Eucharist in the Church of Aymerland

The Eucharist (also Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, the Holy Supper or Holy Communion) is a sacrament in the Aymerlandic Evangelical Catholic Church. In it, consecrated bread and wine is consumed as a commemoration of the Last Supper and sacrifice to God the Father in order that the grace and forgiveness of sin granted through the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus may be visibly and individually imparted. For Evangelicals it is distinct from the Divine Service, the liturgical celebration in which the consecration of the Eucharist customarily occurs. The Evangelical Catholic Church affirms the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, holding that He is presence in both substance and spirit.

New Testament Foundation

Because it asserts the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, the church finds all of the doctrines of eucharistic theology to be clearly deposited in the Bible, primarily and explicitly in the New Testament.

Last Supper

Each of the synoptic gospels record the Last Supper and similar words of Institution as occurring on the night of the Jewish Passover feast, and ordering a sacrificial remembrance of Christ through the consumption of consecrated bread and wine which is his body and blood.

Matthew 26:26-28:

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body.' Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.'

Mark 14:22-24:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take it; this is my body.' Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,'" he said to them.

Luke 22:19-20:

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.'"

Bread of Life Discourse

The Gospel of John's account of the Last Supper (ch. 13-17) does not contain an Institution narrative, but the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6:25-59 does declare Jesus to be "the bread of life." This Johannine discourse is uniquely important for the Evangelical church when compared to the synoptic narratives because verse 51 explicitly associates the flesh of Jesus with bread: "'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.'" Verse 53 associates salvation with the consumption of bread that is the body of Christ: "Jesus said to them, 'Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.'"

First Epistle to the Corinthians

The Apostle Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians testifies to the worship practices of the Church in the decades following the death of Jesus, including what the Aymerlandic Church interprets as a belief in the Real Presence with the statement: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (10:16). 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 also offers another account of the words of institution, which most closely resembles those used in Luke. However, this Epistle predates Luke by at least a decade, and both likely reflect an earlier common tradition.

Old Testament Prefiguration

The Aymerlandic Church recognizes the Old Testament as a preparation, through the nation of Israel, for the full revelation of God's Plan of Salvation through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Thus, the church recognizes elements of the Old Testament as pointing towards Christ. The Old Testament has no explicit prophecy of the Eucharist, but it is prefigured typologically. The first typological accounts of the Eucharist are found in the Bible itself. In the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:32, 48-49), Christ associates Himself with the manna given to the Israelites during their journey to the promised land (Exodus 16), and in 1 Corinthians 10:3-4 the Apostle Paul makes a similar comparison of the manna and water given to the Israelites (Exodus 17), saying: "all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." Another prominent typology of the Eucharist is Melchizedek. Though mentioned only in Genesis 14:18-20, Melchizedek was, like Christ, a "priest of God." Like Christ, he "brought out bread and wine" as an offering although the sacrificial norm in this time was animal flesh. His name, translated from the Hebrew, means king of righteousness, and . For these characteristics he was associated with Christ and his sacrifice with the Eucharist from the earliest moments of Church history, as the Epistle to the Hebrews records:

For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually (7:1-3).

Other major types of the Eucharist relate primarily to the worship practices of ancient Judaism. The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies, where God made Himself locally present in a special way, is associated with Christ's real presence in the Eucharist. The sacrificial ordinances of the Temple are associated with the Eucharist as a sacrifice. In particular, the Eucharist is compared to the lamb traditionally sacrificed on Passover and the unleavened bread consumed with it. The institution of the Eucharist occurs on Passover according the synoptic gospels, and John the Baptist in the Gospel of John declares Jesus to be the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (1:29). 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 makes the type explicit:

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

There are numerous other minor eucharistic prefigurations, some of which are not universally recognized as such in the church, throughout the Old Testament.

