereof appointed of God (b); so the bread in the Lord’s supper is not changed into the real body of Christ (c); though agreeably to the nature and properties of sacraments (d), it is called the body of Christ Jesus.
(a) Matthew 26:29: I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
(b) Ephesians 5:26: That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.
Titus 3:5: he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
(c) Mark 14:24: And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
1 Corinthians 10:16-17: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
1 Corinthians 11:26-28: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
(d) Exodus 12:11, 13, 27, 43, 48: In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover . . . The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt . . . you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped . . . And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it . . . If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.
Exodus 13:9: And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt.
1 Peter 3:21: Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:1-4: For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
For your personal reflection:
The Anglican Reformers took great care to maintain the mystery of the communion between Christ and His people at the Holy Table while simultaneously stripping away the extra-biblical teaching that the bread and wine literally and physically became the Body and Blood of Christ. So, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and author of the Book of Common Prayer, wrote: “For they teach, that Christ is in the bread and wine, but we say, according to the truth, that He is in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine. They say, that Christ is received in the mouth, and entereth in with the bread and wine. We say that He is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith.”
According to Scripture, where is Christ, physically, right now?
What do we need to understand about sacramental language?
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8 users responded in this post
Steve – could you expound on this a bit, with regard to “Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist?” Thanks!
On one level the idea of Christ’s real presence is not problematic. Almost all Christians can agree that Jesus is really present when Christians gather in His Name by His Holy Spirit. Theologically, though, the word “real” denotes a belief that the substance of Christ’s body is present in the bread and wine replacing the substance of bread and wine (the sacrament ceases to be bread and wine and becomes body and blood). There is, however, no scriptural basis for this understanding and it was replaced in Reformation theology by a more biblical belief that of Christ’s physical body is and remains at the right hand of the Father while Christ’s presence with His people is in and through His Spirit.
Thank you. I thought I understood the Calvinist approach – the presence of Christ is via the Holy Spirit – and I gather from your explanation that this is in accordance with your thinking as well. I also thought that Anglicans were not of one mind on this, and that some of the more Anglo-catholics hold a view very close to Transubstantiation, even though the Thirty Nine Articles (#28 I think) calls Transubstantiation “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.”
I’m trying to understand this better, as an Episcopal Church I attend from time to time says the Eucharist is open to all Baptized and Confirmed Christians who believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This is different than the Congrerationalist/Presbyterian churches of my upbringing.
Thanks for all you assistance. Any additional guidance or pointers to good resources would be welcome.
Observer. Thanks for your good questions and search for understanding. It is refreshing! To pick up a few threads in your response: the point of view I advocate isn’t a Calvinist approach. It is an Anglican approach – and a Reformation approach. This understanding is enshrined in the 39 Articles, the rubrics of the services and the historic prayer of consecration. It is often Anglo-Catholic prejudice (I’m not applying this to you personally, but somewhere you’ve encountered the statement) to dismiss it as such – as if it were something less, or other, than “Anglican.”
Anglicanism is – and only makes sense as – a Protestant church. Globally, this remains the case. While there are certainly many faithful Anglo-Catholics I find the rise of Anglo-Catholicism concomitant with the demise of the Episcopal Church: the rise of ritualism, extra-biblical teaching, a faulty understanding of the “catholic” nature of the church, the invocation of Mary and the saints, a magical view of the sacraments and a host of other suspect practices and doctrines denuded the faith of our reforming fathers & mothers and have left us a sad an impotent church – in a century+ long theological decline which has finally manifested itself in numerical losses of the past generation. Sadly, the mass departure of the Evangelical wing of the Episcopal Church in the mid-late 19th Century opened a wide door for the re-emergence of those practices the Anglican Reformers sought to purge from Anglicanism.
The example you give of your own parish’s practice is a wonderful example of the fussy and extra-biblical/canonical excesses of Anglo-Catholicism. It is the teaching of the church that any BAPTIZED Christian is welcome at the Table of the Lord with no qualifying element of confirmation (not a sacrament) or recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Makes me sad to see the traditions of man emerging once again to separate the people for whom Christ died from Christ, Himself.
I have a few books on my shelf that you might find interesting. I’ll follow-up when I’m back in the office tomorrow. Blessings.
Thanks Steve. Sometimes the “via media” is so wide, I have trouble finding where the edges are. I didn’t mean to suggest that if something was Calvinist, that it was not Anglican. Rather, I was trying to be descriptive of which end of the “via media” spectrum I thought the concept resided. From my Presbyterian roots, it is certainly well within my comfort zone.
If you have a moment while you are in the office, the titles of the books you mentioned would be of interest to me.
Thanks again!
Observer: thanks for your post. The first book I’d recommend is “Cranmer on the Lord’s Supper: A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament”. It is out of print but I’m guessing some internet sleuthing could track it down. The book was published by Focus Christian Ministries Trust and the ISBN is 1870223004. The book is simply Thomas Cranmer’s writings on the the topic of the Lord’s Supper. It can be a slow read, but it’s not long, and a slow read is not all bad.
The other book, for now, that I’d recommend is “Our Anglican Heritage” by John Howe – available at Amazon.
If interested after these I’d be happy to refer you to other books.
Blessings.
Again, many thanks. I’ll take the “independent study” route for a while now that you have given me the roadmap. I find personal discovery works better for me than “spoon feeding.” Probably one of the reasons I enjoy your blog. Always more food for tought. And thanks for the offer of more referrals – the future will tell if I need to take you up on that. You have been a blessing – may you receive so many more.
Steve,
Your description here misses the mark terribly, and is certainly far off not only the Biblical witness, but also the practice and teaching of the undivided Church. The Biblical references above, for example, omit fatally Jesus’ own words in John 6, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”
Any teaching also that the Eucharist is open to all baptized people *with no other caveat* is also against the teaching of St Paul who exhorts us to examine ourselves, and against the living witness of the Church which teaches us that though we are surely invited by grace, our preparation for the Eucharist (Prayer, fasting, and recent confession) is vital to our spiritual life, especially that we not “eat and drink condemnation unto ourselves”.
As an Orthodox priest, I am no Anglo- or Roman-Catholic, though I can defend my dear Anglo-catholic and Roman friends’ belief in the Eucharistic presence of Christ–this is not “magic”. Please. You are fighting some medieval excess in 2009. No?
It might also help to read Luke and Cleopas on the Road to Emmaus. Jesus was not evident to them in the Word written, though Jesus’ illumination of their hearts is clear, but only in the breaking of the bread. There is a reason for this.
When shall we meet?