Lord's Supper, one of the sacraments of the Christian religion, so called from its being instituted at supper by the Lord Jesus Christ. It receives also the names of Encharist and Communion. With the exception of the Quakers, all sects of Christians, however different their views as to its nature, agree in celebrating it as one of the most sacred rites of religion. The present article is written from the point of view of those who admit more or less the idea of a historical development of the doctrines connected with the Lord's Supper; the views of Roman Catholics, who hold that the doctrines of their church on the subject were delivered by our Lord and His apostles, and have from the first centuries been taught in substance in the church, will be found under TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
The circumstances of sorrow amid which it was instituted, and its intimate relation to the crowning work of Jesus, His death, had, at the very outset, made a deep impression upon the early church. We have four accounts of the institution, one from each of three evangelists, and one from St Paul (1 Cor. x., xi.): and those who hold the doctrine of the Real Presence see in John vi. an allusion to the Eucharist. Not only was the solemnity, in conformity with the original institution, repeated daily in conjunction with the so-called 'Love-feasts' (Agape, q.v.), and retained as a separate rite when these feasts were set aside, but at a very early period it was believed to possess a peculiar efficacy, and soon ideas of the wonderful and mystical became associated with it. The Lord's Supper was celebrated on every important occasion of life—as when entering on marriage—or to commemorate departed friends and martyrs; to those that could not be present at the meeting of the congregation, such as prisoners and sick persons, the indispensable food of heaven was carried by the deacons, and in some churches the communicants took part of the materials of the feast home with them, that they might welcome the gift of a new day with consecrated food. Heathens and unworthy persons, and Catechumens (q.v.) also, were excluded from this holy mystery. As early as the 2d century, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenæus advance the opinion that the mere bread and wine become, in the Eucharist, something higher—the earthly, something heavenly—without, however, ceasing to be bread and wine. Though these views were opposed by some eminent individual Christian teachers, such as Origen, who took a figurative conception of the sacrament, and depreciated its efficacy, yet both among the people and in the ritual of the church, more particularly after the 4th century, the miraculous or supernatural view of the Lord's Supper gained ground. After the 3d century the office of presenting the bread and wine came to be confined to the ministers or priests. This practice arose from, and in turn strengthened, the notion which was gaining ground, that in this act of presentation by the priest a sacrifice, similar to that once offered up in the death of Christ, though bloodless, was ever anew presented to God. This still deepened the feeling of mysterious significance and importance with which the rite of the Lord's Supper was viewed, and led to that gradually increasing splendour of celebration which under Gregory the Great took the form of the mass. See LITURGY.
For a long time there was no formal declaration of the mind of the church on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. At length, in the first half of the 9th century, a discussion on the point was raised by the Abbot of Corvei, Paschasius Radbertus, and Ratramnus, a learned monk of the same convent; they exchanged several violent controversial writings, De Sangvine et Corpore Domini, and the most distinguished men of the time took part in the discussion. Paschasius maintained that the bread and wine are, in the act of consecration, transformed by the omnipotence of God into that very body of Christ which was once born of Mary, nailed to the cross, and raised from the dead.
According to this conception nothing remains of the bread and wine but the outward form, the taste, and the smell; while Ratramnus would not allow that there is any change in the bread and wine themselves, but granted that an actual transformation of their power and efficacy takes place. The greater accordance of the first view with the credulity of the age, its love of the wonderful and magical, as well as with the natural desire for the utmost possible nearness to Christ, in order to be unfailingly saved by Him, and the apparently logical character of the inference that, where the power, according to universal admission, was changed, there must be a change also of the substance—all these concurring influences brought it about that, when the views of Ratramnus were in substance revived by Berengarius, Canon of Tours, in opposition to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Humbert, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, as it came to be called, triumphed, and was officially approved by the Council of Rome in 1079. In the fourth Lateran Council at Rome (1215), under Innocent III., Transubstantiation was declared to be an article of faith; and it has continued to be so held by the Roman Catholic Church to the present day. The Greek Catholic Church sanctioned the same view of Transubstantiation at the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672. For the Calixtines and Taborites, see HUSS.
