The evanglical / sort-of-Baptist church I attend had a “liturgical” service today. It really spoke to me! I think it’s so great to connect with the historic traditions and confessions of the Church — the Apostle’s Creed (or a Baptist version of it?!!) and a eucharist in which everyone comes forward to identify with the body and blood of Christ. This is exactly the kind of service I’ve been looking for — contemporary worship mixed with historic confession and observance of the Lord’s Supper, but still with a Biblical sermon.
In fact, I’d be interested to explore and push a little further how we treat the eucharistic meal in the economy of salvation. Growing up in evangelical / fundamental / pietistic churches, I’ve always heard the communion meal prefaced with some statement about how communion doesn’t have anything to do with salvation. The churches I grew up in were eager to distance themselves from what they (mis)understood to the the Roman Catholic view on the eucharist as sacrament — actually the closed Bretheren church I went to as a little kid was hatefuly anti-Catholic — but even then I felt the “communion merely as rememberance” view was unsatisfying.
I wonder if it isn’t time for us as evangelicals to recapture the Patristic and Reformational view of the eucharist as something more mystical than merely a remembrance — or maybe I should say, to reinfuse the term “remembrance” with soteriological meaning. I like Calvin’s view that salvation comes by grace alone mediated by faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit — and so the eucharistic meal is not a “means of grace” in the Roman sense of it — but that partaking in the eucharist is a kind of sign and seal of faith. I think that the Baptistic evangelical tradition has gone too far in the direction of defining faith as internal experience — we’ve over-reacted to more sacramental forms of the faith. Internal experience, IMHO, is important, but highly variable and also highly unreliable — particularly for people like me who struggle sometimes with anxiety, depression, doubt, etc. The fact that someone stands up in front of the congregation and receives the bread and cup is itself an expression and act of faith — and something very real and mysterious happens at the spiritual level in that moment. (I want to use the phrase “soteriological meaning” above not to signify a sacrament that is required for salvation, but to understand participation in the eucharist as part of what happens along the “way of salvation” — part of the process of the saved / “being saved” // already / not yet of life in Christ).
I’m not sure if Calvin ever went in this direction, but I’m kind of thinking of a pneumatological theology of the eucharist. When someone takes the elements in faith, the Holy Spirit is present to that person and in the gathered community of faith in a special way, supplying, confirming, reinforcing, directing, invigorating faith. I wonder if this is a sort of evangelical way forward from a kind of stale view of the eucharist without getting in to the question of the “real presence” in either its Catholic or Lutheran versions. I wonder, if by understanding the Holy Spirit to be present in a special way when the elements are taken in faith, we are able to recite the actual text of scripture: “this
is my body, broken for you” “this cup
???????? ????? ????????is the new covenant in my blood” without having to get into the ontological status of the physical elements.
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2 replies on “Eucharistic Baptists?”
Interesting thoughs that I will spend some time meditating on! Was wondering if you would mind emailing me a few scriptures that support this view of the communion being more than a memorial.
I’m not asking in a cynical ‘I think you’re wrong’ kind of way. Just would like to learn more about this concept.
thank you for sharing this!
Hi Eddie — well I’m not sure I have any scriptures beyond the familiar ones about communion. I do think this notion of communion as something “more” is consistent with the Biblical notion of worship in general and that it’s historically more consistent with the understanding of the Church, but I’m not sure it’s something where there are proof texts.