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Quod Ubique The Common Confession of the Universal Church

Layer 2 · 04

The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

The Common Witness

The historic church has consistently witnessed that the Eucharist is not bare memorial but a genuine participation in the body and blood of Christ. This document treats the fact of the Real Presence — not the mechanism by which Christ is present. Transubstantiation (Rome), metabole or divine mystery (Orthodoxy), sacramental union (Lutheranism), true spiritual presence (Calvin), and real but undefined presence (classical Anglicanism) are distinct accounts of how Christ is present, and these belong to Layers 3 and 4. What belongs here, at Layer 2, is the massive consensus that when the faithful receive the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, they receive Christ Himself — truly, really, and not merely by way of mental recollection.

Pure memorialism — the view that the bread and wine are bare symbols triggering pious remembrance — is a minority position in the whole of Christian history, confined largely to the Zwinglian tradition and its descendants in modern evangelicalism.

Scriptural Warrant

The discourse at Capernaum:

  • “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51 ESV)
  • “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:53–54 ESV)
  • “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:55 ESV) — the intensification of the language through the passage (from phagein to trōgein, “to chew/gnaw”) militates against a purely metaphorical reading

The words of institution:

  • “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me… This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20 ESV)
  • “This is my body… this is my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:26–28 ESV; Mark 14:22–24 ESV)

Pauline testimony:

  • “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation (koinōnia) in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16 ESV) — Paul’s rhetorical questions expect an affirmative answer: the Eucharist is participation in Christ’s body and blood
  • “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 Corinthians 11:27–29 ESV) — profaning mere bread is not a capital offense; Paul’s gravity presupposes the Real Presence

Patristic and Historical Attestation

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–107)

“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.” — Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7.1

This text is strikingly early — within living memory of the apostles — and identifies denial of the Real Presence as a mark of heresy (specifically Docetism).

Justin Martyr (c. 100–165)

“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” — First Apology 66

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202)

“He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be His own blood, from which He causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, He has established as His own body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.” — Against Heresies 4.18.5

Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313–386)

“Since He Himself declared and said of the bread, ‘This is My Body,’ who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has Himself affirmed and said, ‘This is My Blood,’ who shall ever hesitate, saying that it is not His blood?… Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ.” — Catechetical Lectures 22.1–9 (Mystagogical Catechesis 4)

Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397)

“Before the blessing of the heavenly words a different nature is named; after the consecration the Body is indicated. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before the consecration it has another name; after, it is called Blood. And you say, Amen, that is, It is true.” — De Mysteriis 9.50–54

John Chrysostom (c. 347–407)

“It is not man who causes the things offered to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but He who was crucified for us, Christ Himself. The priest, in the role of Christ, pronounces these words, but their power and grace are God’s.” — De Proditione Judae 1.6 [∗]

Tradition-Formulary Evidence

Roman Catholic

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) defined that Christ’s body and blood are “truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread being changed (transsubstantiatis) into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power.” The Council of Trent (Session 13, 1551) reaffirmed: “In the most blessed sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the appearances of those perceptible things.” The Catechism: “The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique… it is presence in the fullest sense” (CCC §1374).

Eastern Orthodox

The Orthodox affirm the Real Presence emphatically, typically using the language of metabole (change) or divine mystery rather than the Aristotelian categories of transubstantiation. The Confession of Dositheus (1672), Decree 17: “We believe that in this sacred rite the Lord Jesus Christ is present, not typically, nor figuratively… but truly and really, so that after the consecration of the bread and wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted, and changed into the true Body itself of the Lord.” The liturgy itself is the primary witness: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”

Lutheran

The Augsburg Confession, Article X: “Our churches teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to those who eat the Lord’s Supper.” The Formula of Concord (1577), Solid Declaration VII, is more emphatic: “We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are received with the bread and wine, not only spiritually by faith, but also orally; yet not in a Capernaitic fashion, but in a supernatural, heavenly mode.” Luther himself was unyielding on this point, famously chalking Hoc est corpus meum (“This is my body”) on the table at the Marburg Colloquy (1529) against Zwingli.

