Narcissism and Nobility

Meditations on 1Corinthians

No. 20a

Discerning the Lord’s Body

1Cor 11.17-34

Introduction.

Everyone agrees that this passage is about discerning the Lord’s body in the context of the Lord’s Supper (1Cor 11.29), but there is widespread confusion over what that means.  The consensus since the late Middle Ages right up until today, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, has been that discerning the Lord’s body means discerning that the elements of the Lord’s Supper — the bread and the wine — relate to the historical body and blood of Christ in his atoning death on the cross.  Modern Protestant churches typically think the elements symbolize the body and blood of Christ, and the Roman Catholic church believes the elements become the body and blood of Christ through the miracle of transubstantiation.  But both agree that the point of the Lord’s Supper is to perceive and believe the connection between the elements and the body and blood of Christ, and that to fail to so perceive and believe is to fail to “discern the Lord’s body” and thus to take the Supper in an “unworthy manner” (1Cor 11.29).  And that is serious business because those to eat and drink in an unworthy manner eat and drink judgment to themselves, which has been known to result in sickness and even death (1Cor 11.29-30).  So the application is for us to judge ourselves — to make sure we are sufficiently appreciating the connection between the elements and the body and blood of Christ — so that we will not be judged (1Cor 11.31).

This approach is strong as a philosophy, but weak as an exegesis.  None of the sins Paul identifies in the text have a thing to do with failing to discern Christ’s historical body as represented by the elements of the Supper.  All of the sins have to do with failing to discern Christ’s corporate body (the church) as represented by individual believers (1Cor 11.18, 21, 22).  Similarly, Paul’s corrective commands pertain to discerning the corporate body of Christ (1Cor 11.33-34).  Finally, none of the problems Paul identifies would be remedied by redoubling one’s cognitive focus on the connection between the elements and the Lord’s body on the cross. How then can we continue to read this text and insist that Paul is talking about the connection between the elements and the body and blood of Christ?

How did we get here?  Some historical perspective.

The church from its early days has acknowledged that the Bible sets forth a three-fold sense of the body of Christ: (1) Christ’s historical body, his human body which is now in heaven, (2) Christ’s corporate or ecclesiastical body, the church, and (3) Christ’s eucharistic body, the bread eaten in the Lord’s Supper.

Peter Leithart has done an excellent job tracing the historical development of how the three-fold sense of the body of Christ has been regarded by the Church from the Middle Ages forward.  [Fn 1.]  Basically, prior to the high middle ages with the rise of scholasticism around 11th and 12th centuries, the focus of theologians was on the corporate body of Christ, the church.  The corporate body of Christ was viewed as the end or purpose of both the historical body of Christ and the eucharistic body of Christ.  The incarnation, God the Son’s taking of a historical , human body, was not an end of itself, but was a means to another end – – the formation of the corp. body of Christ, the new humanity through the sacrifice, resurrection, and ascension of the New Man, Jesus Christ.  Likewise, the eucharist or Lord’s Supper was not seen as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, again the formation of the corporate body of Christ.  As Christ himself put it when he instituted the Lord’s Supper, “This is my body broken for you.”  And, he is referring both to his historical body broken in death for us and to the eucharistic bread which is broken.  Both the historical body of Christ and the eucharistic body of Christ are broken to form the corporate body of Christ, the church.

So, the focus of eucharistic theology up through the early middle ages was on the relationship between the eucharist, the partaking of the bread and wine, and the corporate body of Christ; or to be more specific, between the eucharistic body, the bread, and the corporate body, the church.

With the rise of scholasticism in the high middle ages, there was a shift in emphasis.  The focus became the relationship between Christ’s eucharistic body, the bread, and Christ’s historical body in heaven.  Instead of focusing on how the eucharist as a meal forms many people into one corporate body of Christ, the focus shifted to how in the eucharist the bread becomes the historical body of Christ.

This shift was not subtle; it was radical.  For example, there was a complete reversal of definitions used in the theology of the Lord’s Supper.  If you asked an early medieval theologian to point to the “real body of Christ,” he would point to the church.  If you asked him to point to the “mystical body of Christ,” he would point to the bread.  If you asked a late medieval theologian to point to the “real body of Christ,” he would point to the bread, and if you asked him to point to the “mystical body of Christ,” he would point to the church.

