III.

The Development of Doctrine

The development of Eucharistic doctrine centres on two ideas: presence and sacrifice. In the New Testament, no attempt is made to explain Christ’s presence at the Eucharist. The theologians of the early Church tended to accept Jesus’ words, “This is my body” and “This cup ... is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20), as sufficient explanation of the miraculous transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

During the Middle Ages a more elaborate doctrine of the Eucharist was developed by Scholastic philosophers under the influence of Aristotle. Aristotle taught that earthly things possessed accidents (size, shape, colour, texture) perceptible to the senses, and substance, their essential reality, known by the mind. According to Scholastic speculation, the substance of the Eucharistic bread is, by the power of God, wholly transformed into the body of Christ. This view of the presence of Christ, called transubstantiation, was most elaborately formulated by the 13th-century Italian theologian St Thomas Aquinas. It has been the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the Middle Ages, although the Council of Trent, which reasserted the doctrine against the Protestant reformers in the 16th century, did not include any philosophical speculation in its statement, asserting simply that an actual change occurred in the bread and wine.

In the 16th century Protestant reformers offered several alternative interpretations of the Eucharist. Martin Luther taught consubstantion; that Christ is present “in, with, and under” the elements, rather than that the elements of the bread and wine were changed in any way. The Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli denied any real connection between the bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ. He believed that at the celebration of the Last Supper, which recalls to worshippers the words and deeds of the Lord, Christ is with them by the power of the Holy Spirit. According to Zwingli, the bread and wine recall the Last Supper, but no metaphysical change takes place in them. John Calvin argued that Christ is present both symbolically and by his spiritual power, which is imparted by his body in heaven to the souls of believers as they partake of the Eucharist. This position, which has been called “dynamic presence”, occupies a middle ground between the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli. The current Anglican doctrine affirms the real presence of Christ, without specifying its mode.

Some modern theologians have attempted to recapture the ancient Judaic sense of remembering the acts of God (anamnesis). By invoking the presence of God and by remembering in His presence the events by which He has delivered them, worshippers live through those events as present events. Thus, just as each generation of Israelites participated year by year in the Exodus, the wanderings in the wilderness, and the crossing into Canaan, so each generation of Christians, week by week, participate in the Last Supper, the cross, and the Resurrection.

Eucharistic doctrine also concerns the sacrificial character of the sacrament—how the Eucharist is related to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican Churches have traditionally taught that the Eucharist is a means by which believers can partake of Christ’s sacrifice and the new covenant with God that it inaugurated. In popular belief this idea was sometimes interpreted to mean that each celebration of the Eucharist is a new sacrifice, rather than a partaking of the original sacrifice of Christ as officially taught by the Church. Protestants in general have been hesitant to apply sacrificial categories to celebrations of the Eucharist.