Lord's Supper in Reformed theology
In Reformed theology, the Lord's Supper or Eucharist is a sacrament that spiritually nourishes Christians and strengthens their union with Christ.
Early Reformed theologians such as John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli rejected the Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation, that the substances of bread and wine of the Eucharist change into Christ's body and blood.
They also disagree with Martin Luther who taught that Christ's body is received orally in the sacramental "elements" of bread and wine.
[3] Riggs maintains that the influential fourth-century Western theologian Augustine of Hippo, on the other hand, held that Christ is really present in the elements of the Eucharist but not in a bodily manner, because his body remains in heaven.
[5] Western theologians in the three centuries following Augustine did not elaborate on the way Christ is present in the Eucharist but emphasized the transforming power of the sacrament.
[6] According to Riggs, in the ninth century, Hrabanus Maurus and Ratramnus also defended Augustine's view of nonmetabolic real presence.
[8] The doctrine of transubstantiation was developed in the high Middle Ages to explain the change of the elements into Christ's body and blood.
[11] Martin Luther, leading figure of the Reformation and leader of the Protestant movement which would be called Lutheranism, rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation.
[15] Huldrych Zwingli, the first theologian in the Reformed tradition, also rejected the view of transubstantiation,[12] but he disagreed with Luther by holding that Christ is not bodily present in the Eucharistic elements themselves.
[16] John Calvin, a very influential early Reformed theologian, believed the Lord's Supper fed Christians with the spiritual food of union with Christ.
Bullinger's view has been called "symbolic parallelism" because the inward feeding on Christ occurs at the same time as the outward eating of bread and wine but is not caused by it in any way.
[26] Reformed orthodox theologians also continued to insist on Christ's real presence in the Supper, while denying against Lutherans that his body is substantially present in the elements.
[28] In the 19th century the doctrine of the Lord's Supper became a point of controversy between American Reformed theologians John Williamson Nevin and Charles Hodge.
[33] Nineteenth-century Reformed Congregationalist followers of the New England theology generally held a symbolic, memorial view of the Lord's Supper.
[40] Reformed confessions teach that the bread and wine of the Supper do not become the blood and body of Christ, as in the Catholic view of transubstantiation.
Against Lutherans, Reformed confessions do not teach that partakers of the Supper eat Christ's body and drink his blood with their mouths (Latin: manducatio oralis).
While Reformed confessions teach that in the Supper Christ is received in both his divine and human natures,[47] the manner of eating is believed to be spiritual (manducatio spiritualis).
