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 Confessional 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. The church believes in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, holding that He is presence in both substance and spirit. The church teaches that the Eucharist is distinct from the Divine Service, the liturgical celebration in which the consecration of the Eucharist occurs. The Aymerlandic treatment of the Eucharist is firmly Evangelical, but is notably more High Church than in many other churches in the Evangelical tradition.

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 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 Papalist 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 ceases to exist). 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.

Sacrifice

One of the major contentions of the Evangelical Reformers was the rejection of the Papalist idea of the Sacrifice of the Mass. As they interpreted it, this sacrifice meant a repetition of Christ's sacrifice upon the cross carried out by the celebrant of the Mass, an idea which they rejected and linked closely to the Papalist practice of offering Masses for individual remission of sins, even for those not present at the Mass, ex opere operato and apart from faith. Hence the Formula of Concord declares "we likewise reject and condemn all other papistic abuses of this Sacrament, as the abomination of the sacrifice of the mass for the living and dead" (FC SD VII 109). The Reformers did distinguish between two types of sacrifice:

One is the propitiatory sacrifice, i.e., a work which makes satisfaction for guilt and punishment, i.e., one that reconciles God, or appeases God's wrath, or which merits the remission of sins for others. The other species is the eucharistic sacrifice, which does not merit the remission of sins or reconciliation, but is rendered by those who have been reconciled, in order that we may give thanks or return gratitude for the remission of sins that has been received, or for other benefits received

Hence, the Eucharist was recognized as a sacrifice or oblation, but not a proprietary sacrifice. Even then, the Eucharist was not seen as the sacrifice itself, but the oblation of the faithful to God in the liturgy and the bread and wine being offered for Christ's use. However, several early theologians in the Aymerlandic church revived the idea of the Eucharist itself as an unbloody sacrifice without departing from the teachings of the Book of Concord. They accepted that the sacrifice of thanksgiving was a correct (if partial) understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice, continued to reject the offering of the Eucharist for any merits of specific remission of sin, denied that this was a power of the clergy (as it belongs to Christ alone to offer sacrifice), and did not allow that the Eucharist was a repetition of the Crucifixion. However, they argued that the rejection of the Sacrifice of the Mass by the reformers had to be understood in the context of the Papalist abuses they opposed. These theologians pointed to the parallels between the Old Testament sacrifices and the Church, to the writings Church fathers, who said such things as "the sacrifice which was offered once for all in bloody form is sacramentally renewed upon our altars with the oblation of His body and blood," and also to Reformers who were willing to speak in terms of the sacrifice of the Eucharist:

the sacrifice in the Eucharist is numerically the same as the sacrifice that took place on the cross; put otherwise, one can say that the things itself and the substance is the same in each case, the victim or oblation is the same. If we view the matter formally, from the standpoint of the act of sacrifice, then even though the victim is numerically the same, the action is not; that is, the immolation in the Eucharist is different from the immolation carried out on the cross. For on the cross an offering was made by means of the passion and death of an immolated living thing, without which there can be no sacrifice in the narrow sense, but in the Eucharist the oblation takes place through the prayers and through the commemoration of the death or sacrifice offered on the cross.

Taking the language of renewal and difference in action, the theologians affirmed that the sacrifice of the Cross was a distinct and unrepeatable action which the Eucharist commemorates, but as it is a commemoration of that sacrifice and a means of grace in which Christ is equally present as He was upon the cross, the Eucharist can properly be spoken as bringing the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross to the faithful present at the service. It is not the celebrant who brings this about, but Christ acting personally and deliberately through the Words of Institution spoken by the celebrant. They compared this to the levitical sacrifices, pointing out that these are called sacrifices, but were ultimately propitiatory only through Christ, just as the Eucharist is only the Eucharist through Christ's sacrifice, that of the Cross, but also that of his decision to be born as a Man and to make Himself forever present in the Eucharist, and advocating in Heaven for our salvation to the Eternal Father. For these theologians, the Eucharist is a sacrifice made by Christ as part of his only sufficient and eternal sacrifice to the Father, flowing from the Cross, in which the human role is to make the effort, through faith, of pleading salvation through the merits of Christ, as in prayer, but uniquely by the Eucharist. In summary, the Aymerlandic church understands the eucharistic sacrifice to consist of two components: the oblation of praise and bread and wine properly made by man, and the efficacious oblation of Christ in the Eucharist made only by Christ and inescapably rooted in the paschal sacrifice, presented before the Father by the Church as in prayer and out of faith.

This theology of sacrifice was formally accepted by the church at the Third Council of Augustana.

Generation and Duration

The counterpart of Receptionism within the Evangelical tradition is Consecrationism, which professes that it is by the words of institution or Verba, 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. The words are effective upon each element individually, so that the bread becomes the Body of Christ before and regardless of the wine's consecration. 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 Papalist 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.

