Credo Ut Intelligam

What is Really Present?

Here's a point on which I'm more FV than Doug Wilson: I take a more realistic view of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Wilson's view, as he expresses it here, is rather wishy-washy. Which is unusual for him. A Lutheran, Matthew N. Petersen, has been very deftly defeating Wilson in the comments.

Actually, Petersen goes beyond the Lutheran view when he says "I say Christ used a trope to say the Wine is quite literally his Blood." -- I always thought that Lutherans denied this (?), saying instead that the blood was co-located with the wine, not identical with it. So when the wine literally passes into our mouth, so does the literal blood of Christ, in such a way that there are two distinct substances literally passing into our mouth -- wine and blood -- rather than only one (blood and not wine, as the RC church says) or the only the other (wine and not blood, as every other Protestant church says). Petersen seems to think there is one substance which is, a la fois, both blood and wine. This position has a rather serious problem: it directly contradicts the obvious fact that blood and wine are different substances!

Petersen tries to avoid this by pointing to the dual nature of Christ. Jesus is a la fois both God and man, so why can't what's in this cup be both blood and wine? But the analogy doesn't hold. "God is man" isn't like "blood is wine". The term 'blood' refers to a physical substance of a sort that, by it's very definition, is different from the physical stuff that 'wine', by its definition, refers to. 'God' does not refer to a physical substance of any sort. Our apprehension of the meaning of what we're talking about when we say 'God' isn't based on our grasping, in some positive way, what sort of a thing God is. So we can't pretend to know that a person of that sort couldn't possibly be the same as a human-being. But we can pretend to know -- indeed we do know -- that the sort of thing blood is couldn't be the same sort of thing as the wine in this cup: blood and wine have different molecular structures!

Unlike Petersen's view, the traditional Lutheran view (unless I've misunderstood it) is at least coherent: two distinct substances occupy the same space at the same time, one of which is made imperceptible to our senses (we don't taste blood in our mouth when we partake) and is known to be locally present only by faith. There's no reason that couldn't happen in a miracle. But there's also no reason to believe such a miracle takes place. The Lutheran view isn't self-contradictory; it's just wrong.

But what Wilson says is wrong in the other direction. It's downright baptistic. And I'm using that word 'baptistic' in the quasi-technical way that Wilson himself does. It refers to a view that, without being quite baptist, is a departure from robust, red-blooded Calvinism in a baptist direction, a departure influenced by baptist religious habits of thought, especially as those developed in America during and after the Second Great Awakening. Wilson writes:

The third view [which he defends] is the covenantal view. One of the features of God's covenant is attendant blessings and curses. As we consider the teaching of Scripture, we should clearly see that God connects both to His covenant meal with us. The Lord's Supper, approached in godly faith, is a clear means of blessing and grace on the one hand, and chastizement on the other. First, the blessing -- "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, through many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread" (1 Cor. 10:16-17). But there is also the covenantal cursing that is possible. "For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."

This is covenant reality because the Lord Himself is present with us in the meal. Because we are Protestants, we deny that He is locally present in the bread and wine, but because we are Reformed Protestants, we do affirm that the Lord is really present with us in the meal. We must affirm this because we deny the doctrine of "real absence." But His presence with us is spiritual and covenant, not material, and we feed on His presence by faith. So with God's blessing and cursing in mind, we must come to the Table with joyful solemnity. We must discern the Lord's body in one another. We must judge ourselves. We must submit to God's judgments, thankful we will not be judged with the world. We must seek God's blessing on us in the body.

First off, presenting something called the "Covenantal view" as a tertium quid in this debate is a bit misleading: wouldn't all agree that the sacrament is a Covenant sign? Surely they would. That's not what the controversy is about. Nor is it about what the nature of the Covenant is. There's a real debate there, but it's not this debate. This debate is about what relation that Covenant sign has to the physical body and blood of Christ. So let's skip to the next paragraph.

Wilson seems to think he is affirming the "real presence", but where exactly is the real presence in what Wilson affirms? "The Lord Himself is present with us in the meal." But this is something baptists also affirm. No Christian is going to deny that "wherever two or three are gathered in my name ..." The doctrine of the "real absence", if it means that the Lord Himself is absent, is a mere strawman.

The traditional, robust Calvinistic view says far more than Wilson says here. It says that the literal, physical body and blood of Christ are really present. This is, moreover the biblical position. As Petersen ironically puts it (in a classic FV move, to boot) the Covenant is

kinda like a marriage, and no one wants to be physically present with their wife, we just want "spiritual and covental union"--you know the kind St. Paul had with the absent Colossians--with her.

Classic, robust Calvinism agrees with Luther that the very body and blood of Christ -- those physical realities -- are really present, and are really fed upon by the faithful partakers. The disagreement is this: Christ's body and blood are not ubiquitous: they remain in heaven, they not located anywhere on earth. The supernatural work of the Holy Spirit makes us able really to feed upon what is distant from our physical bodies, but not absent from us.

Wilson sort of maybe gets around to saying this:

"I believe in the real presence, but I don't need to assert that Christ's body is physically present (local presence) in order to feed on His body and drink His blood."

But only at the end of a long back-and-forth. Why didn't he say it earlier? Why didn't he say it in his post (which was ostensibly about the Real Presence)? Why didn't he say it right after Petersen introduced the marriage analogy? Because Wilson is just a little bit baptistic, and the hallmark of baptistic theology is not what is said but what is left unsaid. Baptistic presbyterians are very good at saying what the sacraments are not. It's not transubstantiation, it's not consubstantiation, and it's not "merely" a symbol and memorial. What is it then? What do we mean when we say this is the body of Christ, broken for us; the blood of Christ, shed for us? ... to which the baptistic Presbyterian answers: "Let's change the subject and talk about the Covenant."

Hooray for Covenant realism. We are indeed federally united with Christ, what is true of him, as the Second Adam, is really true of us who are united with him. And the Supper is indeed effectual in maintaining and embodying that spiritual union. All good stuff. But what do we mean when we say this is the body of Christ, broken for us; the blood of Christ, shed for us? If, as an answer to that question, you say that the Supper is an effectual means of maintaining our covenant union with Christ, then you will be understood as DENYING that the physical body and blood of Christ are really fed upon by those who eat the bread and drink the wine.

Posted by mccartney at February 25, 2008 05:14 PM | TrackBack