Reformed

The Reformed position requires careful distinction. Calvin explicitly rejected Zwinglian memorialism: “I am not satisfied with those persons who, recognizing that we have some communion with Christ, when they would show what it is, make us partakers of the Spirit only, omitting mention of flesh and blood” (Institutes 4.17.7). Calvin taught a true spiritual presence: the Holy Spirit lifts the believer to heaven to feed on the glorified Christ — a real participation, not a bare sign. The Belgic Confession (Article 35): “We receive this holy sacrament… as a sure sign of Christ’s body and blood… we do not go wrong when we say that what is eaten is Christ’s own natural body and what is drunk is his own blood.” The Westminster Confession (29.7) affirms that “worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified.” This is not memorialism but genuine spiritual reception.

Zwingli stands as the outlier within the Magisterial Reformation. His position — that “is” means “signifies” and that the Supper is primarily a memorial and a pledge of the community’s faith — was rejected by Luther, Calvin, and the Anglican tradition alike.

Anglican

The Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXVIII: “The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.” This rejects both Roman transubstantiation and Zwinglian memorialism. Richard Hooker (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity V.67) wrote: “The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament.” The Book of Common Prayer’s communion liturgy assumes the Real Presence throughout — “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.”

The Dissenting Minority

Who dissents: Zwinglians, most Baptists, most Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and the broad memorialist stream of modern Protestantism.

When: Zwingli articulated the memorialist position in the 1520s, but it remained a minority view even within Protestantism for centuries. Its dominance in popular evangelical piety is largely a 19th- and 20th-century development.

Why — the strongest case for dissent:

  1. John 6:63 — “The flesh is no help at all. It is the Spirit who gives life.” Jesus Himself seems to relativize the fleshly language of John 6:51–56. If the flesh profits nothing, then the discourse must be understood spiritually/metaphorically, not as teaching literal consumption of Christ’s body.

  2. “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25). The word anamnēsis (“remembrance”) centers the rite on memory, not on a metaphysical transformation. The Supper is a memorial meal in which the community recalls Christ’s death — powerful, moving, but not ontologically different from other acts of worship.

  3. “Is” means “represents.” Jesus regularly used metaphor: “I am the door” (John 10:9), “I am the vine” (John 15:5). No one takes these literally. Similarly, “this is my body” can mean “this represents my body” without violence to ordinary language. The burden of proof falls on those who insist on a literal reading of this particular metaphor while treating others as figurative.

  4. The danger of superstition. The memorialist argues that Real Presence theology inevitably leads to adoration of bread, the reservation of the sacrament, and a quasi-magical view of the liturgy that displaces faith as the means of communion with Christ. The focus should be on the believer’s faith, not on the elements.

  5. The ascended Christ is in heaven. Christ’s glorified body is at the right hand of the Father (Acts 1:9–11; Hebrews 8:1). To posit His bodily presence in the bread on thousands of altars simultaneously requires either a philosophical apparatus (ubiquity, transubstantiation) not found in Scripture, or a willingness to affirm mystery where clarity is needed.

These are serious objections, and the memorialist tradition has produced saints and scholars of genuine depth. But the position must reckon with its own novelty: pure memorialism has no patristic advocate. Even the most spiritualizing Fathers affirm more than Zwingli does. And Calvin — the most intellectually rigorous of the Reformers — explicitly rejected it.

For Further Study

  1. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7 — the earliest post-apostolic witness
  2. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 22 (Mystagogical Catechesis 4) — the most detailed early catechetical treatment
  3. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, qq. 73–83 — the Latin scholastic synthesis
  4. Martin Luther, The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ — Against the Fanatics (1526)
  5. Brian Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (1993) — the Reformed alternative to memorialism