Closed Communion

The Aymerlandic church practices closed communion, allowing only members of the church and other church bodies it is in full communion with to receive the Sacrament. The Biblical justification for this practice comes from 1 Corinthians:

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body (11:27-29)

Thus, to allow someone who did not believe in the Real Presence to commune in the church would be to allow him to commit a sin and risk salvation. Even for those, such as Papalists and Episcopalians, who do believe in the Real Presence, the church does not admit them to communion. The doctrines necessary for a worthy communion are unclear from the Biblical text and while the church refrains from judging the worthiness of the faith of these individuals, ultimately it is only in the Evangelical faith that the fullness of Christian truth, not intrinsically threatened by teachings contrary to God's word, can be found. The Bible demands that there be no divisions among Christians:

Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment (1 Corinthians 1:10)

But it also says "Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them" (Romans 16:17). 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 identifies communion as a visible sign of unity: "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? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread." Thus, in order to avoid the appearance of unity with Christians who promote false teachings, the church refrains from communing with them.

Validity of the Sacrament

Several factors impact the validity of the Sacrament, understood as what is necessary from Christ's Institution for Him to make Himself present in the elements. These are the Word, Element, Action, Agent, and Recipient. The necessary components of the Sacrament are different from components that are or ought to be practiced.

The Words of Institution must consist of vocalized words expressing the truth that the elements are the Body of Christ. If the words are said, but understood by the doctrine of the church body in which they are said to be symbolic or merely spiritual, then the Word instituted by Christ was not present. The personal belief of the minister is irrelevant, because the words were spoken in a liturgical language that defined them differently than the institution of Christ.

The elements must be be bread and wine. The sacramental bread must be made of flour from a grain, the type of grain being adiaphora. White bread, gluten-free bread, and essentially all types of bread are (theoretically) allowed. The church understands Christ's references to "bread" to not be a matter of exact composition, but of the idea of bread broadly conceived. It is Christ's free choice, not the property of the grain, which brings about the Eucharist and thus anything recognizable as a bread consecrated out of a desire to fulfill the Lord's command to "take and eat" the "Bread of Life" is sufficient. The sacramental wine must be the product of fermented grapes because Jesus, in Matthew 26:29, refers to the "fruit of the vine," the literal meaning of the liturgical Hebrew term peri haggephen, which can refer only to grape wine, the drink of the Jewish Passover. The type of grape and color of the wine do not impact the validity of the sacrament. Again, this is not to say that Christ is limited to grape wine by the character of the wine, but that to use an element other than grape wine is to transgress against the plain meaning of the commandment and remove the certainty of the sacrament's presence.

Action is closely related to the idea of intended use discussed earlier. If the elements are consecrated with the intent of using them for an action other than to "take and eat," than Christ is not present because his command (or, his words) are not really being followed. However, as previously stated, the consecration is still independent of the action of consumption: a host consecrated with the intent of consumption and then not consumed is the Body of Christ. The Recipient is merely an extension of the action and intent: in order for the Sacrament to be eaten, there must be present people (even if only the minister himself).

The Agent is the individual through which Christ carries out His work, in a sense a mediator, acting in persona Christi. The Aymerlandic church teaches in accordance with the Evangelical symbols that "no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called" (AC XIV). While interpreted only as a concern for order by some Evangelicals, the Aymerlandic church teaches that the right to act in persona Christi is promised clearly in Scripture only to ordained ministers. Thus, for a layman to consecrate the elements, would be to act without the promise of God. Because there can be guarantee of the elements being truly infused with Christ's presence, and because the Eucharist is not necessary for salvation, laymen should never annex to themselves the right to consecrate. In support of this position the church also refers to another section of the Book of Concord, which declares, based on John 20, that "the power of the Keys, or the power of the bishops, according to the Gospel, is a power or commandment of God, to preach the Gospel, to remit and retain sins, and to administer Sacraments" (AC XXVIII). The personal faith of the minister does not affect the validity of the sacrament, in accordance with the Large Catechism of the Book of Concord:

For here we conclude and say: Even though a knave takes or distributes the Sacrament, he receives the true Sacrament, that is, the true body and blood of Christ, just as truly as he who [receives or] administers it in the most worthy manner. For it is not founded upon the holiness of men, but upon the Word of God. And as no saint upon earth, yea, no angel in heaven, can make bread and wine to be the body and blood of Christ, so also can no one change or alter it, even though it be misused (VII 16)

Eucharistic miracles

The Aymerlandic church rejects the Papalist idea of eucharistic miracles. This is done on the grounds that the appearance of Christ's material flesh would be "gross, carnal" and "Capernaitic" (FC SD VII 64) and contradictory to the nature of the Eucharist, in which the Lord is united to bread in a "supernatural, incomprehensible way" (FC SD VII 64). Such miracles claim to destroy the bread, without which there is no eucharist, and thus tend towards the Papalist doctrine of transubstantiation while simultaneously according a local presence, reminiscent of consubstantiation, to the eucharist. The church also teaches that this belief transforms the eucharist into a repetition of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and is inconsistent with the teaching that Christ's body dwells in Heaven until the Second Coming. The church does, however, accept the possibility of eucharistic miracles if understood as a vision of Christ in the context of the communion service, or even a perception that the Eucharist has actually become flesh and blood, without any objective transformation occurring. Unlike Papalism, the church does not have any official process for verifying such private revelation beyond condemning those it views as heretical, nor does it as a matter of policy promote them to the wider faithful to avoid infringing on the sufficiency of Scripture.

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