Audio only:
Joe counters the common Protestant objection to the Catholic Eucharist, citing that Paul calls the Eucharist “bread,” so the meal must only be bread.
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. And while Catholics and Orthodox believe that the bread and wine in the Eucharist become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, many Protestants argue that the Lord’s supper is symbolic and the bread and wine remain bread and wine. And for many Protestants in this second camp, they’re going to point to the words of St. Paul in one Corinthians and ask, look, if the Eucharist is supposed to become Jesus, why does Paul keep calling it bread? Now that’s a great question. And it actually turns out that a better translation and a better understanding of these passages are not only going to support the Catholic position, they’re also going to reveal a spiritual dimension of the Eucharist that even many Catholics and Orthodox overlook. Before we dive into that, I want to invite those of you who haven’t yet to consider joining our Patreon community over at shamelessjo.com.
It’s a wonderful group of devoted Christians. And frankly, many of the topics I cover on this show are based on ideas I’ve gotten from you guys over there. I do weekly Q&A live streams. I offer early and ad-free access to new episodes and show notes that include sources to let you go deeper into each of these topics. In return, patrons like you supporting the show is what helps us to keep the show going without needing to take sponsors or anything like that. So thank you to all of you who are already doing that. And if not, consider joining over at shamelessjo.com. Okay. So there are a couple of passages in question that often come up here. In one Corinthians chapter 10, St. Paul says something like, “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread.” And then in the next chapter, he says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Now, understandably, many Protestants are going to look at passages like that and say, “Look, obviously the Eucharist is still bread.
Otherwise, why does he keep calling it bread?”
CLIP:
You can see similar language in one Corinthians 10:16- 17. The bread that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ? Because there’s one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. So three times in a row, we’re told that it’s bread. And when you partake in the Lord’s supper, you’re partaking of the one bread. And that’s what we believe. When we eat the Lord’s upper, we’re eating bread.
If it’s his literal body and blood, why Jesus still referred to it as the fruit of the vine in reference to the blood? And Paul still refers to it as bread.
He referred to it as bread, not to the body. And that was after he had blessed it, after the blessing, part of the communion. He’s quoted Jesus before saying, “This is my body.” And yet he still calls it bread. So Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’ word and inspired apostle is that it’s still bread.
But if is being used as a reference to the substance, according to the papist, then it is likewise used as a reference to substance when scripture says in one Corinthians 10 for as often as you eat this bread.
Joe:
So there’s an easy answer to this question and then there’s a slightly more involved answer. The easy answer goes something like this. In John six, Jesus calls himself the bread of life, the bread of God, the true bread from heaven, the living bread which came down from heaven. And in John 6:51, he explicitly says that the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. So notice whereas Protestant critics will say that it’s literally bread and only symbolically flesh, Jesus says the exact opposite. He’s literally talking about his flesh and referring to it metaphorically as bread. So it is perfectly reasonable to refer to Jesus’ literal flesh as bread or as a bread of life because that’s what he does. So it shouldn’t be shocking that we sometimes find in the writings of church fathers, for instance, somebody affirming in one moment the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and then a moment later referring to the Eucharist as the bread.
In fact, we do this ourselves when we go to mass.
