# The Eucharistic Host



## nominalist747 (Oct 11, 2006)

I must confess some discomfort with the overall physicality of even the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper. I really don't think that the current, risen, ascended, glorified flesh and blood--the stuff currently covering His bones and flowing through His veins--comes to us in the Supper. Rome was, at the time, setting the terms of the debate, and they set the terms as the question of the tissue and vital fluid per se. The Reformed at least put away the bizarre idea of transubstantiation, but I still don't think they fully escaped from the categories Rome set. 

(I should note that I do not consider John 6 to be truly sacramental, but primarily intended as a challenge (cf. v. 65: "for this reason..."), and given in a context very different from the Last/Lord's Supper (i.e., publicly, in the synagogue, rather than privately to the church). Am I right in thinking this is within the bounds of orthodoxy?)

The words of institution specifically refer to the body as broken and the blood as shed, not as risen. So, we "feed" by faith, not on Christ's risen meat and blood, but on His atoning sacrifice. So what does the risen Christ have to with the supper? Consider Paul's comparison in 1 Cor. 10:21: "the table of the Lord/the table of demons." (Notice also he refers to "partakers--_koinonous_--of demons" in v. 20, a parallel to v. 16, but I don't think anyone then or since has thought that eating the sacrifice to idols was actually eating the demons, as they have thought with the "partaking--_koinonia_--of the body and blood"!) Since he's referring here to Greek idolatry, it seems that the genitive construction with "table" refers to the one presiding at the table, the host, since this was often the role the gods were as having at the sacrifices. If you consider this in the context of the ancient guest/host relation (reflected in the magnitude of the betrayal conveyed by Mk. 14:18-20 & par.), then I suggest that the risen Christ participates in each communion meal as the Host, the one who invites us and to whom it is a deadly insult to reject the meal, or, having taken His food, to then betray Him. We come to Him by the Holy Spirit (cf. Heb. 12:22ff.), but it is to the full Person of the covenant Lord and Host, not just the muscular and circulatory systems. The Host idea is supported also by the act of Jesus related in John 13: Loud-Nida lists "to wash the feet" as 

34.59 (an idiom, literally 'to wash the feet,' derived from the practice of washing the feet of any guest entering the home) to show sincere and gracious hospitality to someone - 'to be very hospitable to.' 1 Tm 5.10. 

So it is not simply service, but the service of a Host...

Comments? Have I gone totally off the deep end of Reformed theology? I'd like to work this out more fully--am I wrong in thinking a helpful angle to take?


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## MW (Oct 11, 2006)

Reformed dogmaticians generally treat of the nature of OT sacraments in the context of sacramental efficacy; and the point that they establish, in distinction to Romanists and Lutherans, is that the sacraments of the NT have the same efficacy as the sacraments of the OT. I think it is an easy matter to discern whether a person is teaching the reformed view of the efficacy of the sacraments, and hence of the spiritual presence of Christ, by comparing what they say to circumcision and passover. If their view requires them to suggest the NT sacraments contain something substantially more than the OT sacraments, then it is a clear sign they are erring towards coporeality or the principle of the opus operatum.


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## tewilder (Oct 11, 2006)

> _Originally posted by nominalist747_
> I must confess some discomfort with the overall physicality of even the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper. I really don't think that the current, risen, ascended, glorified flesh and blood--the stuff currently covering His bones and flowing through His veins--comes to us in the Supper. Rome was, at the time, setting the terms of the debate, and they set the terms as the question of the tissue and vital fluid per se. The Reformed at least put away the bizarre idea of transubstantiation, but I still don't think they fully escaped from the categories Rome set.



You are confusing the Reformed view with the Lutheran view.

The Reformed deny that Christ is physically present, because that would be to confuse the natures (Christ's divine and human nature). The body is a real body, resurrected, and in one place. The Lutherans want to mix the attributes so that the omnipresence of the divinity attached to the body and it can be present in sacraments whenever and whereever they are held.

I have also heard Reformed Episcopal people insist that the sacrament of communion is communion with Christ's humanity and not his divinity, which would appear to neither Lutheran nor Reformed. Since these REC guys are among the ones receptive to the Federal Vision, one wonders what the FV position on this is.


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## Theogenes (Oct 11, 2006)

Hey T. E. Wilder!
I see you're from Oakdale, MN. I'm originally from White Bear Lake, MN! How long has your church been in Oakdale?
Jim


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## tewilder (Oct 11, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Jim Snyder_
> Hey T. E. Wilder!
> I see you're from Oakdale, MN. I'm originally from White Bear Lake, MN! How long has your church been in Oakdale?
> Jim



Oh, a dozen years or so.

There was someone from Whie Bear Lake who went to Westminster, California and may still be there. I forgot his name.


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## nominalist747 (Oct 11, 2006)

Calvin, Institutes 4.17. 5, 8, 9, 10

"For there are some who define the eating of the flesh of Christ, and the drinking of his blood, to be, in one word, nothing more than believing in Christ himself. But Christ seems to me to have intended to teach something more express and more sublime in that noble discourse, in which he recommends the eating of his flesh...Nay, the very flesh in which he resides he makes vivifying to us, that by partaking of it we may feed for immortality...so the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which transfuses into us the life flowing forth from the Godhead into itself...But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by our feeble capacity." _Notice that he is clearly referring to the current flesh and blood, since he asserts that they are at a great distince, and explicitly denies that eating is simply believing._

Belgic, Article 35

"...we err not, when we say, that what is eaten and drunk by us is the proper and natural body, and the proper blood of Christ. But the manner of our partaking of the same, is not by the mouth, but by the spirit through faith."


WLC, Answer 170:
"As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death."


So, the Reformed view does hold that the body and blood are really, though not physically, brought to us in the supper. My point is that only the last clause of WLC 170 ("while by faith...his death") seems to be clearly necessitated by Scripture, and everything that precedes it (and the similar statements, strongly physicalistic, in Calvin) was due not to exegesis, but to the historical circumstances in which Rome set the terms of the debate. 

I prefer the more reserved language of the HC, 75-76, which avoid the more direct physicalism of the literal and corporeal body and blood feeding our incorporeal souls and refer to eating and drinking as primarily a metaphor for belief.

Furthermore, the point is to understand better the nature of covenant meal, and Christ's role in it. I would say there is in fact a real presence, but it is a presence not simply passively as the sacrifice, but also actively as the host. I find more of the former, passive view in the Reformed tradition (the active role seems to be in the context of the heavenly tabernacle, where Christ exercises His priesthood, and I'm not denying this).

Note: Wilder brought up the FV guys--I'm not interested in their position here, but rather in whether this element of the guest-host relation, as a theme of major importance in the ancient world, is in fact at all applicable to the Supper and/or helpful in understanding it. These thoughts had first crossed my mind in the fall of 2000, well before I'd heard of the FV, so I'd rather discuss exegesis, etc. (e.g., of 1 Cor. 10:16, 20, & 21) than the current controversies. Unlike many, both pro and con, my whole interest or pursuit of theology is not determined by the FV.

[Edited on by nominalist747]


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