This is the second set of questions and answers about the distinctive doctrines of the Christian denominations. My aim in this series is to help me to decide on my proper denominational home. I have been stuck in “mere Christianity” for quite a while now, and as C.S. Lewis said,1 this stance
is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.
The first set concerned the doctrinal questions that distinguish Catholicism and Orthodoxy from Protestantism. I answered those questions in a way consistent with a Protestant perspective, and on several important topics (sola scriptura, praying to saints, Mariology, and venerating icons), my positions were definitely opposed to both Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
This second set of questions, as well as the forthcoming third set, distinguish Catholicism and Orthodoxy from most of Protestantism, but they also distinguish, at least to some degree, two types of Protestantism. On the one hand, there are the “high church” branches of Protestantism, especially Lutheranism, Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church Anglicanism. These are distinguished from the “low church” denominations, including especially Baptist, Pentecostal, low church Angicanism, and most “holiness” churches such as the Nazarenes. As to Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Congregationalism, they began as high church, and some still are, but most are low. Almost all of the modern name-brand chain churches and evangelical “Bible churches” fall into the “low church” camp as well. As I understand it, the “high versus low church” distinction is not rigorously drawn, but it does mark out a real and noticeable difference. Generally, high church traditions gained currency and became more formalized with the Romanization of the Church in Late Antiquity.2
The high church practices and doctrines include especially, to use jargon I will define later, the formal liturgy, clerical hierarchy, especially the belief in apostolic succession, and sacramentalism. Other traditional elements of “high church” worship include clerical vestments, a church calendar, creeds, incense, and specific, rigorous clerical training. In sum, we may define the “high church” doctrines and practices as those that were solidified in Late Antiquity, and which can, according to Lutherans and high church Anglicans, be consistent with Scripture or even grounded in it.
We begin this set of questions with apostolic succession, then turn to the sacraments (or ordinances) of baptism and communion. In the next set I will be discussing infant baptism, the form of church governance, and liturgy. I originally intended to include all these questions together, but after writing on just the first three, it was already nearing 32,000 words. So I decided to post the high church questions in two parts.
Let’s dive in.
- I. Is apostolic succession what gives a church its authority?
- 1. The problem.
- 2. Apostolic succession, what.
- 3. Biblical evidence regarding apostolic succession.
- 4. The early church fathers on apostolic succession.
- 5. Why the argument for apostolic succession from Irenaeus fails.
- 6. The tragic corruptibility of the visible Church.
- 7. Does the Holy Spirit work infallibly through apostolic succession?
- 8. What, then, is the mark of the legitimacy of clergy and of the visible Church?
- 9. The Church as based on scriptural ordination.
- 10. Caveats.
- 11. Concluding remarks.
- II. Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation?
- 1. My starting position and sacramentalism.
- 2. The Old Testament foundation of Baptism.
- 3. The purpose of Baptism.
- 4. An argument that the rite of Baptism is a means of grace.
- 5. Symbolism vindicated.
- 6. An excursus on sacramentalism and symbolism as broader outlooks.
- 7. Sacramentalism versus symbolism in Communion.
- 8. Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation?
- III. In Communion, are the bread and wine really (or literally) the body and blood of Christ?
- 1. Literality in the debate over the Eucharist.
- 2. Philosophical issues with eucharistic realism.
- 3. The Synoptic Gospel statements.
- 4. The big “proof texts” for eucharistic realism: 1 Cor 10-11.
- 5. The big “proof texts” for eucharistic realism: John 6.
- 6. The true meaning of the Eucharist.
- 7. Concluding remarks.
I. Is apostolic succession what gives a church its authority?
1. The problem.
This is a fundamental question, nearly as fundamental as any on the first list. It is not just about a technical-sounding Church dogma: “apostolic succession.” Rather, ultimately, it is about the authority of the Church itself, or indeed, what makes any body of worshipers a church at all—or part of the Church.
A particularly strong concept of apostolic succession leads Catholicism and Orthodoxy to claim a certain kind of exclusivity. Their classic claim is that only within their churches are the sacraments (i.e., especially, Baptism and Eucharist) normally valid. So if, as they typically think, partaking such sacraments is ordinarily required for salvation, salvation can only (with qualifications) be found within that particular denomination. Indeed, both Orthodoxy and Catholicism are inclined to say they simply are the one true Church, and nothing else is, properly or fully, the Church.
Such exclusivism, as it is called, is not a doctrine of Lutheranism and Anglicanism. Nevertheless, apostolic succession is important to them. Their (Lutheran) pastors and (Anglican) priests are thought to have their authority at least in part through a sort of spiritual pedigree going back to the Apostles—a “laying on of hands” historically continuous with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Here, I will introduce a bit of useful jargon. The invisible Church refers to the body of all believers who truly belong to the family of God. Its members anticipate ultimate salvation and resurrection and the Holy Spirit of Christ dwells within them, in whose righteousness they will be saved. But that is maybe a bit abstract and lofty. We might simply say the invisible Church is the real Church, as Jesus Christ, its head, thinks of it.
I stipulate: It matters whether we are in some particular church only if it helps us belong to the invisible Church.
Now, the question before us is: What makes a church, or a church denomination, in some sense a proper or actual representative of the invisible Church? We might put this in terms of authority, insofar as the function of the local church is to exercise a kind of (churchly) authority. This is actually sensible and important, because we do not want just anybody preaching the word of God to us, administering baptism and communion, and generally leading the local flock. We do require, then, a kind of authority. What gives a preacher and the institution of which he is part that kind of authority?
2. Apostolic succession, what.
The question we are asking in this section suggests that the source (or justification) of church authority is apostolic succession. So, let us get that concept on the table next. According to the doctrine of apostolic succession, what gives a particular pastor or priest authority as an officer, so to speak, of the invisible Church is his (or, as some say, her) line of ordination—that is, official installation in office—by others who were similarly ordained, going back to the Apostles. Your pastor does or does not have proper authority depending on his line of ordination.
Why? Why does the line of ordination determine proper authority? Now, according to the ecclesiology (the theory of the Church) of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the answer is simple and profound: there is no meaningful difference between the visible and invisible Church, and candidates are constituted as priests of this one true Church by their line of ordination. So, to join the visible Church as priest, through a line of ordination, just is to join the invisible Church. The question of legitimacy is settled precisely by apostolic succession.
Before we look at the Scriptural and Patristic evidence for this doctrine, we might observe that it has some common sense appeal. How do we tell someone is part of a real church? See if he has been authorized by people who are themselves definitely in the church. Catholic and Orthodox apologists then say: our denomination is the one true Church, because of its ancient pedigree, so anyone properly ordained by us is a priest of the Church. But this cannot be all; it invites charges of circularity. Why is Father Brown a legitimate priest of the Church? “Because he is the latest addition to an ancient apostolic lineage.” But why does that lineage represent the (invisible) Church? “Because it just is the Church.” But this really does not answer the question. What is it about this ancient apostolic lineage that constitutes it as the Church itself?
Here then we must get into the biblical evidence for apostolic succession. That there is any such evidence at all is why Lutherans and some Anglicans take it quite seriously.
3. Biblical evidence regarding apostolic succession.
The first step is to note that Jesus did, after all, explicitly inaugurate the Church with the Apostles. It was to them that he gave the Great Commission. He uses the fact that “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” to justify his authority to command the Apostles: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mt 28:18–20). This way of introducing their commission suggests that even as Jesus was given authority by the Father, he is giving the Apostles authority in turn to do the essential work of the Church. Would it not follow quite elegantly that the authority continues to pass from teacher to novice thereafter? I reply: it does not follow strictly as a point of logic, but it is admittedly suggestive. One thing is very clear in any case: the very fact that Judas Iscariot was ordained by Christ himself suggests that some such commissioning is, if anything, not sufficient for legitimate authority. His case shows that authority can be lost, after all.
Here we should consider the classic “keys of the kingdom” verses:
Matthew 16:18–19
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.Matthew 18:18
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Whatever else they might mean, they are certainly examples of Christ himself ordaining Church leaders (not actually given any specific title such as ‘bishop’ at that point). So it cannot be denied that, as a general point, leaders of the Church, beginning with Christ, have ordained and may ordain other leaders of the Church. This confers a specific authority—at least, on the Apostles—such as “binding on earth,” above, and the remission of sins, here:
John 20:22–23
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
In Acts 1:20–26, we find an extended passage that further clarifies the notion of a succession of ordination, as either Justus or Matthias was to be ordained to take the place of Judas. Literally, one “is to become with us a witness of his resurrection” (Ac 1:22).3 Thus, the role to which Matthias was appointed was one of eyewitness. So, it could not have been passed along to those who were not eyewitnesses.
Finally, in Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, meaning 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, we might read many things about the roles of the “overseers” (episkopos), “elders” (presbuteros), and “deacons” (diakonos). All three epistles refer to an official transfer of authority (bold added):
1 Timothy 4:14
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.2 Timothy 1:6
Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.Titus 1:5
For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee.
It is worth pointing out that the laying on of hands was used for purposes beyond ordination to Church leadership. Moreover, in the Pastorals we find many statements that bishops and elders had an essential Gospel teaching role. They should be “apt to teach” (1 Tim 3:2), “labour in the word and doctrine” (1 Tim 5:17), “holding fast the faithful word” that they might “by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Tit 1:9), and in short “Preach the word” (2 Tim 4:2). It is precisely in the context of this teaching role that we find what might be the only clear statement in the NT that Church leadership would be passed on specifically through succession: “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2)
Very well. We may infer several solid propositions from this textual evidence:
- Jesus and the first Apostles ordained ministers of the Gospel. Thus, ordination per se is certainly a fact.
- Jesus seems to have pointed to his authority with the Father to justify, to the Apostles, his authority to commission them to carry out the work of the Church. Thus, that work is divinely ordained.
- By being ordained, a pastor or priest receives some churchly authority and responsibilities.
- The apostolic office was to serve as a witness; but more generally, “bishops” and “elders” had a distinctive and important teaching role, to preach the Gospel and teach doctrine.
Still, these verses do not quite support the doctrine of apostolic succession—not, anyway, in the relevant sense. It is never stated or implied in Scripture that the only way one might become a pastor or priest of the Church is through ordination into an unbroken line of apostolic succession going back to the Apostles. Moreover, it is time that we got quite clear on what the claim really is. Are Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and the rest committed to the view that an apostolic line of ordination is both necessary and sufficient for being a proper pastor of the Church?
4. The early church fathers on apostolic succession.
If an apostolic line of ordination is indeed a condition at all for being a proper pastor, it would be at most a necessary condition. It cannot be a sufficient condition, because there are, of course, some pastors who fall into serious sin or heresy, and so must be defrocked. This suggests that ordination per se is not enough, since one must continue to act within certain rules in order to remain a clergyman. An individual’s ongoing maintenance of such a standard of behavior is quite distinct from his apostolic lineage or any other corporate fact about the Church.
But this, I suppose, is all right, from a Catholic or Orthodox point of view: it is still necessary to be ordained by the Church, according to their understanding of what “the Church” means, in order to be a genuine priest. The question still remains then: Why is it thought to be necessary?
There are certain issues of doctrine on which Catholicism and Orthodoxy are apt to appeal to the Church Fathers when the Bible appears to come up short. Classic examples are various Marian doctrines, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the canon of Scripture. Another one of these, however, is the doctrine of apostolic succession itself.
Ignatius, Tertullian, and especially Irenaeus4 built on the Scriptural tradition, making it abundantly clear that, in their view, only those churches that were successors of the Apostolic ones—i.e., those started by the Apostles—could possibly be legitimate.
In an oft-quoted passage from Smyrnaeans, Ignatius (c. 110 A.D.) declares, “See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father… Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop.” (ch. 8) This, all by itself, suggests fairly clearly that all proper Church authority flows from the bishops: if all Church functions require the accession of the local Bishop, it follows that no new clergy may be installed without his accession. Since this was a general rule, according to Ignatius, it could be expected to be applied thereafter.
In Philadelphians 3–4, Ignatius makes the point even more explicitly:
Keep yourselves from those evil plants [spurious churches] which Jesus Christ does not tend, because they are not the planting of the Father. Not that I have found any division among you, but exceeding purity. For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. …
Take heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever you do, you may do it according to [the will of] God.
For Ignatius to urge them to have “one Eucharist” and “one bishop,” etc., is to suggest that the local church should not divide into multiple congregations, whether due to doctrinal or personal differences, but instead remain unified. This is logically incompatible with any schism: any legitimate church must be a successor of the local churches. Interestingly, it did not follow from his text that there was one centralized Church, but only that there were many local churches, each bearing apostolic authority, and which were, jointly, the visible Church.
In Against Heresies (c. 180), Irenaeus goes on at such length, criticizing heretical schismatics and attacking them as being unable to trace their lineage to the Apostles, that it would be tiresome to quote it all. Here, anyway, are a few pieces:
It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves. (III.3.1)
Irenaeus states, clearly, that only in certain local churches could “the tradition of the apostles” be learned. He says that “we”—meaning presumably those who had received this Apostolic tradition, such as the Bishop of Rome—could trace “the succession of these men to our own times”. It is rather essential to note those whom Irenaeus is criticizing, namely, those who are teaching “hidden mysteries” unknown to the Apostles and never taught by them.
A few paragraphs down, he actually traces the lineage of the then-current Roman Bishop:
The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. … To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth … Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth. (III.3.3)
Here, then, not only do we see the very concept of apostolic succession illustrated (indeed, given perhaps its most famous and foundational illustration), but we see the conclusion that Irenaeus draws from it.5 It is proof “that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.” But I would have you pay special attention to what this conclusion means. It is directed against the Gnostic sects such as the Valentinians, Marcosians, and Marcionites. Irenaeus touts apostolic succession, true—yet not for its own sake, but because such a succession establishes the truth of the doctrine that was presently (i.e., in approximately 180 A.D.) in the hands of the Church in Rome, against the Gnostics, who had very different doctrines. In other words, Irenaeus’s purpose with the doctrine of apostolic succession was apologetic, not ecclesiological. Matters are very different for the modern Catholic and Orthodox Church. They continue to make the same argument millennia after the disappearance of the ancient Gnostics. This matters, as we will see next.
5. Why the argument for apostolic succession from Irenaeus fails.
To be clear, then, apostolic succession supposedly proved that the doctrine of the present Roman Bishop, Eleutherius, was legitimate because it could be traced back to the time of Christ and his Apostles. Therefore, only his doctrine could be relied on as being the Gospel taught by the Apostles.
But in that case, the present use of Irenaeus’s reasoning for the doctrine of apostolic succession faces a rather obvious objection: Does this not mean that “having the Gospel taught by the Apostles” is the actual sine qua non of Church legitimacy? Why not say that Scriptural fidelity is actually a more reliable basis of Church authority, since Scripture is—at present, anyway—the most reliable representative we have of the Gospel and of God’s own truth? This is the argument I will urge later; but first, let us talk a bit more about Irenaeus.
There was a reason Irenaeus did not make such an argument himself. In his time, arguing against the Gnostics, one of the points of controversy was precisely the proper canon. Marcion of Sinope developed an early selection of the New Testament books called the Marcionite Canon (c. 140–50)—casting some (such as the Pastoral Epistles) into doubt; for that matter, he even rejected the Old Testament, as some modern-day Gnostics do. Thus, an extrabiblical argument seemed to be necessary to identify what the church even was, at all, specifically in contradistinction to these occultic sects which rejected Scripture, yet called themselves Christian.
Today, we are in a very different situation, and this for two powerful reasons: the clarity of the canon of Scripture and the fallibility of human institutions over time.
Through careful textual research, we can now confidently maintain that the books of the New Testament are documents from the middle and late first century A.D., within living memory of Christ, and that the Gospels and epistles, although it required generations for them all to circulate, were mostly accepted as authentic from an early date.6 Today, we are in perfect agreement across all our traditions on the contents of the NT canon.
So, if Irenaeus dwelt upon apostolic succession in order to prove that the Bishop of Rome’s church taught the doctrine of the Apostles, we may argue for the same conclusion much more authoritatively by referring to the NT itself. Perhaps this argument would not persuade the Gnostics, but no matter: we are not arguing against them anymore. By Irenaeus’s lights, it seems the truth of the Gospel was the real test of a church’s legitimacy, with line of ordination only a secondary sign of it.
6. The tragic corruptibility of the visible Church.
This leads us to the second reason that Irenaeus’ situation is not applicable to ours: We may observe that a line of ordination becomes less reliable, qua sign of legitimacy, with each passing century. As time rolls on, the possibility of the corruption of the visible Church becomes greater and greater, even if the institutional pedigree is beyond reproach.
I know that Catholics, in particular, will bristle at this statement. But they really should not. Prima facie, we cannot rule out the possibility of corruption in the Church. Paul, Peter, and John all warned against it:
Acts 20:29–30
For I [Paul] know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them …2 Peter 2:1–2
But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of …1 John 2:18–19
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us …
And Jesus too warned about it:
Matthew 24:24
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect …
None of them said that such false teachers, false Christs, and false prophets would arise only outside of the Church. None, of course, said that apostolic succession would be some sort of proof against this happening. Among Christ’s final words to us, in Revelation 2–3, are criticisms of local churches, some of which had done very poorly by the tradition that had been handed to them. Are we supposed to believe that after 2,000 years, serious heresy within the church is impossible? And are we really required to be so naive as to believe the Great Harlot (Rev 17–18) and the False Prophet (Rev 13:11–15) could not rise within the established visible Church?