Right after the consecration, there’s what’s called the memorial acclimation. And one of the prayers is derived from one Corinthians 10. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, oh Lord, until you come again. And there’s something similar in Eastern liturgies like the divine liturgy of St. James. So it’s perfectly fine to refer to Jesus in the Eucharist as the bread of life, particularly when the broader context makes clear that you realize the Eucharist is more than mere bread. With that in mind, let’s consider the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians in context and see if he gives us more of a sense that he means something more than mere bread. So first, he tells them the cup of blessing which we bless is not a participation in the blood of Christ, the bread which we break. Is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
So whatever is happening in the Eucharist, it’s somehow a participation in the body and blood of Christ. That doesn’t sound like ordinary bread. That doesn’t even sound like a representation. If I make a painting of Jesus, I don’t think you would tell me that my painting somehow participates in Jesus. Last we get pointed out that the way St. Paul describes what’s happening here involves comparing the Eucharist to the Jewish and pagan sacrifices in which they participated in the sacrifice by eating the sacrificial offerings. Now, if that’s right, and you can watch that episode for more on that, it seems that he’s saying the Eucharist is Jesus, our sacrificial offering for sins, and that we participate in his sacrifice by eating his literal body and blood. That doesn’t sound like he’s talking about ordinary bread in one Corinthians 10. Well, in the next verse, he says something like, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” So if Paul is talking about an ordinary loaf of bread, well, first of all, how in the world are all of these Christians, including Paul himself, partaking of the same loaf of bread?
We’re going to return to those words in a few moments, but for now, notice that this bread somehow turns us from individuals into the body of Christ the church. Paul seems to be ascribing some kind of spiritual power to the church, so not so much wonder bread as miraculous bread. Then in the next chapter, 1st Corinthians 11, he warns that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord, and that anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. So here again, even though he uses the term bread, he doesn’t seem to be describing ordinary bread. Whatever bread this is, it has the power to transform us into the body of Christ at church, but also if we receive it unworthily, it has the power to bring damnation upon us for profaning the Lord’s own body and blood.
So if your takeaway from all of that is that, well, that just sounds like ordinary bread. I don’t know what kind of sandwiches you’ve been eating. That, as I say, that’s the easy answer. And I suspect many of you watching this could have given something like that answer. It just involves reading the actual passages of the New Testament instead of ripping words and verses out of context and then thinking about where else we find Jesus described as the bread or where else we hear that language in the Bible. But there’s a deeper answer as well, which I find really spiritually beautiful and that many of us overlook. Now you might’ve noticed, I’ve been saying that St. Paul says something like the bread in one Corinthians 10 and 11. That’s because it’s hard to translate the actual word he uses. It’s Artan, which also means the loaf.
And that subtle difference matters because in English, we use bread for both singular and plural. I went to the store this morning. I didn’t know if I should get one loaf of bread or two, but I’m still going to get bread either way. It wasn’t bread or breads. But on the other hand, it is one loaf or two loaves. Now that matters because in the New Testament, there is an interesting distinction between the loves on the one hand and the one loaf on the other. And we can miss this because it’s the same word in English. So one of the clearest places we’re going to see that distinction is in a passage that actually on the surface doesn’t even seem to have anything to do with the Eucharist. It’s from Mark chapter eight. Now, Jesus has just multiplied the loaves and the apostles are now crossing the sea with him and were told that they had forgotten to bring bread.
They’d forgotten to bring the loaves and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. So literally they brought no loaves, but they had one loaf with them. Now on faith, that appears to be contradictory. Did the disciples have bread on this boat or not? But there are several clues in the context of Mark eight that the one loaf with them isn’t a loaf of bread in the normal sense, that rather the one loaf is Jesus himself. Now, what are our clues for this? First, look at how Jesus responds to them. He warns them about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. Leaven is yeast, but Jesus clearly doesn’t mean literal yeast. He’s using this as a spiritual metaphor for corruption. He’s not referring to literal bread making. But the apostles who, again, forgot to bring food, they are worried just about literal bread.
And so they respond to Jesus’ message by telling him they have no loaves. Now notice even in their response, they don’t say they have one loaf, they’ve got none. And Jesus responds, “Do you not yet perceive or understand?” He’s going to show them they do have a loaf, the one loaf that matters. And if that rebuke wasn’t hard enough for them, he’s then going to give them two questions that sound like math problems. So earlier, he had taken five loaves and miraculously fed 5,000 people. So now he asks them, how many loves are left over? They answer 12. But then later he did a similar miracle this time with seven loaves for 4,000 people. How many baskets are left over? Seven. And then Jesus again says, “Do you not yet understand?” And that’s the end of the lesson. And look, you could be forgiven if you don’t understand.
