Communion: Memorial or Sacrifice?

Trimming the Bible

Reformation Leaders

Faith or Works?

Free Will or
Predestination?

Changeable Truths.

The Virgin Mary.

Queen of Heaven

Images and Miracles.

Communion:
Memorial or Sacrifice?

By Their Fruits You
Shall Know Them.

Heaven and Hell.

The Crusades

Which is the True Church?

The Da Vinci Con

HOME PAGE

Catholics, along with the Orthodox Churches, believe in the Real Physical presence of Christ's body and blood in the consecrated bread and wine of Communion.

In common with their practice of desacralising of worship and belief, at the Reformation most Protestant groups, denied that there was any physical change in the bread and wine of communion. Jesus body and blood were not physically present, and Communion became just a memorial, in which Jesus was present, if at all, only spiritually by Faith.

A few groups, like the Lutherans and some Anglo-Catholics, retained a form of belief in the Real Presence, but most Protestant Churches strongly denied this, downgrading the Communion Service to a rarely-performed rite of little significance.

Did Protestants Follow the Bible on This?

It is very difficult to see how they did. Although protestant leaders claimed always to be following clear biblical doctrine, when one actually looks to the bible one finds little to support the Protestant/Evangelical position.

LUKE 22
19. And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them saying, " This is my body, given for you; do this in remembrance of me."

20. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured put for you."

Protestants who deny the miracle of the Real Presence of Jesus' body and blood in the Eucharist, tend to ignore Jesus clear words "This is my body" and "my blood", and concentrate on the phrase "Do this in remembrance of me." Using this to argue that the Eucharist was only meant to be symbolic. But of course, if we do something in memory of someone, (give a gift, for example) that does not necessarily mean that what we do (or the gift) is not real.

So let's look at some other passages, to see whether they confirm the symbolic, or the Real, view of Communion.

JOHN 6
⁵³ Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
⁵⁴ “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
⁵⁵ “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
⁵⁶ “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
⁵⁷ “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
⁵⁸ “This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”

This seems very clear. Jesus is not speaking symbolically. He is stating that His flesh and blood are not only real food and real drink, but that His body and blood are necessary to give life. In fact as we see in a following verse, his hearers certainly understood his teaching in this manner.

60. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"

And some of them did not accept His teaching then, either:

66. From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

Paul too reaffirms the reality of Jesus's body and blood in Communion.

1 Corinthians 11
²⁷ Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
²⁸ A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Once again, here is an insistence on the reality of the presence of the body and blood of Jesus in Communion, and a demand that we recognise the sacredness of this sacrament. Yet this seems to be another of those biblical passages that most Protestants completely ignore.

What Did the Early Christians Believe?

Attempts are sometimes made to imply that the early Christians treated Communion in a cavalier manner, and therefore could not have believed in the Real Presence. But here they confuse Communion with the Agape Meal, or Love Feast, at which bread and wine were shared. If, however, we look at the writings of the Christian leaders of the earliest period, we can see that the real presence in the Eucharist was a central belief of the Early Church:

Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of both Peter and John, writes against Gnostic heretics of his day:
They even abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they will not admit that the Eucharist is the self-same body of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised up again. (Epistle to the Smyrneans, 7, 8).A.D. 110

Justin Martyr, writing around A.D. 155, describes the early Christian belief about the Lord’s Supper this way:

And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but he who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed in the bath for the forgiveness of sins and to regeneration, and who so lives as Christ has directed. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh (First Apology, 1:62).

So, we see that the idea that Holy Communion is only symbolic and that the bread and wine of the Eucharist does not become the Real Body and Blood of Jesus, is a totally novel doctrine, newly invented by Protestants.