Law and Life

Communion and Community

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 24 of 39

Track: 135

Dictation Name: RR156M24

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture this morning is the eleventh chapter of 1st Corinthians, eleventh chapter of 1st Corinthians, and our study is Communion and Community, Communion and Community.

1st Corinthians 11: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread: And when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, ‘Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of Me.’ After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, ‘This cup is the new testament in My blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till He come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.”

The relationship of the Lord’s Table to society has been badly neglected. Communion has been reduced by the church to a ritual which is a parody of its original meaning, has been made mystical, and is by and large blasphemous in its observance. In order to understand the meaning of the Lord’s Table, which began to lose its original significance in the 9th century, the Old Testament roots must be understood. It is the Christian Passover. As Saint Paul declared in 1st Corinthians 5, verses 7 and 8, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Saint Paul speaks of it as a feast. Then he goes on to condemn the violations of this feast. For example, in 1st Corinthians 5:9, he speaks of fornication as a violation of the Lord’s Table. In 1st Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 17, he discusses baptism and communion and cites violations thereof. Also, in verses 18 to 33 of 1st Corinthians 10, and chapter 11 we read and he cites violations there also. These violations include idolatry, insubordination by wives and by women who seek to assume dominion, disunity among believers, failure to obey the Lord by men, greed, gluttony, and many, many things more. These are offences not only against God but in the context cited against the Christian community. Now let us go a step further. The Old Testament Passover was a family meal. The youngest male child who was able to speak asked the question concerning the meaning of the feast, and the father explained it to him. The father is a priest. We see this in Exodus 13:1 through 16. It is a family sacrament. This is also true of the Christian Passover. It is now the family of Christ, or as Saint Paul says in Ephesians 2:19, the household of God; the family. We are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens, members of the household of faith. We are commanded, as Saint Paul says in Galations 6:10, to do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith, that is of the family.

Now what does this involve? We have seen as we’ve studied Old Testament family law that the family has far reaching obligations; the care of the young, the support of young and old family members, relief to needy relatives, hospitality to one’s kin, teaching, instruction of the young, teaching also one’s children both a trade and the law, and much else. Now the same obligations are binding on the Christian family and the Christian community; the larger family of faith. The church of New Jerusalem assumed these responsibilities at once. In Acts 6:1, we read that the deacons were appointed to take care of the widows and orphans and so on for the Christian community. The family activities of the Christian community grew beyond the deacons very quickly. They included a wide variety of activities that we touched on in earlier weeks. In Matthew 25:34 through 40, our Lord made it clear in His parable of judgment that these were essential to the faith; the sick, the needy, the imprisoned, the persecuted had to be cared for. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me, and inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these, ye have not done it unto Me. On the other hand, they were forbidden to help the shiftless. If any would not work, neither should he eat, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

Now in this matter especially of the care of widows and orphans there is an interesting point. In the ancient near east, it was the royal virtue to care for widows and orphans. So that when a man seized power, say in Assyria or Babylon or Sumer or wherever, one of the first things to demonstrate I am indeed a king was to give money to widows and orphans. It was the royal virtue. Now in both the Old and New Testament, we are spoken of, the household of faith, as a royal priesthood. And that which kings did from time to time on a ceremonial basis, just a handout periodically to say look I have the royal virtue, the people of God were to do all the time. For we are a royal priesthood. And thus, over and over again, this is cited as a necessary part of the activity of the household of faith, for example in Exodus 22:22, Deuteronomy 14:29, Deuteronomy 24:17, Job 29:13 following, Isaiah 1:17, Jeremiah 7:6, and many other verses.

We see that this was an activity of Christians in the New Testament on an individual basis as well as a community and church basis. Thus, Dorcas we are told according to Acts 9:36 and 39 was full of good works and almsdeeds. And as a well-to-do woman, she had a large number of women that she herself took care of. Saint Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:3, honor widows that are widows indeed. Now we do not understand the meaning of the word honor in the old fashioned sense, in the sense that it is used in the Greek, in a sense it once had ages ago. The Greek word for “honor” means to value, to pay a price or sum, to support. And so when we are told to honor widows who are widows indeed, it means the needy widow is to be supported by the Christian community. This is why when Saint Paul in 1 Timothy 5:17 says those who are faithful ministers are worthy of double honor, double pay. That’s exactly its meaning. Moreover, we’ve forgotten the sense of another word. You see we have reduced all words to their minimal meaning, their most irresponsible meaning. When James says in James 1:27, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. The word “visit” in Greek is a form of episcopal pay, which we have an episcopal. It means to visit with help, with support, with care, with oversight. So James isn’t saying just go visit the needy and the unfortunate and say too bad kid, I’m with you. It means you go with help. This was a different complexion on what Scripture is teaching.

