Breaking Bread with the Early Church
“They
devoted themselves to…the breaking of bread” (Ac 2:42)
A.
Introduction: What Is a “Sacrament”?
1. The early church did not have a
definitive “list” of
sacraments.
- Hilary of Poitiers (d.
368) spoke fasting and Holy Scripture.
- Jerome (d. 420) spoke
of the sacrament of martyrdom.
- Augustine (d. 430)
spoke of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer as sacraments. He also speaks
of the sacrament of the exorcized salt that was given to the
catechumens.
- Bernard of Clairvaux
(d. 1153) spoke of the sacrament of foot-washing.
- Pope Alexander III (d.
1181) spoke of the sacrament of the Incarnation.
No
ancient writer ever
grouped together the seven rites to which the word “sacrament” was
restricted
in the later Middle Ages.
If
certain sacraments were
ever set apart in a special category, it was only the two clearly
instituted by
Christ: baptism and Eucharist. Later, different writers devised
different
groups.
- Pseudo
Dionysius (ca. 500) listed six sacraments: Baptism, the Eucharist,
anointing,
ordination, monastic consecration, and the rites connected with burial.
St.
Theodore the Studite (d. 826) basically followed the same line of
thought.
- Peter
Damian (d. 1072) grouped together twelve Sacraments.
- Hugh
of St. Victor (d. 1141) named nearly thirty, divided into three
classes.
- Peter
Lombard (d. 1160), bishop of Paris, wrote that there were
seven. His Sentences became the
principal manual of theology among the Latins for the next four hundred
years,
and his theory about the number of the Sacraments was very generally
accepted.
2. A
Working Definition of
“Sacrament.” In Greek, one speaks of the mysteria
(“mysteries”) of the church. A mysterion
is knowledge that was once unclear, but now has been revealed.
The ancient church understood that
believers are being gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ
(2 Co 3:13-18). Part of
this transformation has to
do with how we lead our lives in the world, and part of it was
understood to
take place in the various sacred acts of Christian worship. These rites
and
ceremonies were understood to reveal what was once unclear, and
therefore the
Greek-speaking church called them “mysteries.”
When the Western church switched
from Greek to Latin, they did not have a comparable term. St.
Jerome landed on the Latin word sacramentum,
used for the loyalty oath of a Roman soldier, as a
similar process of transformation.
-
The sacramentum
of the Roman military was a physical religious act that transformed a
person’s
legal status.
- In Christian usage, a sacrament
is “a rite that
corresponds to a person’s spiritual transformation” or a “physical
manifestation of spiritual reality” (Ken Collins, Disciples pastor)
3.
Connection between the physical
and the spiritual. Judaism and Christianity were unique in the
ancient
world in
asserting that there was a connection between religion and morality.
Formerly,
one sacrificed to the gods (religion) for benefits in the earthly
realm, and
led lives of virtue (ethics) to prepare the soul for life in the
spiritual
realm.
Four key aspects of Christian
theology make it plain that the earthly and the eternal exist in close
connection:
-
Creation.
Christians affirm the physical world as a good creation of a good God.
- Incarnation.
God himself took on a truly physical human existence.
- Redemption.
Salvation involves not initiation into sacred mysteries but faith in
the saving
power of the physical death of Jesus Christ.
- Resurrection.
God put Jesus back in a body after death, and promises believers will
likewise
spend eternity in an exalted bodily state (cf. 1 Co 15).
These four aspects of the Christian
gospel:
-
Are the exact opposite of the
position of the
Gnostic heretics that troubled the church in the first few centuries.
- Hold forth Christ and his saving
work within the
material, earthly realm as the supreme “mystery” of the church.
Augustine could therefore define a
sacrament as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible
grace.”
(Remember that, for Augustine, this definition includes such things as
the
Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.)
B.
Breaking Bread: What?
“The
cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of
Christ? The
bread that we break, is it not a sharing 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” (1 Co 10:16-17).
