The Eucharist Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey, glad you're here. It’s Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lang Craig. Let's get back to Dr. Craig's thoughts on the Eucharist. This is part two on that podcast. And, by the way, if you like free stuff, and you like to sharpen your mind, then you're going to like Equip from Reasonable Faith. The Equip platform is our on-demand training center for Christian apologetics and philosophy. Whether you're new to the conversation or ready to tackle the deep stuff, Equip gives you the tools to defend your faith with confidence. We have courses on everything from Apologetics 101 to Molinism to the attributes of God. You name it, we got it. Just go to KnowWhyYouBelieve.org or you can go to ReasonableFaith.org to create your free account and start learning today. Now, let's get to the studio with Dr. Craig.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's go to Gavin's second reason, the historical record. Clip number three.

DR. ORTLUND: Now, some people say that real presence is the universal view throughout church history. I think that's slightly overstated, but it is nearly unanimous.

KEVIN HARRIS: Gavin acknowledges that there are nuances and debates among church leaders throughout history, but he maintains that some species of real presence has been the dominant view. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I think this is very misleading, if not downright false. Of course real presence became the dominant view after the Roman Catholic Church condemned people like Berengar in the 11th century for holding to a symbolic view. But among the church fathers there was a diversity of opinion about the real presence. The historical theologian, Gary Macy, in his book Theologies of the Eucharist calls the patristic period “the origins of diversity.” Then he characterizes the period to follow “the decline of diversity.” The great dogmatic historian, Jaroslav Pelikan, has said that no one during this early era clearly affirmed that the presence of the body and blood was purely symbolic (although he says Tertullian and Origen came close) and no one clearly affirmed the real presence of the body and blood (though Irenaeus and Ambrose came close). In fact, St. Augustine, commenting on the sixth chapter of John that you just mentioned, says the following about Christ's body and blood represented in the Lord's Supper. Listen to what St. Augustine wrote.

What seemed difficult to them was his saying, "Unless a man eat my flesh, he will not have eternal life." They understood it foolishly. They thought in a carnal way and supposed that the Lord was going to cut off some pieces of his body and give the pieces to them. And they said, "This is a hard saying." They were the ones who were hard, not the saying. For the twelve disciples remained with him, and when the others left, they pointed out to him that those who had been scandalized by what he had said had left. But he instructed them and said to them, "It is the spirit which gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life." Understand what I have said spiritually. You are not going to eat this body which you see. Nor are you going to drink the blood which those who crucify me are going to shed. I have given you a sacrament. Understood spiritually, it will give you life. Although it must be celebrated visibly yet it should be understood invisibly.

Clearly Augustine did not understand this passage in terms of eating the body and drinking the blood of the historical Jesus. And over time this symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist was clearly expressed, for example, in the 9th century by a monk named Ratramnus of the monastery of Corbie. He had been written by the emperor Charles the Bald who asked him, “Is the body and blood in the Eucharist the same flesh and blood that was born by the Virgin Mary and lived in Galilee and was fastened to the cross in the crucifixion of Jesus?” In response to this, Ratramnus distinguishes between something that is said figuratively and something that is said in truth. He says that the bread and the wine are only said figuratively to be the body and blood of Christ. Let me quote from Ratramnus’ essay. He says,

Therefore, they are not the same. For that flesh which was crucified was made from the Virgin's flesh, formed of bones and sinews, distinguished by the features of human limbs, animated by the spirit of a rational soul, and capable of corresponding movements. But the spiritual flesh which spiritually nourishes the believing people according to the outward form it bears consists of grains of wheat by the hand of a craftsman. Not formed of any bones or sinews, not distinguished by any variety of limbs, not animated by any rational substance, and incapable of performing any movements of its own.^[1]