Neither Christ nor any Apostle gave us any sanguine assurance that the Church—whether a small local body or a great old tradition—could never be twisted and perverted from within. Peter warned of precisely of corruption inside the Church, reminding us that, not infrequently, the prophets of God, who spoke to God directly, identified the gravest corruption in the priesthood (2 Pet 2:1–3). Regular reform will always, surely, be necessary. We ought to remember who was the very greatest reformer of established, yet perverted priestly traditions: Jesus Christ. He observed that the Second Temple priesthood was largely wicked, teaching doctrines of men, with few of them recognizing their own Messiah:
Matthew 15:3, 6–9
But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? …
Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.Matthew 23:13–15
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
This, by the way, was after the Lord handed down the most careful rules and procedures for priestly succession, particularly in the book of Leviticus. As if to demonstrate the fallibility of his own institution to posterity ever after, he slew the first two priests anointed by succession for offering “strange fire.” The sad story of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:1–7) speaks eloquently to the present question: it gives me no joy at all to report that the corruption goes back to the very beginning of priestly succession.
And besides that, is not one of the great themes of the Bible precisely the presence of a small, faithful remnant after periods of solid establishment? Are we to believe that the presence of the Holy Spirit among us will certainly prevent the visible (or, apparent but spurious) Church itself persecuting that very remnant? That is what happened to the prophetic remnants after the rise of David; it is what happened to Jesus and the Apostles after the restoration of the Temple; and it is what Jesus anticipates in his revelation to John, when only a small remnant will suffer through the tribulation (Rev 12:17 and 13:7).
Surely we cannot rest the legitimacy of the visible Church on the continuity of traditions that might, after all—according to the examples and warnings contained in the Bible itself—be corrupted. The testimony of Scripture on the prospects of apostolic succession is sad but clear: ordination and succession are no guarantees against doctrinal or moral failure. The legitimacy of the visible Church can be rooted only in its proven fidelity to the Word on which it was founded, as revealed in Scripture; in its fallibility, it cannot be rooted in an all-too-human, institutional pedigree.
7. Does the Holy Spirit work infallibly through apostolic succession?
I anticipate one important response to this argument: We live in a new dispensation, in which the Church, properly constituted is guided infallibly by the Holy Spirit. Thus, while there might be apostasy, even in high office, the Lord will not allow the institution as a whole to be corrupted: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Mt 16:18)
The problem, however, is that this begs the question as to what the Church established by Christ is. Some supporters of Catholicism and Orthodoxy may be untroubled by doubts about their institutions; but I am not so persuaded. Let us stipulate that the invisible Church will never fall, and that there will always be a faithful remnant in the visible Church. To insist doggedly that this faithful remnant will always (or necessarily) be found within one particular institution is to assume the very thing in question.
But let us consider the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. While I place great trust in the Holy Spirit who moves through the Church, he manifestly does not prevent the downfall of many ordained priests and pastors. Considering the above-reviewed warnings by Jesus and the Apostles, I see no evidence at all that he will prevent our wickedness from ruining our all-too-human institutions.
But, I will be told, look at the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–16). Does this not suggest, in several places, that a new dispensation was upon them, in which the Apostles could be relied upon? Well—yes. As long as we assume we’re talking about the Apostles, certain passages are remarkably supportive:
John 14:16–17
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.John 14:26
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.John 15:26–27
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.John 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
When Jesus says that the Comforter would “teach you all things” and “bring all things to your remembrance,” he is evidently speaking of the Apostles in particular, not all of us—as we have no memory of Christ on earth. Similarly, when Jesus says “he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning”, he is speaking of the unique prerogatives of the Apostles as founding teachers of the Church. So also, I believe, with the rest of the discourse. These are words addressed specifically to the Apostles as representatives and witnesses of Christ, who would be specially commissioned to bring the work of the God-man “down to earth,” so to speak, even to Gentiles. He addressed them, and the words are recorded, to emphasize the unique inspiration of the founding of the visible Church. Even as Christ had the special help of the Holy Spirit after he had emptied himself of his power,7 so too would the Apostles be aided as they preached the Gospel, showed forth miraculous signs that would compel new believers, and planted churches. So, without litigating the status of the long passage (against, especially, the objections of continuationists), I would say simply that its function was, indeed, to prepare the Apostles to found the Church.
But if this is true, it means that the Spirit-given infallibility of the Apostles in their work would not necessarily be passed along to their disciples, any more than the prophetic prerogatives of a Moses, Samuel, or Daniel were passed along to theirs. Interestingly, Elijah stands out as practically unique, apart from Christ himself, as one who actually did have a disciple who inherited his prophetic ability and ministry: Elisha. There are two other pairs, however: Moses, who taught Joshua; and David, who taught Solomon.8 There are no discourses in Scripture that speak of a line of infallibly inspired ordained priests as such. Nor is there any hint that even mere spiritual authority would be conferred by institutional descent. Paul, Peter, and John speak most sternly of the essential need of both the people and their leaders to cleave to their Gospel—suggesting that even the leaders might not, in fact, do so. Paul never said that each man must carefully follow and imitate the man from whom he learned, like an ecclesiastical game of telephone—he said that they should teach his, Paul’s Gospel, which is that of Jesus Christ. It follows that there is no support here at all for the notion that an unbroken chain of ordained clergy would serve as a guarantee of the reliability of teachers, or of the incorruptibility of the tradition.
8. What, then, is the mark of the legitimacy of clergy and of the visible Church?
Irenaeus argued, implicitly, that the feature that established the correctness of the doctrine of the then-current Bishop of Rome was the fact that he was the recipient of Apostolic tradition by direct succession. But if so, why not observe that each of us may have a direct line to the Apostles, and indeed to the words of the Lord himself, via the Scripture itself? This is a simple question, yet it undermines the strongest argument for apostolic succession as a necessary condition of Church legitimacy.
Similarly, it is argued that the guidance by the Holy Spirit is thought to authorize the leaders of the Church to speak authoritatively on his behalf, even as he originally did with the Apostles. But as we have seen, Jesus was speaking only to the Apostles in their capacity as witnesses and his personal disciples; there is no hint that such abilities were permanent among all Christians (as continuationists say) or Church leadership (as Catholics say). Finally, the special inspiration they received was precisely in order to inaugurate the Church and, surely, to help in the creation of the New Testament Scriptures. But the visible Church has been established, Scripture written, witness recorded—these essential tasks all lie in the past. While I do believe that the visible Church will always survive, it is in itself not infallible. Yet Scripture is reliable, indeed infallible, in a way that additions made centuries later can never be. But, then, if I begin to go over the debate on this, we will be back to the issue of regula fidei, which I discussed in Part I, Question 1 and in this essay. As the claim to the authority of apostolic succession goes hand-in-hand with sola ecclesia, so the probity of the Word itself as the foundation of the Church goes hand-in-hand with sola scriptura.
What, then, are the necessary and sufficient conditions of an institution actually being a visible representative of the invisible Church? And what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of a clergyman being ordained in that Church?
These are ancient and difficult questions, with a remarkable variety of possible answers. So, I am not eager to offer an answer. Nevertheless, I will do what I can.
One characteristic of the genuine visible Church is one that all Protestants seem to agree on: in it, the Word of God, or the Gospel, is rightly preached. If the Word is not preached, not at all, then certainly it is not a Church, properly speaking. The vivid concern for “doctrine” (which means, simply teaching—and hence, teaching of God’s own truth) and for the “word” is found throughout the Epistles9, and are illustrated in Acts.10 Near the end of Jesus’ walk on earth, he gave his Apostles instructions to go “teach all nations”:
Matthew 28:19–20
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations… Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you…Mark 16:15
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.Luke 24:46–7
Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations…Acts 1:8
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me… unto the uttermost part of the earth.John 15:27
And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.
While these instructions were given to the Apostles, naturally, Christian pastors and priests take it to be their job to do the same.
This much is obvious, I suppose, but we should observe a consequence: to the extent to which a particular church does not “preach the gospel,” either because it preaches something not in the Bible or because it avoids doctrine altogether, it is not acting as part of the invisible Church, or what is properly called the visible Church. One difficulty about this qua criterion, however, is its sheer vagueness. A single doctrinal error will surely not disqualify a church (or pastor). Yet nothing but falsehood or persistent falsehood on fundamentals surely will. But this raises questions: What proportion of error is permitted? Which doctrines are “fundamental”? I do not propose to saddle myself with these difficult questions. Even setting those aside, a meta-question remains: If local churches and pastors can be better or worse in their preaching function, does that mean they are, somehow more or less part of the invisible Church?
Then there is the question as to what other functions a church, if really part of the Church, must execute. Whatever you think about the question of whether Baptism and Communion are necessary for salvation, it is surely the case that a “real church” performs both of them with appropriate regularity and according to appropriate forms. But then, what are those?
The sheer difficulty of these questions is enough to make one take a second look at apostolic succession. Yet it is possible to find churches within the Roman Catholic fold, I am sorry to say, in which so-called “liberal” priests, who have (we may stipulate) a perfect line of ordination and are in good standing with the institutional hierarchy, teach that Christ is not divine. But then, we already knew that an apostolic line of ordination is not sufficient for being a properly ordained minister of God.
The fact is that there is no simple formula of virtue in a church, any more than there is a simple formula of virtue in a person. It is also perfectly obvious—from the regularities of statistical distribution, if nothing else—that there will be edge cases of genuine churches, as there are edge cases of people who are quite honest, decent, kind, etc.
What I would say is that “God is in the details.” Each different requirement would need debating, and Scripture supplies guidance on many details.
9. The Church as based on scriptural ordination.
What a church is, first and foremost, what the Reformation called a church: A place where one can reasonably expect to hear the pure Word of God preached with competence; where the Lord’s Supper is correctly administered; and where new converts and possibly infants may be properly baptized.11 But here I am speaking about what a church is, that is, a local church: we can expect to hear godly preaching there. For us to have such a reasonable expectation, it is very clear, as a matter of common sense and observation, that there must be some institution in place that can make our expectation reasonable. After all, there are some people who set up “Bible churches” who, near as I can tell, have no special training to preach the Bible, nor are they specially approved by anyone except, perhaps, some wealthy sponsors or a corporate startup denomination (with low standards). The sole indicator of their being worth listening to is frankly supposed to rest in the fact that they have gathered an audience. In my opinion, experience shows that that is not enough.
Here, then, we find a more sensible ground on which to endorse the very idea of ordination: it is ordination that serves to make us reasonably assured that we will, indeed, hear the Word of God preached with confidence, the Lord’s Supper correctly administered, and persons properly baptized.12 But let me stipulate that by “ordination” we mean “the process of properly confirming that a candidate preacher is qualified to lead a congregation.” This, then, pushes back the question: What does the process of properly confirming a pastor that look like?
For one thing, it seems to me that we can, up front, determine that the candidate pastor does sincerely hold, and can clearly and correctly explain, certain fundamental doctrines (i.e., things to be taught). Well, now it seems we’re getting somewhere, because this is nothing other than the very notion of a confession of faith. The Lutherans have the Augsburg Confession, and the other contents of their Book of Concord. The Anglicans have their famous Thirty-Nine Articles, and the contents of their Book of Common Prayer. The Presbyterians have the Westminster Confession of Faith and its various catechisms. I submit that these all differ in an important way from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The classic Protestant confessions are, to my knowledge, all very reasonable interpretations of the doctrinal commitments found in Scripture alone, while the Catholics confidently affirm—on the basis of Sacred Tradition and Magisterial authority—many things that simply cannot be adequately supported by Scripture alone. As a result, in my view, I would conclude that Catholic priests, being officially committed to teach the things contained in their Catechism, will be adding to the Word of God. For that simple reason, I humbly submit that they are not properly qualified as ministers of the Word in a Protestant church. I am not confident enough of my conclusions to broaden them to the entire Church.13
Once we have a reliable confession in hand, then we may proceed to train—or, at least, examine—candidate pastors in the proper understanding of all the Bible and theology necessary to preach faithfully, according to the confession. This is how the classic confessional denominations14 operate. Such training should also cover other aspects of running a proper church. Then we define ordination this way: A minister of the word has been properly ordained if competent judges of theological and ecclesiological matters have so tested and confirmed a candidate so that he is shown, to their reasonable satisfaction, to be (a) sincerely committed to a properly biblical confession, (b) able to explain its doctrines both clearly (to a lay audience) and correctly (such as to satisfy theologians), (c) able to administer the sacraments (or ordinances) of the Church, and (d) in other respects to administer the Church properly; and of course (e) who personally satisfies the moral and situational requirements of a Christian pastor.
Here, then, we arrive at the Lutheran and Anglican concepts of the apostolic succession. They both hold that there is value in being historically connected to the original Church at Pentecost, via a historic succession of ordination, tracing back to the Apostles. It would be nice if those who did the ordination were themselves ordained by those who were ordained, etc., going back to the Twelve. But this is not, strictly speaking, required, because we are now blessed to be able to sit at the feet of the Apostles and of the Lord himself and to learn directly from their words. Therefore, what is required is confirmation that a candidate has adequately mastered those words, believes them, possesses the ability to teach them, is personally qualified, etc. Why should we not maintain that such a person who is so confirmed may be considered to be properly ordained on that basis alone?
One of the mercies of ordination as such is that it does an end-run around all the questions we each would have to ask (mentioned in the last subsection) about what a proper church looks like. Such questions are left up to the theologians associated with godly Church traditions. All we congregants must do is review their confession, ordination practices, and other matters constitutive of the Church (which are covered by other questions in this series); if we approve of those, and are presented with an ordained minister in that tradition, then, if the denominational organization has done its job well, we can trust that the minister is indeed qualified.
10. Caveats.
Let us take up some caveats, each of which complicates the previous discussion. Since I will answer these much more briefly, my answers should not be taken as definitive, as I have (probably) not given them as much thought. I include them here mostly for the sake of completeness.
What happens when a Church organization becomes corrupted? Can it still ordain its clergy?
There are, I suppose, different kinds of corruption. Incorrectness of confessional standards is one type, which is addressed by the next “caveat” question. Other types, however, include denominational practices that are either badly mistaken or sinful. For example, some denominations ordain homosexual ministers, which as a practice suggests a lack of biblically principled judgment about the personal conduct of candidates. Some denominations have been credibly accused of being tolerant or even defensive against credible accusations of child abuse by their ministers; this casts an unfortunate pall over all of their ministers, for, what must the organization be like, internally, for such serious crime to be overlooked by the ruling hierarchy for years on end? So, I think the answer here must be “no”: a corrupted Church organization cannot still ordain its clergy. This is not to say that such ordination is disqualifying for all individuals; but it is not a confirming sign. If the organization is so far gone that it fails to meet some standard of godliness, then ordination by that organization is no evidence of the personal holiness needed to be a minister.
How do we know which confessions are sufficiently biblical?
We may begin with the simple requirements: The confession, or the typical teachings of a denomination (if not confessional), should be fully consistent with the ecumenical creeds, including the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed (with or without the filoque). But this “mere Christianity” is a minimal necessary condition, not a sufficient one. What a sufficient condition is, is harder to ascertain. This requires testing a confession against Scripture. Establishing that a confession is perfectly biblical is difficult if not impossible for us in this life; in short, the statements it makes must be reasonably defensible. But this then pushes back the problem to defining when a statement is “reasonably defensible” according to the Bible, which is a matter of hermeneutics (I suppose). I would say that at least it should be expressed or clearly implied by multiple verses of Scripture, when considered in their proper context, when (a) taking other relevant passages into consideration and (b) making a good-faith effort to follow the analogia fidei (analogy of faith). I know, of course, that different traditions approach this task differently.
Can ordination be valid if the confessional standards are wrong or incomplete?
If an organization repudiates, whether in confessional standards or in common practice, fundamentals (for example, the divinity of Christ, our salvation through his sacrifice, the unity of the Godhead, the infallibility of Scripture, or the righteousness of God the Father) then a pastor who signs on with such an organization seems to be expressing de facto contempt of those fundamentals. The ordination in such a case strikes me as being positively disqualifying, because a candidate who deliberately joins such a denomination is expressing either indifference or hostility to such fundamental principles. Such a posture is ipso facto disqualifying.
Generally speaking, if the denomination’s confession (and other defining creedal statements) undermine the fundamentals of the faith by means of its additions to “mere Christianity” (see above), then its ordination is, indeed, disqualifying. This is a serious failing. This is why those ordained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarian Universalists, and others are not Christian ministers at all (not if they have not repudiated that ordination and have been ordained by a Christian denomination).
