A brief statement is needed as to the Eucharistic doctrine of non-episcopal religious bodies. Since the time of the Westminster Assembly and of the foreign Protestant Confessions of the Reformation period most of the non-episcopal bodies in England and abroad, except those Lutherans who have maintained the beliefs of Luther, have held opinions either Calvinist or Zwinglian. The very remarkable attempts of the Lutheran theologian Godfrey William Leibnitz towards the end of the seventeenth century to promote a reconciliation between Roman Catholic and Protestants abroad, which should include the allowance of the doctrine of Transubstantiation or a doctrine not strongly distinguished from it, wholly failed. As to the teaching of the non-episcopal theologians in the nineteenth century and at the present time, a very few representative instances may suffice.
Among the more eminent Lutheran theologians of the nineteenth century were the Danish Dr. Martensen and the German Dr. Dorner. Both these writers adopt the later Lutheran doctrine of a gift of the body and blood of Christ under the veil of the elements, but not so closely associated with the elements as to imply that they are the body and blood apart from the administration and reception of the Sacrament. Dr. Dorner in his System of Christian Doctrine says:—
“In the Supper … believers are to be made directly partakers of the body and blood of Christ as the true Paschal Lamb, and therewith of His Personality, His merit and life. Certainly it is founded also in memory of Him, and this element ought not to be undervalued, precisely because it recalls most definitely the intention of Jesus, that it should be repeated. It is ordained in remembrance of Him, and therefore for the future.… What is the more precise meaning of the words of institution? They are not handed down to us in uniform terms, from which it may justly be inferred, since the early Church received these different forms without opposition, that they all contain what is essential. At least the essential part must not be discovered in that in which they vary. Now, that ἐστί may mean ‘signifies’ is beyond question, and ought never to have been denied. In proof, it is enough to refer to the interpretation of the parables. The meaning then certainly is: The bread is a figure of My body.… Since … the elements in the sacred act exist to be partaken of, and are partaken of, denoting consequently a gift to be received, and since the words ‘Eat, drink,’ cannot mean a past or future gift, all that is left to be said is: The symbolism denotes a present gift offered to be partaken of; the elements are aliments. But that which is offered under the symbolic veil of the elements is described by Christ in the words ‘My body,’ and ‘My blood,’ by which, in opposition to anything merely ideal or merely material, is meant the entire reality of His Personality, Christ Himself with body and blood; and in order to understand the full meaning of the act instituted for all future time, we must go back to the import of Christ’s Person in general, and its relation to believers as their Head, to His parable of the vine and branches, to His words of promise, such as, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’; ‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world’; further, to His exaltation to be the Head of the Church and the glorification of His entire Person; finally, in general to His loving purpose, which desires to give Himself with princely generosity unreservedly to His people.… It was in keeping with the indefiniteness and looseness of the relation of the elements to the thing that the elements played an independent part alongside the Sacrament as a Communion, and were specially employed in divine worship. Since sacrificial gifts were also joined with the Supper as thank-offerings for the benefits of Christ, the Holy Supper became a ‘Eucharist,’ and a sacrifice, certainly not of Christ, but of the earthly sacrificial gifts. The Supper was only changed into the Sacrificium of the Mass after the earthly elements had vanished into a mere semblance through the Transubstantiation-doctrine of Paschasius Radbert and Lanfranc. Christ’s body and blood were put in their place, and treated in just the same way as the elements had been before, namely, as a sacrifice.… The view taken by the Lutheran Church of the connexion of Christ with the elements is not so rigid that it approves the above expressions (which are rather expressly rejected), or that it makes a material imprisonment of Christ (impanatio) take place. Further, the unio sacramentalis with the elements is not made so indissoluble as to take place also extra usum. The presence of Christ is not to be conceived after the manner of the presence of the elements (not locally), but a modus supernaturalis of the presence obtains; and the view is earnestly repudiated that the manducatio oralis is a Capernaitica one, for only the elements, not Christ’s body and blood, experience a lacerari dentibus.