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The Eucharist explained. Differences
of interpretation.
[Extract
from Rev J A Wylie, The History of Protestantism, London,
Cassell,1899, vol 2. p 53-55.]
The Lord’s Supper began
early to be corrupted in the primitive Church. The simple memorial was
changed into a mystery. That mystery became, century by century, more
awful and inexplicable. It was made to stand apart from other ordinances
and services of the Church, not only in respect of the greater reverence
with which it was regarded, but as an institution in its own nature wholly
distinct, and altogether peculiar in its mode of working. A secret virtue
or potency was attributed to it, by which, apart from the faith of the
recipient, it operated mysteriously upon the soul. It was no longer an
ordinance, it was now a spell, a charm. The spirit of ancient paganism had
crept back into it, and ejecting the Holy Spirit, which acts through it in
the case of all who believe, it had filled it with a magical influence.
The Lord’s Supper was the institution nearest the cross, and the spirit of
reviving error in seizing upon it was actuated doubtless by the
consideration that the perversion of this institution was the readiest
and most effectual way to shut up or poison the fountain of the world’s
salvation. The corruption went on till it issued, in 1215, in the dogma of
transubstantiation. The bread and wine which were set upon the Communion
tables of the first century became, by the fiat of Innocent III, flesh
and blood on the altars of the thirteenth.
Despite that
the dogma of transubstantiation is opposed to Scripture, contradicts
reason, and outrages all our senses, there is about it, we are compelled
to conclude, some extraordinary power to hold captive the mind. Luther,
who razed to the ground every other part of the Romish system, left this
one standing. He had not courage to cast it down; he continued to his
life’s end to believe in consubstantiation—that is, in the presence of the
flesh and blood of Christ with, in, or under the bread and wine. He
strove, no doubt, to purify his belief from the gross materialism of the
Romish mass. He denied that the Lord’s Supper was a sacrifice, or that the
body of Christ in the elements was to be worshipped; but he maintained
that the body was there, and was received by the communicant. The union
of the Divinity with the humanity in Christ’s person gave to His glorified
body, he held, new and wholly unearthly qualities. It made it independent
of space, it endowed it with ubiquity; and when Zwingli, at Marburg,
argued in reply that this was opposed to all the laws of matter, which
necessitated a body to be in only one place at one time, Luther scouted
the objection as being merely mathematical. The Reformer of Wittenberg
did not seem to perceive that fatal consequences would result in other
directions, from asserting such a change upon the body of Christ as he
maintained to be wrought upon it in virtue of its union with the Divinity,
for undoubtedly such a theory imperils the reality of the two great facts
which are the foundations of the Christian system, the death and the
resurrection of our Lord.
Nor was it
Luther only who did homage to this dogma. A yet more powerful intellect,
Calvin namely, was not able wholly to disenthral himself from its
influence. He believed, it is true, neither in transubstantiation nor in
consubstantiation, but he hesitated to admit the thorough, pure
spirituality of the Lord’s Supper. He teaches that the communicant
receives Christ, Who is spiritually present only by his faith; but he
talks vaguely, withal, as if he conceived of an emanation or influence
radiated from the glorified Humanity now at the Right Hand, entering into
the soul of the believer, and implanting there the germ of a glorified
humanity like to that of his risen Lord. In this scarcely intelligible
idea there may be more than the lingering influence of the mysticism of
bygone ages. We can trace in it a desire on the part of Calvin to
approximate as nearly as possible the standpoint of the Lutherans, if so
he might close the breach which divided and weakened the two great bodies
of Protestants, and rally into one host all the forces of the Reformation
in the face of a yet powerful Papacy. Zwingli has more successfully
extricated the spiritual from the mystical in the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper than either Luther or Calvin. His sentiments were a recoil from the
mysticism and absurdity which, from an early age, had been gathering round
this Sacrament, and which had reached their height in the Popish doctrine
of the mass.
Some have
maintained that the recoil went too far, that Zwingli fell into the error
of excessive simplicity, and that he reduced the ordinance of the Lord’s
Supper to a mere memorial or commemoration service. His earliest
statements (1525)
on the
doctrine of the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, may be open to
this objection; but not so his latter teachings (1530), we are disposed to
think. He returned to the golden mean, avoiding both extremes—neither
attributing to the Sacrament a mystical or magical efficacy, on the one
hand, nor making it a bare and naked sign of a past event on the other.
In order to
understand his views, and see their accordance with Scripture, we must
attend a moment to the nature and design of the Lord’s Supper as seen in
its institution. The primary end and significance of the Lord’s Supper is
a commemoration : “Do this in remembrance of me.” But the event
commemorated is of such a kind, and our relation to it is of such a
nature, that the commemoration of it necessarily implies more than mere
remembrance. We are commemorating a ” death ” which was endured in our
room, and is an expiation of our sin; we, therefore, cannot commemorate it
to the end in view but in faith. We rest upon it as the ground of our
eternal ]ife; we thus receive His “flesh and blood” —that is, the
spiritual blessings His death procured. Nay, more, by a public act we
place ourselves in the ranks of His followers. We promise or vow
allegiance to Him. This much, and no more, is done on the human side.
We turn to
the Divine side. What is signified and done here must also be modified and
determined by the nature of the transaction. The bread and wine in the
Eucharist, being the representatives of the body and blood of Christ, are
the symbols of an eternal redemption. In placing these symbols before us,
and inviting us to partake of then, God puts before us and offers unto us
that redemption. We receive it by faith, and He applies it to us and works
it in us by His Spirit. Thus the Supper becomes at once a sign and a seal.
Like the “blood” on the doorpost of the Israelite, it is a “token”
between God and us ; for from the Passover the Lord’s Supper is
historically descended, and the intent and efficacy of the former,
infinitely heightened, live in the latter. This, in our view, exhausts,
both on the Divine and on the human side, all which the principles of the
Word of God warrant us to hold in reference to the Eucharist ; and if we
attempt to put more into it, that more, should we closely examine it, will
be found to be not spiritual but magical.
Zwingli’s
grand maxim as a Reformer eminently was the authority of Holy Scripture.
Luther rejected nothing in the worship of God sunless it was condemned in the Bible: Zwingli admitted nothing unless it was enjoined. Following
his maxim, Zwingli, forgetting all human glosses, Papal edicts, and the
mysticism of the schools, came straight to the New Testament, directed his
gaze steadfastly and exclusively upon its pages, and gathered from thence
what the Lord’s Supper really meant. He found that on the human side it
was a ” commemoration ” and a “pledge,” and on the Divine side a “sign”
and “seal.” Further, the instrumentality on the part of man by which he
receives the blessing represented is faith; and the agency on the part of
God, by which that blessing is conveyed and applied, is the Holy Spirit.
Such was the Lord’s Supper as Ulrich Zwingli found it in the original
institution. He purged it from every vestige of mysticism and materialism;
but he left its spiritual efficacy unimpaired and perfect.
Dictionary definitions:
Transubstantiation:
The whole substance of the bread and wine in the Eucharist is by
reason of the consecration [ by the priest ] changed into the flesh and
blood of Christ, the appearance only of the bread and wine remaining the
same.
Consubstantiation:
The doctrine of the substantial union of Christ`s body and blood with the
elements of the Sacrament; union in one substance or nature.
18/07/2011
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