Christ’s Substantial Presence in the Eucharist According to Scripture

The Augsburg Confession affirms the ancient and medieval consensus of the catholic Church that Christ’s flesh and blood are substantially present in the Eucharist: “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.”¹  This avowal of the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper was integral to the Lutheran Reformation from the beginning.  In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther criticized the practice of communion in one kind (i.e., the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic practice of withholding the cup from the laity), transubstantiation, and the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead.  Nevertheless, unlike most other reformers, Luther very clearly confessed the real presence based on canonical and evangelical principles.  Since the real presence was overwhelmingly the catholic consensus of the Church from its inception, the catholic principle also applies to this theological question.  

Paul’s Affirmation of the Substantial Presence

First, with regard to the canonical principle, the New Testament straight forwardly affirms the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.  As Luther tirelessly emphasized, the words of institution themselves (“this is my body . . . this is my blood”) do not admit a metaphorical interpretation.  The words of institution are a promise regarding the sacramental elements set before the Christian. Moreover, they are also deed-words that accomplish the consecration so that the bread and wine become vehicles conveying the true body and blood of Jesus to all recipients. 

St. Paul, the earliest Christian author, describes the sacrament as the body and blood of Christ received through the eucharistic elements: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16).  Here, Paul clearly argues that consumption of the eucharistic elements entails reception of the body and blood of Christ.  

Paul’s affirmation of the substantial presence also makes sense of a later statement to the Corinthians. According to Paul, the Corinthians were sinning against the supernaturally present body and blood of Christ. The Corinthians acted wickedly by treating the eucharistic elements as merely ordinary food. Additionally, they quickly consumed the Lord’s Supper before poorer members of the congregation, who worked later into the evening, had a chance to receive. Paul responded to this situation with condemnation: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord . . . For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:27, v. 28).  

Again, Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 11:27 that Corinthian Christians sinned against the body and blood of Christ by treating the elements as if they were ordinary bread and wine.  These passages show that even if communicants remain unrepentant and therefore do not believe, they still receive the actual body and blood of Christ. Thus, Christ is objectively present in the elements and received regardless of belief or unbelief. Because if this, the historic Roman Catholic and Lutheran doctrine of the manducatio impiorum (“eating of the impious”) aligns with Paul’s inspired teachings. This stands in contrast to the Reformed contention that unbelievers receive nothing but a bare sign.  

Additionally, 1 Corinthians 11 and related sections of Scripture contain no hint that the eucharistic elements are mere symbols, as Anabaptists and Baptists claim. Nor is there textual basis for the Reformed belief that the elements mediate a spiritual presence for believers.  Reformed teaching holds that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is solely the presence of the Holy Spirit uniting believers with the heavenly Christ.

To support this interpretation, John Calvin appealed to Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper in a typological analogy. Paul wrote that the manna consumed by Israel in the wilderness was “spiritual food . . . [and] spiritual drink” (1 Cor. 10:3-4).  Calvin reasoned that both Israel and the Church have access to something spiritual (which the sacraments and their types signify). For Calvin, then, this spiritual participation has nothing to do with physical eating.²  

Nevertheless, Paul’s use of the term “spiritual food and spiritual drink” is not supposed to contrast the physical and spiritual, as if he accepted Platonic dualism.³  The manna and the water from the rock were indeed “spiritual” like the Lord’s Supper. But this was not because they were non-physical. Clearly, the manna and water existed as physical entities. Rather, Paul uses the term “spiritual” because the manna and water appeared via supernatural agency.  Hence, by “spiritual” Paul simply means “supernatural.”  Of course, as Calvin reminds us, Paul also has the presence of Christ in view when considering these events (1 Cor. 10:4)⁴ Christ, in his pre-incarnate state, fed the Israelites with supernaturally produced physical elements.  

The Johannine Witness to the Substantial Presence

Finally, the Johannine bread of life discourse provides biblical evidence in favor of the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.  Most Roman Catholic scholars have accepted this passage as eucharistic.  Lutherans, on the other hand, have had a mixed response. Ulrich Zwingli attempted to use the passage to prove a symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist⁵ Luther, in turn, tended to read John 6 as mainly related to union with Christ by faith.⁶  Johann Gerhard followed Luther’s interpretation.⁷ 

There are certainly passages in the discourse which are about union by faith (for example, Jn 6:35). However, there are other verses that suggest an anticipation and promise of the sacrament.  This discourse is specifically an “anticipation” because Jesus obviously had not yet instituted the sacrament. Yet, as Lutheran theologian David Scaer notes, readers would have undoubtedly seen eucharistic implications after the institution of the Eucharist.⁸  Scaer⁹ and other Lutheran scholars, such as Hermann Sasse¹⁰ and John Stephenson¹¹, affirm that the bread of life discourse is relevant to eucharistic theology.  

It seems undeniable that throughout John 6, Jesus speaks pervasively of the real eating of his flesh and blood in ways that the early Church would clearly see as an exposition of the meaning and reality of the Eucharist (Jn. 2:22) after its institution and the resurrection. At the beginning of the passage, John notes that the bread of life discourse occurs on the eve of Passover (Jn. 6:4). This connects the discourse not only with the institution of the Lord’s Supper on that feast, but also with the pervasive Johannine theme of Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (Jn. 1:29). 

