Wendelin's "Christian Theology": Doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Part 1

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THESIS I:  Hitherto concerning Baptism.  It follows concerning the Lord’s Supper, which is the other sacrament of the New Testament, instituted for the remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion for us, wherein to adult Christians, furnished with faith, through bread broken, received, and eaten, and also through wine poured out and drunk, He represents His suffering and death for us, and at the same time bear witness, that He, by His flesh crucified, and His blood poured out, apprehended by true faith, spiritually feeds our souls unto eternal life.

EXPLANATION:  I.  The Lord’s Supper elsewhere in Scripture and the Fathers is called the Body and Blood of the Lord, the New Testament, Communion, the Breaking of Bread, the Table of the Lord, the Sharing of Christ’s Body and Blood.  By the Greeks it is called σύναξις/assembly, ἀγάπη/love, εὐχαριστία/eucharist:  all which appellations are improper.  Whence it appears, that improper expressions are not foreign to the Sacraments, and especially to the Lord’s Supper.

* II.  Altars are pleasing to the Papists, because they have transformed the Lord’s Supper into the sacrifice of the Mass by transubstantiation.

III.  The language of supper indicates the circumstance of the time when this sacrament was instituted and administered by Christ.  It was at night or in the evening; when the Passover was also celebrated.

THESIS II:  The causes and effects of the Lord’s Supper are to be considered.

THESIS III:  The efficient is principal or instrumental.

THESIS IV:  The principal is Christ the Lord, after whom the Lord’s Supper is names:  who instituted this mystery of His body and blood, in words containing a command and a promise.

EXPLANATION:  Let the institution of this sacrament be seen in Matthew 26 and 1 Corinthians 11.

Others observe that the words of the institution of Christ are threefold:

(1.)  Preceptive, which contain a command:  Do this, etc.

(2.)  Ὁριστηκά, or sacramental, which are promises.

(3.)  Exegetical, which indicate the end of the sacred action.  Concerning which in its own place.

THESIS V:  The words of command impose the necessity of administration to the dispensers, and of reception by the communicants.

THESIS VI:  The words, do this, enjoin the necessity of administration on the dispensers:  by which words the ministers of the word, to whom it belongs to administer the Lord’s Supper, are commanded to do what Christ did in the first administration of the Supper:  namely, (1.)  With the bread and wine received, to give thanks; (2.)  To break the bread, and to pour wine out into the cup; (3.)  To distribute the broken bread and poured out wine to the communicants.

EXPLANATION:  By εὐχαριστίαν or the giving of thanks, in the administration of this sacrament, the bread and wine are determined for a sacred and sacramental use, and are separated from their common use, without any mutation of their substance or internal accidental properties.  The Papists transformed this action into a transmutation of the sacramental symbols, the bread and wine, into the body and blood of the Lord:  which they call consecration.  Whence the consecrated hosts are understood by them as transmuted into the body of Christ:  the consecrated wine into the blood of Christ; concerning which in its own place hereafter.

THESIS VII:  These words, take, eat, drink, particularly enjoin upon the communicants the necessity of reception and use.

EXPLANATION:  I.  The Church is bound by commandment to the dispensing and receiving of this sacrament, not only for a certain time, but unto the end of the age, and the coming of the Lord for the final judgment.  1 Corinthians 11:26, as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till He come.

II.  It is here asked:  How are the sacramental signs, offered by the dispensing ministers of the word, to be received by communicants, immediately by mouth, or first by the hands?

Response:  It does not make any material difference, whether you receive the sacred symbols by mouth or by hand from the hand of the dispensing minister:  only let not a false opinion be added, that it is received more religiously by mouth than by hand:  or that the hands of those administering are more holy than the hands of those communicating.  At the same time, if you attend upon the word employed by Christ, if upon the circumstances, the form of Christ’s reclining with the Apostles, if upon the communicating and dining, if finally upon the practice of the ancient Church, there is no doubt, that the sacred symbols were received by the hands of the communicants:  as it is also done in our Churches.

(1.)  Christ uses the word λαμβάνειν, to take, which is properly taken of the hand, whence also among the Greeks that whereby a thing is grasped by the hand is called a λαβή, a grip or handle.

(2.)  At the last supper, John is said to have reclined on the bosom of Jesus,[1] and thus, according to custom, the rest were reclining in an orderly manner in a circle:  neither is it read that Christ rose up in the administration.  But in this posture of reclining the sacred symbols were able far more easily and commodiously to be extended from one hand to another hand of the disciples, rather than to the mouth.

(3.)  Those to whom the supper was administered were not infants or little children, into whose mouth mush is wont to be spooned, but men, who are wont to receive by the hand, not by the mouth after the likeness of infants, food and drink offered by others.

(4.)  That in the Old Church the sacred symbols were received, not by the mouth, but by the hand, teach the words of Ambrose[2] to Theodosius the Great:[3]  How shalt thou extend hands, from which innocent blood is yet dripping?  How with hands of this sort shalt thou receive the holy body of the Lord? Theodoret’s[4] Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chapter 8.

III.  It is also asked:  With what gesture of the body ought the Lord’s Supper to be received, standing, or sitting, or kneeling?

Some think, that kneeling in multiple ways violates the precept concerning the shunning of idolatry:  neither is standing the most suitable rite, because it is not regular gesture of table companions:  but sitting is the most suitable, because it better expresses the dignity and familiarity to which we are called.

These individual rites are found in diverse Churches of Evangelicals:  on account of which none of us judge that troubles are to be raised.  They are even able to kneel without sin:  for this is not idolatrous of itself, unless an idolatrous intent is added.  Nor is standing with body erect foreign to the dignity and familiarity to which we are called:  for thus we show ourselves to be ready to do all the ordinances and commands of our Lord.  Angels, the most familiar with God, stand before Him.[5]  See Exercitation 93.

[1] John 13:23.

[2] Ambrose (340-397), Bishop of Milan, was a man of great influence, ecclesiastically and politically, and was instrumental in the conversion of Augustine.

[3] Theodosius reigned as Roman Emperor from 379 to 395.

[4] Theodoret (393-457) was bishop of Cyrus, and a significant participant in the Christological controversies of his age.  He was an advocate of Antiochian dyophysitism, or moderate Nestorianism, although he condemned the Nestorian affirmation of two Sons in Christ, and the Nestorian denial that Mary was Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God.  His orthodoxy was cleared at the Council of Chalcedon (451).

[5] See, for example, 1 Kings 22:19.