Holy Communion - The Real Presence

The words ‘Body’ and ‘Blood’ do not mean the material Body and Blood of our Lord. The body is the means by which the spirit expresses itself. The bread in our Holy Communion becomes the Body of Christ; not His material body but His sacramental Body, the means by which He carries out His purpose of feeding us spiritually with His own Life.

The blood is, in Hebrew thought, the life, especially when released in sacrifice in order to be offered to God. To ‘drink the blood’ is to share the life; as members of Christ, we are permitted to share the life of our Savior, because it was given for us; and we do this when we receive the bread and the wine in the Holy Eucharist, for they have become the body and blood of Christ. “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.”

The result of the change affected by the consecration of the bread and wine is commonly called the Real Presence. That the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ is implied in Scripture, and was explicitly taught by the Fathers: if we believe this, we must hold that the living Christ is personally present, and that we receive Him when we receive the consecrated bread and wine. The word present must be used, not in the ordinary sense, but in a mysterious sense, undefined because heavenly.

Note: From The Christian Faith, An Introduction to Dogmatic Theology by Claude Beaufort Moss.

On this view we hold that we receive through the bread and wine the Body and Blood of Christ, because in answer to the prayers of His Church and in fulfilment of His own promise, He has brought the elements into a mysterious union with Himself,. He has, as it were, taken them up into the fulness of His ascended life and made them the vehicle of imparting that life to his members. Thus He is in a real sense present not only in the devout communicant but in the consecrated elements. The Presence is spiritual, not material. The manner of this presence and its relation to the outward elements we cannot define.

Note: From The Thirty Nine Articles by E. J. Bicknell, Third Edition revised by H. J. Carpenter.

He is in the Holy Eucharist after the manner of a spirit. We do not know how; we have no parallel to the ‘how’ in our experience. We can only say that He is present, not according to the natural manner of bodies, but sacramentally. His presence is substantial, spirit wise, sacramental; an absolute mystery, not against reason, however, but against imagination, and must be received by faith.

Note: From Via Media, vol. Ii. P 220 by Cardinal Newman.

The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper, is Faith.

Note: From The Book of Common Prayer, Article XXVIII, Of the Lord’s Supper, of the Articles of Religion.

Article XXV - Of the Sacraments

(1) The Value of Sacraments:

a) They represent the blending of the material and spiritual in man.

b) The sacramental principal is as old as man. Primitive worship included sacred meals in connection with sacrifice. At their best, they were the efforts of primitive man to realize communion with God. By the deliberate institution of Christian sacraments our Lord draws men to find in Him the satisfaction of the need to commune with God.

c) Sacraments are often called ‘an extension of the Incarnation’. In the Incarnation, God’s dealing with the world took the form of definite outward historical event. So too, in His sacraments Christ deals with his church through outward events. Through outward and visible signs Christ communicates Himself to us.

d) Sacrament are a necessary condition of the social side of religion. They remind us that religion includes not only our relation to God, but our relation to each other.

e) Our sacraments are but the supreme demonstration of the subjection of the material to the spiritual. Our Lord took the two most simple and universal needs, cleanliness and food, and based on them the two sacraments of the Gospel.

(2) Four Objects for which Christian Sacraments Exist:

a) “badges and tokens of Christian men’s profession”: They are the means by which we publically confess our allegiance to Christ.

b) ”certain sure witnesses ... of grace: The existence of sacraments is proof that God in his love wishes to bestow grace on us.

c) “they are effectual signs of grace and God’s good will”: An effectual sign conveys the blessing it symbolizes. This efficacy of sacraments depends upon the ordinance of Christ.

d) “by which he ....... doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith”: Sacraments are an aid to faith. Christian sacraments help our faith to lay hold on God. They set before us definite promises of God for faith to claim. Their use helps us realize our needs and the power of God; our use of them tests our belief in God’s promise and power.

Article XXVIII - Of the Lord’s Supper

(1) History:

a) One of the earliest ideas underlining primitive sacrifice was that of communion between God and man. At the time of Christ, communion with God by a sacred meal, receiving of divine life through participation in the sacrificial victim, of human fellowship through such participation were perfectly familiar. In the Holy Communion, Christ summed up the fulfilment of the highest ideals of worship.

b) Early practice: All through Christ’s ministry, eating together had been a bond of union between our Lord and His disciples. At such common meals He was accustomed to breaking bread and giving thanks even as he did at the feeding of the 5,000. [Mark 6:41] It was only natural that after His ascension, his disciples would continue to meet for the breaking of bread. In apostolic times, as a general rule the Lord’s Supper formed the conclusion of a common meal or agape and was not sharply distinguished from it.