Like many other passages in John, Jesus contrasts himself as the true reality to which the Old Testament types pointed.  Manna in the wilderness was a kind of supernatural bread (Jn. 6:49). But Jesus is the real bread of life (Jn. 6:48).  Since Jesus is the real and literal reality to which the shadows and types of the Old Testaments pointed, the eating of his body and blood is also real and literal. 

Lest there be any doubt of this, Jesus emphasizes that his flesh and blood are real, substantial, and to be literally consumed: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn. 6:54-56, Emphasis added).  Here Jesus’s flesh is “true food,” lest anyone take this statement to be a metaphor.  

At the end of the discourse, many disciples abandoned Jesus because they found what he had said a “hard saying” (Jn. 6:60).  Jesus did not run after them, clarifying that he was only speaking metaphorically.  Jesus also stated: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (Jn. 6:63).  Zwingli famously took these words to mean that physical things cannot mediate salvation. Only “spirit” can.¹²  But this is clearly a false interpretation, since Jesus is not thinking of Platonic dualism here, but rather of fleshly and fallen human reason. 

Fallen reason cannot accept Jesus’s statements about supernaturally eating his body and blood because it is limited to things of the current fallen age and its possibilities.  That is why his saying were rejected by many of his followers.  Ironically, Zwingli’s style of rationalism over the sacrament is precisely what Jesus condemned. ¹³ 

Church Consensus and Later Protestant Dissent

As we have seen, there is no scriptural evidence whatsoever for the rejection of the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’ Supper.  Not a syllable of the Bible ever states that the words of institution are metaphorical.  None of the New Testament authors (notably Paul and the Evangelists), ever indicate that the Eucharist is symbolic or merely spiritual. 

On the contrary, they consistently affirm a real and substantial presence that can be profaned and masticated in, with, and under bread and wine.  Beyond the scriptural evidence, the consensus of the early Church up to the ninth-century debate between Ratramnus and St. Radbertus¹⁴ was in favor of the substantial presence of Christ in the sacrament.¹⁵  

In light of this, it behooves us to ask why the majority of Protestants have taken the exegetically problematic position of sacramental symbolicism or spiritualism.  There seem to be many complex reasons, including many cultural and historical variables that we could examine. But, in terms of formal theology, there are a limited number of arguments. 

The first is the Christological argument promoted by Zwingli. Namely, Zwingli taught that the communicatio idiomatum is merely linguistic and notional, and therefore the human nature of Christ must be limited to a circumscribed presence. Logically then, Jesus’ body and blood cannot be in the elements.¹⁶  We have already dealt with this argument in some length in the chapter on Christology and need not return to it.  It is sufficient to remind the reader that the resurrection appearances themselves prove that in his glorified state Christ can exercise multiple forms of presence and transcend the normal boundaries of physicality.

• Facebook
• X
• Bluesky
• Mail

---

1. AC X. ↩︎
2.  ICR, 2.10.5-6; Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:432-433. ↩︎
3. See Lutheran critique of dualism in the sacraments in: John Stephenson, The Lord’s Supper, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. 12 (St. Louis: Luther Academy, 2003), 256-258. ↩︎
4. ICR, 2.10.6; Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:433. ↩︎
5. See: W. P. Stephens, “Zwingli on John 6:63: ‘Spiritus est qui vivificat, caro nihil prodest,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C. Steinmetz in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday, eds. Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans,1996), 153-173. ↩︎
6. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520); LW 36:19. ↩︎
7.  Johann Gerhard, A Comprehensive Explanation of Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, trans. Elmer Hohle (Malone, TX: Repristination Press, 2000), 214, 341-344; 214. ↩︎
8. David Scaer, “Once More to John 6,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 77, no. 1-2 (2013): 62. ↩︎
9. Scaer, “Once More to John 6,” 47-62. ↩︎
10. Hermann Sasse, “The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament,” in We Confess the Sacraments, 77-80. ↩︎
11. Stephenson, The Lord’s Supper, 39-40.  ↩︎
12. Stephens, “Zwingli on John 6:63,” 171-172. ↩︎
13. Sasse, This is My Body, 33, 154. ↩︎
14. See: Aquilina, The Mass of the Early Christians; Jones, Christ’s Eucharistic Presence: A History of the Doctrine; Rordorf, The Eucharist of the Early Christians. ↩︎
15.  George J. Gatgounis, The Law of the Eucharist: Radbertus Vs. Ratramnus—Their Controversy as to the Nature of the Eucharist (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2021). ↩︎
16.  K.J. Drake, The Flesh of the Word: The Extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 56-60. ↩︎

---

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

---

Cover image from Mark J. Buchhop, “The Closed Communion Conversation,” The Lutheran Witness, November 3, 2020, accessed June 10, 2024, https://witness.lcms.org/2020/the-closed-communion-conversation/; other images from Pris, “O Lord I am not Worthy,” My Little Catholic Nook, February 16, 2016, accessed June 10, 2024, https://catholico.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/o-lord-i-am-not-worthy/; “I Am the Bread of Life First Holy Communion Standard Size Bulletin,” Catholic Supply of St. Louis, Inc., accessed June 16, 2024, https://shop.catholicsupply.com/i-am-the-bread-of-life-standard-bulletin.aspx.