The Reformation of the 16th century again raised the question of the nature of the Eucharist. The Lutheran Church rejected from the first the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, as well as of the mass—i.e. the constant renewal of the sacrifice of Christ—and merely taught that, through the power of God, and in a way not to be explained, the body and blood of Christ are present in, with, and under the unchanged bread and wine ('Consubstantiation'). In opposition to this doctrine, it was laid down by Zwingli that the Lord's Supper is a mere commemoration of the death of Christ, and a profession of belonging to His church, the bread and wine being only symbols: a view which is adopted in substance by Socinians and Arminians. Luther bitterly opposed the symbolical view, especially towards the latter part of his career; Zwingli's doctrine was more repugnant to him than the deeper and more mystic Catholic doctrine.
Calvin sought to strike a middle course, which has been substantially followed by the Reformed Churches. According to him, the body of Christ is not actually present in the bread and wine, which he also holds to be mere symbols. But the 'faithful' receiver is, at the moment of partaking, brought into union with Christ, through the medium of the Holy Spirit, and receives of that heavenly power (efficacy) which is always emanating from His glorified body in heaven. Melanchthon, in this controversy, was inclined to the views of Calvin; but he thought a union might be effected by adopting the declaration that Christ in the Eucharist is 'truly and really' present (not merely in faith). The endeavours of Melanchthon and his party, by arbitrary alterations of the Augsburg Confession and other means, to effect a public reconciliation only served to rouse among the partisans of Luther a furious theological storm, and the result was the establishment of the views of Luther, and the final separation of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches.
The whole controversy relates to the mode in which the body and blood of Christ are present in the Lord's Supper; for it was agreed on all hands that they are present in some way. The Reformed theologians argued that presence is a relative term, opposed not to distance, but to absence; and that presence, in this case, does not mean local nearness, but presence in efficacy. Here they parted company both with the Roman Catholic Church and with the Lutherans. They were willing to call this presence 'real' ('if they want words,' as Zwingli said), meaning true and efficacious, but they would not admit corporal or essential presence. But while the Reformed Churches were at one in holding that by receiving the body and blood of Christ is meant receiving their virtue and efficacy, there is some difference in their way of expressing what that efficacy is. Some said it was their efficacy as broken and shed—i.e. their sacrificial efficacy; others, in addition to this, speak of a mysterious supernatural efficacy flowing from the glorified body of Christ.
With regard to the Reformed Churches, it may be remarked that their Confessions on this point were mostly formed for the express purpose of compromise, to avoid a breach with the Lutherans. Hence the language of these Confessions contains more of the mystical element than the framers of them seem, in other parts of their writings, to favour. And it is remarkable that the Anglican Confessions, which were framed under different circumstances, lean more to the symbolical view of Zwingli than do those of most of the Reformed Churches. The Thirty-nine Articles, after laying down that, 'to such as with faith receive the same, it is a partaking of the body of Christ,' repudiate the notion of Transubstantiation, and add, 'The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith.' The Anglican Church is divided on this, as on several kindred topics, into two parties: with one the symbolical view of the rite is predominant; the other party reprobate this view as 'low,' and maintain an objective 'mystical presence' of the thing signified, along with the sign. The view of the latter party as to the sacrificial nature of the Sacrament approaches very closely that of the Church of Rome. For the various points of difference amongst Anglicans as to vestments, the eastward position, &c., reference must be made to the books cited below. In the Mackonochie case (1869) it was decided that the celebrant had no right to kneel during the prayer of consecration; in the Purchas case (1871), that he had no right to adopt the eastward position.
The Presbyterian Church adopted substantially the views of Calvin. The words of the Westminster Confession are: 'That doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's body and blood (commonly called Transubstantiation) by consecration of a priest, or by any other way, is repugnant not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason. . . . Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.' But the tendency is nowadays to regard the rite in its commemorative character, and the signs as means of working upon the mind and feelings subjectively, rather than as the vehicle of any objective, mystically operating grace.
