What Is the Eucharist? Bread, Wine and the Argument That Split Christendom
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On the night before he died, the gospels say, Jesus took bread and wine at supper with his disciples, gave thanks, and told them that the bread was his body and the wine his blood and that they should do this in memory of him. Christians have done it ever since, at every mass and communion service in the world, and they have not agreed about what they are doing. Whether the bread becomes the body of Christ, contains it, signifies it or recalls it is the question over which Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists and Baptists have parted company, burned each other, and remain apart, and the rite that was meant to unite them is the clearest line between them.
The rite
The Eucharist, from the Greek for thanksgiving, is also called the mass, holy communion, the Lord's supper and the divine liturgy, and its shape is recognisable across the churches: readings from scripture, a prayer of thanksgiving over bread and wine that repeats Jesus's words at the supper, the breaking of the bread, and the eating and drinking by the congregation. The earliest description outside the New Testament, by Justin Martyr around 150, already has that outline and already calls the elements the flesh and blood of Jesus. Catholics and Orthodox celebrate it daily and require it weekly; most Protestant churches celebrate it monthly or quarterly; the Quakers and the Salvation Army do not celebrate it at all, holding that the whole of life is sacramental.
What is believed
The positions, in the order they diverged:
- •Catholic: transubstantiation, defined in 1215 and explained with Aristotle's categories by Aquinas, holds that at the consecration the substance of the bread and wine becomes the substance of Christ's body and blood while their appearances, the accidents, remain; the consecrated host is worshipped and reserved
- •Orthodox: the bread and wine truly become the body and blood by the action of the Holy Spirit, a mystery the church declines to explain philosophically
- •Lutheran: the body and blood are really present in, with and under the bread and wine, which remain bread and wine, a view often called consubstantiation though Luther rejected the word
- •Reformed, following Calvin: Christ is spiritually present and received by faith, and the bread and wine are the means by which believers are lifted to him, not changed
- •Zwinglian and most Baptist and evangelical churches: the supper is a memorial, the bread and wine symbols, and the presence is in the gathered congregation
- •Anglican: deliberately unspecific, with a spectrum from near-Catholic to near-Zwinglian in one church
Why it mattered so much
The question looks technical and was a matter of life and death, because it decided what a priest was, what a church was for and where Christ could be found. If the bread became Christ's body, then the priest who consecrated it held a power no layman had, the mass was a sacrifice, and the reserved host was to be adored; if it did not, the priesthood was a function rather than a caste, the mass was a meal and the adoration was idolatry. The Reformation was fought on that ground more than any other: Luther and Zwingli met at Marburg in 1529 to unite the Protestant movement and parted over a single word, Luther writing this is my body on the table in chalk and refusing to read it as a figure; England's Protestant martyrs under Mary were burned for denying the real presence and its Catholic martyrs under Elizabeth were executed for the mass; and the Thirty Years' War carried the argument across Germany with armies.
The practices that follow
The theology shows in the details. Catholics use unleavened wafers, receive the host on the tongue or in the hand and, for centuries, did not receive the wine, which the priest alone drank; the Orthodox use leavened bread mixed with wine on a spoon; Protestants broke the bread in loaves and gave everyone the cup, which was one of the Reformation's first demands. Who may receive is the other line: Catholic and Orthodox churches admit only their own baptised members in good standing, and a Protestant at a Catholic mass is asked not to come forward; most Protestant churches open the table to any Christian, and some to anyone. The ecumenical dialogues of the last sixty years have found more agreement in the doctrine than the sixteenth century did, and the practice at the altar rail is still the point at which a Catholic and a Lutheran cannot share what both call the same meal.
The takeaway
The Eucharist is the rite of bread and wine that Jesus instituted at the last supper and that every Christian church repeats, in which Catholics hold that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood in substance, the Orthodox that they become them by mystery, Lutherans that Christ is present with them, the Reformed that he is present spiritually, and the memorialist churches that they are symbols. The disagreement decided what a priest and a church were, split the Reformation at Marburg in 1529, cost lives on every side, and still governs who may take communion where.