So for Ratramnus it was ordinary bread and wine that were consumed but they were figuratively the body and blood of Christ. It's interesting Ratramnus experienced no push back from the church. Radbertus, another monk at the same monastery in Corbie, believed in the real presence, and there's no record historically of any sort of dissension that resulted from their disagreement on this. But in the 11th century, Berengar of Tour who lived from about 1040 to 1080 also raised this question and asserted that the body and blood in the Eucharist are symbolically intended, not the real presence. He thought that to assert the real presence of the body and blood of the risen Lord in the sacrament would be nonsense and blasphemy. It would be nonsense because it was apparent to the senses that there was no such change in the bread and wine. It was ordinary bread and wine there on the altar, not the body and blood of Jesus. But it was more than just inane. He said these claims would be blasphemous if they were true. The presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist would entail a kind of cannibalism, to say nothing of the indignity to Christ's body of being digested and then passed on via elimination, and so this is a ridiculous and blasphemous interpretation. What happened was the Catholic Church came down with a hammer on Berengar. In 1079 he was forced to recant and to make the following affirmation. Let me quote the affirmation he was forced to sign.

The bread and the wine which are laid on the altar are, after consecration, not only a sacrament but also the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And they are physically taken up and broken in the hands of the priest and crushed by the teeth of the faithful, not only sacramentally but in truth.

Macy says in his book that this oath that Berengar was forced to take at the synod of Rome is, and I quote, “perhaps one of the most unfortunate and theologically inept statements ever put forward by the church on the subject of the Eucharist.” So it became official church doctrine that the body and blood of Christ are consumed in the Eucharist. And if you lump together all of the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Lutherans, then it's not surprising that among nominal Christians in the world that the vast majority would hold to the doctrine of the real presence. But today about 20% of the world's Christians hold to a purely symbolic view of the Eucharist. 20%. And that, I think you'll agree, is very far from nearly universal as Gavin claimed.

KEVIN HARRIS: One more clip from Gavin. Here's his third reason. Fittingness. This is clip number four.

DR. ORTLUND: A third reason to believe in real presence is fittingness. And by that I just mean real presence is a fitting expression of what is actually happening. What is the purpose of the Eucharist? It is to apply the benefits of Christ's death unto believers. So we can think of the Eucharist as the point of contact between the death of Christ and faith. Food and hunger. This is where they touch. Here's a helpful way to think of it. Real presence is not generic. Christ is present in the power of his sacrificial death. That's why we speak of it as his body and blood. And that's why in the Protestant traditions we speak of it as a sacrifice.

KEVIN HARRIS: A fitting point of contact or application of Christ’s sacrifice is what he said. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I'm sorry. I do not think that the Eucharist is a way of applying the benefits of Christ's death to believers. I don't read that anywhere in Scripture. This has to do with the fundamental question of whether the Eucharist is a special means of grace. Now, in a very generic sense, of course it could be a means of grace. So is prayer. So is Bible study. So is meaningful worship. All of these are means of grace. But that does not set the Eucharist apart as a special means of grace whereby the benefits of Christ's atoning death are applied to us. The benefits of Christ's atoning death are applied to us when we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and justified by God. That is where the point of contact between the death of Christ and faith is – justification by faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. There is no scriptural basis for saying that taking the Eucharist conveys forgiveness of sins or other benefits of Christ's atoning death. Now, of course, as Gavin said, Christ is present in the power of his sacrificial death. But again, that is not the same as saying that we eat and drink the physical body and blood of the historical Jesus now risen and ascended into heaven. Finally, when Gavin says, “In the Protestant tradition, we speak of it as a sacrifice” I couldn't believe my ears. This is shocking. The idea that the Eucharist is a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to God is a Catholic doctrine that was vehemently opposed by the Protestant Reformers. There was no aspect of the Catholic Mass that they rejected more vigorously than the idea that the Mass was a sacrifice presented to God. Therefore, I think it is altogether unfitting to regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice that we offer to God.

KEVIN HARRIS: You talked a little bit about the Catholic view of transubstantiation, and probably we could do a whole podcast on that (and maybe we will in the future and explore this some more). We've just scratched the surface. But, boy, the Reformers in my own reading, they really reacted to things like the superstition that would arise. The parishioners would take the leftovers and put it in their crops because they thought it would make their crops grow better. Or they got into weird things about what if a mouse gets into it, and trying to think of some of the others. Oh, and they would parade it through the streets so that people could view the host.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

KEVIN HARRIS: So there was a lot of reaction against things like that. But maybe some thoughts in your research that you could offer.

