Conversations among Catholics and Protestants concerning Jesus’ words at the Last Supper usually involves Catholics giving arguments for a literal interpretation and Protestants simply countering. But Protestant apologist James White gives his own positive line of argumentation for a non-literal interpretation. And he does it based on Jesus’ reference to the contents of the chalice being the “blood of the covenant.”
As White points out in his book The Roman Catholic Controversy, this is a direct allusion to the “blood of the covenant” that Moses sprinkled on the people to ratify the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai (Exod. 24:8). And White directs our attention to the fact that “the blood of the covenant was blood from a sacrificial victim, not a living person” (176). Had the blood not been shed, it wouldn’t have been the blood of the covenant.
In light of this, White argues that because Christ’s blood had not been shed yet on Calvary when he spoke of the substance in the cup as his “blood of the covenant,” the contents of the cup couldn’t have been the blood of the New Covenant, for the blood of the New Covenant is Christ’s blood shed on the cross. Given this premise, White concludes that the contents of the cup “have to be symbols”—symbols of Jesus’ blood that would be shed the next day.
So what’s our comeback?
One response is that the issue of whether real blood is present is different from the issue of whether that blood presently has the status of being “blood of the covenant.” Consider the victims on Sinai, for example. Before they were slain, their blood didn’t have the status of being the “blood of the covenant.” But that doesn’t mean the blood present in the victims wasn’t real blood.
Christ’s blood at the Last Supper could still be present in the chalice even if it didn’t yet have the status of being the “blood of the covenant,” since he hadn’t been slain yet. And that’s all the doctrine of transubstantiation requires: the belief that Christ’s real and substantial blood was made present in the cup at the Last Supper. Whether his real blood is technically the “blood of the covenant” at that moment doesn’t bear on whether the wine became Jesus’ blood. We could suppose, for the sake of argument, that Jesus was simply speaking about the substance in the cup as his real blood that would soon become “blood of the covenant,” but it would still be real blood.
Another way we can respond is to challenge the assumption that Christ’s blood at the Last Supper cannot be described—even at this stage—as the “blood of the covenant.” There are two ways we can do this.
First, if it is true that Jesus’ blood is truly present in the cup at the Last Supper, then his blood is the blood that will be used to solemnize the New Covenant on the cross. It thus can be described as “blood of the covenant,” whether or not the covenant has been solemnized yet. The same would be true of the blood of the offerings Moses used for the original covenant the day before they were slain and their blood was used to solemnize it.
Second, the objection wrongly assumes that Christ’s blood can’t be the “blood of the covenant” because Christ’s sacrifice hadn’t been offered yet on the cross. Why should we believe that Christ’s redemptive sacrifice is restricted to just the moment of his death? If we consider what the Bible teaches about sacrifices, there is good reason to think Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice was not restricted to his death.
For example, death was a key moment in Old Testament sacrifices, but they didn’t begin at the moment of death. The sacrificial rituals consisted of many things that preceded death: bringing the animal into the sacred precincts (Exod. 29:42, Lev. 1:2-3), examining the animal for any blemish, placing hands on its head (Lev. 1:4, 4:15), the confession of sins by both the priest (16:21) and the penitent (5:5), etc. All of these things made up the one sacrifice.
Moreover, the New Testament teaches us that there’s such a thing as a living sacrifice. Paul tells the Romans, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). Elsewhere, he considers the Gentiles as his “offering” in his “priestly service of the gospel of God” (Rom. 15:16).
This wide range of what’s possible for sacrifices in God’s plan of salvation shows that Christ’s redemptive sacrifice may not have been restricted to his death, but may have begun while he was alive.
So did it?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church answers in the affirmative: “Redemption comes to us above all through the blood of his cross, but this mystery is at work throughout Christ’s entire life” (517). Even if an individual doesn’t accept such an expansive understanding of Christ’s sacrifice, Protestant theologians also identify Jesus’ sacrifice with his Passion as a whole.
On this we can agree: Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice may reasonably include the sufferings that immediately led up to it and were intentionally directed toward the Crucifixion. The obvious example is his agony in the Garden, where he requests three times that the Father remove the cup of suffering from him (Matt. 26:39-46).
Was Jesus already suffering at the time of the Last Supper (the relevant time frame for our purposes)?
Consider that Jesus would have been in distress over Judas’s betrayal, which he predicts at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:24-25, Mark 14:18-21, Luke 22:21-23, John 13:21-30). In John’s account, we even get a hint at Jesus’ inner suffering when he tells Judas, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27). This suggests that Jesus isn’t looking forward to what is to come and—like most of us—wants to complete his passion as quickly as possible.
Now, because this suffering at the Last Supper is directed to the cross, we can reasonably say it’s a part of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. And since his redemptive sacrifice is the New Covenant institution sacrifice, we can conclude that the New Covenant redemptive sacrifice has already begun at the Last Supper.
Thus, at the time of the Last Supper, Christ’s blood already had the status of “blood of the covenant”: the real and substantial blood of the New Covenant sacrificial victim present in the cup and the New Covenant redemptive sacrifice. Yes, the sacrifice will culminate in his death the next day. But his blood is still blood of the New Covenant sacrifice and thus reasonably can have the status of “blood of the covenant.”
In the end, White’s appeal to the phrase “blood of the covenant” fails to establish a merely symbolic interpretation of the chalice. Even if Christ’s blood had not yet been shed in its climactic form on Calvary, it could still be truly present in the cup and already belong to the New Covenant sacrifice that was unfolding in his passion. Far from undermining the Catholic view, Jesus’ covenant language fits naturally with the belief that the Eucharist truly is the blood of the sacrificial victim who offered himself for the salvation of the world.