1. Biblical names for
the
observance:
-
Breaking
of Bread (Ac 2:42,
46). Focus on the resurrection
of Christ
- Sharing (“Communion”) (1 Co 10:16). Focus on spiritual intimacy
- Lord’s Supper (1 Co 11:20). Focus on the death of Christ
- Thanksgiving (“Eucharist”) (Luke 22:17, 19). Focus on
gratitude
What we prefer to call the observance perhaps speaks of what is most
central to our understanding of it. Perhaps it also reveals our blind
spots--do we reject or downplay certain terms because we fail to see
those aspects of the observance?
2. John 6
was universally applied to
the Eucharist. (Remember, the early Christians loved to find deeper
meanings in
things!)
“‘I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this
bread will
live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world
is my
flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this
man give
us his flesh to eat?’ So 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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I
will
raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood
is true
drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in
them.’” (Jn
6:52-56).
3. "Real
Presence." The orthodox writers of the early
centuries unanimously believed in the “real presence” of Christ in the
Eucharist. They did not hesitate to assert that "something happens" in
the breaking of the bread.
a.
Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca. 110)
- Consider how contrary
to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God
which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the
widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the
hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer,
because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior
Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the
Father, in his graciousness, raised from the dead (Smyrnaeans
6)
- Come together in
common, one and all without exception in charity, in one faith and in
one Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David according to the flesh,
the son of man, and the Son of God, so that with undivided mind you may
obey the bishop and the priests, and break
one Bread which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote against
death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ (Ephesians
20)
- I have no taste for the
food that perishes nor for the pleasures of this life. I want the Bread
of God, which is the Flesh of Christ, who was the seed of David; and
for drink I desire his Blood, which is love that cannot be destroyed (Romans 7).
b.
Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165)
- This food we call the
Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who
believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the
washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as
Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common
bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate
by God's Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have
been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes
from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by
transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus (First Apology 66).
c.
Irenaeus of Lyons (fl. ca. 180)
- [Christ] has declared
the cup, a part of creation, to be his own Blood, from which he causes
our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has
established as his own Body, from which he gives increase to our bodies
(Against Heresies)
- So then, if the mixed
cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the
Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify
and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim
that the flesh is incapable of receiving God's gift of eternal life,
when it is nourished by Christ's Blood and Body and is his member? As
the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, ‘For we are
members of his Body, of his flesh and of his bones’ [Eph. 5:30]. He is
not talking about some kind of ‘spiritual’ and ‘invisible’ man, ‘for a
spirit does not have flesh an bones’ [Lk. 24:39]. No, he is talking of
the organism possessed by a real human being, composed of flesh and
nerves and bones. It is this that is nourished by the cup, which is his
Blood, and is fortified by the bread, which is his Body. The stem of
the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and ‘the
grain of wheat falls into the earth’ [Jn. 12:24], dissolves, rises
again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally
after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive
the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood
of Christ (Against Heresies 5:2, 2-3)
- For just as the bread
which comes from the earth, having received the invocation of God, is
no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two
realities, earthly and heavenly, so our bodies, having received the
Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, because they have the hope of the
resurrection (Against Heresies, 4:18, 4-5)
4. Later interpretations
-
Roman
Catholic—highly meticulous
system of
transubstantiation
- Eastern Orthodox—literal
presence, but no need
to dissect what is essentially a mystery
- Martin Luther—Christ present
“in, with, and
under” the bread and wine
- John Calvin—Christ spiritually
present in the Eucharist
- Huldrych Zwingli—Zwingli’s early
writings on the
Eucharist proposed a purely symbolic understanding. Later, he came to
believe
in Christ’s spiritual presence in a way quite similar to Calvin.
Note on Baptists: Baptists are
generally conceded to have drawn their understanding of the Lord’s
Supper from
Zwingli. What many Baptists do not realize is that early Baptists often
sounded
more like the mature Zwingli who espoused a doctrine of spiritual
presence,
than like the early Zwingli for whom the Supper was merely a symbol.
