Is Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, as it is variously called in Protestant traditions, a “sacrifice”?
Many if not most Protestants, wary of how that language is typically applied to the Eucharist in a Catholic context, would say no. Yet some Protestants eager to recapture a certain strand of their own history and tradition would argue that yes, there are senses in which the Eucharist can be described as sacrificial. And, as my friend and Protestant writer and editor Mike Sabo has argued, Catholic critiques of Protestantism that fail to appreciate the diversity of thought within the Protestant tradition effectively attack a straw man.
Yet in what sense do Protestants, typically of an Anglican variety, refer to the Eucharist as sacrificial? According to Sabo, quoting Daniel Waterland, an eighteenth-century archdeacon in the Church of England and a master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, there are a number of senses in which the Eucharist can be described as sacrificial. This includes “the active (as actually offered) and passive (participation by others), the extrinsic (Christ) and intrinsic (‘sacrifices of the heart’), and the literal and spiritual,” writes Sabo. The “orthodox understanding taught by the Patristics,” explains Waterland, is that “we may indeed partake of Christ’s sacrifice, a proper sacrifice, but not in the literal sense.” Rather, Christians offer “proper sacrifices, namely, spiritual sacrifices,” including the prayers, praise, thanksgiving, alms, and worship.
Protestants are certainly free to define and interpret the Eucharist within their own ecclesial traditions however they see fit. But are Waterland, Sabo, and other “pro-sacrificial” Protestants accurate when they say that their interpretation is truly that of the Church Fathers? Even a fairly cursory review of the historical evidence would suggest otherwise.
Some of the earliest Church Fathers affirm that the Eucharist is not simply sacrificial, but truly the sacrifice of Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch (d.108)—who according to tradition was a disciple of St. John the Apostle—in his Letter to the Philadelphians refers to the Eucharist as “one flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for union with his blood,” which certainly sounds as though the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ himself. St. Justin Martyr (d. 165) writes that the Lord teaches, “In every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name is great among the Gentiles” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew). Writing of the bread and the cup, St. Irenaeus (d. 202) similarly explains “that in every place sacrifice will be offered to him, and indeed, a pure one, for his name is glorified among the Gentiles” (Against Heresies). If the sacrifice offered by priests is “pure,” could it really be that of sinful Christians who partake, rather than Christ himself?
Later Patristic sources get more specific. St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) says priests offer “a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father” (Letters 63). St. Serapion of Thmuis (d. c. 360) in his Prayer of the Eucharistic Sacrifice asserts, “Full also is this sacrifice, with your strength and your communion; for to you we offer this living sacrifice, this unbloody oblation.” St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) declares in The Priesthood that the Lord is “sacrificed, and laid upon the altar,” with the priest “standing and praying over the victim.” I do not know how Chrysostom’s words could be interpreted other than that the Eucharist is actually Jesus himself sacrificed.
St. Ambrose of Milan says, “Even if Christ is not now seen as the one who offers the sacrifice, nevertheless it is he himself that is offered in sacrifice here on earth when the body of Christ is offered.” He continues: “Indeed, to offer himself he is made visible in us, he whose word makes holy the sacrifice that is offered.” In effect, for Ambrose, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is Jesus.
Finally, for the sake of brevity, let us quote St. Augustine, whom so many Protestants, including John Calvin, praise for his doctrine of grace. We read in Augustine, “In the sacrament he is immolated for the people not only on every Easter Solemnity but on every day; and a man would not be lying if, when asked, he were to reply that Christ is being immolated” (Letters 98:9). In the sacrament, it is Jesus who is offered in sacrifice.
So extensive is the evidence in favor of the Church Fathers’ belief in the Eucharist as the literal sacrifice of Christ that even prominent Protestant historian J.N.D. Kelly argues as much in his classic book Early Christian Doctrines. There we read,
The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice. . . . Malachi’s prediction (1:10–11) that the Lord would reject Jewish sacrifices and instead would have “a pure offering” made to him by the Gentiles in every place was seized upon by Christians as a prophecy of the Eucharist. The Didache indeed actually applies the term thusia, or sacrifice, to the Eucharist.
Moreover, offers Kelly, “the bread and wine, moreover, are offered ‘for a memorial (eis anamnasin) of the passion,’ a phrase which in view of his identification of them with the Lord’s body and blood implies much more than an act of purely spiritual recollection.”
Certainly we should praise Protestants who seek a deeper, more traditional and even more Patristic conception of the Eucharist. But to say only that the Eucharist is in certain senses sacrificial, but not literally the sacrifice of Christ himself is to depart from the same Patristic sources traditionalist Protestants aim to honor. There is overwhelming evidence that Patristic sources as early as the first decades of the second century believed that the sacrifice of the Eucharist was Christ himself, and not merely “sacrificial” in certain limited senses.
“Instead of going to the proverbial referee and telling him how unfair some Catholics are, Protestants should gather the will to defend themselves and their traditions,” writes Sabo in his defense of “classical” or “historic” Protestantism. That is all well and good, as far as those traditions are more closely aligned with Catholic teaching. Yet at least for those sources cited by Sabo, such Protestant thinkers still fail to faithfully follow the teachings of the Church Fathers regarding the sacrifice of the Eucharist. As their own words demonstrate, the Eucharist was in their eyes not simply “sacrificial.” It was, and is, the sacrifice.