(2) Meaning:

a) A sign of fellowship: Our unity in fellowship is symbolized by the one bread and the one cup. [I cor. 10:16].

b) A sacrament of our redemption: The Eucharist is to be kept ‘in remembrance of’ Christ [I Cor 11:25) and as a thanksgiving for the redemption wrought by His death. Christ’s words ‘This is my blood of the covenant ...’ suggests that a new covenant was about to be ratified by the blood of a better sacrifice. Each Christian who partakes in the communion claims his share in the blessings won by Christ’s death. The Eucharist is the Passover of the Christian Church.

c) The body and blood of Christ: In the Holy Communion our Lord took bread and wine, typical food of the Galilean peasant, to be the outward sign of the normal of the Christian soul. In the Holy Communion the Christian, as a member of Christ, receives by faith through the outward and visible sign of the bread and wine the inward and spiritual grace of the perfect humanity of Christ.

(3) The 6^th Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John: What is meant by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ?

The feeding of the 5,000 is followed by a discourse in which, step by step, greater stress is laid on the absolute need not only of Christ’s teaching but of Christ’s life. Our Lord begins with a contrast between the meat that perishes and the “meat which endureth unto everlasting life.” [St. John 6:27]. The condition of receiving is faith [vs. 29]. Such bread can only come, like manna by the direct gift of God [vs. 33], and He is that bread. “I am the bread of life.....” [vs. 35] and “I am that bread of life” [vs. 48]. This bread is further defined as “my flesh”. “And the bread that I will give is my flesh...” [vs. 51]. Christ then claims there is no life in man, ” Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” [vs.53]. “For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed.” [vs. 55] We abide in Christ and He in us when “eat his flesh and drink his blood” [vs 56]. Throughout the thought is of identity of life between the believer and Christ. In eating and drinking by a deliberate and voluntary act we take into ourselves something that is outside ourselves, in order that it may become part of ourselves. So in Holy Communion, we receive the life of Christ into our souls that it may become our life.

(4) Transubstantiation:

The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, condemned in this article, is an attempt to define the relation of the gift of the elements in the Lord’s Supper. As a formal definition, it has its roots far back in church history. Just as the various heresies of the early Church tried to emphasize one aspect of Christ’s nature at the expense of some other aspect, there was a tendency among early writers to exalt the divine gift in the Lord’s Supper in such a way as to minimize the reality of the bread and wine after consecration. The gross and superstitious teaching was defended and refined by the Schoolmen. A distinction was made between the ‘accidents, of the bread (the nature of bread that our senses detect) and the ‘substance’ of bread, beyond the range of our senses. The Schoolmen held that the ‘substance’ of the bread, by the power of God, was changed into the ‘substance’ of the body and blood of Christ. No change can be detected by the senses.

Our article rejects transubstantiation on four grounds:

a) Scripture knows nothing about any philosophical distinction between ‘accidents’ and ‘substance’. The words of institution may promise a divine gift, but they do not try to explain the manner in which the gift is related to the outward sign.

b) Scripture speaks of the bread after consecration as bread [I Cor. 11:26,28].

c) A sacrament has two parts: ‘the outward and visible sign’ - the bread and wine - and the ‘inward and spiritual grace’ - the body and blood of Christ. If the substance of the bread and wine is destroyed, the reality of the outward sign is destroyed. The nature of the sacrament is overthrown as lacking one of its two parts.

d) Miracles have been attributed to the host. In answer to the objections of opponents, miracles have been lavishly postulated. The view of the Roman Church is that anything that gives rise to superstitions is not a conclusive argument against it.