This radical shift in focus led directly to the doctrine of transubstantiation, pursuant to which the bread, not visibly, but nevertheless really, is miraculously transformed into the historical body of Christ which is broken again in sacrifice for us at every mass.  I think we can see in this shift the growing influence of pagan Greek thinking.  Indeed, Thomas Aquinas, who did much to refine and articulate the doctrine of transubstantiation, openly relied on Aristotle’s philosophy of reality to explain how the bread became the body of Christ in its essence while still remaining bread outwardly.

So, while early and late medieval theologians agreed the purpose of the eucharist was to form the body of Christ, they differed radically on what that meant.  The early medieval theologians said the point was to form the body of Christ, the church.  The late medieval theologians said the point was to form the body of Christ in the bread.

One effect of this shift was to largely remove the eucharist from the people.  The end or purpose of the eucharist was reached once the priest confected the body of Christ out of the bread.  This was the whole point.  So, while many masses were performed, the people rarely partook of the bread and wine.  The people were largely incidental to the mass.  You would have a priest performing the mass in the front of the church while the people, if any, would be way in the back.  It was as though he was an OT priest in the Tabernacle, separated from the people who waited outside.  The people present would often just mill around the back of the church, talking and visiting while the priest was confecting the body of Christ out of the bread, at which time a bell was rung, and the priest would hold up the host, the bread, for the people to see.  Then the people would look toward the front to see the body of Christ  – – the bread miraculously transformed.  This was the central point of the mass.

With the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, the reformers tried to overcome these abuses and unscriptural elements.  They all agreed that the Supper needed to be returned to the people and transubstantiation rejected.  The reformers were successful in varying degrees in their efforts to return to a biblical view, but as a whole, the reformers never completely broke free of the assumptions and emphases of the scholasticism of the late middle ages.  The reformers debated the issues vigorously, but they were not successful in changes the terms of the debate or reframing the issues.  The late medieval obsession with the relationship between the historical body of Christ and the eucharistic bread continued to dominate and shape the debate.  So, much of the writings and interchanges of the reformers concerned that issue – – how, and in what way was the historical body of Christ in or at least present with the eucharistic bread?

As time has gone on, those late medieval assumptions, influenced as they were by pagan Greek thought, have grown like leaven until the whole lump, Roman Catholic and Protestant, has been leavened.  Catholics and Protestants are at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the connection between the bread and the historical body of Christ, and on how the eucharist forms the body of Christ, but both agree that that is the key issue.  So, once again, driving the debate, and going largely undetected, are common conceptions (misconceptions I would say).

The result is that the modern Protestant church, just like the late medieval church, has largely removed the Lord’s Supper from the people.  Protestants say the body of Christ is not in the bread, but they agree with the Roman Catholics on the fundamental assumption that if the bread is to communicate anything, the thing communicated must be contained within the bread.  The Roman Catholic’s say a miracle during the mass confects the body of Christ out of the bread, so that His body can literally be communicated through eating the bread.  Protestants deny any such miracle and say that the way the eucharist forms the body of Christ is by calling it to mind.  So, the body of Christ formed is the idea, which the people meditate on by faith.  This, then, is the point, the purpose, the end of the eucharist for most Protestants – – to confect Christ’s body and blood in your mind.  As with the late medieval church, it is not that important that the people partake of the Lord’s Supper – – that is not really the point.  With the Roman Catholics, the point is to confect the body and blood of Christ from bread and wine, and the people don’t really need to partake to do that.  With the Protestants, the point is to confect the body and blood of Christ in your mind, and the people don’t really need to partake to do that — you can do it in the privacy on your own mind any time you wish.  So, one often encounters in Protestant writings, even among the reformers, the idea that Christ ordained the Lord’s Supper as an accommodation to the weakness of our flesh and of our faith.  Implicit is the idea that if our faith was strong enough, we wouldn’t need carnal, material elements like bread and wine.  Out of deference to our Lord, we will follow his command, but we certainly don’t need to do so very often, because after all, the whole point is to think about Christ’s body and blood given for us.

(To be continued . . . )

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Footnotes

1. Peter Leithart, Liquid Gospel, Edible Words, audio recorded lectures from the 2002 Christ Church Ministerial Conference, Moscow, Idaho.