Now, what is reprobate communion sharing? And it is called reprobate, for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. Now the interpretations of that text for centuries have been Monophysite and or Nestorian. They have not been Calcedonian. They say, well you don’t understand the doctrine of Christ, you don’t understand His diety or this or that and so on. That’s not what Saint Paul is talking about. He assumed, he assumed that no one was going to be admitted to the Lord’s Table who didn’t believe the Word of God, who didn’t believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. He’s not saying that their failure is failure to discern the Lord, it’s failure to discern the Lord’s body. And what is the Lord’s body? The community of believers. What are his examples? Why, the very examples he cites most immediately have to do with the celebration of the sacrament. How is it celebrated? Well the church in those days could not meet Sunday morning, they had to meet Sunday night, it was a work day. It was not a holiday. They had to meet in the evenings, late. This meant that if they went home and ate and then went to the meeting it would be very late indeed, almost impossible for a meeting to be held. There was no eight hour day in those days. You worked ten, twelve, fourteen hours, as long as your employer required you to. As a result, the only way services could be held was for the families to bring their evening meal, their dinner, to the meeting, share it on a potluck basis, which would be their communion service, and then the preaching service would follow immediately. Now Saint Paul says that many were acting greedy and gluttonous, they were saying hmm, I brought better food than the Jones have, why should I share it with them? If I put everything on the table, my wife’s good cooking is going to be diluted with everything else and I may only get the poor fare that the Joneses or the Smiths have brought. And so they were sitting off in a corner and eating what they brought because they felt it was superior to someone else’s. And if they brought something inferior they were always ready to share. And Saint Paul says you do not see yourselves as a family. You do not discern the Lord’s body in this and in every respect where you are required to care for one another in terms of family law. Therefore, such communion taking, he says, is damnation.

Now let me cite a specific example of the kind of reprobate communion taking that is commonplace. And this illustration is one of dozens that I know in various denominations which are evangelical or orthodox, which profess to believe the Bible from cover to cover. A ministerial student in one such church that prides itself on being absolutely true to the Word of God had one tragedy after another befall him. His wife became seriously ill, their newly born baby died. He was overwhelmed and virtually wiped out with medical bills, hospital bills, he was only able to take a minimal course, just enough to stay in school and was working long hours trying to keep his head above water. He had to make a routine report to presbytery, and in the course of it, and to his local congregation, and in the course of it he told them his situation and why he was slow in getting his work done towards his degree. He never received one letter of sympathy, not an acknowledgement that his report and letter had been received by either session or presbytery, not one nickel of help from everybody, anybody. But when he returned for ordination a couple of years later they had their knives sharpened to go after him in the examination, to prove how strict they were and how righteous and how holy a denomination. Theologically, such churches, and I could name this kind of incident from church after church, claim to know the Lord as few others, but the Lord’s body, His people, they refuse to discern and they are clearly in danger unless they repent of hearing the Lord declare as our Lord said He would in Matthew 25:41 to 46, “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

Now in this parable, no doctrinal error is charged against the reprobate, they are outwardly orthodox, they believe every word of Scripture. Their failure is to discern the Lord’s body and so our Lord says your failure to discern the Lord’s body is your failure to discern Me. Now as I have gone around the country in the last few years, again and again as I have spoken to church groups I have told them, as I told one church group that in its bulletin spoke proudly of the fact that they gave half a million dollars a year to missionary purposes, I said now how about your own congregation? How many shut-ins do you have here? Where the wife is perhaps bedridden and the husband needs help maybe with the shopping, he can no longer drive a car, or help with the housekeeping? How many situations are there in the church where if the church organized they could perform a very valuable service right here? Of course you’d get involved, I tell them. And it’s not as easy as just putting your money in the plate and boasting of half a million dollars a year spent in missionary activities. You know I rarely get any kind of comment on a statement like that, or any indication we should do this or we’re doing it. Failure to discern the Lord’s body, and our Lord says where that takes place, the service is damnation, damnation, it is blasphemous. And yet in Calvin’s last communion service, he stressed precisely these responsibilities as necessary to the partaking of communion.