The Second London Confession (1689) would
challenge many 21st-century Baptists:
Worthy
receivers, outwardly
partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, do then also
inwardly by
faith, really and indeed, yet not
carnally and corporally, but spiritually
receive, and feed upon Christ crucified,
and all the benefits of his death; the body and blood of Christ being
then
not corporally or carnally, but spiritually
present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the
elements
themselves are to their outward senses.
Perhaps most Baptists are actually
closer to affirming some kind of spiritual reality within the Lord's
Supper than contemporary theological language will allow. We are
often guilty of "Romophobia"--an instinctive rejection of anything that
even smells of Rome!
C.
Breaking Bread: How?
1.
Frequency of observance—daily (Ac
2:46) or weekly (Ac 20:7 and all of later church history).
"It is good and
beneficial to communicate every day, and to partake of the holy body
and blood of Christ. For he distinctly says, "He that eats my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life" [Jn 6:54]. And who doubts that to
share frequently in life, is the same thing as to have manifold life.
I, indeed, communicate four times a week, on the Lord's day, on
Wednesday, on Friday, and on the Sabbath, and on the other days if
there is a commemoration of any saint. It is needless to point
out that for anyone in times of persecution to be compelled to take the
communion in his own hand without the presence of a priest or minister
is not a serious offence, as long custom sanctions this practice from
the facts themselves. All the solitaries in the desert, where there is
no priest, take the communion themselves, keeping communion at home.
And at Alexandria and in Egypt, each one of the laity, for the most
part, keeps the communion, at his own house, and participates in it
when he lies. (Basil of Caesarea, Epistle
93)
2. The
earliest Eucharist took place
in the context of the agape or “love
feast” (Didache, letter of Pliny).
The Eucharist was the Church’s weekly feast, with all that implied with
respect
to family, belonging, and the obligation to share with those who have
less.
3. Later
developments. Moving past
the first century, we see a growing complexity of ritual, but also a
counterbalance on full participation.
a. Eucharistic
presidency of the bishop (Ignatius, Tertullian) (remember the bishop’s
role as
a symbol of unity), but requires the whole church’s participation
(“laity” was
conceived of as an order of the “clergy”)
b. Reverence for
the elements, but freedom to take home the “leftovers” for Communion in
the
home.
c. Fasting, private
devotions around the reception of the elements (sign of the cross, the
Lord’s
Prayer, etc.). Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical
Catecheses 5:
(21) “Approaching,
therefore, come not with your wrists extended, or your fingers open;
but make
your left hand as if a throne for your right, which is on the eve of
receiving
a King. And having hollowed your palm, receive the Body of Christ,
saying after
it, Amen. Then after you have with carefulness hallowed your eyes by
the touch
of the holy Body, partake thereof; giving heed lest you lose any of it;
for
what you lose is a loss to you as it were from one of your one members.
For
tell me, if any one gave you gold dust, wouldn’t you with all
precaution keep
it fast, being on your guard against losing any of it, and suffering
loss? How
much more cautiously then will you observe that not a crumb falls from
you, of
what is more precious than gold and precious stones?
(22) “Then after
having partaken of the Body of Christ, approach also to the cup of his
Blood;
not stretching forth your hands, but bending and saying in the way of
worship
and reverence, Amen, be hallowed by partaking also of the Blood of
Christ. And
while the moisture is still upon your lips, touching it with your
hands, hallow
both your eyes and brow and the other senses. Then wait for the prayer,
and
give thanks to God, who has accounted you worthy of so great mysteries.”
4. An
example of an early
Eucharistic prayer. Acts of Thomas
133 (ca. 200):
Bread of life,
those who eat of which remain incorruptible;
bread which fills
hungry souls with its blessing—
you are the one
thought worthy to receive a gift,
that you may become
for us forgiveness of sins,
and they who eat
you become immortal.
We name over you
the name of the mother of the ineffable mystery
of the hidden
dominions and powers,
we name over you
the name of Jesus.
Let the power of
blessing come and settle upon the bread,
that all souls
which partake of it may be washed of their sins!
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Lesson: "Praying
with the Early Church"
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