… Not merely does the universal Lutheran doctrine affirm that the unworthy do not receive the spiritual blessing annexed to faith, although the sacramental contents are objectively present to man along with the elements, and are presented, that is, offered, to every one, but a difference is made between the spiritual and material eating.… The notion of partaking of Christ, or at least of His body and blood, as a punitive Judge is incongruous, because partaking affirms a union or assimilation, whereas the Judge stands outside and above Him who is punished.… Every theory must in the end go back to the promise of Christ, to the effect that He desires to be the present gift in the Supper. That promise implies, therefore, that the present Christ really offers Himself through the entire act to every one taking the outward elements, consequently to unbelievers also. As Christ truly and earnestly offers grace in the word, and as far as He is concerned not merely to believers, so is it in the Holy Supper. The objective grace exists for all, and this is the essential point; but there is a difference in the taking, and hence in the effect also. As unbelief only receives the sensible word with the bodily ear, while the inner ear or heart is closed to the meaning and truth of the word, so too may it be in the Holy Supper. The saving blessing is rejected by the unbeliever, therefore not accepted. And since the unbeliever takes the elements like the believer, and Christ offered Himself in the act in which the unbeliever takes part under the guise of a believer, unbelief renders void Christ’s promise and purpose, which held good also to him, by this wicked, hypocritical conduct; and whereas he receives nothing but the elements, thus making the Sacrament a common eating or empty ceremony, he sins against the Lord and draws down judgment on himself.… The God-man received by faith through the Holy Spirit is the real power that reconciles all antitheses, the antitheses of nationalities and individuals, in the last resort even the antithesis between nature and spirit. In Him is given the new and true humanity, in which likeness to God is realised also in the world, appearing in His glorified corporeity. Hence the Holy Supper is also a real bond of communion between all the members. Every individuality is destined to be transfigured through Him, and made a reflex of His glory. And for this very reason, through the instrumentality of the faith that receives Christ, the Holy Supper operates also as the principle of reconciliation between all antitheses in the individual personality, and therefore as the principle of pneumatic corporeity such as will be exhibited in the resurrection-body.”
Like teaching to this of Dr. Dorner’s is contained in Dr. Martensen’s Christian Dogmatics.
“The Lutheran doctrine is opposed not only to the doctrine of Transubstantiation, but to the Calvinistic separation of heaven and earth likewise. Christ is not in a literal manner separate from His believing people, so that they must go to heaven in order to find Him. Christ is on the right hand of God; but the right hand of God is everywhere. Dextera Dei ubique est. And therefore He is present wholly and entirely (totus et integer) in His Supper, wherein He in an especial manner wills to be. There are not in the ordinance two acts, one heavenly and one earthly, distinct from each other, but the heavenly is comprehended in the earthly and visible act, and is organically united therewith, thus constituting one sacramental act. The heavenly substance is communicated in, with, and under the earthly substances. And as the sacramental Communion is not a partaking of the corporeal nature of Christ apart from His spiritual nature, no more is it a mere partaking of the spiritual nature of Christ apart from His corporeity. It is one and undivided, a spiritual and corporeal communion.… The idea which lies at the foundation of the Lutheran doctrine regarding the Lord’s Supper … is … the idea of Christ as the Head of that new creation whose final end is the redemption and perfecting of human nature as a whole, as undivided body and soul.… The Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper … sees … not only, like Calvin, an aliment for the soul, but an aliment for the whole new man, for the future man of the resurrection, who is germinating and growing in secret, and who shall be manifested in glory in exact likeness with the glorified humanity of his Lord.… The whole and undivided Christ gives Himself as the aliment of the new man in the Lord’s Supper.… The act here in question is not a literal eating of Christ according to the notion of the Jews at Capernaum, but it is one whereby we are made partakers of Christ as the principle of the entire new creation of man, and of the future humanity of the resurrection which shall be revealed in that day. Here we have to do, not with a presence of Christ literally defined according to the category of place, but with a presence in which the higher heavenly sphere invisibly penetrates the lower and the earthly, a presence in power, in working, in gift; for in His gifts He gives Himself.