Law and Life

Communion and Culture

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Lesson: 25 of 39

Genre: Speech

Track: 136

Dictation Name: RR156N25

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

[Rushdoony] Our scripture is from the first letter to the Corinthians, the tenth chapter, verses 14 through 17. 1 Corinthians 10:14-17. Our subject, Communion and Culture. Communion and Culture. 1 Corinthians 10:14-17. “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.  I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. 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.”

In our last study, we saw that in the eleventh chapter when St. Paul speaks of the fact that improper taking of communion was a sin against the body of Christ, a failure to discern the body of Christ. The meaning of this has been commonly misunderstood. It has been assumed that theological errors are involved, but it was assumed that anyone who did not understand the doctrine would not be admitted to the table. What St. Paul was dealing with and what the church for centuries understood in some quarters was that the failure to discern the Lord’s body meant failure to realize that the body of Christ is the people of Christ, the elect community.

The sin that St. Paul was dealing with in that context we saw was that they came to the meeting, each bringing their own food and guarding it for themselves. The Lord’s Day then was not a holiday. It was a work day. There were no eight and ten-hour days. Men worked from sun up to sun down and, as a result, the early church met on the evening of the first day, the day of resurrection and since had they first gone home and eaten, it would have meant a very late hour for the meeting. The common practice was for the women-folk to prepare the food and then the men would come and together, they would leave immediately for the place of meeting and there, have a common meal. But people would look at what they had brought and say, “Well, our neighbors don’t have food as good. Why should we share and have inferior food? Let’s eat our own and not share,” and St. Paul indicted them for this and said that there was a failure to discern the Lord’s body, that they were now one family in Christ.

The old Passover had been for the blood family within the covenant. Now, the new Passover was for the family of Christ, all who were made adopted sons through the atoning blood of Christ.

Now, the heretical doctrine of communion assumes that the believer, on partaking, is mystically made one with God the Son, one with divinity. The late Medieval mystics, of course, made this the cornerstone of their faith, and this doctrine unfortunately has remained, in some fashion, as the basic Catholic and Protestant doctrine, although in many Protestant quarters it is not so badly stated.

Now in our scripture text, we are told, first of all, that our communion is the communion of the blood of Christ. This means, very obviously, that we are not drinking his blood, but we stand together as a new creation through his atoning blood. We are products of his nullification of the fall, of his regeneration of his elect people, and we are a new humanity in Christ. There is no implication of any mystical union with deity or any literal drinking of blood. The incarnate one has redeemed us by his blood.

Then second, we are told that we partake of the cup of blessing. That is, we celebrate our new creation by his grace and we are warned that we should not fall into idolatry as we interpret baptism and communion, that even as it is idolatry to partake of the table of false idols, so it is idolatry if we fail to understand what it is we are partaking of in the Lord’s Table. “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.”

Thus, it follows next that the bread of communion commemorates the broken or crucified body of Christ, again reminding us of his atonement, not of mystical union. Moreover, it is the communion of the body of Christ, his redeemed people, not the dead body of the cross. The living body of his elect people is here meant. Our minds are turned to the present, we being many are one bread and one body. We are the new humanity of the new Adam, and so Paul goes on to say a little later in this chapter, idolatrous communion is fellowship with devils. Those who partake of the table of false gods are having fellowship with devils. The Greek here is koinonos, communion, fellowship, sharing in common, also translated as partakers in verses 18 and 20. It means sharing, on the one hand, a common faith and new life in Christ as against a new life, supposedly in devils.

But very early, paganism infiltrated the church and led to another interpretation and the Lord’s Table was seen as an aspect of the deification of the believer. Transubstantiation developed as a result of this idea. Some of the church fathers developed the idea that God became man that men might become gods and this was the cornerstone of their interpretation of the Lord’s Table. Gregory of Mises{?} said, “In no other way was it possible for our body to become immortal, but by participating in incorruption through its fellowship with that immortal body.” He declared further, “The question was how can that one body of Christ vivify the whole of mankind? All that is in whomsoever there is faith and yet, though divided amongst all, be itself not diminished. Rightly then do we believe that now also the bread which is consecrated by the word of God is changed into the body of God to work. Since then, that God-containing flesh partook for its substance and support of this particular nourishment also, and since the God who is manifested infused himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, that by this communion with deity mankind might, at the same time, be deified. For this end, it is that by dispensation of his grace, he disseminates himself and every believer through that flesh, whose substance comes from bread and wine, blending himself with the bodies of believers to secure that, by this union with the immortal man who may share in incorruption.”