But we go back further and find that before the Norman conquest, Alfric, one of the great men of the English church, in his pastoral homily declared, and this was a generation before 1066, “We ought also to consider diligently how that the holy hussell is both Christ’s body and the body of all faithful men after ghostly mystery. As wise Augustine saith of it: If you will understand of Christ’s body here the apostle Paul thus speaking, ye truly be Christ’s body in His members. Now is your mystery set on God’s table, and and ye receive your mystery, which mystery be ye yourselves. Be that which ye see on the altar, and receive that which ye yourselves be. Again the apostle Paul saith of it, We many be one bread and one body. Understand now and rejoice, many be one bread, and one body in Christ, He is our Head, and we be his limbs.” Alfric’s latter reference is to 1st Corinthians 10:16 and 17 which reads “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread and one body. For we are all partakers of that one bread.”

Calvin said of this that it meant, and I quote, “We are united to Christ in such a way that we are flesh of His flesh, and bone of his bones. For we must be all incorporated (so to speak) into Christ, that we may be united to each other.” Unquote. On this aspect Alfric said further, “Christ hallowed on his table the mystery of our peace, and of our unity: he who receiveth that mystery of unity, and keepeth not the bond of true peace, he receiveth no mystery for himself, but a witness against himself.” But going back still to an earlier era, we find the classic exposition of this in Bertram’s De Corpore, written in 840 AD. Now, Bertram wrote his work because he saw the doctrine of transubstantiation and a Monophysite type of interpretation of the sacrament coming in, and he felt he had to witness against it in terms of Scripture. His work, by the way, was the classic that the Reformers used. When they discovered it they said aha, we have here the answer to the medieval doctrine. And they used it but unfortunately their emphasis was negative. They stressed mostly the fact that Bertram, seeing the first dawning of the doctrine of transubstantiation and the Monophysite interpretations stood against that. So they used him against transubstantiation but failed to stress the positive meaning, using the negative primarily. Bertram declared, and I quote, “It is also to be considered that in that bread, not only the body of Christ but also the body of the faithful is represented as a figure; for it is made of many grains, even as the body of the faithful is increased by individual believers through the word of God. Wherefore as in a mystery that bread is taken to be the body of Christ, so also in a mystery are the faithful in Christ signified. And even as not corporally but spiritually, that bread is said to be the body of the faithful, so also is it necessary that the body of Christ be not corporally but spiritually understood.” Unquote.

This then is the meaning of our Lord’s words. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye hath done it unto me. Failure to discern the Lord’s body means that God’s purposes for and through the new humanity are rejected. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. This is why we must say many rituals are observed throughout Christendom today, but not the Lord’s Table. They are blasphemous rites because they eat and drink damnation to themselves according to the plain wording of Scripture, for their failure to discern the Lord’s body. Now what did this failure do to the church? Well, in the medieval era, because this Monophysite doctrine arose, a formal correctness was insisted on as to doctrine, but the world was given over to the devil. The great classic statement of this was in Aquinas, who theologically affirmed the whole of Scripture. He’s as predestinarian, for example, as Calvin, but philosophically threw it all out and so he sundered the world. The theological world he pushed up into heaven and the natural world he gave over to man and the devil, and so Christianity no longer could mold and shape culture. Now the hallmark of that was the medieval doctrine of the Lord’s Table. It separated Christ from culture, Christ from man, and it ultimately ended with severing salvation from man as well because it abandoned him to this world and a world without Christ.

Now, today again because of this same Monophysite perversion on the one hand among the evangelicals and orthodox, and the Nestorian perversion among the modernists, Christ has been sundered from the world. There is no longer a Christian culture and the rite has become blasphemous. The result is the death of Christian culture and it is not until we return to what our Lord teaches, that the Lord’s body must discerned, that these responsibilities of the Christian family must be met, that the Lord’s Table again can be observed, that there again can be a true church, not a Monophysite church or a Nestorian church, which is all that we have now. They say Lord, Lord but they discern His body or they reduce it to pure humanism among the modernists. It is important for us, therefore, to understand what the doctrine of the Lord’s Table teaches, what it means to discern the Lord’s body, to establish again the family of faith. Then communion, which is the same root word as community, will again mean what our Lord intended it to mean; community, the community of faith. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy Word and we pray that by Thy grace Thy Word may take hold in the hearts of men, that once again the Lord’s Table may flourish in Thy church and that men may discern the Lord’s body, Thy body, and that there may be a community, a household of faith from one end of the earth to the other. O Lord, our God, use us to this purpose. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] At what time in history did the doctrine of transubstantiation come from?

[Rushdoony] The doctrine of transubstantiation really did not become fully established until the thirteenth century. But in the ninth century it began to take hold, and as a result this was why Bertram wrote against it. Now in England, it was later getting established than elsewhere, and the reason was of course, Alfric’s work was very staunchly against the new interpretation that was coming in. He recognized the heretical nature of it and fought against it about two centuries after Bertram. Yes?

[Audience member] Why do you see transubstantiation as {?} Monophysite?