… It follows … that the Calvinistic notion that Christ is present only for the faithful must be rejected. For the word and command of God, not the faith or devotion of man, make the Sacrament; and as the seed-corn is the same, whether it fall into good or into bad ground, so is it with the Sacrament.… Unbelievers also who partake of the Sacrament come into actual relation with the All-holy; and, though we cannot say of them that they eat the Sacrament, that is, make it their food, yet we must say that they receive it.… It is not weakness of faith, nor deficiency in doctrinal insight, which causes a person to eat condemnation to himself. It is the unhallowed sense which fails to discern the Lord’s body, to discern between the holy and the profane, and which draws nigh to the Table of the Lord without preparation or self-examination. As we oppose the Calvinistic principle that the presence of Christ is conditional upon faith, we equally reject the Romish representation that the consecrated bread and the consecrated wine are the body and blood of Christ apart from the receiving thereof. For the presence of Christ in the Eucharist extends only so far as the words of institution extend; but the words of institution are inseparable from the distribution and the receiving of the bread and wine. The Lord has instituted His Supper as one undivided act, and to separate one single element from the ordinance for a holy use is arbitrary and without promise. We therefore reject the adoration of the host in the Romish Church, a rite which depends upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the notion connected therewith of the sacrifice of the Mass.… The doctrine of Transubstantiation expresses a false relation of unity of the kingdom of nature and of grace, because the former is interwoven with the latter.… The Calvinistic doctrine regarding the Lord’s Supper rests upon an overt principle of dualism between the kingdom of grace and that of nature, a dualism so thorough that the Lord’s Supper is literally divided into two distinct acts, the one in heaven, the other on earth.… The Lutheran doctrine regarding the Lord’s Supper rests neither upon a dualism between nature and grace nor upon a transformation of the one into the other, but upon an inner marriage of the heavenly and earthly substance. But this inner marriage of the supernatural and the natural, of the heavenly and earthly, is the fundamental feature of Lutheranism, and is reflected in its whole worship, in all its services, in its poetry, in its customary world-life.”
A representative instance of the kind of Eucharistic doctrine prevalent among many non-episcopal Christians is to be seen in the teaching of the eminent Wesleyan theologian of the nineteenth century, Dr. William Burt Pope, in his treatise entitled A Compendium of Christian Theology. The Eucharist is there described as a memorial among Christians of the sacrifice of Christ, and a sign and pledge of the salvation and nourishment received from Christ. Dr. Pope writes:—
“The Lord’s Supper is a rite ordained by our Lord for perpetual observance in His Church as a sacramental feast in which bread and wine are signs of His sacred body and blood offered in one oblation on the cross, and seals of the present and constant impartation to the believer of all the benefits of His passion. In this Supper the Church joyfully and thankfully celebrates before the world the sacrifice once presented in the past, until He come again without sin unto salvation. Moreover, the Lord’s people partake of the elements as the symbol of a common Christian life and sustentation, as the mutual pledge of union and brotherly fellowship, with all its enjoyments and obligations. Thus, this ordinance is the Sacrament, as it signifies and seals the mystical nourishment of Christ; the Eucharist, as commemorating the sacrifice of redemption; and the Communion, as the badge of united Christian profession.”
“The true doctrine generally is that which bears in mind the design of the ordinance to be a sign to the believing Church of all the blessings purchased by the oblation of the one sacrifice for sins, and a seal to the believer of his constant and present interest in those blessings. Whatever other ends it subserves, as a perpetual memorial of the life and death of Christ, as a badge of union among Christian people, and as a sacred service in which all holy affections and purposes are quickened, it is also the abiding exhibition to the eye, in sensible emblems, of the blood of atonement and the bread of life, and also a pledge to those who accept the propitiation, as it is offered to penitent and believing faith, of their present and constant and eternal heritage of life in Jesus. Each of the terms sign and seal must have its full meaning preserved, while they are made one to the eye and hand and experience of living faith. That which the sign represents and the seal pledges is a benefit proceeding from Christ which must not be separated from Christ Himself. It is not the Holy Spirit save as He is the Spirit of Jesus.”