Chrysostom, in his epistle to Cesarus, developed the same idea. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:29, Chrysostom, in commenting on failure to discern the Lord’s body, declared, “But why doth he eat judgment to himself? Not discerning the Lord’s body. That is not searching, not bearing in mind as he ought the greatness of the things set before him. Not estimating the weight of the gift for if thou shouldest come to know accurately who it is who lies before thee and who he is that gives himself and to whom thou wilt need no other argument but this is enough for thee to use all vigilance, unless thou shouldest be altogether fallen.”

It was for this reason that the church began to suppress the early agape feast, or the early communion meals which were the potluck dinners brought together at which the entire congregation of believers sat down. Now, some of the history books will tell you that they suppressed these agape feasts because disorders began to set in. The evidence from the church fathers is very different. St. Paul’s epistle corrected the disorders and they became something very different. They were suppressed because communion began to be interpreted as the deification of the church, of the believers. And so they worked very early to drive the agape feasts, or charity feasts, or love feasts, those terms were used, out of the church. They forbad the clergy to attend them.

Now, it is very interesting that the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11, very early in the history of the church, tied it together with the feast of rejoicing before the Lord. Deuteronomy 14, verses 22 through 29, where the tithe which was to be shared with the Levites, with the poor, was made basic to the observance of the Lord’s Table, and so the communion feasts, the love feasts, were made occasions where the clergy were invited to be fed without bringing food, where the widows and the orphans in the congregation, the needy, were invited and the bounty of those who had was shared with them. So that they brought together both the communion service and the feast of rejoicing before the Lord, and it was the belief of the early church that this was in terms of a proper interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11. And so it was that, very early, the church worked to suppress this, knowing exactly what they were doing.

For example, when the pressure first began, the camp counsel of Gangra in the fourth century in Canon 11 rose to defend the practice and said if anyone shall despise those who, out of faith, made the love feasts and invite the brethren in honor of the Lord and is not willing to accept these invitations because he despises what is done, let him be anathema, but within a few years the opposition prevailed. The African Code of 419 demanded the separation of communion from the love feasts and it required that fasting precede communion and that communion be not a meal but just symbolic and so one had to fast because now they were going to take the mystical body and blood and be incorporated into divinity.

The Synod of Laodicea in the 4th century, approximately 381, forbad love feasts in the Lord’s houses or churches. Then, the Council of Pedesix {?} in 692 ordered excommunication for all who persisted in holding love feasts in churches. It was not disorders, but a totally alien theology which led to the change in the practice, a very few groups since the Reformation revived it; the German Baptists, the Mennonites, and a few others. The practice lingered in Scotland quite late and there were attempts to revive it at the Reformation but there was too much concern with other affairs n the Reformation by and large; the doctrine of grace, of justification, and so this received too little attention.

Now, while the service of the Lord’s table and the feast of rejoicing before the Lord, the tithe sharing, are not identical, the evidence seems to indicate that they coincided in practice in 1 Corinthians 11 and this is why St. Paul rebuked the Corinthians for their unwillingness to share. They were failing to discern the Lord’s body.

Neo-Platonism, however, and subsequently Aristotelianism, favored the development of transubstantiation and the consequences very clearly appeared in Aquinas. Aquinas, in a sermon before Pope Urban II in 1264, declared, “O marvelous sacrament in which God lies concealed and our Jesus like another Moses cloaks his face under the creatures he has made. May all generations praise him. Wonderful is his sacrament in which in virtue of the words of institution, charged with the divine power, the symbolic species are changed into flesh and blood in which accident subsists without a subject and in which, without violation of nature’s law by consecration, the singular and whole of Christ self-identically exists in different places as a voice is heard and exists in many places, continuing unchanged, remaining inviolable when partaken, nor suffering any diminution. Nay, he is whole and entire and perfect in each and every fragment of the host as visual appearances are multiplied in a hundred mirrors.”

In another context, Aquinas said “The only begotten son of Christ, being pleased to make us partakers of the divine nature, took our nature upon him being made himself man that he might make men gods.” For Luther, too, the same position was essentially true when he said that the bread and wine in their accidents, in their outward form, remained bread and wine, but in their substance became the body and blood of Christ, and he said, “Further, he Christ did not want to give us his divinity unconcealed. This was impossible. For God said men shall not see me and live. Therefore, it was necessary for God to hide, to cover and conceal himself, thus enabling us to touch and apprehend him. He must disguise himself in flesh and blood, in the Word, in the external ministry, in baptism, in the sacrament and Lord’s Supper, where he gives us his body in the bread and his blood in the wine to eat and to drink. He must conceal himself in forms to which he adds his word in order that we may recognize him.”