Now, as to the harder cases, I am not so confident of my case here as to regard as disqualifying the ordination of Catholic and Orthodox priests just because their creeds are inconsistent with sola scriptura and sola fide.15 They (and especially the more theologically adventuresome Catholics) do go well beyond what Scripture supports, and I maintain that that is contrary to biblical command; nevertheless, it might not be so thoroughly wrong as to disqualify a minister ordained by those creeds as a Christian minister, in my opinion. There might actually be some stances, such as a Mariology that is so extreme that it becomes Mariolatry, that are individually disqualifying in the case of individual priests. But I am not prepared to say the entire traditions are disqualified if, for example, they say that Mary is Queen of Heaven and they pray to her as co-redemptrix. Perhaps I am being too kind; but, for now, I am not prepared to so condemn all the priests of the majority of professing Christians.
What about sacramental validity?
I have avoided this topic because it “opens a can of worms,” which I will carefully unpack in questions II, III, and IV below.
Is the Church not supposed to be unified? How can you preserve unity apart from apostolic succession?
This concern is complex. For one thing, what is meant by “the Church” here—the invisible Church? We may say the invisible Church is and will be unified in spite of the unfortunate divisions introduced by the visible Church. But unified how, you may ask? This is a good question to ask exclusivists. Must the Church, to be properly “unified,” be subject to one single global hierarchy, as the Roman Catholics believe? I do not think so. Are they not unified by their sincere and demonstrated faith in God and in the doctrines of “mere Christianity”? Perhaps. Apostolic succession maintains a way to keep all those pastored by those having an apostolic lineage part of a single (and hence unified?) organization.
But what is the value of such unity? In the days of Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, unity was a sign of orthodoxy: that was its value. But now there are many distinct organizations, in different hierarchies (or which have repudiated hierarchy as such, as the Baptists, Congregationalists, and various Free churches) that are no less committed to such Christian fundamentals. In short, then the unity that matters is not that of central authority, in particular: Why would it be? The unity that matters, surely, is unity of doctrine, of purpose, and Christian love.
What if the congregation calls a minister but he is not ordained by a larger body?
My view here is that this is an unfortunate but perhaps understandable circumstance. It would be better if all qualified ministers were ordained by persons who actually were qualified, in all essential ways, to ordain them. Generally, I do not think the typical congregation has the theological acumen (at least) to make this judgment. But I also realize that there are some candidates who are extremely strong, from almost anybody’s view, despite their lack of formal ordination, and who are already loved by a congregation; and a congregation is having difficulty attracting suitable candidates otherwise. In such a case, perhaps the congregational leaders might seek outside help in vetting the candidate(s) in lieu of an exercise of denominational authority.
I will discuss this more under question V below.
What about women’s ordination?
I will be brief here on this much-debated issue, not out of a desire to be peremptory, but because I think the Bible settles the matter, and I have no desire to try to litigate such a controversial issue fully.
My view is that Scripture is clear on this matter. There are no instances of women serving as congregational heads in the New Testament. Paul is very clear in his descriptions of the qualifications of overseers and elders;16 he also makes very clear about, and even offers his reasoning for, his claim that only men may teach, i.e., preach authoritatively in Church services.17 There are many who are capable of creatively drawing out all support the Bible can offer for the contrary view. But the fact is that analogia fidei makes the conclusion not just clear, but obvious: If women sometimes were prophetesses or leaders, or did teach or evangelize, or were spoken to with great respect by the Apostles,18 none of those things is incompatible with, or somehow overturns, Paul’s clear words about who may lead and teach at the local Church.
This is one case where commitment to the Bible places one squarely against one aspect of modernity, in the form of feminism: Generally speaking, feminists absolutely insist that women be permitted to be pastors. Feminist (or gender) egalitarianism has become so pervasive in our culture that it is positively shocking for some to be told that women may not do something reserved only to men. So be it.
11. Concluding remarks.
It is easy for traditionalists—of all stripes, regardless of where they end up—to be impressed by apostolic succession. It suggests an ancient tradition, a substantial heritage, a kind of authenticity. When these are wedded to beautiful cathedrals, stunning artwork, and the impressive trappings of the “high church,” some conclude that a local church that lacks these features is not really part of the Church at all. This is, frankly, a kind of elitism, not to say snobbery—or, anyway, that is what it can seem like—and the faithful sons and daughters of Catholicism and Orthodoxy are only too willing to deploy it against criticisms. “Your criticism is only your opinion, and who are you? We are the real Church, the living bearer of a truly ancient tradition.”
I understand this impulse—the ancient Christian Church is impressive—but I also reject it as a response to Protestantism. If I join a Lutheran church, or even a Free Baptist church, I join another living bearer of a “truly ancient tradition.” While the denominational tradition might go back only a few centuries, in every case it was made in an effort to return to the genuine faith of the Apostles, as revealed in the oldest and most beautiful tradition we all possess—namely, Scripture itself. Protestants partake of that same tradition, even if they do not own the old cathedrals and use precisely the same forms of worship. My position here is to endorse, in principle, what Anglicans call branch theory: the branches are just as legitimate and draw from the same roots as the trunk (or trunks).
I also reject the notion that those Protestants ordained through a proper, serious process—one that confirms their beliefs, their knowledge, and their features of character necessary for the ministry—are less qualified as ministers of the Word of God than are their Catholic or Orthodox brethren. Being able to prove an apostolic pedigree is a pleasant thing, but it is does not go any distance, especially when it is almost 2,000 years after the ministry of Jesus Christ, to proving the qualifications of a minister. All it proves is the conformity of a minister to one particular tradition—when, from my point of view, it is an open question which traditions are in fact faithful to the Word of God. And it is the Word of God that ultimately unifies the Church and qualifies her proper branches and ministers.
II. Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation?
1. My starting position and sacramentalism.
Just a few years ago, I would have answered this question like this:
I don’t see what the fuss is about. On the one hand, of course Baptism and Communion play a hugely important role in the life of a Christian. Baptism marks the entry of a person into the Church. We take Communion because we obey Jesus’ request, and it is our memorial of his sacrifice. Both of these can help us remain secure in the faith. On the other hand, we are saved by faith alone, and since neither Baptism nor Communion is identical to (or even a necessary part of) faith, then they are not actually required for our salvation.
If you agree entirely with this (as non-sacramental Protestants might), then any further discussion of this question may seem at first pointless. It is natural for Protestants to wonder what, exactly, the fuss is all about.
As I read more about theology, however, I became increasingly aware of how important Catholicism and Orthodoxy take these two sacraments, as they call them. The word is not found in the Bible. I also began to learn that Lutherans and Anglicans, too, understand these in a way that is not obvious even from repeated readings of the Bible. This is not to say that I agreed with them, but I was curious about the controversy, and I began to understand the issues better.
Sacramentalism as I understand it has two aspects, one common to all sacramentalists, and one specifically denied by Protestants. All sacramentalists hold that Baptism and Communion are means of grace, which is a particularly difficult piece of jargon that suggests that our salvation is, in some way, facilitated by the rites of Baptism and Communion. (In particular, how are we to understand “means of grace”? This is a point of difference to be discussed below.) The grace we receive by their means is bound up with certain instruments, or outward signs: the bread and wine in Communion, and the rite of Baptism properly performed. Specifically, these are both outward signs our spiritual regeneration; of our union with the body of Christ; of our adoption in the family of God; and perhaps of other things. For sacramentalists in general, without these instruments, we do not receive a certain kind of grace—although Lutherans and Anglicans hasten to add that saving grace is not necessarily bound up with them.
The second component, which is characteristic of Orthodoxy and Catholicism but not Protestantism, is that the two sacraments in question are instrumental causes by which God conveys saving grace to us; as such, they are necessary for our salvation. In other words, they are among the means by which we must be saved. They are effective not due merely to the faith of the believer; if performed properly, by properly ordained priests, they confer grace in a way that does not depend on the believer. The jargon here is ex opere operato: “by the work having been worked.” God has promised to do work through the instruments, by their unique character, quite independently of the present spiritual state of the Christian, although they will be fruitful only with the cooperation of the believer.
For Catholics, the sacraments are instrumentally required in achieving particular ends: Baptism washes away the stain of Original Sin, while the Eucharist (Communion, Lord’s Supper) nourishes the soul, and they confer grace by virtue of the rite itself, not our faith. Lutherans, by contrast, say something similar, but decidedly not the same. They believe that, on the one hand, Baptism does wash away Original Sin, and the Communion, while being the real flesh and blood of Christ, is a sign of Christ’s grace, when administered by a properly ordained minister and consumed in faith; but, on the other hand, they confer this grace through faith, not independently of it. So, Lutherans agree that they are instruments or means of grace, but they specifically reject ex opere operato; as instruments, they communicate grace, but they work by virtue of faith, not of themselves.
This, then, puts the basic claims on the table. It is not to support them, nor does it answer any of the questions that might have leapt to mind as you read this introduction.
Of all the above claims, perhaps the easiest to support is the notion that baptism plays some role in our salvation. Exactly what sort of role is best ascertained, I think, by actually examining the texts.
But, before we get into the texts, I want to make one note: the theological detail and complexity we have introduced, and which we are about to unpack, is nowhere to be found in Scripture. Now, of course, this does not mean it is illegitimate; the language of “Trinity” is also nowhere in Scripture, but it is quite legitimate, as the bare doctrine of the Trinity sums up a series of claims clearly to be found in Scripture. But, again, jargon such as “means of grace,” “instruments,” and ex opere operato and the special claims attached to such concepts are not in Scripture. This is one reason that I have felt like a fish out of water whenever I have approached this material in my reading. Unlike most of the rest of what we have discussed thus far, the careful study of neither the Bible nor natural theology can prepare one adequately for the particular details about the sacraments. This frankly bothers me. I find myself with the same attitude that I have—I am nonplussed—when presented with the debate over the filioque. In both cases, large and important aspects of the debate are not suggested by Scripture, although some are; the presence of those aspects of the debate in the theological landscape is entirely owing to the historical exigencies of later theological speculation. I say this not to dismiss this “later theological speculation” but to orient the reader to my frankly skeptical perspective.
Let us begin with Baptism. I will explain later why I have set aside Communion from this introductory discussion of the sacraments, but it will be fully discussed in its place.
2. The Old Testament foundation of Baptism.
I think that, surely, we must be baptized. Now, my job, in the following, is to understand what this ambiguous formula ultimately means. When I say we must be baptized, I am reflecting back only what I see in the text: baptism is treated as the constant and indeed in some sense necessary accompaniment of those who enter into the faith. It is presented as at least a mandate—yet this, by itself, does not mean we must be baptized in order to be saved. Perhaps we must, but this remains to be established.
Scripture makes tolerably clear just where baptism comes from and what its symbolic references are—on anybody’s view, it carries symbolic meaning. The genesis of Baptism is reflected in a remark from Peter’s first epistle. In this passage, he is comforting those who are made to suffer for their faith. To encourage his readers, he says that if we must really “suffer for well doing” (1 Pet 3:17), then we should bear in mind that
1 Peter 3:18–21
…Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: …
We will not attempt a full exegesis of this complex passage, but the relevant portion may be understood as follows. The world was destroyed in the Flood for its sins, and God vindicated and saved Noah and his sons and their wives; in a similar way, Christ suffered and died for our sins, purifying and saving us. Peter’s point in the passage, then, is that, in our suffering (even if it means martyrdom), we ought to remember this. It is in this context that Peter declares, in the KJV, “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us…by the resurrection of Christ,” or in the NIV, “this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also … [and] saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. Note the italicized words. Peter is saying that the Flood was a figure, or symbol—theologians add, a type—of our baptism. The waters of Baptism are analogous to the waters of the Flood, and passing through those waters means we emerge in a new state of being, one cleansed of sin and spotless before the Lord, born anew (a theme we will return to).
Passage through the waters of purification to promise or salvation is a central type in the Bible, found in the great flood (Gen 6–9), the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 14), the priestly waters of purification (Num 19), the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land (Josh 3–4), and Naaman washing in the Jordan to be healed and cleansed of his leprosy (2 Kgs 5). These great narratives share a symbolic continuity. Before, we were beset by sin and uncleanness, and these are left behind. Passing through the waters cleanses us, saves us from destruction, and prepares us for a new life in the Lord, filled with his Spirit.
Equally significant for the development of the rite of Baptism is this famous prophecy from Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36:23–27
And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. … Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
In short, then, Baptism is prophesied as one element of the Lord’s promised salvation, alongside a “new heart” and “new spirit.” Christians see in this a prophecy of the coming of the Gospel to the Gentiles, and to Pentecost, first of all, and thereafter of our individual regeneration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each of us. Baptism, then, is seen as our prophesied inheritance. The connection with the passages through water is not made explicit here, but it lies in the intertextual background.
What we may infer, here, is the Baptism was long in preparation as a sort of standard rite of passage into the family of God. It is possible, moreover, that ritual washing practices in the intertestamental period led to the development of Baptism; in any case, the Lord approved of his own Baptism, saying, “it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” (Mt 3:15) This suggests that it was a work of “righteousness.”
3. The purpose of Baptism.
Based on the Old Testament background, we might anticipate that Baptism would have at least three functions: (1) the ritual cleansing of sins, (2) the inauguration of a new life, in which (3) we are filled by the Holy Spirit. And so it is. This is one of innumerable continuities in which Old Testament types and prophecies are fulfilled in the New Testament. We will discuss these points in turn. They are not controversial and can be illustrated by a few texts.
First, on the function regarding the cleansing of our sins, or Baptismal Washing, Baptism is actually introduced in Mark’s gospel with these words: “John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” (Mk 1:4) Baptism is called “the baptism of repentance,” as if it were specially joined to our changing our mind, repudiating our old life of sin. This is arguably essential, at least when done by sufficiently mature people: Baptism is not merely something done to us, but something we participate in, as it is an outward sign of our conversion. Similarly, when Paul was converted, Ananias tells him, reflecting the usual rites of a new follower of Christ, to “arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” (Ac 22:16) Obviously, if we should embrace Infant Baptism as a doctrine, then repentance and “calling on the name of the Lord” is not necessary. Yet the basic point holds good: Baptism washes away sin, and in the case of Infant Baptism, this is understood to mean Original Sin. (We will come back to this under Question IV.)
The second purpose of Baptism is sometimes called Baptismal Regeneration, i.e., with this event comes a new life in the Lord. This is perhaps most fully developed by this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Romans 6:3–11
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. … Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Here Paul is showing a similar baptismal theology to Peter’s: after Christ’s resurrection, the full meaning became clearer. Passing through the water is analogous not to any old death, but most specially to Christ’s death for our sins. Thus, for both Peter and Paul, the rite of Baptism serves as a memorial of Jesus’ death for us, just as Communion is to do. This once-and-for-all sacrifice on our behalf ensured our salvation and our adoption into his family. In the same way, Baptism means dying to our sins and thereafter being resurrected, or reborn, in a new life in Christ, in the family of God.
We must make a caveat: If Baptism washed away sins, that certainly did not mean the person who was baptized was thereafter incapable of sin. This can be seen, repeatedly, in the history of the typological antecedents of Baptism. After they passed through the great flood, Ham sinned against his father Noah grievously, and was cursed as a result (Gen 9:22–25). The generation that was saved by crossing the Red Sea later rebelled, and was made, in the 40 years’ wandering, to die without seeing the Promised Land (Num 14:22–35). Achan passed over the Jordan with the rest of Joshua’s men, anticipating life in the Promised Land; but he stole the spoils that had been promised to the Lord, and he and his family were executed in punishment (Josh 7:16–26).
These examples show that passing through the waters was not sufficient to guarantee a person’s ongoing righteousness. So it was with the baptism of John. In fact, the first thing Matthew records him saying is a warning to those who would continue to sin after their baptism: “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance” (Mt 3:7–8)—in other words, after your baptism, be like a fruitful tree, allowing God to “harvest good works” from you, showing that you did sincerely repent of your previous sins. If you continue to sin as you did before, if your baptism is of no effect, you will be punished for it.
On this point, I might also quote a more authoritative passage from the gospel of John. Nicodemus, who visited Jesus, did not understand the notion of Regeneration. Jesus declared to him,
John 3:5–6
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
While this does not explicitly reference the rite of Baptism, it is preceded not long before by John and his baptism, in chapter 1, and is almost immediately followed by another scene featuring John’s baptism (3:22–36). Thus “born of water” is often understood by commentators and theologians to mean (water) baptism (though it might well mean other things as well).
It is possible that a third purpose of Baptism (though others have proposed others) is Spirit-Filling. This is supported by a few texts:
Acts 2:38
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.Acts 19:5–6
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them…
The general idea is that the rite of Baptism is (or, depending on the theological view, seals or signifies) the moment of conversion; moreover, upon our conversion, we are filled with the Holy Spirit. But the two verses above do not settle the matter, and there are no other clear verses on this.
4. An argument that the rite of Baptism is a means of grace.
Sections 2 and 3 above have given necessary background, so we can better understand the main points of controversy. We said that full sacramentalism has two basic components: (1) the sacraments are means of grace, and (2) they are necessary for salvation. The first is what Lutherans, Anglicans,19 Catholics, and the Orthodox all have in common. The second is unique to the last two only.