As an instance of modern Presbyterian teaching, some passages from Dr. J. C. Lambert’s The Sacraments in the New Testament, the Kerr Lectures for 1903, may be quoted:—
“We feel bound to maintain, on the plain evidence of the New Testament, and on every ground of historic probability as well, that Jesus both intended and instructed that the Supper should be repeated, and that His purpose was that it should become a regular ordinance for the Christian Church. So regarded, its meaning in the mind of Christ appears, in the main, to have been threefold:—
“(1). In the first place, it was designed to be a commemoration of His own death of sacrifice, by which the new covenant was established. This is shown by its connection with the memorial feast of the old dispensation out of which it sprang, as well as by the express injunction in which its chief purpose is clearly summed up, ‘This do in remembrance of Me’.
“(2). In the next place, it was meant to be a means of communion. There was to be a real communion in it with Christ Himself, a truth which is indicated by the fact that Jesus not only used the bread and wine as symbols of His body and blood, but gave them to His disciples to eat and drink; and, further, by the circumstance that, as His death was represented as the sacrifice of the new covenant, the Supper was thereby shown to be the covenant meal of the new dispensation, in which, as in other covenant meals, a genuine fellowship was established between the members of the covenant and their Head. In this latter aspect of it as a covenant feast, the Lord’s Supper was also intended to be the occasion of a communion not only of Christians with Christ, but of fellow-Christians with one another.
“(3). Once more, it was the pledge of Christ’s promised return, and a foretaste of a fuller fellowship between Him and His disciples in the consummated kingdom of God.”
“To sum up the doctrinal teaching of Paul with regard to the Lord’s Supper, we may say:—
“1. In the first place, and this is his fundamental conception, the Supper is a commemoration of the Lord’s death. This does not mean, however, that the celebration of the rite is nothing but the raising of a monument beside the highway of time to a great historic fact of the past. On Paul’s lips the proclamation of the Lord’s death on the part of Christians is the proclamation of His redeeming sacrifice, and so includes faith in Christ Himself as the Redeemer of His people. And, as this faith, which the Apostle certainly assumes, is the basis of all communion with Christ, whatever special forms communion may take, it is absurd to attempt to make out any contradiction between the thought of the Supper as a commemoration and the thought of it as a communion and participation. Rather, in the very proclamation of the Lord’s death there is a communion by faith with the Lord Himself, and an appropriation of the blessings that flow from His sacrifice.
“2. But, further, Paul looked upon the Supper as a communion with the Lord in a sense that is special and peculiar. He did not imagine that Christ was objectively present in the elements, or that there was some specific religious content in the bread and wine, whether sensible or supersensible, which is communicated in no other way to the bodies and souls of Christian people. But He believed that in this ordinance of His own appointing the Lord draws near to offer Himself with all the fruits of His redeeming death to faithful hearts, and that faith, quickened by seeing and touching and tasting the outward symbols, through which it is brought into direct historical contact with Him who first put the bread and the wine into the hands of His disciples, may be drawn out at the Supper with unusual warmth and freeness to conscious fellowship with the Saviour and conscious appropriation of His saving gifts. And, further, He believed that in the Lord’s Supper Christians may realise as nowhere else, not only their communion with Christ Himself, but their fellowship with one another in the unity of the body, of which Christ Jesus is the Head.
“3. Once more, although this is a thought to which he only alludes, Paul conceived of the Supper as containing within it the promise of the Lord’s glorious return.”
