COMMUNION ELEMENTS
COMMUNION ELEMENTS
Virgil Warren, PhD
I. Unleavened Elements
In regard to the nature of the elements of the Lord’s Supper, the basic fact is that Jesus instituted it during a Passover meal. Consequently, he used elements available at that feast.
A. The bread
Only unleavened bread was to be eaten in the Passover meal itself as well as during the preceding week (Exodus 12:8, 15-20; 13:6-7; Leviticus 23:4-8, 15; Deuteronomy 16:3-4, 8). This was such a prominent feature of the Passover that it was even called “the feast of unleavened bread” (Deuteronomy 16:16, etc.). Anyone disobeying this rule was “cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether a sojourner or one born in the land" (Exodus 12:15, 19).
B. The cup
1. Observations suggesting that unfermented wine would have been used at the
Passover
a. Passover texts about leaven apparently do not refer just to unleavened bread. No leaven itself was to be “in all their borders,” in their houses (Exodus 12:15), and no one was to eat anything leavened (Exodus 12:19-20). These provisions may indicate that no spoiled food was to be kept in the home. Since fermentation is accomplished by the same process that leavens bread, if nothing leavened was to be eaten, it would seem to be in the spirit of the feast not to drink leavened fruit of the vine as part of the meal.
b. The liquid element of the Lord’s Supper is never called “wine” (οἶνος, [oinos]) in the New Testament. It is always designated “the cup” (Matthew 26:27 = Mark 14:23 = Luke 22:20 = 1 Corinthians 11:25-28; 1 Corinthians 10:16, 21) or “the fruit [γέννημα] of the vine” (Matthew 26:29 = Mark 14:25 = Luke 22:18). The second expression is not apt to be a euphemism, as is occasionally suggested, because “wine” is hardly a term that calls for a euphemism. Although it is a technical point, even if οἶνος [oinos] were used of the Lord’s Supper, it could mean “must,” or unfermented wine (Matthew 9:17).
c. In connection with the Lord’s Supper some have noted that the New Testament uses “leaven” to symbolize evil influence (Matthew 16:5-12 = Mark 8:14-21; cp. Luke 12:1-3; 1 Corinthians 5:1-8; Galatians 5:9), but it does not always mean evil influence (Matthew 13:33 = Luke 13:21) and therefore that leavened bread or grape juice would be inappropriate in divine observances. No point about leaven as symbolism for evil, however, is ever made in connection with the Passover bread or the communion bread. Instead, the lack of leaven is originally connected with the Israelites’ hurried departure from Egypt (Exodus 12:11); they did not have time to knead the dough, put leaven (yeast) in it, and let it rise. This not waiting would not apply to grape juice with leaven in it, that is, fermenting juice. People would not be waiting to let the grape juice become what the fermentation would produce.
d. Probably the bottom line is that there is no reason to use wine, especially in our circumstance, where grape juice is so readily available. Furthermore, it must be remembered that natural fermentation process, the only one available in antiquity, creates less than 3% alcohol content. Even then, the Greeks usually mixed water with their wine, a practice adopted among the people of Palestine by the first century A.D. The situation today is obviously quite different.
2. Counter considerations
a. The question about the elements needs to be conditioned by the fact that the Lord’s Supper was instituted at a Passover meal. Had it been instituted at another time, would Jesus have worried with getting unleavened bread to represent his body? The lack of leaven is not a stated part of the symbolism in the supper, but it did bear a significance to the Passover. The base question on the elements, then, is whether the precise form of them is a function of the Passover meal, and we should not make its peculiarities determinative for the Lord’s Supper.
b. Today Jewish people use regular wine in the Passover feast without supposing that they are breaking the ancient Passover regulations. This may not have been the original practice, however, since “the earliest evidence for the use of wine at Passover comes from the Hellenistic period” (Judith 49:6; New International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, IV:1070).
c. The vintage season for grapes came in the fall—around September—while the Passover feast was in the spring—March/April. Grape juice from even the most recent harvest would still have been potentially intoxicating at the Passover and Pentecost feasts (“new wine,” cp. Acts 2:13, 15). After six months significant fermentation would have taken place. Although the Israelites—at least by the first century—had pneumatic sealing, it is doubtful that under normal conditions they would have used it for grape juice.
d. In his comments to the Corinthian church, Paul notes that during the Lord’s Supper some people were “drunken,” which could imply fermented wine (1 Corinthians 11:21). However, Paul is describing an agape feast of which the Lord’s Supper was a part. In so doing, he contrasts “drunken” (μεθύω [methyō]) with hungry (πεινάω, peianō 11:21) and connects it with both drinking and eating (11:22), facts which would suggest that he means “satiated” or “stuffed,” rather than intoxicated (note John 2:10).
About the only positive comment we could give for fermented wine is that one-cup communion would be less liable to spread disease if “real” wine is used.
II. “This is my body”; “this is my blood” (Matthew 26:26 + 28 = Mark 14:22 + 24 = Luke
22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24; cp. 11:27, 29).