But the numbers 12 and seven are important New Testament numbers, particularly in this context. 12 is the number of tribes of Israel, the number of apostles. So it’s a symbol of both Israel and the church. And seven is a number associated with perfection. There are seven days of creation, but later also one associated with the Gentiles and the church’s mission to the Gentiles because of the sinding out of the seven deacons in Acts chapter six. So chances are good. The apostles aren’t making all of these connections yet, but hopefully readers of the New Testament will. So Jesus ends the conversation, again with this question, do not yet understand. He has pointed them towards the fact that there’s something more going on here than ordinary loaves of bread, but they don’t have the full picture yet. As Lyson and Manhart point out, this is actually the last time in the gospel of Mark we hear about bread until the last supper when Jesus breaks bread and declares it to be his body.
So Mark seems to be showing us that we’re not going to fully be able to recognize the one loaf until we see him in the Eucharist. We see a similar thing in the gospel of Luke. As Scott Han has pointed out, there are 10 different meal narratives throughout Luke’s gospel, but only at the three at which Jesus is a host do we hear of loaves being broken. You’ve got the multiplication of loaves, you’ve got the last supper, you’ve got the road to Emmaus, and just like the disciples and Mark can’t recognize Jesus until they see him in the one loaf. So in Luke, the disciples on the road to Omaus are unable to recognize Jesus until he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. This image of Jesus, as the one revealed in the breaking of the bread as the one loaf is significant, both because Jesus is the living bread come down from heaven, but also because of the oneness of Christ, the oneness of the Eucharist and the oneness of the church.
Now that, by the way, is the actual point that St. Paul is making in one Corinthians 10. Because the Eucharist is one, the church is one, because we all partake of the one loaf, Jesus Christ. Now, that’s a theme that the early Christians understood that many of us overlook. The Didicae, which dates back perhaps as far as the time of the apostles themselves in the first century, and includes some of the oldest known Eucharistic prayers from those early days of what would later be called the mass. And the prayer over the bread to be consecrated included these words. “Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom, for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever. “Saint Ignatius writing shortly after the apostles about 107 similarly describes how the Eucharist should only be celebrated either by the one bishop of the local church or else by someone acting presiding with the bishop’s authorization.
He reminds the Ephesians to be united to the bishop and his presbyters with an undivided mind, breaking one in the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote to prevent us from dying, which causes that we should live forever in Jesus Christ. Now, Ignatius is perfectly clear that he doesn’t think this is just bread. He believes that the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ. Those are his own words verbatim, but he’s also clear that the Eucharist is also the one loaf and that this matters because the true meaning is that we become one body because we partake of the one loaf. There’s one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and the church is called to be one body united to her one Lord through a common Eucharist under the authority of the one bishop. That’s not some crazy medieval accretion, that’s a basic biblical view of the Eucharist.
And it’s what we find in these earliest followers of the disciples is why Ignatius can tell us to have but one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and there’s one altar as there is one bishop. So that’s the true meaning of these passages about the one bread, the one loaf. Yes, Jesus Christ is our bread. He’s the bread of life, and these words are not meant to deny that this is truly his flesh. The bread that he gives for the life of the world is his flesh, but we receive him in the one loaf of the Eucharist, a bread that is broken but not divided. We receive his flesh in the Eucharist and we become his flesh, his body, and we become one because he is one and we’re part of his one true church. Now, Ignatius wrote many letters to the early Christian churches, and it’s actually quite heartening to see many Protestants reading those letters for the first time and seeing just how Catholic they sound.
Now, Ignatius writes at length about the Eucharist and how essential that doctrine is, but that’s honestly the tip of the iceberg. So if you want to find out more about how Ignatius helps us to see just how Catholic the early church is, invite you to click here. For shameless popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.