With these expositions of Dr. Lambert may be compared some statements by Mr. R.M. Adamson of Ardrossan in his book The Christian Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, published in 1905:—
“That at least in this great Action communicants make loving remembrance of their Lord is admitted upon all hands. But, however precious this mode of remembrance may be (so precious is it that there can be no true Communion without it), we cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that Christendom as a whole has ever been strenuous in maintaining that the Sacrament means a great deal besides, and that far more important than any devout or loving act on our part is the substantial gift bestowed upon us by God through this holy ordinance.… A supper enjoyed by guests is essentially something given by the host.… What exactly is the divine gift?… The nature and the greatness of that gift can be expressed only by saying that it consists of Christ Himself. The real gift to be obtained through the Sacrament is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.… The expression ‘the body and blood of Christ’ signifies His whole Personality.… The richest and most liberal nature ever known among men is that of Jesus Christ. All who come in vital contact with Him know themselves to be gainers. In proportions largely conditioned by their own receptivity and faith, they feel that the divine life so abundant in Him tends to infuse itself into them.… If, then, this experience of Christ as properly a gift be found peculiarly real in the Supper, there should be no difficulty in attaching definite meaning to the assertion that what Christ gives therein is truly Himself, Himself in all the offices and relationships which He has sustained and does sustain towards mankind collectively and individually. In the Last Supper with His disciples, the first of the new covenant, He gave Himself to them in a manner conditioned by the circumstances. He being not yet crucified and risen, not yet perfected and glorified, the gift of Himself could not have that completed character which it afterwards assumed. Yet the first Communion was a true one, in that the partakers enjoyed a fresh reception of Christ through the sacramental medium. After the Lord had been sacrificed, after He had risen and ascended and shed forth His Pentecostal Spirit, after His disciples’ eyes were opened to the significance of all that, the gift of God in His Son became unspeakably amplified. Henceforward the exalted Saviour carries within Himself the gathered force of all His redemptive achievement, and communicates that force to His people through all the media of grace, specially the Sacrament of His body and blood. And, finally, however little we may be able to imagine the precise mode in which the perfect communion of eternity is to be realised, it is promised that the heavenly period shall be gladdened by a blessed Marriage Supper, in which the affiance of Christ and His own shall be as intimate, as mutual, and as indissoluble as is the most ideal union between bridegroom and bride, the most unimpeded marriage of true minds. The proper gift, then, of the Sacrament is the manifold entity of the God-Man as He now exists.… To assert the reality of such a gift in the Sacrament is in some sort to assert the real presence of Christ.… There should be no difficulty regarding the general statement that Christ is present with His people in the sacred action. To state that fact is to affirm a real presence.… To be conscious of Christ’s presence is simply to be conscious of the living energy of the Lord. And, if the vital powers of His nature are felt in the Eucharistic service, there can be no disadvantage but rather a gain in predicating His presence. Further, it would be consistent with this to call such a presence objective.… The theory which the present writer is endeavouring to construct certainly demands an objective presence of Christ amongst the communicants of His body and blood.… This is not to view the Sacrament as a mode of existence for Christ apart from the presence of communicating souls. The simple idea of presence implies a subject as well as an object. It is to communicants as subjects that Christ is objectively present: take away the subjects, and to speak of presence at all is a meaningless use of words. Hence our insistence upon the necessity of faith on the part of communicants; and hence the truth of the statement that it is in the believer’s heart that Christ’s presence is realised. When, therefore, we say that Christ is in the Sacrament, we can only mean that He is mediately present therein.… We have consistently spoken of Christ being present in the Sacrament as contrasted with the elements merely. The distinction is one of the highest importance; and, if it had more frequently been kept in mind, a considerable deal of superstition might have been avoided. When we say that Christ is present in the Sacrament, what we strictly mean is that the Sacrament is a means whereby Christ makes Himself felt by His people.… A real Communion involves faith in the Gospel of the Son of God together with a whole series of ritual actions. Of these actions the principal are the gathering together in the name of Jesus, the worship of God in prayer and praise, the hearing of His word read and declared, the confession of sins and of faith in Christ, adhesion to the Church as the body of Christ, recognition of the unity of the members of the Church, the offerings of the faithful; and then the consecration of the elements by thanksgiving, blessing, or invocation, together with the pronouncement of Christ’s words, followed by the fraction and distribution; also on the part of the communicants the believing reception, the dividing perhaps among themselves, along with all interior acts of devotion. Here we have the process of a great spiritual function, in the course of which Christ makes Himself specially present as a Power and a Gift.… There is … no warrant for singling out bread and wine, or both together, and attempting to view them as the particular centres of the Lord’s presence. Certainly within the Sacrament the things that answer pictorially to Christ’s body and blood are the bread and wine, but the analytic attempt to press the identification is really a kind of afterthought which causes us to part company with the informing idea of the whole.”