Let us take up (1) in this section. To call Baptism as such a “means of grace” is to say that God works through it; so, baptism would be an instrument actually used by God. We are actually cleansed and born again, through the use of the rite, by God. It is not as if we had sins on our skin, which were literally washed away, or as if coming up out of the water were literally a kind of birth. Still, God uses the moment of baptism—and the rite itself—as the occasion to accomplish what baptism signifies, i.e., the cleansing of sin and the new birth. Or, in the case of infant baptism, when the priest or pastor willingly undertakes the rite on our behalf, the infant is cleansed of Original Sin and is added to the Church.
This is perhaps easier to understand if we contrast it with the contrary, non-sacramental view. This may be called the symbolist view, for reasons that will become clear shortly. We ought to be baptized indeed, symbolists say, and it can be quite true that in our baptism we are cleansed and reborn; but it is not, actually, anything about the baptism that does the cleansing and regeneration. Thus Baptism as a rite is merely symbolic of what goes on, actually, in the spiritual realm. It points to, indicates, or symbolizes the Lord’s forgiveness of our sins, which strictly speaking does not depend on undergoing any particular rite; similarly, it points to our entering upon a new life in the Lord. We can (and many people do) enter such a new life without actually being baptized: one’s baptism is basically a public ceremony declaring our allegiance; the allegiance might have been concluded long before that.
When I first thought systematically about this, the first question that leapt to mind is, “Why can’t symbolists who reject sacramentalism still call Baptism and Communion ‘means of grace’? Do we not receive grace by their means? I think we do.” I still think this is a fair question, but essentially, “means of grace” is a special term of art that is specifically used to mark the difference. In other words, if Baptism only symbolizes (or, as I will say below, is the occasion of) our cleansing and regeneration, then it is not really by means of the rite that we are cleansed and regenerated.
If this still makes no sense, then that is probably because you are merely assuming that the cleansing and regeneration are and only could be spiritual acts. It would be almost nonsensical to say that they are necessarily joined to a specific rite. But that is exactly what sacramentalists say. What is required is that certain people, who really are duly ordained, must do certain things with water (immersion or sprinkling—it does not matter so much right now) to the person being baptized. Only in the doing of those things does a person receive the graces conferred by the rite of Baptism. That is simply how it works.
On what question, then, does this particular controversy turn? This, I find, is very difficult indeed. I am tempted to say, with my tongue firmly in cheek, that the question is, “Can we be baptized without being baptized?” But the symbolists agree, of course, that we must be baptized in order to be baptized. You might think that the controversy rather devolves on the question, “Can we be cleansed and regenerated without being baptized?” This formulation will not work, because in fact, Lutherans and Anglicans agree that we can be cleansed and regenerated without being baptized. In this respect they are like symbolists and unlike the Catholic and Orthodox sacramentalists.
Does the difference between the symbolist and a Lutheran sacramentalist, then, come down to a semantic dispute? I am tempted to say so, but let us see if we can explain exactly how: the proof is in the pudding.
Now, the plain symbolist says that when we step into the baptismal pool, are lowered down, and come back out of the water, all that is taking place are two symbolic representations: (1) we repent of our sins sincerely, and so he forgives us and washes us clean, and (2) we declare allegiance to the Lord, and so he has given us new life in his family. We might also thereby join the local church and thus the invisible Church—although symbolists would have said the latter probably occurred before the ritual.20
But how, precisely, are (1) and (2) supposed to work? It is clear enough, when a person allows himself to be lowered into the water, that he intends to show, by his actions, that he repents of his sins. It is also clear that, when he comes back up out of the water, he intends to show, by his actions, that he intends to enter into a new life. That is something that is symbolically shown by his own actions. But he cannot show, by his own actions, anything that the Lord does. In other words, it is a meaningless charade if someone goes through the motions of a baptism, yet at the end of it, he is not forgiven and adopted into the family of God. The Lord must have taken action if we are in fact—objectively speaking—baptized.
Now, by this analysis, Scripture clearly indicates that the rite of Baptism does accomplish the graces of cleansing and regeneration. But that means that God gives us those graces when we are baptized. And this would seem to put us on the side of sacramentalism. Right?
Not so fast.
5. Symbolism vindicated.
We need to present the symbolist view coherently, if possible. If the symbolist view were simply that the rite of Baptism symbolizes cleansing and regeneration, without the performance in any sense bringing about the cleansing and the regeneration, then that would indeed contradict Scripture. I do maintain that Scripture clearly indicates that Baptism accomplishes cleansing and regeneration. That is what the text says.
But how? The sacramentalist says the rites themselves are the very means or instruments by which God gives us grace. What corresponding view does the symbolist offer? Simply this: The rites are symbolic or analogical pictures, publicly performing and depicting deeper spiritual realities at which they point. When we are baptized, then, our being submerged is an intentional sign of our death to sin; our rising out of the water again is an intentional sign of our rebirth. Still, I take a high view of Baptism, insofar as this is not merely a performance on our part; rather, the Holy Spirit is present and does certain things. Because Jesus was baptized and enjoined us to be baptized, and because he made it clear what it means, we can be confident that the Holy Spirit really does forgive our sins and really does regenerate us and adopt us into his family. But there is a question that the following discussion will have to clarify: Is it with the rite of Baptism alone that these things take place? And if not, then what makes the rite special? That will lead to a clearer and better version of symbolism.
Let us unpack this view. In the same way that we maintain that true fellowship with Christ happens during the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 10:16), or (arguably) when two or three people are gathered together, the Holy Spirit is present (Mt 18:20)—so also, we certainly do maintain that the Lord is on hand when someone is properly baptized. It is said that, after our baptism, “ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (Ac 2:38) He is, therefore, present at that point.
But he is on hand throughout the rite. If, in being baptized, I descend into the water and emerge again, the Holy Spirit is present, and he has done something important, even as the act of baptism has occurred: he has indeed conferred the graces of cleansing and regeneration. This is what the texts we read said. But here I should explain an important point. I maintain that these graces do not, strictly speaking, require baptism. They could have been accomplished through other means.
For example, Scripture portrays many people as being forgiven by God, without at that time being baptized. The stock example for this and several other purposes is the thief on the cross. After the thief says, “remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,” Jesus responds to him, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Lk 23:42–3) If indeed the thief was with Jesus in the afterlife, that implies his sins were forgiven. In particular, he was cleansed of the sin for which he was hanging on the cross. There are other instances when Jesus forgives sins without baptism: the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet (“Thy faith hath saved thee”; Lk 7:47–50) and the paralytic who was lowered through the roof (“Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee”; Mt 9:2–7).
Of special interest is the well-known Psalm in which David begs forgiveness for his sins. Here, the language of cleansing or washing of sin is used, but there is no obvious reference to anything explicitly like baptism:
Psalms 51:1–2, 7, 10
Have mercy upon me, O God,
according to thy lovingkindness:
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin. …
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. …
Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me.
What this shows is that there is a tradition of metaphorical “washing” and “cleansing” of sins and “renewing” of spirit in Scripture. Now, this does not, by itself, establish that the meaning of the rite of Baptism is symbolic. Some might even go so far as to say that the psalm serves as a type or foreshadowing of the rite, i.e., that it is actually the rite of Baptism that gives the psalm its meaning. I do not think so, however: this is a psalm about David’s present forgiveness, long before baptism was instituted; and of course the psalm uses symbolism for that forgiveness.
Now, in the present context, the response to me seems obvious:
If you are simply saying that God forgives our sins throughout our walk of faith, then the answer is of course he can and does. But there is something special about the forgiveness or cleansing of Baptism.
I am skeptical of this response, however, and would ask my critic to distinguish between the specialness of Baptism, on the one hand, and the specialness of the baptismal graces. Can we not say there is something unique about Baptism, but not about the specific graces that it confers? The answer is an emphatic yes. I will develop this point in some detail below, but first, let us explore further scriptural insights that will clarify the point.
My point so far in this section has been to show that the grace of cleansing does not, strictly speaking, require the rite of Baptism. Similarly, there are many stories of people emerging into a new life in the Lord, and receiving the Holy Spirit, that do not, strictly speaking, involve the rite. This shows that the other graces of baptism, too, can and have been conferred by other means.
A good example is the order in which events took place in Cornelius’ household:
Acts 10:44–48
While Peter yet spake these words [a summary of the gospel], the Holy Ghost fell on all them [the household of the Gentile centurion Cornelius] which heard the word. … For they [Peter and other visiting Jews] heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.
The centurion’s family received the Holy Spirit when the gospel was preached—and only later were they baptized.
Similarly, faith, or new life in the Lord, is declared in several places before or without baptism. Zacchaeus repents of his greed, and Jesus declares, “This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.” (Lk 19:8–9) Similarly, many who were introduced to Jesus by the Samaritan woman at the well came to believe, both simply due to the woman’s testimony, and then more later due to Jesus’ own testimony (Jn 4:39–42). Later, the Ethiopian eunuch believed before being baptized (Ac 8:36–39); and the same was true of Paul himself (Ac 9:17–18). I could go on: clearly, some received a regenerating faith and the Holy Spirit before being baptized.
The reason I dwell on this is to point out that, if Baptism’s purpose is to confer the graces of cleansing and regeneration, it does not do so uniquely. But please do not let me confuse you. Baptism does indeed in some sense confer these graces: we have already shown that in section 3 above.
The conjunction of these clear, biblical claims, then, helps to clarify the distinctive purpose of the rite. Baptism remains the divinely-ordained, visible means of publicly declaring the spiritual realities of cleansing and rebirth; yet it need not be, strictly speaking, the exclusive means. That, then, points to a unique purpose: it is a visible sign and confirmation of God’s invisible work, done both at the time, and possibly before, and certainly thereafter. As a visible sign, it is indeed unique as an established rite of incorporation into the Church.
I can anticipate an objection, which might go like this:
If you were right—that it is possible for us to be regenerated and adopted independently of the indispensable rite of Holy Baptism—then it would not actually be true that you are being regenerated and adopted when you are baptized. It is a kind of empty sham. This illustrates how the symbolic view of Baptism makes it redundant, empty, even unnecessary. It is a “low” view of Baptism indeed.
This is an interesting and useful objection, but ultimately, it fails. The first individual whose baptism we witness, in Scripture, is that of Jesus himself. John, understandably, objects when Jesus comes to be baptized: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” (Mt 3:14) In other words, what is the point of your being baptized? You, Jesus, have not sinned and need no cleansing. John could have gone on and said: You are already one with the Father and the head of the Church. This was all true. Would you say that Jesus’ baptism was a “sham”? Of course it was not. Why, then, was it done? He says it briefly, but clearly: “it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” (v15) All of the faithful children of God ought to do all righteous things, he says, i.e., all things that are expected and proper. In so saying, Jesus is declaring that Baptism itself is one of those righteous things. It is not a “sham” but a respectful and holy thing to repent of your sins and declare your allegiance to God, and to show to the world that he has, indeed, cleansed you and accepted you into his family.
Baptism is an act God requires of us, and it is social. The baptizing parties perform certain faith-filled and meaningful actions; at the same time, the Lord responds to the occasion by granting grace to the one baptized. Our doctrines about Baptism must consider both aspects, human and divine.
With that in mind, let me put the key aspect of this type of high symbolism slightly differently. In the rite of Baptism, I, along with the pastor who baptizes me and the witnesses, have made a certain public statement—we have made it official, as it were. But it is not just, or even mainly, our work. The work that God does—in forgiving my sins, granting me regeneration, and adopting me into his family—is all spiritual work. It is not somehow encoded or made more real by a certain ceremony. The ceremony is not the efficient cause of grace, but its divinely-appointed occasion. The ceremony is pointing to spiritual facts and serves as the occasion for them. If they were already facts, that is fine: the ceremony seals them. God’s forgiveness has nothing necessarily to do with my descending into the water; when I am dipped, the Lord cleans me of my sins, as perhaps he had done earlier, when I heard the word of God. Similarly, my rebirth and adoption have nothing to do, literally speaking, with my coming out of the water.
What these ritual actions do is publicly exhibit, and serve as spiritual occasions for or as seals of, the reality of these graces. While the rite is not strictly necessary for the baptismal graces—or, for that matter, for salvation—it is commanded and exemplified repeatedly in the New Testament. As such, it is deeply important and not optional.
6. An excursus on sacramentalism and symbolism as broader outlooks.
Arguments of the sort I have been making are nothing new, and I do not pretend otherwise. The debate is very ancient. Thus, it might help to take a step back and to inquire a little into the nature of the debate itself. I find that there are two different views about, broadly speaking, religious matters or the things of God. Let us explore this; I find it illuminating, and perhaps you will too.
Sacramentalism imbues the things themselves—observable objects and actions—with the profoundest significance. It is not hard to see why they do so, however. When the Lord declares to Moses, “the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Ex 3:5), they are struck by the consecration of ground itself. When some oxen were shaking the ark, Uzzah took hold of it, and he was immediately struck down (2 Sam 6:6–7); again, sacramentalists are inclined to conclude that the ark itself was imbued with special features. A third example—of a crowded field, because we could go on—are the holy relics much beloved by Catholics and Orthodox believers. They are said to have various kinds of mysterious powers because they are believed to have played some part in the Bible story. In short, then, sacramentalism focuses on the things themselves that are “touched by God” in one way or another, judging them to carry a kind of divine dignity or in some cases literal power. Now, the sacramentalist may quibble that he treats sacred objects as instruments of grace, because God has bound himself to act through them. But the sacramentalists’ focus is, nevertheless, on the objects themselves.
The symbolist outlook, by contrast, resists this move, preferring always to speak of the dignity of God rather than of objects. To imbue the things themselves with a divine power in any way apart from God appears, to the symbolist mindset, to be something like idolatry and magical thinking. This view is aligned with symbolism because, when an object seems to have some virtue in itself, that is because it only because God has chosen to work through or with the object; the object itself is utterly powerless, and the power is all God’s. Thus the object, or action, points to the underlying spiritual reality. So, the “holy ground” around the burning bush was not antecedently holy, and did not continue to be holy ever after. It was holy because the very presence of God requires respect. Hence, the ground must be treated as if it were holy, because God is holy. But the only thing that is truly holy here is God himself. When Uzzah was struck down for touching the ark, this was not because the ark itself was imbued with some special power; as the text says, “the anger of the Lord was kindled against” him and “God smote him there for his error” (2 Sam 6:7). Indeed, the ark was a sacred object, but that is because God demanded that Uzzah treat it as utterly holy—indeed, as untouchable. As to the relics of saints, symbolists are naturally skeptical that there is any power in any way attached to them; but, if there happens to be, it is only because God uses the objects for his own purposes, for some reason. The object itself is only a symbol of God’s sovereign power and authority.
Let us see if we can pin down the difference further here. The sacramentalist outlook elevates to a sort of divine status ordinary created objects, if they, in some particular way, come into contact with God. A good illustration of this is found in the story from Jesus’ ministry, in which crowds of the sick “besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.” (Mt 14:36) Thus, the garment itself is spoken of as if it had taken on the power of God. The sacramentalist thus would call the garment itself holy. The symbolist outlook is happy to admit the facts in evidence but concludes, instead, that God sought to demonstrate his power by allowing those who touched the garment to be healed. Jesus knew that “virtue” or power “had gone out of him”: “Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” (Mk 5:30) There was nothing holy about the garment itself.
The question at issue, in all such cases, is whether it is most proper to say that (1) the objects themselves ever had a virtue unto themselves, given by God, or instead that (2) the objects (or actions) are only tools, or occasions, of actions that God takes. The sacramentalist says (1); the symbolist says (2).
These two outlooks do not, as far as I can tell, allow us adjudicate the sacramentalist-symbolist dispute regarding Baptism. They only allow us to understand the outlook and, perhaps, the psychology involved. The symbolist is profoundly uncomfortable with objects—mere things—being treated in the way that God is treated. The sacramentalist, in short, is not; sacred objects as such are not disturbing, because God can touch things and make them so. The symbolist insists that the things themselves will never be sacred: only God, and his uses for them, could be. Although it might be offensive to sacramentalists to say so, the symbolists find it fetishistic—evidence of a kind of magical thinking21—to say that objects themselves have powers, even if given them by God. In the face of this rude criticism, sacramentalists (especially of the Lutheran and Anglican types) emphasize that, ultimately, God acts through sacred objects and rites. But frankly, I am not sure whether this means that, when pressed, they reduce their own claims to the very ones insisted on by symbolists. This seems to be a conundrum for Lutheranism and sacramental Anglicans.22
An interesting illustration of the sacramental outlook is found through an application of the central idea of Union with Christ by Marcus Peter Johnson. Johnson identifies a profoundly unifying theme of the Bible: In our salvation, we are said to be in union with Christ, or one with him. This plays out in many of what only appear to be metaphors in Scripture. For example, we may observe that the Church is the Bride of Christ, and that we are said to eat the flesh and blood of Christ in Communion; these are all ways of being in Christ. This pattern tends to make a significant impression on those of the sacramentalist outlook. When we eat the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, then we in some literal (metaphysical, not merely symbolic or spiritual) way become one with him. When we arise out of the water of Baptism, we rise into oneness with him. The sacraments find deeper, mystical significance because they are instruments by which we become more fully (and literally) one with the Church, which is the body of Christ. The symbolist outlook, by contrast, can appreciate the pattern of metaphor, but refuses to admit that we have a particularly clear idea of what oneness with Christ really means—beyond what we experience in our prayerful unity with him and being guided by his Spirit. It does not mean that we take Communion together and have the body of Christ in our bellies at the same time.23 So, there is a significant exegetical disagreement in play here. The sacramentalist finds the significance of such phrases as “in Christ” being shown, for example, in Eucharist, which literally unifies us with the body of Christ. The symbolist, by contrast, insists that things cannot be so simple, that there are deeper spiritual realities of which we have only an earnest in this life, and with which we will not be fully acquainted until the next life.
