The Lord's Supper

This book engages five voices on conversation on the eucharist: Brother Jeffrey Gros (Roman Catholic), John R. Stephenson (Lutheran), Reformed (Leanne Van Dyck), Baptist (Roger E. Olson), and Pentecostal (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen). The Eastern Orthodox perspective is conspicuously absent, which unfortunately limits the value of the book.

Gros spends much of his chapter on transubstantiation. “Externally, the bread and wine retain their appearance even after consecration,” he writes. “Yet at the same time the whole Christ is sacramentally present in them-the whole Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity”. The Catholic formulation in historic debates has been transubstantiation. “Although other explanations of this presence would be possible, none has yet been approved by the Catholic Church” (9). It does not repeat Christ's sacrifice but “sacramentally re-presents it” (11).

Stephenson, in the most polemical chapter (Olsen describes it as “offensive” (82)), defends the corporeal presence of Christ's body and blood. This creates “an insuperable wall of separation between orthodox Lutheranism and the wide world of Protestantism” (61), while “the different ways in which Lutherans and Roman Catholics articulate the real presence are in themselves not necessarily church-divisive” (65).

Leanne Van Dyck argues for the Reformed view—Calvin's instrumentalism, in contrast to Zwingli's memorialism or Bullinger's parallelism. Calvin viewed the sacrament as a true means of grace, with Christ's ascended presence mediated by the Holy Spirit (106)—an emphasis the Pentecostal Kärkkäinen finds intriguing (124).

Olson sides with historic Anabaptists and Baptists in rejecting “any idea that the grace of God is especially attached to these visible, physical objects or emblems” (131). He grants that “emblems are objects in an event in which Christ is present and active in strengthening participants' faith” (132). There is no real presence; at most the ordinance can be compared to the renewal of wedding vows (142).

Kärkkäinen admits that “Pentecostals have devoted little attention to developing any kind of constructive theology of sacraments in general or the Lord's Supper in particular” (169). Pentecostals have generally adopted the memorialist view, but surprisingly have not reflected on the Spirit's role in mediating Christ's presence (181). Many questions and possibilities remain for the emerging generation of Pentecostal scholars. Perhaps the most interesting possibility would be Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper combined with Pentecostal fire.