Doctrines

Aymerlandic eucharistic doctrines are the product of two major disputes in the early modern era. The Aymerlandic church traces its heritage to the Evangelical Reformation, and thus rejects certain Popish Catholic teachings on the eucharist, in particular transubstantiation and teachings related to eucharistic disciplines. However, the church has also been shaped by the dispute in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries over Receptionism, which teaches that the Body of Christ is not present in the sacramental bread and wine before or after its consumption. When Aymerland gained independence, long after the height of the controversy, certain clerics favored by the monarchy undertook a persecution of Receptionists and promotion of in order to consolidate the nascent state church and differentiate it from other Protestant bodies. As a demonstration of opposition to Receptionism and in order to assert the catholicity of the Aymerlandic church, some theological understandings and practices of the pre-Reformation church viewed as consistent with the Gospel were re-emphasized or restored.

Sacramental Union

the Aymerlandic understanding of the Real Presence is, like that of the wider Evangelical tradition, the sacramental union. According to this doctrine, the body and blood of Christ is truly and in substance present, united with and to the elements of bread and wine which also remain present in form and substance (in transubstantiation, the substance of the bread and wine is destroyed). Christ is fully and particularly present in the bread and wine. He is not locally or physically present in the sense that a certain part of him is there, or that human flesh can be observed, nor is He is contained in the confines of the elements, but He is objectively and "physically" present and grounded in the elements in a supernatural manner. The common locution used by Evangelicals, coming from the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, Article VII, Paragraph 35, is that Christ is present "under the bread, with the bread, [and] in the bread." The Sacramental Union is sometimes confused with Consubstantiation, a scholastic explanation of the Real Presence that accepts the continued existence of the substance of the bread but also believes in a limited and local presence.

Confection and Duration

The counterpart of Receptionism within the Evangelical tradition is Consecrationism, which professes that it is by the words of institution, because of the efficacy given to them in the command of Christ to "take and eat" his body and blood, that the elements become united with the body and blood of Christ. Consecrationism was the belief held universally before the Reformation and was maintained by its earliest fathers, including the Great Reformer, who said, "For Christ did not build His foundation on our faith and virtue, but on His own word and power. He says it, and He does what He says, whether we believe or not." As a result of neo-scholasticism, the receptionist view gradually came to predominate in the 17th century, though it has sense fallen out of favor among many Evangelicals. Uniquely among the evangelical communities, the Aymerlandic church considers Consecrationism to be an essential doctrine of the Christian faith and requires all its members to uphold this teaching, because Receptionism:

Weakens the objective character of the sacrament, is foreign to the fathers and reformers of the Church...and above all because it is contrary to the Word of Christ, that the elements are, in an unlimited sense, his body before He passed them to the disciples to consume.

A common defense of the Receptionist position comes from the Solid Declaration, which in Article VII, paragraph 83, declares:

However, this blessing, or the recitation of the words of institution of Christ alone does not make a sacrament if the entire action of the Supper, as it was instituted by Christ, is not observed (as when the consecrated bread is not distributed, received, and partaken of, but is enclosed, sacrificed, or carried about), but the command of Christ, This do (which embraces the entire action or administration in this Sacrament.

This statement is summarized "Nihil habet rationem sacramenti extra usum a Christo institutum" (FC SD XII 86), "nothing has the character of a Sacrament outside of its intended use." The Aymerlandic church sees this statement as purely a condemnation of the Popish practice of eucharistic adoration, mentioned in the text, and similar instances in which the object of the consecration is not the consumption of the elements. Christ confects the Eucharist through his power, not man, and while the words of institution are necessary to have the sacrament and in that sense efficacious, Christ is not obligated to do anything by the words.

Within Consecrationism there is a dispute over the duration of the Presence. Durationism upholds the belief in a permanent Presence, while Cessationism teaches that the Presence departs from any elements left after the communion service. The Aymerlandic church considers Durationism to be the proper view of the Eucharist, because Christ makes no further statement beyond "this is my body" and "the word of the lord endures forever" (1 Peter 1:25). All of its members must uphold this teaching because of the risk of profaning the sacrament by improper treatment after the service. Furthermore, the Durationist point of view is believed to threaten the Sacramental Union by denying a truly effective union between the elements and Christ, to imply that the elements merely hold Christ before disappearing.

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