There is a distinctively Catholic and Orthodox sort of argument on this point. The argument begins from the observation that God works in the world. God became flesh, born of a woman; he ate and drank with Abraham; Moses saw his back; he spoke through a donkey; he used spit and mud to heal; his body was crucified, died, and resurrected; he walked in the Garden in the cool of the day; he hovered over the waters in creation (and the post-Flood re-creation).24 In short, then, it is possible for God, and his holiness, to be embodied in matter, manifested in physical form. Moreover, these examples show that it is mistaken to insist on a sharp ontological distinction between spirit and body. For these reasons, one can sometimes find Catholics accusing non-sacramental Protestantism of a dualism that, as Catholics say, verges on Gnosticism.25
The response to this should prove illuminating. It is true—and highly interesting—that God is sometimes embodied and works in the world that he created. This must not be denied. Yet he appeared in many forms; he spoke not just in the mouth of a donkey, but in dreams, out of the burning bush, and in the incarnate Word. He did heal by spitting on mud and putting it on a person’s eyes; but he also healed with a touch, or with a word.26 The point then is that God, being master of his own creation, is of course capable of working in his own creative medium however he wishes. It does not follow from this that the items of creation are imbued with their own power as a result. Balaam’s ass did not have the power of speech ever after: it was a miracle that it could speak at the time that it did speak.
In City of God VII, Augustine concludes a long and elaborate argument against pagan polytheism by saying that it is ridiculous that each minute function of the ordinary creation has been assigned a different deity, so that there is a god who opens a newborn’s mouth for its first cry, a goddess of drinking, and a god who helps children walk. This is the locus classicus of what we might call the Christian argument against magical, pre-scientific thinking and the animism that is closely associated with polytheism in practice. Now, I would not accuse Catholics of resurrecting these old gods, simply because they say holy things have power in themselves. I would say, however, that they are different points on a spectrum, defined as the tendency to imbue ordinary pieces of the creation with their own spiritual power or authority. No, the elements of Baptism and the Communion host (to change the examples), are not viewed as gods, but they are viewed as something spiritually powerful and holy in themselves.27 In this admittedly limited way, Catholicism and Orthodoxy continue the pagan notion of the “enchantment of the world.” For their part, they find this to be a good thing, not a problem—”a feature, not a bug.”
The Christian view, which lies at the root of the proper scientific view, is that God gave objects their features and set them in motion according to certain laws, constants, and original positions, all of which is “disenchanted” and unspiritual. No godlings need be consulted. He governs the whole: the whole is the “very good” work of the Holy God. So, if he gives a donkey or a bit of mud or the rite of Baptism some unusual power, what are we to conclude? That the donkey, mud, and water are thereafter holy in themselves? No, that his power is holy, and if the things are holy, they are so not in themselves, but because he works through them. The things in themselves are also the work of his hands, pieces of the creation.
I draw my conclusion: when God acts through what are described as sacraments, we may well call them holy, but that is only because he is indeed acting on their occasion. They point to or, if you like, symbolize his very real actions; they are visible signs and seals of those actions, whether done originally at the moment of baptism or at some time beforehand. The acts of saying the words of baptism, and of dipping and ascending out of the water, have no inherent efficacy in themselves. It is not the rite of Baptism that somehow in itself confers grace, but God alone.
From a philosophical point of view, I must admit that one tricky problem lurking here, and it is a problem for both sides. Namely, if we must use such locutions as “the things in themselves,” then are we even capable of characterizing the dispute in any non-circular way? In other words, if I maintain that my baptism “in itself” accomplishes nothing, while a sacramentalist says it is a means of grace that, if done properly, it efficiacious “in itself,” both sides should answer a question: What work does the quoted phrase do? What does it really mean? Is there a way to explain it in other, clearer words such that the sacramentalist will accept an affirmative statement28 and the symbolist will accept the corresponding negative?
Without getting too much deeper into metaphysics, I can say this. When the sacramentalist uses such language as “the rite of Baptism in itself,” this distinguishes the rite from the things closely associated with it: the passing mental states of the one baptized and of the baptizer; its social or ceremonial significance, in which the one baptized is added to the visible (local) Church; and certainly not any symbolic meaning. “In itself” here would mean whatever is seen in the performance of the rite itself, including the utterance of some words, lowering into the water, and raising up out of the water (or perhaps being sprinkled), and also the fact of the minister’s ordination. Call this “the definitive components of Baptism itself.” So, according to the Catholic view, that Baptism works ex opere operato, it is the definitive components of Baptism itself—the list above, taken individually and jointly—that cause the baptismal graces (cleansing, regeneration) to be granted to the one baptized. The symbolic view, generally speaking, is that the definitive components of Baptism itself cause nothing at all, but that God alone causes, or grants, the baptismal graces. The listed components are, instead, only signs of the spiritual work that God does. The Catholic might well insist that God acts by means of the rite, but he is also committed to the position that indeed God imbues the rite itself with power. This is the thing that the symbolist specifically denies.
Neither do we say that, when Jesus used mud to help the blind man see, he temporarily made a sort of one-off, spell-like recipe for a mud poultice, and it was the power of the poultice that did the job. No. Jesus performed a miracle; as to why he used mud, well, we can only speculate. He did not have to use mud, so it is silly to suppose he gave some special, temporary power to the mud. By contrast, when the two blind men said, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on us”, then the procedure is described this way: “Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened” (Mt 9:28–30). The procedure was completely different. Why? Probably, Jesus used different procedures for different people and for different purposes. This then supports the symbolist view in a subtle and interesting way, by analogy: If the Lord healed people while using different accompanying signs, or “occasions,” then that gives us more reason to find it plausible that the rite of Baptism itself is only an occasion (also serving as a symbol and seal) by which he confers the baptismal graces.
I will leave the debate there, not claiming that this settles the matter definitively. The point is that the phrase “in itself” actually does seem to be doing important work; the debate is not merely semantic.
7. Sacramentalism versus symbolism in Communion.
Why have I left Communion out of the discussion? After all, the question I am answering in this part of the essay (“Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation?”) does mention it. Mostly, it is because there are certain features of Communion that make it deceptively easy to argue against sacramentalism; this would tempt me (and my allies) to make an argument that, I am sure, will be called a fallacy. This would make the more general case for symbolism, and against sacramentalism, appear to rest on that fallacy. So, it was better to begin with the harder instance—to avoid that accusation.
But now it is time to make the argument in question. I say that it is easier to show that the ordinance29 of Communion is not a means of grace, but instead a symbol. But what makes this relatively easy has less to do with the issues discussed under the present question. As we will see in the response to question III, (1) It is ultimately incoherent to say that the bread and wine are really or literally the body and blood of Christ. (2) A wide variety of Bible verses makes it clear that the language of the “body” and “blood” of Christ is best understood symbolically. I will save my arguments for (1) and (2) until later. Still, let us explain how these points help establish that the Communion is not a means of grace.
Now, a sacramentalist view of Communion, on the formulation common to Catholicism and Lutheranism alike (but meaning something different in each case) is that the bread and wine are, as in the rite of Baptism, a means of grace. Thus, we receive graces by ingesting them. There, at the first Communion, Jesus said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” On the view of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglo-Catholic Anglicanism, ingesting his body and blood is manifestly a grace, insofar as we participate in the original sacrifice of the Lord. In other words, this is—with every Eucharist observed—a miraculous participation in a Passover feast at which the Lamb of God is served. It also remembers the Passover that the Apostles celebrated at the Last Supper. The analysis is different on the Lutheran view and for other Anglicans. These deny that the Communion is a participation in a sacrifice; rather, we receive the benefits of eternal life given us through Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice.
It is part and parcel of eucharistic sacramentalism of both types that, when we eat the bread and wine, this is no mere symbol of body and blood, but really the body and blood. Since the host really is the body and blood, it is a means of grace specifically for that reason. But if, as we will argue under question III, it is ultimately incoherent (a “holy mystery,” at best) to say that the bread and wine are the body and blood, then the sacramentalist view itself is so opaque as to resist coherent explication. Moreover, if Scripture does make clear, as I think it does, that the “body” and “blood” of Christ are best understood symbolically, this directly undercuts support for the claim that we receive grace owing to their actually being the body and blood. Yes, we receive grace—but directly from God, not by these instruments.
I will raise another type of problem briefly here. We were able to explain the purpose of Baptism by reference not just to many New Testament texts that mention it, but also by reference to the Old Testament typological background of Baptism. But—when interpreted correctly30—there are only two texts in the entire Bible that make quite clear what the purpose of Communion is. As the gospel of Luke has it, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” (Lk 22:19) And as Paul later reiterates in much the same words,
1 Corinthians 11:24–25
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup… saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
And that is all.31 The Lord is remarkably clear, brief, and explicit on the purpose of the ordinance. Why are we to celebrate this meal? He could have said, “I will give you grace” or “You will receive my life,” but he did not. His answer is, “this do in remembrance of me.” We ought to take him at his word.
The doctrinal developments concerning the purpose of Communion—as means of grace, in which we participate in a sacrifice of the Son of God or in the life of Christ—are not, in fact, supported by Scripture. They took on a life of their own, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. They make no apologies for this doctrinal development, and I am not asking them to; but their traditions are, indeed, rooted in what they call Sacred Tradition, not Scripture. Lutherans and Anglicans, committed as they are to sola scriptura, are on shakier ground in adding to the Lord’s words regarding the purpose of Communion. Support for their doctrine about the eucharistic means of grace indeed must be drawn from Scripture, which gives them no (or doubtful) help.
Indeed, against all these sacramentalists, we may mount a cogent argument from silence: there is simply nothing in Scripture that supports their doctrinal details. If the Lord wished us to view Communion as a participation in the sacrifice of Christ, or as a way of (somehow) literally imbibing his life, then he would have surely left us something on this point in his inspired word. He did not. Wwe see no clearly articulated doctrines of eucharistic sacramentalism until centuries after Christ.32 Such silence “speaks volumes,” as they say.
As I will argue later, symbolists are much more firmly grounded in Scripture when they say that the bread and wine symbolically represent the function of Christ—his body and blood, shed on the cross for our sins—so that, when we take Communion, they indeed remind us of that sacrifice. A rite may be and in this case was instituted as a way to remind us, through its symbolic associations, of what we owe to our Lord and God. This is not to deny that God gives us grace in the context of Communion. On my view—which is the common one in much of Protestantism—we may say quite correctly that the Holy Spirit is present when we celebrate Communion, and he blesses and gives grace to us because we obey his ordinance. But, as with Baptism, such grace is not conveyed uniquely by (as efficient cause) the rite itself. Rather, by the occasion of our obedience, God surely extends us grace as he does for any similar act of obedience.
8. Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation?
This long discussion has focused primarily on the questions such as whether Baptism may be counted as a “means of grace.” You would be perfectly right to wonder what this has to do with the question we are supposedly answering in this part of the essay: Do Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation? So, what bearing does the sacramentalist-symbolist debate have on this question?
In short, if Baptism and Communion are means of grace in the sense that they actually convey justifying or sanctifying grace, then they do contribute to salvation, in the ordinary theological sense of that phrase. In other words, we must be baptized and partake in the body of Christ (which is what the Eucharist is) if we are to be saved. This, at least, is the position taken by Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But why? Again, what bearing does this “means of grace” have on salvation?
The arguments, as I understand them, are slightly different. In the case of Baptism, there are some direct verses, which we might well revisit here:
Mark 16:16
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.John 3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.1 Peter 3:21
The like figure [i.e., symbol, similar to the Flood] whereunto even baptism doth also now save us…Titus 3:5
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.
I do not propose to rehearse the debate again, but simply to make a few remarks. I have already conceded that the function of Baptism is cleansing and regeneration, and insofar as we are indeed regenerated in our baptism, our baptism does save us, in some sense. This seems quite clear, as I said. The question, however, is whether it is required, as a necessary condition for salvation. Now, even Catholicism and Orthodoxy deny that, strictly speaking, they are required in every case. Their position is that they are ordinarily required; they are required in most cases.
There is much Scriptures that says we ought to be baptized, or which shows that baptism is the first step in a life in Christ. By contrast, there are very little Scripture indeed that says we must be baptized. The only reasonably clear-appearing ones are above. When Jesus in John 3 tells Nicodemus, “Except a man be born of water…he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” he is explaining what meant by “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3). But what this means must be reconciled with the rest of Scripture, which repeatedly claims (as we showed in the Part I, Question IV) that we are saved by faith alone, and not by meritorious works.
Besides, I do not think it is the merit of Baptism that would be thought to save us, in any case, but rather the fact that God has indeed regenerated us. The primary symbol and occasion of regeneration is, without doubt, in the rite of Baptism. The question, then, is whether the rite itself is required for salvation even “in the ordinary case,” and that comes down to the question whether Baptism is a required and efficient cause of the saving graces. This, as you should recall, is a question already amply explored and answered in the negative. Rather, the rite of Baptism can be generally described as the occasion of our regeneration, etc., but as we said, we may experience spiritual rebirth even before our baptism. In such a case, Baptism serves as a public seal of what has already taken place. In any event, we must certainly—as Jesus himself clearly said—be reborn, in a spiritual way that is demonstrated by our water baptism. Jesus’ formula, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” is best understood as a symbol of our regeneration.
The argument for the necessity of Communion is more difficult and more directly dependent on later-added theological doctrines. Scripture nowhere suggests that we must receive Communion sometimes, or regularly, or even at all, as a condition of salvation. The closest that Catholics sometimes cite is: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” (Jn 6:53) As I have argued elsewhere (see Question III below), this verse does not refer to Communion. Rather, Jesus is “doubling down” on the “bread of life” figure, and he does so not in order to emphasize the importance of Communion but against those who resist the suggestion that he is the Son of God, and who lack faith in him. The context makes it abundantly clear that “eating the flesh of the Son of man” is simply a symbol of faith in him.33
These rites are merely ordinances—external rites that symbolize God’s work and ought to elicit our obedience. They do not confer grace of themselves, and so they do not contribute to salvation except indirectly, as acts of obedience by which faith is expressed and strengthened. They are important, yes, and commanded—but that does not make them salvific per se.
So, we might say the whole sacramentalist-symbolist debate is a proxy debate for whether Baptism and Communion contribute to our salvation, but even the latter question is indirect. The really hot-button issue is whether Baptism and Communion are (normally) required for salvation. Apart from a few texts—which admittedly require some work to explain, but we can be confident of our conclusions there—the only reasons to think these rites are salvific are rooted in Catholic and Orthodox sacramentalist theology. If we reject that doctrine as inadequately supported, as we do, then their views on Baptism and Communion pose no threat to sola fide.
There is another perspective on the question, which is worth at least a couple paragraphs. Some would answer “Yes” to “Is Baptism required for salvation?”, yet their answer is not rooted in sacramentalism. This is the view of the Churches of Christ, their cousins the Christian Churches/Disciples of Christ, and some Pentecostal groups. They are symbolists, but they nevertheless regard Baptism (but not Communion34) as normally required for salvation. These groups tend to be suspicious of any interpretation of Scripture that would have us adjust what they regard as “the plain meaning of the text” even for reasons of doctrinal consistency. They are very impressed by the verses (quoted above) stating we must be “born of water” and that “baptism doth also now save us.”
I don’t mean to be peremptory, but I will not take long with this position. I do not find it to be persuasive. These denominations face the impressive battery of arguments for sola fide, and it is not clear how they can do so, or even that they would want to; Churches of Christ, I gather, do not admit that they are opposed to sola fide. The older Protestant confessions are rooted in a rich tradition of enabling them to explain why Baptism is not strictly required for salvation, however important the rite remains; but Churches of Christ face a very serious difficulty in that they do not avail themselves of the Catholic and Orthodox (sacramentalist) framework for the requirement. They stand by it simply because the Bible says so. That is, admittedly, a fine reason to take a position—what Bible-believing Christian can say otherwise?—but it does not help us in overcoming the problem that this interpretation of Scripture makes it difficult to support sola fide. It is ultimately more coherent to say that the necessary thing is to be born again, not necessarily to undertake the rite that is the occasion and seal of our being born again.
I want to conclude on a historical note. This long discussion in some ways recapitulates the history of the debate about the sacraments. My understanding is that the reformers began by asking, “How are we justified?” or (this is somewhat similar) “How is grace received?” This raised the question how the sacraments—so called by the Western Church of the day—actually contribute to grace. Luther, it seems, concluded that the Catholic theology of sacramentalism was not rooted in Scripture, and that Scripture made it abundantly clear that we are saved by faith alone. This, then, made it clear that we are not saved by the rite of Baptism.