Now, of course, Calvin struck out against this, but very quickly, this idea so very heavily took Reformed circles that it is echoed in a slight degree in the Westminster Confession. It is ironic that, within a generation, in the Amaraldian{?} case, the Reformed scholars or supposedly Reformed scholars who were prosecuting the case never once quoted Calvin. They quoted over and over again from St. Thomas Aquinas. The only person in the case who quoted Calvin was Amaraldis {?} himself who, while not orthodox, at least knew Calvin, the only one in the situation who did.

Van Til has pointed out, very clearly, what happened with regard to the Lutheran doctrine. It was a position that held that the human can become the divine and at the same time, while divinizing the temporal, it temporalized, Van Til says, the eternal.

Now, all of this goes back to ancient heresies. For the Monophysites, the human is absorbed into the divine. For the Nastorians, the human, by an act of will, becomes divine. In both there is a confusion. Both are a violation of Chalcedon which declares there can be no confusion of the divine and the human, and they are united in perfect union in Christ, without confusion. The Monophysites have never been able to create a Christian culture, because with them, there is an abandonment of history, an eternalizing of the temporal and the temporal loses meaning for Monophysites unless it denies itself and transcends itself. Time only is important as it seeks to become eternal and today, because orthodoxy, so called, and evangelicalism, has relics of this in it in its view of the Lord’s Table and much else. It cannot create a Christian culture. On the other hand, for Nastorianism, the reverse is true because eternity is temporalized and eternity has meaning only if it a dimension or potentialiality of time. It can only create a humanistic culture which it divinizes. Modernism is Nastorianism. Evangelicalism, so called orthodoxy, is Monophysite. They have dropped the idea of transubstantiation but they have retained the framework. They have given a mystical interpretation to the elements. The elements are mystically rather than substantially changed.

Now, for authority, these people cite Matthew 26 verses 26 and 27, our Lord’s words at the last table. But, there is a difference between the Gospel accounts and St. Paul’s and this difference is important. The Gospel accounts give us what our Lord said before the event. St. Paul writes after the event. One is about a sacrifice about to take place and our Lord is declaring the meaning of that sacrifice. St. Paul is declaring what it has done for us and what it is to mean now in our life and our action. Now, there is a great difference between the two. There is a vast difference between an atoning death, a once and for all thing, and a remembrance of that death and the consequences of that atonement in our lives. Christ before the event spoke of his body and blood set forth in the elements as symbolizing the reality of the new covenant in his body and in his blood, in his atoning sacrifice.

Now, at this point, Roman Catholic theology is logical. If we retain the original meaning, if we insist on coming to the Lord’s Table and seeing it as Christ declared it, then we are celebrating the perpetual sacrifice of the mass. Rome’s position is a logical one, but if we say that, with St. Paul, we do this now with something accomplished then it has a different meaning now for us. For us, it is not the event we are looking to, but an accomplished fact in terms of which we now do certain things. There is a backward look in St. Paul’s account, true. “This do in remembrance of me,” is twice stated. There is also a forward look. “Till he come.”

But there is another factor in the original account that is often neglected. Our Lord said, “But I say unto you I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” What does this mean? This appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The commentators do not give us a satisfactory answer to this. Why? Because the commentators, no matter how evangelical or orthodox they are, deal with the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke without reference to John. In that sense, there is an implied modernism in their interpretation, but if we believe the word of God is the word of God and we go to John, and we see in John our Lord’s words as a commentary on what he had done, what he observed, what he had celebrated, then we find in John 15:1-17, the meaning of these words. In John 15:1-17, our Lord declares, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” And he goes on to develop this point in some detail. Now, what does this mean?

It has reference, very obviously, to the wine of the communion. He does not speak of it as blood when he deals with his disciplines as he brings home the meaning to them. It is the fruit of the vine. Moreover, he has declared to them that he is now the true vine, a fact of very great importance. Israel, in the Old Testament, was the noble vine of the Lord, Jeremiah 2:21, but Hosea declared Israel has become an empty vine. “He bringeth forth fruit unto himself,” Hosea 10:1, and over and over again, we meet with this imagery of Israel, the vine, having become a {?} and Jesus now calls himself the true vine whom, at the beginning we are declared, Matthew 2:15 is the true Israel of God.

Moreover, he calls his disciples the new wine, new wine which requires new wineskins, a new culture to be free, to expand and realize its being in Matthew 9:14-17, and the new wine cannot be kept in the old wineskins of our Lord’s day and the old wineskins of the Pharisaic churches of today will not tolerate new wine coming into their midst and will seek to drive it out, “lest they be burst asunder.” We are the branches. We now bear the new wine and are the new wine. We are breaking the old world’s wineskins, bearing everywhere the joy of the new wine, and as branches of the true wine also we are required to bear fruit, or else to be cut off and burned, and a central aspect of this fruit bearing is to love one another, to care for one another, and St. Paul indicts them in 1 Corinthians 11 for failing to discern the Lord’s body, for being unwilling to share one with another, and this is why the church taking to heart what he taught, celebrated regularly the communion as also the feast of rejoicing in terms of Deuteronomy.