A. “Is” means “represents.” In the mind of the participant the elements of the Lord’s Supper are “transformed” into the body and blood of Jesus; that is, the participant views the emblems as having that meaning.
1. In the context of the institution, Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 have Jesus say of the liquid element, “This is the new covenant in my blood” instead of saying, “This is my blood.” Presumably the two statements are regarded as equivalent with the implication that “is” means “represents.” A “covenant” is not something substantive.
2. A figurative significance is found in similar texts both on the lips of Jesus and in the mouth of Paul (cp. Matthew 13:37-39; Luke 11:8; 15:26; John 10:6; 12:48; Galatians 4:24-25; cp. John 6:51- 58).
3. Jesus himself—hence, all of his body and blood—is present when he tells the disciples that the bread and cup are his body and blood. Therefore, when he refers to something besides his body as his body, he means something other than body and blood.
B. The doctrine of “real presence” says that at the prayer of consecration by the administrator of the sacraments, the bread and grape juice are (ontologically, hypostatically) transformed into the real body and blood of the Lord (transubstantiation), or the actual body and blood of Jesus are mystically intermingled with the bread and grape juice (consubstantiation).
1. As a matter of plain fact, in the process of observing the Lord’s Supper, the elements do not change any characteristics perceivable to the senses. They look, taste, and feel like bread and grape juice.
Despite the lack of perceivable change in the elements, the claim is that though the “accidents” admittedly do not change, the “essence” changes at the prayer of consecration. This essence-accidents distinction comes from Greek philosophy, which distinguished between real and ideal; the accidents were the sum total of the material characteristics, and the essence was the ideal nature.
We simply reject the supposed distinction by saying that the real is all that ever really exists; the real is the sum total of all characteristics and associations. The supposed ideal is merely the formal, mental concept a person has in his mind about the real; the “ideal” has no existence apart from the mind. The real-ideal distinction involves a subjective-objective confusion. Under that confusion Jesus would have been eating himself. The job here is not disproving the essence-accidence distinction, but what is the basis for it.
2. The liquid element is called “fruit of the vine” after he prays, after he enjoins his disciples to partake of it, and after he says that he will not drink of it until he does so with them in his Father’s kingdom (Matthew 26:27). Consequently, even today what he drinks with us when we drink it is still “fruit of the vine.”
3. In the course of the institution, the same item is called in the one case “the cup,” “the fruit of the vine,” and “my blood”; and in the other case “the loaf” and “my body.” Even on an assumption about essence-accident distinction, the same thing could not be all three things—blood, a cup, fruit of the vine—at the same time in the same sense. It is therefore arbitrary to pick blood as what it essentially is (ad hominem argument from consistency).
4. Christ no longer has a flesh-and-blood body because he has been glorified, and henceforth we know him no longer after the flesh (2 Corinthians 5:16). It is not until our glorified condition comes that we will be like him and therefore able to see him as he is (1 John 3:2).
5. The observance is to be in remembrance of Jesus. If the bread and cup are actually his body and blood, his actual essence would be present in a substantial sense. We wonder whether it would be likely to call the observance a “memorial” in such a circumstance.
6. By way of comparison, the water-become-wine at the marriage feast in Cana is called wine after Jesus miraculously changed it from being water. It looked and tasted like wine (John 2:1-10). A similar observation could be made about the water Moses miraculously changed to blood in Egypt (Exodus 4:9); it looked like (Exodus 7:20) and tasted like (Exodus 7:24) blood. Similarly, if the fruit of the vine were miraculously changed to real blood, it would have been perceived as such; from control cases there are no analogies for anything else (argument from analogy).
7. The hypostatic reading of the statement does not bear its positive burden of proof, whereas the emblematic reading can do so. No positive basis can be given for a hypostatic reading of Christ’s words over against a figurative reading. Surely a figurative significance (metaphor) to his words gives a sufficient relevant meaning, as when we say of a picture on the desk, “This is my wife.” In other words, “is” means “means” or “represents.” (Note the hermeneutical problem called “reification”; Interpretation: Getting the Point, p. 52).
8. Christianity concerns itself with interpersonal matters rather than ontological ones. The kind of cause must conform to the kind of result (the “law of the harvest”). Consequently, we have no positive basis for supposing that ontological considerations belong to an act that has spiritual significance as per the purpose of the faith in general.
A similar confusion ontologizes behavioral/relational/personal as demonstrated in the ancient pagan practice of eating the heart of a brave man slain in battle as a way of becoming brave and strong. A characteristic of behavior learned by experience is conceived of as transmitted by matter. Our eating the body and blood of Christ is not something that has value in the ontological realm or in an ontological sense; we internalize his values and purposes symbolically by “ingesting” what represents what he as a flesh-and-blood man of God stood for while he was among us.
III. Substituting Other Elements for Unleavened Bread and the Fruit of the Vine
In some parts of the world, grapes are not readily available. Other fruit drinks have been substituted rather than importing grapes and cultivating them for communion purposes. Less understandable, however, is the idea of replacing the traditional elements with hamburgers and coke just to become “culturally relevant” or to do something different.