Then a debate internal to Protestantism began. Luther and his followers wished to preserve the language of “sacraments” and “means of grace” and “instruments” that they found in theology. They saw, however, that Catholic and Orthodox theology held that the rite itself, that is, working ex opere operato, actually effected or brought about saving grace. Thus, in both Baptism and Communion, they separated the infusion of grace from the instruments, saying that God worked through the sacraments, but only in connection with faith.
Calvin, Zwingli, and others went rather farther. They (or some their followers) rejected the Catholic-originated theological apparatus of “sacraments,” “means of grace,” and “instruments,” saying rather that Baptism and Communion were commanded ordinances that were symbols of the spiritual graces they were said to confer. The graces themselves are spiritual, so water, bread, and wine cannot convey them: only God does so.
The position I find myself in, after studying the text, is that indeed Baptism is said to save us, but only in the sense that it is a symbol of our regeneration. This places me more in Zwingli’s camp. Yet I also agree that God acts upon us—Scripture says so, after all—when we undertake these rites. It is a holy and social relationship between God and man, a communion indeed. That relationship, and his work, is not merely symbolic. That work, even if it is only to seal what was already done, is something done upon the occasion of the rites.
I have not studied the details of the history of the sacraments well enough to be able to say whose position I take, but I suppose it is fairly close to Calvin’s, but also not very far from Luther’s or Zwingli’s either.
The time we have spent on these theological minutiae was well spent, because it allows me (to speak only for myself) to draw a conclusion with some confidence: Baptism and Communion, as important and necessary as they are, and as much as we all ought to partake of them, are not strictly speaking required for salvation.
III. In Communion, are the bread and wine really (or literally) the body and blood of Christ?
1. Literality in the debate over the Eucharist.
The question, I suppose, is this: Is the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, also called Communion or the Eucharist, really or literally the body and blood of Christ?35 If it is not literally his body and blood, then what is it? I will try to cut through the complexity with a few of what I hope will prove to be well-chosen arguments. But it will still be fairly long. We will begin with some much-needed philosophical clarifications. After that, we will go into the arguments for eucharistic realism, followed by arguments for eucharistic symbolism, which is the view I take.
Let’s begin by establishing what all Christians can agree upon, namely, that in the Last Supper, Jesus said, referring to the bread and wine, “this is my body” and “this is my blood.” He said that not just in the three synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—but also in 1 Corinthians. Many, though not all (not me), would say that the hard sayings of John 6 are also referring to this, to the Eucharist.36 So this is one of the very best-attested statements of Jesus, for sure.
So nobody denies that he said that the bread and wine are his body and blood in some sense. The question at issue is what he meant when he said that. That, I am firmly convinced, is what the controversy revolves around.
Now, you might object that the more central question is whether he meant the statement literally. I agree that we must get to the bottom of that question; but we cannot really answer it without answering the broader question of what Jesus meant.
But let us now actually address the claim that Jesus meant “this is my body” literally. Here I must put on my philosopher’s hat and insist that we get quite clear about what we mean by the word literally. Typically, when we say a sentence is literally true, we mean just that if you take the sentence out of its context—if you try to understand it as it would be understood on its own, in its primary sense—then you are understanding it literally. The problem is that we can still understand different things by “literal.” You might think I am wasting time with obscure philosophical complexity, but I think not. This is not just important—it is central to the entire controversy, and ignorance of the philosophical points here explains a lot of the disagreement.
The ambiguity of the word “literal” can be understood with an example. Suppose a cousin is upset about the family’s choice of the Christmas dinner, and he’s pouting that he can’t have a deep-fried turkey, which he’s never been able to try. So your aunt says, “Stop it. You’re being a gigantic baby.”
Now let’s think about your aunt’s statement. Clearly, this is not literal. All she really means is that your cousin is unduly upset. But if someone were to claim, crazily, that your cousin is literally a gigantic baby, there are a couple of different things that could mean. One is that your cousin is doing what literal babies do—pouting, crying, wailing until they get their way. Here the thing that is literal is your cousin’s behavior. So the sentence literally describes the cousin’s behavior, but not the fact that he’s a baby. Another is even more literal, and simply absurd: that your cousin is one year old, way larger than any known baby, and sitting on the floor and crying.
Stepping back a little, I acknowledge that this might try your patience. We are getting into the weeds about the semantics of literality—but it is worth the effort. We need to think about these things.
Now, I have made this detour into the example to make something very clear. Namely, when we say that something is literally true, we can actually mean different things. It is not just one thing. Sentences can be more literally or less literal. There are gradations of literality.
2. Philosophical issues with eucharistic realism.
So let’s get back to Jesus’ statements, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” I think it is very clear that no Christian understands this in the most literal way. In the most literal way, if Jesus were to say, “This is my body and blood,” then he would mean, “This food in front of you, though it might look like bread and wine, is, despite all appearances, actual human flesh, with muscle fibers and fatty tissue, and this here is a warm tankard of my blood, which came out of my body (you didn’t see it being drawn), and it is composed of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma.”
Yes, I’m going into disgusting detail, but for a point. Even imagining this is disgusting and an insult to the dignity of our Lord. Moreover, we are not to drink the blood of a human being, and of course cannibalism is forbidden. As if that weren’t obvious, the Jerusalem Council affirmed this clearly: “Wherefore my sentence [or judgment] is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from”—and there follows a list of items, then—”and from blood” (Ac 15:20). (We will return to this point later.)
So—if you actually need an argument against the most literal interpretation of Jesus’ words, there you go.
But, of course, no serious theologian thinks this, and it would be unfair to say they do. In their councils, synods, and other statements, they don’t even usually use the term “literal,” but sometimes they explain their statements using that word. The Catholics say the body refers to “the substance of the body.” Orthodox say the bread becomes “the True Body.” Lutherans say the body of Christ is “truly and substantially present” with the bread. High Church Anglicans say similar things, while others dissent.
Still, I have dwelt on the word “literal” because it activates concepts that ordinary modern people are used to using, and the issues are much the same as if we had put them in terms of what is real. If I point at a piece of bread or a holy wafer and I say, “This is literally the body of Christ,” then the same questions arise as if I had said, “This is really the body of Christ.” I mean, when Catholics, for example, speak of the real presence of the body of Christ in the host, they are certainly not saying that the holy wafers become an ordinary piece of meat. “Real presence,” clearly, is a term of art.
According to Catholic theology, when Jesus said, “This is my body,” he meant, “This bread has the substance of my body” or “My body is really present in this bread.” But they would strongly deny that they mean that the bread is a piece of meat that would smell like steak if you put it in the oven long enough. That would be insulting and absurd.
Now we really get down to business. The natural question to ask the Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, and many Anglicans is: What is the sense in which the body of Christ is really present in the communion wafers or bread? It’s not like they cannot answer that question. Of course they can. The answers go back over a thousand years.
The Catholics eventually deployed Aristotelian philosophical theories to explain it. I will not attempt to lay out all their theorizing, but let’s go over the basics. Catholics say the wafers are transubstantiated into the body. And what this means is that the substance of the wafer changes, but the accidents remain the same. The accidents include such apparently insubstantial things—don’t ask me why they are insubstantial—as shape, texture, smell, weight, taste, being made of plant cells versus human cells, and so on. So the substance is distinct even from such things as shape and weight.
After transubstantiation, the wafers are the substance of the body of Christ, Catholics say, but without any of the accidents I just listed. With the accidents, by the way, such a transformation would be disgusting—and illegal, under all known systems of law. It is legal to eat the substance but not the accidents.
The Orthodox are, to my mind, less philosophically ambitious—less prone to what what is, arguably, rationalization—and so more reasonable, again in my opinion. People differ. They agree that the bread and wine are the true body and blood of Christ—I think that too, figuratively—but how, or in what sense this might be, they leave as a Holy Mystery. The Lutheran position is somewhat similar. They say that the body of Christ is really present in the wafers, or that it is “in, with, and under” the form or appearance of the wafers. But they decline to specify further what that means, explaining that it is a Holy Mystery.
This level of detail in theoretical explanation is actually essential, and in fact it is possible I am not getting detailed enough. This is not tangential material. It lies at the very core of the sacramentalist doctrines about the Eucharist.
It is at this point that I pose my uncomfortable question: In what sense are the wafers or bread really the body of Christ? Sacramentalists insist that the Eucharist is really the body of Christ. How? Again, Catholics say that the substance changes while the accidents stay the same. All of the sacramentalists ultimately regard the real presence as a Holy Mystery. But this is jargon, however impressive it might seem, and it does not answer the question. The question is: In what sense is the body of Christ really present? Catholics can repeat their formula, “The substance has changed, and that’s how.” But that explains precisely nothing, because—as many philosophy students quickly discover—the Aristotelians could never cash out what they meant by substance if it excluded things like matter, physical structure, weight, cells… silly little things like that. They are not substance? They are not substantial? Apparently not. Those things are “accidents.”
This question I am insisting on is just the first part of my challenge. The second part is actually a positive argument: that words like “real” and “true” and “literal” do impose constraints on meaning. I’m here to tell you: Sacramentalist theologians use these words in a way that is straightforwardly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to come up with a theory and then slap the label real on the Eucharist if you cannot explain in what sense it is real. Why should we agree that it is properly called real? If I say my mother makes literally the best turkey stuffing in the world, and if my claim is intelligible, I must be able to explain what I mean by literally. I suppose mean that in an objective taste test—if everyone’s mother’s stuffing were sampled—my mother would come out on top. That would be literally true. That, at least, is a meaningful claim. But it might not actually turn out to be true, if the taste test were performed. (Sorry, Mom.)
Besides, after all this semantic wrangling, the issue remains straightforward. Suppose you want to maintain that the body and blood of Christ are really, truly, and literally in the communion wafers and wine. Fine. But whatever else they are, the body and blood of Christ—if real or literal—must be flesh and blood. A real body is made of flesh. Why call it a body if it is not made of flesh? That is what a body is. Real blood has red blood cells in it. That’s what makes it real. If you’re going to talk about some kind of real or literal blood that doesn’t have red blood cells in it, then what is it? Define it, because otherwise it’s just empty words. To refer to the real body and blood of Christ is to refer not to something spiritual or symbolic or memorial, but something physical.
Physicality is the key. After all, the word body means something physical. You can use the word substance, but it has to cash out in physical terms. Can you map substance in three-dimensional space? I cannot tell. Does it have mass? Maybe not. What makes it physical, this substance? If it does not behave like a physical object—no smell, no mass, no structural change—then it’s confusing to call it physical. By the sacramentalists’ own account, there is no physical change at all. The smell is the same. The weight is the same. Catholic theologians concede that the accidents are all the same. But I say the accidents are what are actually real. That is my assertion. Prove me wrong.
Catholic theology is not commonsensical here. Common sense tells you what Aristotelian metaphysics does not: that a human body is really, literally made of muscle and bone, not of some impossible-to-define “substance.” Perhaps we should give them credit for trying. Orthodox and Lutheran sacramentalism looks uncomfortably upon the question and calls the very sense in which the wafers and wine are really the body and blood of Christ a “Holy Mystery.”
But in the end, all fall back to the claim that it is a Holy Mystery in what sense the body of Christ is really present in the bread. There is a deep irony in this position. Consider what they are saying. They insist that it is essential to affirm that the body and blood of Christ are really present. Very well. I agree that the body and blood of Christ are present, because he said so. So it is true. (In what sense, we will better understand below.) But these traditions use the words literal, real, and true in a way that implies physicality—the real body. Yet when pressed to explain what that means, they fall back on mystery. What it means to say that the body is really present in the bread is itself a mystery. This is deeply ironic. It seems to me that of all the things that are not mysteries, the reality of a physical body is at the top of the list.37
It would be better if we said, at this point, that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ metaphorically. This, as we will see, coheres beautifully with the text and does not require that we fall back on the expedient of a Holy Mystery when asked to explain the theory. I have nothing against Holy Mysteries as such: the Trinity is one, but the Trinity is absolutely required by the text.38 The difference is that eucharistic realism is not required by the text. That is what we will argue for in the rest of this essay. But first, we will consider what support the Bible offers the realist view.
3. The Synoptic Gospel statements.
It’s fairly clear why eucharistic realists hold the position that they do. They sincerely believe that the text of the Bible, as confirmed by later Church Fathers, demands a realist interpretation. But does the Bible actually require this reading?
Let’s try to make the strongest possible case for the realist view based on Scripture alone. The text does not come out and say, “The bread and wine you take when you celebrate the Lord’s Supper are really, or literally, the body and blood of Christ—not merely a symbol, and not merely spiritual.” It is not, in fact, not explicit at all. But some say it is; let us examine the texts that lead them to think so.
First, consider a group of three very similar passages from the synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here is the longest version, from Matthew:
Matthew 26:26–28
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
In this text, Jesus refers to the bread, saying, “this is my body,” and to the wine, “this is my blood.” The demonstratives—“this”—are clear and emphatic. Mark and Luke have parallel passages that say much the same. We can refer to these collectively as the synoptic Gospel texts, even though there is a similar text in the epistles (1 Cor 11:23–25).
Two common points are made about this. The first is that the Bible is to be taken literally, and so when Jesus says, clearly and directly, that it is his body, he must mean it is really his body. And that, essentially, is the whole argument: he says it is his body, so it is his body. Sometimes people dwell on the fact that the word “is” is used (in translations). But this is overly simplistic.
There are several problems with this argument. One is that it simply begs the question. Why couldn’t Jesus be speaking figuratively? He also said, “I am the good shepherd,” after all. Does the use of the word “am” mean this sentence must also be taken literally? The argument appears to rule a figurative meaning out without argument. Another problem is one already raised: If the literal claim were true, you still need to explain what it means. That this bread, held in his hand, is literally his body? Without further explanation, this borders on nonsense, if taken literally. But I will not belabor that point again here.
Instead, let us consider the second standard response to these texts. It runs like this: Jesus could not have meant that the bread was literally his body, because his body was clearly present and intact before them. He was sitting at the table with them, in the flesh. So his statement must be taken as a paradox, one that makes sense only when understood figuratively.
But let’s consider a response to this. It is obvious that Jesus’ body was right in front of the disciples. So another thing is equally obvious: When the eucharistic realists say, “the bread and wine really were his body and blood,” nobody thinks he meant that in the crudest or most literal sense. So when one makes this simple reply, eucharistic realists react with some exasperation—and I think we can understand that. We want to understand their point of view and do it justice. Of course they do not mean the bread was his body in the most literal sense, as we have already explained.
Still, behind this simple point, there is something profound, which will not be so easily dismissed. Indeed, Jesus said that the bread was his body, and you can say he “really meant it.” But then we see the significance and difficulty of the question raised above: What did he mean?
So, as we can see, the three synoptic Gospel texts (and the similar 1 Corinthians text) are taken by the realists as proof texts for their side. But now I get to turn the tables.
These texts actually suggest to me another, independent, and strong argument against eucharistic realism. If the bread and wine were really and literally his body and blood, then what Jesus meant would involve violating the letter of two, and arguably three, Old Testament laws. I mentioned this above but let us get into details.
First, if drinking the wine at the Last Supper constituted drinking blood, that act would violate long-standing prohibitions. These are found not only in the Mosaic code (e.g., Lev 17), but also in the laws given to Noah (Gen 9:4) and, much later, in the decree of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 (quoted above), which explicitly imposed the prohibition on Gentile converts. That council included at least two of the Apostles.
Second, eating real human flesh would constitute cannibalism. The Old Testament may not have explicit laws forbidding cannibalism, but that’s likely because none were needed; the matter is sufficiently addressed by other laws. Moreover, one of the most horrific consequences of divine judgment in the Bible is that people under siege eat their own children to survive. Actual cannibalism is never presented as acceptable, much less holy.
Third, it is plausible that eating real, literal human flesh in the Eucharist would involve eating the sacrificed flesh of Jesus, who is the Lamb of God—the Passover sacrifice for all humanity. If so, then Eucharistic flesh would be the flesh of a slain lamb. But if this is human flesh, then the rite entails touching a dead body, which is a third law violation.
Now, I know how eucharistic realists will respond. They will say: “You’re being unfair. You yourself said there are degrees of literality, and we don’t believe any of those things. So why are you suggesting we do?” But I am not contradicting myself. Let me reiterate: yes, there are degrees of literality, and no, Catholics and others do not affirm these things. All I am doing is pointing out the consequences of asserting that the bread and wine are not figurative or spiritual, but real flesh. And real is their word, not mine. Even if the nature of this reality is said to be a mystery, the laws cited above are laws against consuming real flesh and real blood. So then: Why don’t those three laws apply? Can that question be answered without abandoning realism?
In fact, some theologians defending eucharistic realism respond that the flesh and blood in the Eucharist are not physical in any ordinary sense—which, to be fair, should already have been obvious. But now it appears they are contradicting themselves. How can there be flesh and blood that are non-physical? If it’s non-physical, then surely it is not real flesh and blood. If there is real flesh and blood, then whatever else may be said, it must be physical, because that is what flesh and blood are. If it is not a physical body, then it is not a real body. There is no other kind.