[Rushdoony] Because, well, there are both Nestorian and Monophysite implications in it and it depends on the interpreter thereof. But in some versions it has become Monophysite because it emphasizes union with the deity of Christ, and one of the consequences of it was the school of mysticism in the later Middle Ages which emphasized becoming a part of God and these mystics celebrated the communion precisely as becoming divine. It was a part of putting on divinity. So that strand emphatically went in that direction. Another strand became the modernist interpretation in which you made Christ totally human who became divine by his activity. A mystical strain was very much present you see, because philosophically for Aquinas there was one being. Theologically he held to the doctrine of creationism, there was a creator and then there was creation, but philosophically it was one being, and so philosophically for him evil was merely the absence of being. Now the Monophysite interpretation readily lends itself to this kind of thing, it had a defective concept of being. Yes?

[Audience member] Would you explain a little more when you said this doctrine takes Christ out of the world?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The question how does this doctrine (the false doctrine of communion) take Christ out of this world? First of all, in a Monophysite interpretation whereby you have communion only with the deity of Christ and you separate him from his body, the faithful, and you don’t read concerning the Lord’s body as knowing and becoming one family with all fellow believers, to take out the heart of Christian action on one hand, and on the other you only stress the deity of Christ you see. The Lord’s body is made like the Lord Himself, totally God. And in the interpretations of this the humanity of Christ, that He was very man of very man as well as very God of very God, are soft pedaled and gradually in the doctrine of communion eliminated. So that in the interpretations that have ensued of the doctrine of communion, while the theologians who have interpreted it for the past thousand years almost in some areas, have said we believe in the two natures of Christ, that He was God and man, in their doctrine of communion they don’t mention the humanity at all, it’s just the deity, and it’s as though you were taking communion only with the deity and you were being united with the deity.

Now some of them will not go that far and make it a mystical doctrine because of their theology they stop short. But when you separate Christ from the world that way, and from the faithful, from the new humanity, because He is the second Adam, you then separate Him from His power to transform culture because when Christ says inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me, and that this is discerning His body, it means that we have to create a new humanity, make it the new culture, the new society, to occupy till He comes in one area after another. But if we’re only to think in terms of union with God, then you have the characteristic of the later Middle Ages where the only goal of religion was union with God and you let the world go to the devil, and tyrants took over. Well the same thing has happened, totalitarianism has taken over. And yet we have more professing Bible-believing Christians today than they had when Christendom was conquered. We have forty to forty-five million evangelicals in the United States today, impotent because they do not discern the Lord’s body, they are not geared for community, for a conquest of culture. Yes?

[Audience member] Note that the Passover was supposed to be celebrated once a year?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] Was it the custom in the early church that it was every time they got together?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] And should it be right now, Christians every once a week?

[Rushdoony] A very good question about the observance of communion; in the Old Testament once a year in the Passover, in the New Testament once a week, at their weekly meetings as they came together. Now what we must remember that while the Passover was celebrated formally once a year in the Old Testament, and the rite had to be explained in terms of the comprehensive in terms of the smallest boy in the family, practically every day when they sat down at the table, and as they broke bread together, the very expression, the breaking of bread together, they were in a sense observing the same thing. This is why prayer was to accompany the breaking of bread. The father’s role was priestly. The prayers that they used in ancient Israel indicated the continuity of this. This is why every meal to this day in a strictly Christian family is a religious observance. And it is communion around a table. So that while there’s a formal observance in the Old Testament once a year, in the New Testament weekly and later on less regularly because they were separating it from the meal, the fact is with every meal in a sense we acknowledge its continuation.

And this is why there could be no actual eating of blood at any meal, why in ancient times and to modern times in some families the breaking of bread was done at the table always. The father would take the bread and either slice it or break it. This was done within my memory, when the father gave the blessing at the table. At the end he also broke the bread and passed it around first of all. Of course they had forgotten in many cases what it meant, but this was a continuation you see. So we must see ourselves in this respect.

Well if there are no further questions we have a few brief announcements. First of all, there are announcements of our economic seminar, with Doctor Hans Sennholz, Saturday, November the ninth on the lectern at the back. So if you have not sent in your reservation, please get it in soon. Then, on Saturday, November the sixteenth at 8:30, Grace Community Church, there is a Bible Science Association seminar. Then last, I’d like to call to your attention the clipboard on the table in the back. Next Sunday we will again have a dinner together after our morning meeting at Bruno’s. So if you plan to come, please sign your name there and the number in your party and your telephone number. That will be next Sunday, we will go to Bruno’s at 12:30 for dinner after our morning meeting.

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.

[End of tape]