DR. CRAIG: The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is a version of the doctrine of the real presence that is incredibly complex and truly bizarre. And those aspects that you just mentioned, like the worship of the consecrated elements (not just veneration, you worship them). The procession of these elements. The preserving of these elements left over in a tabernacle or being so careful not to just throw the remains into the trash or down the sewer, or the belief that if a mouse crept into the church that night and ate some of the consecrated host, it would literally consume the physical body of Christ just like we do. These are all logical implications of the doctrine of transubstantiation because, according to that doctrine, the bread and the wine no longer exist. They have turned into – they have become – the physical body and blood of Christ and therefore they remain so. Even the leftovers after the communion service is over – these are still the body and blood of Christ and therefore they have to be treated with respect and honored and even worshipped because this is a new substance. Aquinas and others say that the reason for transubstantiation is because we would be revolted if we saw what we were doing, that we're drinking a man's blood, that we're eating his flesh. And so the properties (or “accidents”) of bread and wine remain so that we will not be revolted by the gruesome act in which we are engaged in taking the Eucharist. The strange thing is how can the properties of the bread and the wine remain if the substance of the bread is gone? The properties inhere in the substance. These properties of bread and wine cannot inhere in the blood and the body of Christ which is now present because then it wouldn't be the body and blood of Christ. It would be bread and wine if it had the properties of bread and wine inhering in it. And so these properties are said to inhere in nothing. These properties are, as it were, just sort of floating without any sort of metaphysical grounding. It is what one author has called a metaphysical miracle that enables these properties to exist without inhering in anything. And that's just part of the doctrine of transubstantiation. It gets even more complex because Christ, as Ratramnus pointed out, has limbs. He has arms and legs and fingers and hair. How are those present in the consecrated elements? On the transubstantiation view, Christ's whole body is present in that little tiny wafer and in that cup of wine. He is wholly present in all of them and therefore Christ is wholly present in multiple places at once. He's multiply located. Moreover, if you break the bread in half, contrary to what Berengar was forced to confess, the body of Christ is not broken in half. The body of Christ is impassible. It's in heaven. It's glorified. The bread is broken in half, but each half contains the whole body of Christ. So Christ is not only present in multiple disjoint places at once, wherever the Eucharist is celebrated (for example, in Rome and in Chicago), but also in the very elements he is present in every subregion of the elements of the bread and the wine down to the point where molecularly they are no longer recognizable as bread and wine. Then his body and blood are not present. So this is an incredibly, incredibly complex and reticulate doctrine that has been well thought through by people like Thomas Aquinas, but I think is truly bizarre. I do not think we should adopt these views. One author, Steven Nemes, a Christian philosopher, in his book, Eating the Flesh of Christ, has characterized these various doctrines of the real presence as magical cannibalism. I think that is not unfair. And it is such a far cry from what I think we find taught in the New Testament. Therefore I do not think this is a doctrine that we should affirm.

KEVIN HARRIS: Problematic to say the least. As we conclude, I've noticed that churches are all over the place when it comes to how often to take communion. I grew up observing it once a quarter. Currently, my church has it every month. Do you have a recommendation or preference for that? Also, as we wrap up, talk about how we should treat the observance of the Lord's Supper. Those verses that you commented on earlier taking it in an unworthy way – it can be very convicting.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. There is a host of these minor questions about the Eucharist like how frequently it should be taken. Should the laity be given both the bread and the wine or, as in the Catholic Church, are they given only the consecrated bread, and other questions of that sort. I think that these are questions on which the Scripture doesn't speak and therefore they're open to Christian conscience to do as one deems best. I think that the really crucial questions about the Eucharist that we need to answer are, number one, the doctrine of the real presence. Do we consume the physical body and drink the physical blood of the historical Jesus now risen and ascended into heaven? Second, the question of sacrifice. Is the Eucharist a sacrifice that we offer to God? A re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary? And thirdly, is the sacrament a means of grace? Is it a way in which the benefits of Christ's atoning death are applied to us? Those, I think, are the really crucial questions that every Christian needs to think through thoughtfully.^[2]