So we see that the synoptic Gospel texts, which are supposed to be key proof texts for eucharistic realism, actually turn out to be as much a problem as an asset—and perhaps more of a problem than is commonly understood.
4. The big “proof texts” for eucharistic realism: 1 Cor 10-11.
Now, in addition to the synoptic Gospel texts, there are three important passages often used as proof texts for the claim that the bread and wine are really and literally the body and blood of Christ. Let’s take the first two together, in this section. Are these texts really as compelling as they are often made out to be?
In First Corinthians, Paul makes two brief references to what must have been, by that point, established Communion practices. Here are the first verses:
1 Corinthians 10:16–17
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? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.
Eucharistic realists take this to mean that when we come together to take the bread and wine, we become “one bread” and “one body” in virtue of consuming the “one bread” of the Eucharist. The suggestion is that only by consuming the real body and blood of Christ could it be true that we become one bread and one body.
Before addressing that, consider a similar passage from the next chapter:
1 Corinthians 11:27–29
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
The realist claim here is that the only way one can “participate” (koinonia) in the blood of Christ or “sin against” the body is if the body and blood are really present in the bread and wine. But that does not follow. Why should the notions of participation or sin require the real presence of Christ’s physical flesh and blood? There is no clear rationale for this. Or, if there is, let us try to reconstruct the reasoning. Suppose that, in some way—perhaps a Holy Mystery—the blood is really present. What does it mean, then, to participate in, or sin against, that blood? If the answer is simply “to drink it,” then the claim remains empty. Drinking, by itself, is not normally a form of participation or offense. But when I have a drink of water, I am never “participating in” or “sinning against” water. So that analogy fails to explain anything.
By contrast, the symbolic interpretation makes much more sense of what Paul is saying in these chapters. The offense of illicit koinonia—participation—in the blood of Christ would not be merely, or even primarily, ingesting a substance. It would be, rather, to offend against what the blood of Christ means. Participation means being joined to Christ, socially and spiritually, we as his congregation and he as our head, by virtue of his sacrificial death. The offense, then, would simply mean participating in the rite when not being so joined. There is no need to speak of literal bread here. Note that Paul’s wording becomes unintelligible if taken literally: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” We, clearly, are not literal bread; we are human beings. So too with “participation in the blood of Christ.” It does not involve actual blood. Even if there were blood in the cup, it would still be a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. That sacrifice, in turn, is the occasion for our fellowship in him. If someone takes the wine of the Eucharist while not having that fellowship, he offends gravely against the Holy Spirit because of the shared wine symbolizes such fellowship.
In short, Paul’s concern is with spiritual unity and fellowship. It is evident from a plain reading of the text that the true meaning of the bread and wine lies in the spiritual and symbolic significance given to them by the Lord. What this fellowship could have to do with a metaphysical substance, imbued with quasi-totemic importance, is a mystery indeed.
As for being “guilty of” his blood, no one sins against a substance. One sins against a person. In this case, to sin against the blood of Christ is to sin against Christ himself, by disrespecting his sacrifice. Sinning against the blood of Christ is thus an example of metonymy, in which one thing (the wine) is symbolically connected with another thing (the blood), and stands for the person of Christ himself.
Eucharistic realists are particularly impressed by the phrase “discerning the body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 11. But what do they think that means? It is unclear. At first glance, one might think Paul means that we must look carefully at the bread or peer into the cup. But we do not discern the body of Christ visually. The “accidents” do not change, only the “substance”—so there is nothing for the eye to detect. Any discernment, then, must be intellectual: an understanding brought to the elements. But what, precisely, is being discerned? Again, not the “accidents” of flesh and blood. Are we discerning a complex theological doctrine that can only be understood with Aristotelian metaphysics—or worse, left entirely mysterious? It cannot be Paul’s point that we discern a Holy Mystery. Rather, Paul means that we are to recognize that the bread and wine betoken Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and what that sacrifice signified. If one reads the surrounding context, this becomes clear.
It helps to understand what Paul is arguing against in these two chapters. In chapter 10, he is taking the Corinthians to task for eating other, pagan sacrifices. He is certainly not saying, “You’ve got your theology wrong, Corinthians! You’re mere symbolists? No, the bread and wine are the real thing!” He says no such thing. In the chapter, Paul’s target is not symbolists, but people who want to mix Christianity with paganism: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils,” he says. In chapter 11, he is also concerned for the welfare of the poor left out of a literal meal, which they cannot afford. Here, the notion is that, if you can recognize this as (representing) the body and blood of Christ, you surely must acknowledge that you cannot leave the poor out of the meal. That would be “eating unworthily.” So, include them—or eat at home.
5. The big “proof texts” for eucharistic realism: John 6.
The third text will take longer to examine. Before saying anything else, I will simply quote what is sometimes taken as the most important proof text for eucharistic realism:
John 6:52–57
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is one of the weirdest passages in the entire Bible—I found it disturbing the first time I read it—and probably the most jarring statement Jesus ever made.39
I guess it does not take a lot of explaining to understand why this passage is used as a proof text that the real body and blood of Christ is found in the bread and wine. In it, Jesus says that you must eat his flesh and drink his blood no fewer than four times. He spoke vividly and used the language of literal consumption of food. He gives no clear hints—at least, not in this text—that he is speaking figuratively. And while he does not mention the Lord’s Supper in this passage, it is quite reasonable to suppose his meaning is the same, because the words are indeed very similar.
That is the start of the argument, but already we may see some problems with it. One is that everything we said about the three synoptic Gospel texts applies to this text. It is not obvious that the words should be understood literally. There is no textual or theological reason to suppose that he is not speaking figuratively. The only distinctive aspect, helpful to the realist case, is that in John 6, he develops this discourse—of eating his flesh and drinking his blood—in more detail and, as it were, boldly, even aggressively. But there is no exegetical principle that I have ever heard of, according to which a symbol or a metaphor may not be developed with boldness, in great detail, or that abundance of detail means it is more likely figurative. Jesus’ parables are developed at great length and are used to make sharp and serious points; that does not make them less parabolic. The psalms and prophetic books are full of detailed poetic metaphor and imagery that is clearly not to be understood literally. So why should the John 6 passage be understood literally?
Now, there is an interesting response. When pressed, Jesus failed to clarify his meaning; in fact, it seems he deliberately emphasized the paradox. At first, the Jews (that’s the phrase used by John in the text) “murmured” or objected to him (Jn 6:41). Then they said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (v52) It’s at that point that he seems to “double down,” to use the common phrase. Finally, his own disciples said, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” (v60) This suggests—so goes the argument—that the statement is being taken literally, at least; otherwise, why are “the Jews” and the disciples pushing back? I grant that this is a significant observation. For these reasons, Catholics in particular can become rather overconfident about this passage.
But I think they misunderstand Jesus’ words.
I reply as follows—and this will take a while, so bear with me. Let’s look at the passage soberly. On the one hand, it’s clear that there must have been some concern that Jesus was making an unexplained suggestion of cannibalism. On the other hand, such a suggestion would have been so bizarre as to be merely puzzling: How can a man say that others must literally eat him? Did anyone really think Jesus was about to chop off a hand? Why think they understood him to be speaking of cannibalism? Maybe they did not understand him that way at all.
Consider what the disciples themselves say: It is a “hard saying.” The Greek word sklērós simply means difficult or harsh. So the disciples are saying it is difficult to accept, or perhaps hard to understand; but they do not say, “We are offended because cannibalism violates Jewish law.” The reason they find it “hard” is likely that it is so exceedingly strange, and that is all—not that they believe Jesus is speaking literally. What could possibly be going through their minds if they believed he meant this literally? Would they really hypothesize to themselves that such was his intent?
Now, I will freely admit this: Jesus did not walk back his statement. But why didn’t he? It begs the question to assume that he refused to walk it back because he wanted to assert a literal interpretation. That is not the only explanation.
In fact, the text clearly supplies a different reason why Jesus insisted on the language he used, and that reason is not that he wanted his hearers to believe they could literally, cannibalistically, eat his body and drink his blood. So what I will do next is explain a more plausible account of why he did not clarify or qualify his statement. This is not mere speculation; it is rooted in the text, the broader context, and sound theology.
The best way to introduce this is to examine the broader context of the “hard sayings” in John 6. I discussed this earlier in the essay, but let me now summarize. The chapter opens with the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The crowd then follows Jesus, seeking more literal bread. It is at that point that Jesus tells them not to labor “for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life” (Jn 6:27). This is obviously figurative. He does not mean the food will be eternally fresh, but that eating it would give us eternal life.
A few verses later he declares, “I am the bread of life” (v35). Again, this is figurative; he does not mean he is composed of flour and water. But this prompts a fruitful question: What did he mean when he called himself the bread of life?
Anyone who studies John’s Gospel carefully will have, by chapter 6, a fairly good idea of what he means. Whatever it is, he is saying that something will give a person eternal life. Both Jesus and John the Baptist say that believing in Jesus is what gives eternal life. Most famously, John 3:16 states, “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And v36 adds, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”
Why then can’t Jesus mean that this bread is a symbol for something that more literally saves—namely, believing in him and following him faithfully? And then his flesh and blood are further symbols for the same thing. That interpretation seems far more reasonable.
Still, I think some people will want to answer. They would say:
But there is a straightforward explanation of what he meant. He said that his followers could receive the ‘bread of life,’ which meant the Eucharist, of course! When Jesus said he was the bread of life, he meant that when we take the wafers and wine in the Lord’s Supper (which he was anticipating), we are doing something that will save our lives. Unlike the miraculous manna given to the wandering Israelites, and unlike miraculous bread given to the 5,000, the Eucharist is a sacrament, and it has the power to grant eternal life.
It may now seem as if we are finally getting somewhere, with both sides now making very reasonable and interesting points. And I think some people, especially those with a dislike of debate, will be inclined to tune out the dialogue at this point, satisfied that both sides are shown to be reasonable, and that nothing can be said that will really resolve the tension.
But that, I think, would be a mistake; one side will emerge the clear victor in this debate. Bear with me. Pay special attention to the bolded words:
John 6:60
Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear [or, accept] it? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
Examine the bolded words. I suspect many people read right past those sentences. After all, on first reading, these seem to be yet more obscure sentences, added after a whole chapter of puzzles. But we can understand this; it is not especially hard. And what Jesus meant is not just meaningful, not just important, but essential to understanding the point of the chapter.
Jesus asks the disciples if it offends them to hear that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. He then says another admittedly strange thing, which I would paraphrase this way: “Suppose you saw me rise up to heaven, where I came from.” Now, why would he say that? Well, if he rose bodily to heaven, that would be much clearer proof that he was from heaven. But why does he say so, at this point? If you have not been tracking the subtext well, he seems to be changing the subject. How would his ascension, his rising to Heaven, remove the disciples’ offense—the offense over his statement that his disciples should eat his flesh?
Well, look at the next bolded sentence. “It is the spirit that quickeneth”—or, brings to life—“the flesh profiteth nothing”. This is perhaps the most puzzling bit. After all, you might say, he just finished saying that whoever eats his flesh will have eternal life. But now he says “the flesh profiteth nothing”? Is this a contradiction? It is not. He then doubles down, not on his suggestion of cannibalism, but the opposite. He says: “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” The implication here is that, contrary to all that he had been saying, his flesh is not life, not strictly speaking. Not literally: “the flesh profiteth nothing,” because what is truly spiritual and saving are the words he spoke.
So Jesus is finally revealing his meaning here, which, so far from being fleshly, actually refers to his spirit and word. And in this connection let us add how Peter responds to Jesus: “thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” (vv68-69) This too might seem to be a strange and irrelevant reply. But, if you understand what Jesus meant in line with our explanation above, then Peter’s words make perfect sense. He meant something like this: “When you spoke to us of eating your flesh and drinking your blood, you meant only that we must believe in you and your words, and in so doing, we will be granted eternal life. And we do believe that.”
In summary, the point with regard to the body and blood of Christ is that these are simply used symbolically, much as “bread of life” is. By treating it as a symbol, it is not only possible to understand John 6, it makes the discussion of John 6 much clearer. If you think Jesus is getting very, very earnest about the essential importance of taking communion, of regularly consuming the wafers and wine, then, in my humble opinion, you have badly misunderstood the chapter. His focus is on the fact that he is master of life and death, and that the people must follow his words faithfully if they wish to have eternal life with him.
6. The true meaning of the Eucharist.
My basic thesis can be summed up as follows.
Eating the wafers and wine in our Communion is a symbol of our embrace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and thanksgiving for his sacrifice for us. Our word “Eucharist” comes from the Greek word eucharistia, which means “thanksgiving.” The meaning of our act of taking the Communion is, most essentially, to show that we thank him for his sacrifice, and to show that we know we have been given eternal life.
This is achieved not through some metaphysical, physical, or magical properties of the wafers and wine. Christ alone saves, if we repent of our sins and embrace him as our Lord; in this act, we accept that he is the Lamb of God, who made a painful sacrifice on our behalf. So, by consuming the Eucharist, we demonstrate our faith.
Moreover, by doing this together, socially, the Holy Spirit is among us and in us, and so we are more greatly and publicly unified as the “body of Christ.” But it is not some substance infused in the wafers and wine that makes us part of the body of Christ, although that is part of the symbolism. When we take Communion together, drawing together more closely in the Church, the wafers are correctly treated as a symbol of the underlying reality, which is that we are unified in our collective faith in the Lord.
That, then, is a fairly concise statement of what I will call the eucharistic symbolism. There are also elements of “spirit” and “remembering” and “thanksgiving” in this statement. But as a name of a certain position on the metaphysical dispute, ‘symbolic’ fits because the dispute concerns what the significance of the Lord’s Supper is: Is its meaning symbolic (or metaphorical or figurative), or is it really, literally the body and blood of Christ? This is the question.
So, in this last part, I want to defend symbolism, so I will have to argue why the Eucharist should be considered as merely symbolic.
There are several persuasive arguments for this view. Maybe the strongest, which by itself might be enough to establish the point, is the one we began developing earlier, namely: It is possible to explain the symbolism in a compelling way. This advantage is completely unavailable to the realist view, which makes the reality of the body and blood in the Eucharist into a Holy Mystery. Not positing a Holy Mystery needlessly is a distinct advantage. When Jesus said, in the Last Supper, that the bread and wine were his body and blood, he did not mean this literally, as if the bread and wine had been, somehow, literally transformed as he spoke. He meant that the bread and wine were a symbol of his own sacrifice. That then is the basic claim.
The textual evidence of this claim is abundant. We have already seen two key textual arguments from John 6. I’ll review these only in order to draw some further points.
Textual argument 1: Jn 6:35. First, he said, “I am the bread of life” in verse 35. Immediately after saying this, he adds, by way of explanation of what he means, “he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” He does not say, “He who eats my metaphysical essence will live forever.” There is nothing whatsoever in the text that says, or implies, any such metaphysical or mysterious claim. Rather, what he and his faithful disciples all declare consistently is that believing in him confers eternal life; thus, the availability of such a belief makes him “the bread of life” symbolically. He certainly was not saying he was made of flour and water. But in that case, we may infer by analogy that, when he says the broken bread in the Last Supper is his body, he is again speaking symbolically. The analogy is close—both are centered on eternal life.
Textual argument 2: Jn 6:63. The second textual argument is based on his later explanation in verse 63: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” He, speaking to his disciples by way of clarification, as good as says that he was speaking “in a parable”; despite what he had been saying, in fact, the flesh profits nothing, while it is the Spirit that confers life. All you must do is accept the underlying meaning of Jesus’ words, and you will live. So, when in verse 68 Peter responds to Jesus, he says nothing about flesh and blood, nor about bread and wine; he says, simply, “thou hast the words of eternal life.” As if that’s all there had been to Jesus’ discourse. Because indeed—that’s all there was to it. This actually supports the suggestion that when Jesus says “this is my body” and “this is my blood,” again he is referring to something that is a symbol of his flesh and blood.
Textual argument 3: interlinear context. Perhaps the most important argument of all is the one that sheds detailed light on the meaning of the symbol. The Last Supper, which is treated by all theologians as the first-ever Communion, took place on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, which occurred during one of the holiest of annual festivals of the ancient Jews: the Passover. Now, in the main meal of the Passover, commemorating the exodus from Egypt, what was eaten was a lamb, sacrificed according to particular statutes handed down in Exodus (Ex 12:3–11).
Many believe that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. But, you might say, Jesus broke bread, not lamb. This is true. Jesus broke that bread in that greatest of Passover meals: in calling the bread his body, he was implying that he was the Passover lamb that year. Now, that Jesus was “the Lamb of God” is widely accepted regardless of your view on the larger issue. It is hard to dispute it, because Paul said, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7); John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (Jn 1:29) One could go on.
