Calvin's Eucharist and Local Presence (Part 2)

In 1 Corinthians 11 the Apostle Paul is writing to a community that had failed to embody Christian koinonia. In that community, the eucharist had not yet been separated from the larger communal meal. Apparently when the Corinthian Christians came together, the meal would begin with the breaking of the bread, then each believer would “take out” (v. 21) his own meal to consume it without sharing (v. 21) or “waiting upon” (v. 33) others. This lack of mutual sharing, one getting drunk while another went hungry, underscored the social and economic inequities within the community and compounded the oppression of the poorer believers. The Apostle chastens them saying, "When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat." (v. 20). To paraphrase, St. Paul is saying, “You are celebrating a supper all right, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking that it is the Lord’s supper.” What is being described, then, is not a general instance of the manducatio impiorum, but the specific instance where a professing Christian congregation invalidated their eucharist by failing to discern their own identity as the ecclesial body of Christ. St. Paul looked at their foodways and saw no evidence that they had really understood the kingdom Christ was bringing into the world. The Corinthian church didn’t look like the Kingdom of God at all. It was as though Jesus had never been crucified. The scandalon is that this cognitive dissonance took place even as they communed in Christ’s sacramental body.

Should we wish to make the secondary application of this passage to general instances of the manducatio impiorum, it is important to keep the question of cognitive dissonance in mind. When St. Paul warns the Corinthian Christians regarding the “unworthy” or better “careless” reception of the eucharist, he is describing their failure to “discern” a body that is really and objectively present both sacramentally and ecclesiastically. If an unbeliever presents himself at the altar of a true Christian church, he objectively partakes of the sacramental body of Christ because he partakes in the objective presence of the gathered ecclesial body of Christ. Now it is true that an unworthy or careless participant in the eucharist, whatever his profession, eats and drinks only “judgement to himself,” but this is because of his failure to discern something that is objectively there. The ecclesial body and the sacramental body stand and fall together. For this reason, St. Paul says that unworthy participants are guilty, not of eating mere bread and wine only, but of “profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” Put simply, faith discerns the body and blood of Christ; it does not manifest them. The incarnation of the body of Christ is an objective reality and his being present is underwritten by the promise: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).

This manner of resolving the difficulty inherent in the question of the real presence has a real pastoral payoff and an inherent practical benefit. First, the notion that the real presence is restricted to those who receive with true faith would seem to annul the Reformed notion of sola gratia. As soon as the presence of Christ, and thus the validity of the eucharist, depends on the quality or character of our faith, we move from an economy of gift giving to an economy of exchange. Faith becomes the currency that procures the presence of Christ. This would not seem to represent a biblical understanding of how God manifests himself. To return briefly to prophetic conceptions of “day of Yahweh,” the sudden coming of the Lord to his temple is a given (Cf. Mal.3:1). While this coming of God may signal the advent of salvation or damnation—of vindication or desolation—the faithlessness of God’s people is irrelevant to his appearance. Indeed, when Christ fulfills the promise of Malachi it is in his “judgment” (contra “cleansing”) of the temple (Cf. Matt.21:12; Mk. 11:15; Jn.2:14-15). It is for this reason that prior to communing at table, our Book of Common Prayer prescribes the so-called “prayer of humble access” for the Priest who prays “in the name of all those who shall receive the communion:”

We do not presume to come to this, Thy table, trusting in our own righteousness but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under Thy table. But Thou art the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink His blood, that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us.

As clergy we can never give the appearance that we are turning people back upon themselves or their spiritual own resources as the means of their healing. Better here on pastoral grounds to prefer the Formula of Concord’s construal of the presence of Christ to that of Calvin:

We believe, teach, and confess that not only the true believers [in Christ] and the worthy, but also the unworthy and unbelievers, receive the true body and blood of Christ; however, not for life and consolation, but for judgment and condemnation, if they are not converted and do not repent, 1 Cor. 11, 27. 29.

For although they thrust Christ from themselves as a Savior, yet they must admit Him even against their will as a strict Judge, who is just as present also to exercise and render judgment upon impenitent guests as He is present to work life and consolation in the hearts of the true believers and worthy guests.

We believe, teach, and confess also that there is only one kind of unworthy guest, namely, those who do not believe, concerning whom it is written John 3, 18: He that believeth not is condemned already. And this judgment becomes greater and more grievous, being aggravated, by the unworthy use of the Holy Supper, 1 Cor. 11, 29.