Article XXX - Of both Kinds

There is no evidence in scripture or in the use of the primitive Church to support the denying of the cup to the laity. At the last supper, those present drank of the cup [Mark 14:23], [Luke 22:17,20], Matthew 26:27]. At Corinth all received in both kinds. ‘Let a man so provr himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup’ [I Cor. 11:28]. Even the Roman Church gave communion in both kinds until the twelfth century. Pope Gelasius, at the close of the fifth century, when he heard that some that received the host abstained from the cup, ordered that they should ‘either receive the sacraments entire or be repelled from them altogether because the division of the one and same mystery cannot take place without a huge sacrilege’. The practice of the laity only receiving the host increased gradually after the eleventh century. In 1415, the Council of Constance unhappily formally adopted communion in one kind as the official practice of the Roman Church. The theological defense attempted for this practice was that ‘as much is contained under either kind as under both,’ This doctrine, known as concomitance is pure speculation. It was affirmed for the Roman Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

Article XXXI - Of the one oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross

a) The Language of Scripture:

The New Testament gives little detail about the Lord’s Supper as a Sacrifice, but leaves little doubt that the Church regarded it as such. In I Cor. 10:14-21, St. Paul’s argument rests upon the identity of principle between the Christian communion and the sacrificial meals of the Jews. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read, ‘We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat, who serve the tabernacle.’ The reference to the communion is unmistakable and the words imply a sacrifice comparable to the old covenant. It is clear that our Lord’s body and blood are not only our spiritual food: they are that because they are first the sacrifice that prevails for us. The words ‘this is my blood of the New Testament ‘ [Matt. 26:28] or ‘This is the new covenant in my blood’ [I Cor. 11:25] are an echo of the words of the covenant-sacrifice of Exodus 24 and quoted in Hebrews 9:20. Also in Hebrews [Heb. 9:28] the writer says ‘So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many’.

b) The Sense of the Sacrifice:

Several distinct ideas underlay the early sacrifices of the Jews. Sacrifice was a gift or tribute; a means of propitiation; and a means of communion with God. All of these ideas find expression in the Christian Communion.

What the Church offers to God in the first instance is simply the bread and wine as a token of homage and dependence on Him. In the early Church the bread and wine actually used in communion were take from the offerings of the faithful. So today the oblations of bread and wine and the collection of money are in origin and significance one and the same act.

Then in the prayer of consecration the Church performs in remembrance of Him those acts that He Himself performed at the last supper. We pray that our earthly oblations of bread and wine, by the power of the Holy Spirit, be united with the heavenly oblation of our Lord. In a sense, God accepts our offering by giving them back to us to be the spiritual food of His body and blood. In Holy Communion our Lord is present in His glory to be the food of our souls and since He is present his sacrifice is present too. As members of Christ’s Church we identify with Christ. We claim the forgiveness won for us; we thank God for the great act of redemption. Through Christ we enter into communion with the Father. He is our atonement. And through Christ we offer our prayers and thanksgivings for our fellow-members in His body and plead His death for all the faithful, living and departed.

Through Christ we offer ourselves to the Father. Our Lord in heaven presents to the Father, his body the Church. We as members of Christ’s Church join with Him in offering ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee;’. This is the culmination of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Not the mere presentation of Christ’s sacrifice as something done for us, but our own self-identification with that sacrifice. Without our self oblation, the Eucharistic sacrifice is incomplete.

c) Teachings Repudiated:

The first sentence of the article is an assertion of the atonement, similar in language to the opening words of the Prayer of Consecration. It is made here to be ground of the subsequent condemnation. It is based on Heb. 7:27, Heb. 9:14,26-28, and Heb. 10:10 where the death of Christ once for all is contrasted with the repeated sacrifices of the Jewish system [Romans 6:9,10]. The next sentence presents the condemnation. The plural ‘sacrifices, condemns any idea that each Eucharist is in any sense a repetition of the sacrifice once offered on Calvary. Also the plural ‘masses’ condemns the idea that each mass posses a supplementary value of its own. So it is not ‘the sacrifice of the mass’ that is condemned but the ‘sacrifices of the masses’.

We need to get back to broader and truer notions of sacrifice. The root idea of sacrifice is communion rather than propitiation. The Roman tradition is based on the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, which regards the physical modification of the victim as the essential part of sacrifice. The Roman interpretation of the sacrifice of the Eucharist rests on the later and debased mediaevil theology. Against it we appeal to a nobler and wider conception of sacrifice, more alike to history and scripture.

Note: Based on: The Thirty-Nine Articles

E. J. Bicknell

Third Edition revised by H. J. Carpenter

LTS April 2000