So, let us review. (1) They were eating a meal in Passover week. (2) Lamb was traditionally eaten. (3) Jesus himself is called the Lamb of God. We might also add: (4) He called himself the Bread of Life, this meaning that anyone who believes in him has eternal life. In this context, we read: “This is my body.” Clearly, therefore, there was a good reason for Jesus to call the bread his body, and that we should eat such bread in remembrance of him. Namely, the rite would call to mind that his body, sacrificed as the Lamb of God on the cross, was the perfect Passover offering for the sins of the world—and thus the true Bread of Life, granting eternal life. That is far and away the most coherent explanation of what he meant, and it makes such rich and excellent sense only symbolically.
But now, let me ask you theologians something: Was Jesus literally sacrificed? I do not believe so. I believe he died for our sins literally, and that this required a great sacrifice in the sense that it was a great and painful burden. But it was not a traditional, completely literal sacrifice according to Jewish law. That much is obvious. After all, need I really point out that human sacrifice was not permitted under the law? Therefore, it was not a legal sacrifice. Rather, he is given another figurative name, the Lamb of God, and this commemorates the great sacrifice he undertook. He was not literally a lamb, of course. That is all I mean, when I say he was not literally a Passover sacrifice according to the law.
I may expect broad agreement when I say that, when Jesus said the broken bread was his body, he was trading on the same symbolism of the Lamb of God. If so, then I have a question. This might sound like a joke, but it is not, or rather, it has a serious point. If the bread is transubstantiated, is it changed into human meat, or lamb? I do not actually mean to be flippant or disrespectful. I actually think it is an interesting question—for eucharistic realists. If he is called the Lamb of God, and if the bread becomes real flesh, why not say that it becomes lamb meat? This would stand to reason, after all, since human meat is forbidden: that is cannibalism. If things are being miraculously changed, why not say the bread is miraculously changed to lamb meat, since he is the Lamb of God? The realists cannot reply, “This is ridiculous. ‘Lamb of God’ is obviously just a symbol.” Because, after all, I agree: it is obviously just a symbol. But follow me now: If “Lamb of God” is meant as a symbol in the context of his very act of sacrifice, then surely we can say that “This is my body,” referring to the broken bread, was symbolic as well.
I am not making any shocking new theological proposals here. I am simply pointing to a tension in sacramentalist doctrine. Again, if they realists say that the words “Lamb of God” are understood symbolically while “This is my body” is taken literally, then their doctrine becomes selective and ad hoc about which metaphors are to be realized physically and which are not.
Textual argument 4: John 4 and 7. But the symbolism doesn’t just stop there. If the foregoing argument trades on the fact that the Last Supper happened on the Passover, the next textual argument trades on the fact that Jesus used not just one or two, but many symbolic representations of food and drink as the means of salvation, eternal life, doing the will of God, and the Holy Spirit. Consider the book of John, where most of this food-and-drink symbolism can be found.
In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that he offers “living water,” adding, “the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (Jn 4:10–14) Do we take this literally, or figuratively?
Later in the same chapter, Jesus tells the disciples, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” He adds, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” (John 4:32–34) Again: Did Jesus have literal meat?
A few chapters later, we have perhaps the clearest example both of a drink metaphor and an immediate explanation of it:
John 7:37–39
On the last day, that great day of the feast [of Tabernacles], Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
Of course, it is not literally true that out of our bellies rivers of living water will flow. This is so obvious that John, the author of the Gospel, decides to be much more explicit than he was in chapter 6. He essentially says that by “rivers of living water,” Jesus meant “the Spirit”—the Holy Spirit—that would be received after Jesus had been glorified.
We have seen four instances, at least, in which food and drink are taken to represent the things of God symbolically.
So, I would like to ask eucharistic realists again: Why would you think that Jesus had to mean something real, and definitely not something figurative or symbolic, when he said the bread and wine were his flesh and blood—especially when the context makes it perfectly clear that he means that he is the Lamb of God, and we are to commemorate that with the observance of the Lord’s Supper?
Textual argument 5: Lk 22:19 and 1 Cor 11:23–25. But symbolism is suggested not only by food and drink metaphors; it is also strongly suggested in Jesus’ instructions about the Eucharist. A final textual argument confirms the point directly. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives the reason we are to observe the Lord’s Supper as follows: “this do in remembrance of me.” (Lk 22:19) Paul repeats the same words (1 Cor 11:23–25).
Now, this is perfectly consistent with the symbolic view; indeed, it supports the view strongly. If the wafers and wine we take were really, literally the body and blood of Christ, then indeed we might be thought to take them as part of a recreation of a sacrifice. Indeed, the body of Christ is, as it were, “presented” over and over again, according to the verbiage of Catholic theology. But if this is really the body of Christ that was sacrificed, we are actually consuming a real sacrifice. That is in fact the Catholic view.
Meanwhile, if you take Jesus seriously when he says we should eat the bread and wine to commemorate his sacrificed body and blood, then there is no reason whatsoever to think the wafers and wine themselves are a real sacrifice. Just as parables are aids to memory, the Lord’s Supper uses a symbol to remind us of the great self-sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. To serve as reminders of and to point to deeper realities—that is precisely what symbols do. That is their function. Why then would Jesus tell us the purpose of the Lord’s Supper would be to remind us of his sacrifice if we were actually partaking in it?
7. Concluding remarks.
Let me conclude by summing up my positive arguments for eucharistic symbolism.
We began by showing that the term “literal” is ambiguities and comes in degrees, and that none of the major eucharistic realist views can make sense of their claim without retreating into vague metaphysical jargon or appeals to a “Holy Mystery.” This must be confessed to be a weakness in the view.
We then examined the primary biblical texts, and found that none require a literal interpretation. Eucharistic realists ground their view primarily in Jesus’ institution words at the Last Supper—“this is my body…this is my blood”—which appear in all three Synoptic Gospels and in Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 11. We argued that the realist interpretation simply begs the question by assuming Jesus could not have been speaking figuratively, even though Scripture is full of metaphorical language and Jesus regularly used it. We also made the common point that the statement “this is my body” is incoherent without further explanation: How could bread be his literal body while he was sitting there bodily intact? We argued that if the realist interpretation were true, it would imply violations of biblical law, such as the prohibitions against consuming blood, human flesh, and touching a corpse. We also contended that the realist position becomes self-contradictory when it claims the body and blood are not “physical” but still somehow “real”—because flesh and blood are, by definition, physical things. There is no such thing as nonphysical flesh.
As to Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 10–11, his concerns there are not metaphysical: to partake unworthily is to sin not against a substance but against what those elements represent, namely, Christ himself and the fellowship built on his sacrifice. “Communion” means spiritual participation, and “discerning the body” means recognizing that it represents the body of the risen Christ, who invited the poor to his table, as the Corinthians must also do, to eat worthily.
The symbolic interpretation of John 6 makes better sense of both the text and the broader theological context. Jesus repeatedly uses vivid metaphors—calling himself the Bread of Life, insisting that his followers eat his flesh and drink his blood—but then clarifies that “the flesh profiteth nothing” and that his words “are spirit, and they are life.” This directly signals that his discourse is spiritual and figurative, not literal. Just as Jesus earlier calls belief in him the way to eternal life, so too eating and drinking are symbols of internalizing his teaching and embracing him in faith. His refusal to explain the metaphor does not imply a literal meaning, but rather highlights that true understanding comes through spiritual discernment, not carnal interpretation. The climax of the passage, in which Peter confesses faith in Jesus’ words (with no mention of a sacrament) confirms this reading. Thus, the symbolism of body and blood in John 6 coheres with the Gospel’s emphasis on belief, not ritual, as the path to eternal life.
In a set of positive textual arguments for symbolism, we showed that the context and content of Jesus’ words, across several passages, overwhelmingly support a symbolic reading of the Lord’s Supper. In John 6, he calls himself the “bread of life” and then explicitly states that “the flesh profiteth nothing,” clarifying that his words “are spirit, and they are life.” The parallel use of symbolic food and drink language throughout John (ch. 4, 6, 7) precisely mirrors a symbolic reading of “this is my body.” This reading is also reinforced by the connection to the Passover: just as the lamb symbolized God’s deliverance, so the bread symbolizes Christ’s once-for-all offering. He was not literally a lamb, nor literally sacrificed according to Mosaic law. The details of the symbolism are rich and mutually supporting: Christ is the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, our Passover. All are ways of saying that belief in him saves. And, most plainly, the explicit purpose of the Eucharist is “remembrance,” not re-sacrifice.
I was raised Lutheran, and I rather like some things about Orthodoxy. I find Anglicanism congenial. I do have some Catholic friends, of course, whom I would rather not offend. So it gives me no pleasure to disagree with these denominations on these issues.
For me, the bottom line is this. The Bible is full of symbolism. The symbols matter, and they matter deeply. Just consider the Cross, the Promised Land, the Tree of Life, the Rock, the Vine, the Ark—and to them we must add the Bread of Life and the Lamb of God. If you think it does not take Scripture seriously to suppose the Communion bread and wine are symbols for the body and blood of Christ, then you must think that the symbolism inherent in the language of, say, the Cross and the Tree of Life are, somehow, unserious. But they are not.
On my view, when we take the bread and wine as symbolic, this is no count against their seriousness. What Christians believe most essentially is that we are saved from our sin by the mercy and grace of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That is the true underlying reality. This does not mean the wafers and wine do not matter. They do matter, because by them, we demonstrate publicly that we remember the body and blood of Christ, and we welcome the Holy Spirit among us, to whose family we belong.
But even his body and blood represent something more fundamental: his sacrifice. We thank him for that sacrifice as we take Communion. And even the sacrifice points to still more fundamental things; the end of the wrath of God; the defeat of the devil; God’s active love and grace toward us; and the hope of the world.
The wafers and wine are not, somehow, made of no effect by being the body and blood of Christ symbolically. In short, the deepest reality is that our Lord’s loving, merciful forgiveness saves us. Yet the wafers and wine are still a profound, and Spirit-filled reminder of his sacrifice, which made that forgiveness possible.
Footnotes
- Near the beginning of Mere Christianity itself.[↩]
- This is not to say that they were invented then; that is a matter of debate. But these traditions developed gradually over the second and fifth centuries A.D., not all at once.[↩]
- No word strictly meaning ‘ordained’ actually appears in the Greek, though the word appears in the KJV.[↩]
- The following quotes are taken from NewAdvent.org, a Catholic site. I cannot vouch for the quality of the translations used—the translators are presumably Catholic—but it is certainly a lovely thing to have all the Fathers in one place. See: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/[↩]
- It is worth pointing out that his doctrine was, according to some scholars, an innovation, in that it posited what has come to be called a monarchical bishop model.[↩]
- While a common Catholic and Orthodox argument is that it required the institutional, visible Church to confirm the canon of Scripture, the fact is that the local churches were able to do this piecemeal for themselves. They did not require a central body or ecumenical council to do it for them; there was significant agreement among the Ante-Nicene Fathers as to who was worth quoting, and there was substantial agreement, with few exceptions, on canon lists, leading up to the first full list in the Easter Letter of Athanasius (367 A.D.), which was later ratified by two further councils. Thus, as Protestant theologians often say, Athenasius and the Councils of Hippo and Carthage did not create the canon; they recognized and ratified it. And I agree with this.[↩]
- This refers to his well-known kenosis, emptying: Php 2:5–8.[↩]
- These were unique relationships, and only with Elijah and Elisha is it said that the spirit and ministry of one passed on to the other. This might be implied with the other pairs, but it is not made explicit. One might argue that, since both David and Solomon were given the same (“Davidic”) covenant separately, they were indeed in a similar spiritual succession. Yet, considering their sometime wicked royal descendants, the Davidic covenantal succession is clearly not the same as Elijah’s uniquely inspired prophetic succession; only the latter involved a transfer of prophetic spirit and power.[↩]
- E.g., 1 Cor 14:26, Col 3:16, and Heb 13:7.), especially the three Pastoral Epistles (which give Paul’s instructions to two early pastors),((E.g., 1 Tim 4:13, 2 Tim 4:2, Tit 1:9.[↩]
- E.g., Ac 2:42 and 20:7.[↩]
- These three items are the “marks of the Church” touted by the Reformation.[↩]
- A humorous example of people not properly baptized is when Russell Brand, a recent convert with some dodgy theological views, spent time in his tighty-whities in a stream baptizing people.[↩]
- The issue is that the visible Church should not—I think, must not—”add unto the word” that God has commanded. This causes difficulties for the ordination of Catholic priests that I cannot solve. Of course, they might well be qualified to teach Catholic doctrine and administer Catholic sacraments. But that is a different from the question whether they are properly qualified ministers of the Word simplicitur. See Deut 4:2 and 12:32; cf. Prov 30:5–6 and Rev 22:18–19.[↩]
- Namely, Lutheran, Presbyterian, some other Reformed (a large group), and Anglican. Historically, Methodists and Congregationalists were also confessional, but most of their contemporary incarnations are not. This is not to say they reject the faith, generally speaking (and their websites will still have “what we believe” sections); it is only to say that membership and ordination do not require an explicit and specific declaration of faith.[↩]
- Addressed in footnote 13 above.[↩]
- 1 Tim 3:1–7; Tit 1:5–9.[↩]
- 1 Tim 2:11–14.[↩]
- Jdg 4–5; 2 Kgs 22:14; Lk 2:36–38; Ac 18:26; Ac 21:9.[↩]
- In fact, there are non-sacramentalist Anglicans. They tend to be called “low-church” types.[↩]
- Catholicism and Orthodoxy, saying that the visible Church is a more solid representative of the invisible Church, would say this is accomplished only when the convert is explicitly confirmed by the visible Church.[↩]
- Some might be startled by the use of the word fetishistic. This word is used in its original, anthropological sense, not the modern, sexually charged one. According to this sense, a fetish is an actual item, such as a small statue, amulet, or other trinket, which was thought to be imbued with a magical power of its own. An example would be a magic wand in the Harry Potter books. An example from the Bible would be Jacob’s uncle Laban’s teraphim (household gods) from Genesis 31. So, fetishistic is generally used in theology to accuse someone, or a view, of treating actual physical objects as having some arcane, occult powers.[↩]
- They seem to be forced to choose between (a) avoiding “magical thinking,” which they may associate with Catholic and Orthodox sacramentalism, and (b) giving substantive meaning to their embrace of the originally Catholic jargon of “means of grace.”[↩]
- Some might find this to be unfair to Johnson, or to how sacramentalists think about unity through the Eucharist. But if this is not what unity through the Eucharist means—it is the real presence, which is literally in us at the same time, unifying us—then what work does the concept of the real presence do? How does it show that the body of Christ is unified through the Eucharist? If not this, which admittedly may seem crude, then what?[↩]
- God became flesh, born of a woman: John 1:14; Galatians 4:4. He ate and drank with Abraham: Genesis 18:1–8. Moses saw his back: Exodus 33:23. He spoke through a donkey: Numbers 22:28. He used spit and mud to heal: John 9:6. His body was crucified, died, and resurrected: Luke 23:33, 46; Luke 24:6–7. He walked in the Garden: Genesis 3:8. He hovered over the waters in creation: Genesis 1:2. He hovered again after the Flood, in re-creation: Genesis 8:1.[↩]
- Gnosticism held that the material world was not only very different from soul or spirit, but also evil by its very nature.[↩]
- Matthew 9:29–30; Matthew 8:8, 13.[↩]
- We will be discussing the notion that the wafers and wine are literally the body and blood of Christ under question III below.[↩]
- I.e., some properly qualified version of “The sacraments are efficacious in themselves.”[↩]
- As I will now consistently call it. An ordinance in the Church is a rite instituted and ordained by Christ. Sacrament, by contrast, is used by sacramentalists to refer to rites that are “means of grace” (defined in section 2 above). Hence, to a Baptist, for example, Baptism is called an ordinance, while to a Lutheran or Catholic it is a sacrament.[↩]
- This is a point that also depends on work done in answer to question III below.[↩]
- As I will discuss under the next question, eucharistic sacramentalists generally take John 6 to be an anticipatory discussion of the purpose of the Eucharist, but that ultimately turns out to be incorrect as a point of exegesis.[↩]
- The earliest supposedly helpful texts, such as those in Ignatius and Justin Martyr, give only vague and debatable support for the doctrine of real presence. In any event, that is not the same as the doctrine of the means of grace.[↩]
- Again, see Question III below and almost 60 minutes of video discussions of John 6 I have commenting on it, including this (exclusively on John 6) and this (forwarding to the part where I begin discussing it for 20 more minutes).[↩]
- They do not make the same answer to “Is Communion required for salvation?” simply because Scripture does not say that it is.[↩]
- The following is a combination and light revision of video scripts.[↩]
- We will discuss this in some depth below.[↩]
- I might be understating the problem here. Eucharistic realists invoke mystery not because Scripture demands it—as with the Trinity—but to solve a problem raised by their controversial theological commitments. In other words, the Bible does not contain a Holy Mystery here, but only sacramentalist theology. This is especially a problem, therefore, for Lutherans and Anglicans, who must attempt to support the notion of a mystery using only the resources of the Bible.[↩]
- This is disputed by unitarians and secular skeptics, but the biblical case is explained in detail in virtually all standard Christian systematic theologies.[↩]
- I discussed this passage, in the context of John 6 as a whole, in a video, with an edited version of the text here.[↩]
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