Eucharist

Eucharist.
1. NAME. The title ‘Eucharist’ (meaning ‘thanksgiving’) for the central act of Christian worship is explained either because at its institution Christ ‘gave thanks’ or because the service is the supreme act of Christian thanksgiving. Other names are the ‘Holy Communion’, the ‘Lord's Supper’, the ‘Mass’, and in the E. Church, the ‘Divine Liturgy’.

2. ORIGIN. The institution of the Eucharist is recorded by St Paul in 1 Cor. 11: 23–5 and in the three Synoptic Gospels. From Acts it is clear that from a very early date it was a regular part of Christian worship and was held to have been instituted by Christ.

3. DOCTRINE. That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood of Christ was universally accepted from the first. The Eucharistic elements were themselves commonly referred to as the Body and Blood. During the patristic period some theologians wrote as if they believed that the bread and wine persisted after the consecration, others as if they held that they were no longer there; there was no attempt at precise definition. After the controversies arising from assertions by Paschasius Radbertus in the 9th cent. and Berengar in the 11th, definition was felt to be desirable. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) used the term ‘transubstantiation’ to assert the Real Presence against the Cathari. Later in the 13th cent. this teaching was worked out in detail; it was maintained that consecration effected a change in the ‘substance’ of the Bread and Wine, whereas the ‘accidents’ (i.e. the outward appearance) remained.

At the Reformation there was much controversy on the subject. M. Luther defended a doctrine of consubstantiation, according to which after the consecration both the bread and the wine and the Body and Blood of Christ co-existed. U. Zwingli affirmed that the Lord's Supper was primarily a memorial rite and that there was no change in the elements. J. Calvin and his followers held an intermediate position. They denied that any change in the elements took place, but maintained that the faithful received the power or virtue of the Body and Blood of Christ, a doctrine which became known as virtualism. The ambiguous wording of the BCP has permitted the coexistence of a variety of doctrines in the C of E.

From at least the end of the 1st cent. it was also widely held that the Eucharist was in some sense a sacrifice, though here again definition was gradual. This aspect of Eucharistic doctrine was the centre of discussion in the E. Church, and a Council at Constantinople in 1157 upheld the teaching that the Liturgy makes present the Sacrifice of Christ that is ‘eternally celebrated’ upon the ‘altar on high’. Among the Reformation theologians there was a tendency to deny the sacrifice or to explain it in an unreal sense. The Council of Trent, on the other hand, affirmed that the Sacrifice of the Mass was propitiatory, that it availed for the living and the dead, and that it did not detract from the sufficiency of the Sacrifice of Calvary.

In the 20th cent. theologians have emphasized the element of anamnesis (or memorial) as central to an understanding of the Eucharist. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission achieved a measure of agreement on the subject by stressing the idea of anamnesis, understood as ‘the making effective in the present of an event in the past’. The Eucharist is thus presented as ‘a means through which the atoning work of Christ on the cross is proclaimed and made effective in the Church’. The Liturgical Movement emphasized that the Eucharist is a commemoration of the whole paschal mystery and brought out its relation to the corporate nature of the Church and the role of the laity in its celebration. The Second Vatican Council also stressed the corporate nature of the Eucharist and the sociological significance of Eucharistic worship expressed in the active participation of the people. See also EUCHARISTIC PRAYERS.