This variety of dogmatical opinion as to the Eucharist naturally gave rise to variety in the ceremonies of its observance. The Catholic notion of a mysterious transformation produced the dread of allowing any of the bread and wine to drop, and led to the substitution of wafers (hostiæ, oblatæ) for the breaking of bread. The doctrine of the 'real union,' which declares that in the bread as well as in the wine, in each singly and by itself, Christ entire is present and tasted—a doctrine which was attested by wafers visibly bleeding—caused the cup to be gradually withdrawn from the laity and non-officiating priests (see LITURGY); this practice was first authoritatively sanctioned at the Council of Constance, 1415. All the Reformed Churches restored the cup: in the Greek Church it had never been given. From the same feeling of deep reverence for the Eucharist the communion of children gradually came, after the 12th century, to be discontinued: the Greek Church alone admits the practice. Grounded on the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches hold the 'elevation of the host' (hostia, 'victim or sacrifice') to be a symbol of the exaltation of Christ from the state of humiliation: connected with this is the 'adoration of the host,' and the carrying it about in solemn procession. The use of leavened bread in the Greek Church, and of unleavened in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran, of water mixed with wine in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, and of unmixed wine in the Protestant Churches, magnified into importance by symbolical explanations, have given occasion to the hottest controversies. The greater part of the Reformed Churches agree in breaking the bread and letting the communicants take it with the hand (not with the mouth); and this practice is owing to the original tendency of those Churches to the symbolical conception of the Eucharist, in which the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine are essential elements.
It has been contended that the early Christians celebrated the Lord's Supper daily, but a weekly celebration—originally in the evening along with the agapee—is more probable. Abuses at the Agape (q.v.) led to the separation from them of the Lord's Supper, which now took place in the morning. Early synods ordained that the faithful should receive the communion at all the higher festivals—Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, Christmas. Early morning communion, received fasting, is the rule with Catholics and High Anglicans, mid-day communion being allowed to aged and invalid persons. The Moravians always celebrate the communion in the evening. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is usual to reserve portions of the Sacrament after celebration for the purpose of permitting the sick to communicate in their own houses. As to kneeling or sitting at communion, see KNEELING. In the English Church it was usual to exclude communicants from being present during the rite, as the ancient church excluded catechumens; but neither the modern Catholic Church, the High Anglican, nor the Presbyterian practise this exclusion. In the Highlands of Scotland, through a morbid awe of eating and drinking unworthily, it is customary for devout Christians to postpone communicating till late in life. Of late some teetotalers insist on the use of unfermented wine in the Lord's Supper.
But although the great divisions of the Christian world have continued as churches to adhere to those doctrines about the Lord's Supper which were fixed and stereotyped in Acts of Council and Articles and Confessions about the time of the Reformation, we are not to suppose that the opinions of individuals within those churches continue equally uniform and fixed. Even Roman Catholic theologians, like Bossuet, have sometimes endeavoured to understand the doctrine of the church in a philosophical sense; and in the Lutheran Church the greatest variety of opinion prevails. Some uphold unmodified the dogmas of Luther; others accept them with explanation; Hegel even undertook to ground them on speculative reason. Others, as Schleiermacher, would have recourse to the views of Calvin as a means of reconciliation with the Reformed Churches. Even all 'supernatural' theologians do not adhere strictly to the formulas of the church; while rationalism in all its phases tends to the pure symbolism of Zwingli.
See the relevant works of Hooker, Barrow, Jeremy Taylor, Waterland, Burnet, Calvin, Hodge, Oosterzee, Dorner, Schmid; and Hagenbach's History of Doctrine; Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1845); Pusey, Doctrine of the Real Presence (1855); Soudamore, Notitia Eucharistica (1875); J. H. Blunt, Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology (1870); Ebrard, Das Dogma vom Abendmahl (1846); Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Abendmahl (1851); Ruckert, Das Abendmahl (1856); Howson, Before the Table (1875); Armstrong, The Sacraments of the New Testament (New York, 1880); Dean Stanley, Christian Institutions (1881); Bridgett, History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain (1881); and a Clerical Symposium on the Lord's Supper, by Luthardt, Pressensé, Littledale, and others (1881).