1 Corinthians 10:16 makes clear the cup is not the blood of Christ but the communion of the blood of Christ, and the bread is not his flesh but the communion of the body of Christ. Both thus celebrate a fellowship, a communion, because the many of us are one bread, one body since we all participate in the one bread. Thus, we have here not the occultism of the mystery religions or the Medieval mystics, nor the deification of man as Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism taught, but it is the purpose of the living God which is set forth, that we, as the family of God, made a new creation through Jesus Christ. Now, apply the law of God and the love of God in our midst. It is the summoning of the elect people as branches of the true vine, to bear fruit, become the expansive new wine in obedience to his law and to break all the old wineskins of a fallen world with the redeeming power, grace, and love of Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that, in Jesus Christ we are a new creation, the family of Christ, called to be a people gathered together unto thee, loving one another, caring for one another, praying for one another, in all things obeying thee and, as thy new wine, to break the old wineskins of this world and in the name of Christ to conquer. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience member] Can you comment on the {?} Reformed churches about the means of grace, sacraments, Bible, and prayer?

[Rushdoony] Yes, this of course, is the Reformed doctrine, but when the sacrament is misunderstood and made into a mystical doctrine rather than what scripture teaches it, of course, then you have to say there must be something wrong, not only with their sacrament, but with the word they teach, and I think most of the churches today are acting as old wineskins. They drive out, or work to drive out the new wine, because they know they will burst, they will shattered by the new wine. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience member] I was wondering when {?} Romanism actually begin from, if you consider Gregory {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a difficult question to answer, because first of all, from the very beginning you had a large body of Pharisees who came into the church and what we call Romanism is Phariseeism, because the Pharisees had the doctrine of the works of supererogation. That is, the merits of Abraham sufficed to save all Jews til the end of time who called upon the name of Abraham and asked that his merits be applied to them. They believed in prayers for the dead. This appears in 2 Maccabees. This why 2 Maccabees and other works of the Apocrypha were included at the Council of Trent into the canon and much else. So, because Phariseeism that was a continuing vein to which was added neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism.

Now, however, you did have very strongly biblical doctrines taught. I found a reference as late as the 1200’s in England where a congregation told a priest he had better move on if he didn’t quit quoting Latin poetry and give them more Bible in his preaching. We do know that, for example, the doctrine of the Lord’s Table in terms of the kind of thing I developed last time of this were very strongly taught in certain quarters, and in England particularly. The great classics, Bertram of Corby whose body and blood of Christ, an interpretation which I gave you the last time in substance, was used by the reformers to attack transubstantiation because they said, “Aha, here. We have an early document which gives us the faith that was held until transubstantiation began to arise,” but much later, in Aelfric just before the Norman conquest, you had the same thing very clearly set forth, attacking again this new doctrine. It persisted in Scotland in some of the out of the way areas to a very late date and, in fact, it was called Passover, the Christian Passover in Scotland, in some quarters, almost to the Reformation.

So, really what today is called Romanism was actually set forth in the Council of Trent and imposed on all of the church then. Prior to that time, it did not have universal acceptance. So that you had a new church, really, with the Council of Trent, incorporating all the errors that the reformers saw in the old church, you see? It was, in a sense, a division. Yes?

[Audience member] Would you say that dispensationalism, that {?} the visible reign of Christ and on externalism, would you say it’s a type of Phariseeism or {?}

[Rushdoony] No, dispensationalism is not a type of Phariseeism. There was also a very strong apocalyptic tradition in Israel, and the elements that are dispensational today belong to that tradition which also survived. It was another heretical, Jewish tradition that crept into the church, so that you had it in some of the early church fathers, some who were extreme apocalypticists. You had a very strong revival in the Medieval era through Joachim of Fiore whose third world concept we still have, and after the Reformation, through some Jesuit thinkers, this came into Western thought. It is especially – that is, into Protestant thought, and especially in the last century through the Urbingites {?} and then the Darbyites, the Plymouth Brethren, it has taken over vast segments of Protestantism. Are there any other questions?

I’d like to remind you then, of one announcement. If you have not yet made your reservations for our Christmas dinner meeting on Sunday evening the 8th at 7:00, please do so with Lane Argast today, and I believe the reservations have to be in by this Friday. So, do get them in. This will be on the 15th, Sunday evening, at 7:00.

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