“A great many outward and inward acts go to make up the great sacred action called the Lord’s Supper, and every one of these acts is of the nature of those ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ’. … If all prayer be … sacrificial, especially so is that prayer which is offered in the peculiarly holy circumstances of the Supper.… The element of thanksgiving, whether in praise, prayer, gifts, or services, is especially described in Scripture as being sacrificial, and the Eucharist is the Thanksgiving.… While the more real sacrifice of persons consists in character and conduct, yet Christians present their persons to God as they approach the Lord’s Table. That aspect of sacrifice in which a material gift is prominent finds some place in the Eucharist. Every material thing necessary to its celebration, and devoted to that sacred purpose, is an offering or sacrifice to God.… The most costly of the material oblations consists in the money gifts made at Communion.… With regard to all such acts of worship and offering there is … express Scriptural sanction for speaking of them as sacrifices. Needless to say, however, they are on a plane altogether inferior, and in a category altogether different from the one and only sacrifice of the world’s Redeemer.… True as it is that Christ’s mediatory life in heaven is a life for us, the introduction of the appellation sacrifice is somehow not altogether happy. And, even if it were from some points of view appropriate, the Eucharist cannot under this head be called sacrificial. At best it could only be a means of grace in dependence upon Christ’s heavenly mediation.”
The teaching of Dr. Lambert and that of Mr. Adamson are not wholly identical, and both of them are expressed in view of the circumstances of recent times. In their essential features they closely resemble the doctrine which has been taught by many Anglican divines, as, for instance, by Bishop Beveridge.
An interesting treatment from a Presbyterian source of the idea of the heavenly sacrifice of Christ and the connection of the Eucharist with it rejected by Mr. Adamson in the last two of the sentences quoted above is in the Baird Lecture for 1891, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, by Dr. William Milligan, then Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism in the University of Aberdeen.
“There can be no doubt that in” “the Eucharistic Service of the Church” “the idea of offering is more fully and forcibly expressed than in any other Christian ordinance, or that the Church has throughout her history felt this to be the case. With the exception of a comparatively small number in recent times, her members have never been able to rest in the idea that the Sacrament of the Supper is simply a memorial of the death of Christ. They have beheld in it, in one sense or another, an offering which they make to God, as well as a remembrance of what God has done for them.… The offering … made in the Eucharist is not an offering of death.… The Eucharist is an oblation in which the offerer, offering himself, lives, having accepted death as the penalty of sin in Him who died upon the cross; but having now through death entered into life, the life of Him who died once, and dieth no more. As the Lord’s offering of Himself to His heavenly Father never ends, or can end, so in that offering His people, organically united to Him, one with Him, must be offered, and must offer themselves; and this they do in the expressive and touching symbols of the Eucharist. They do not simply remember what Jesus did on earth. They bring to remembrance as a present fact what He is doing in heaven. They commemorate, they hold communion with, they accept, and at His Table are nourished by, a living Lord,—‘in remembrance of Me,’ of Me, not as I was, but as I am, to the end of time. Christ Himself, spiritually present with them, is the life of their souls; His body and blood there given them are the substance of their feast; and living in Him, and obtaining in Him pardon, peace, and strength, they transact here below what He is transacting in the heavenly sanctuary. In the Sacrament of the Supper, in short, they offer themselves in Him who is now and for ever an offering to the Father.”