Why I’m Not an Evangelical: Part III
If you haven’t seen my previous post I highly suggest you read it. It’s a relatively short read but it sets up why I will use the Church Fathers significantly going forward. Today we’re going to discuss sacramentology.
The Eucharist
The Eucharist — also called communion and the Lord’s Supper — has been a controversial topic since the Reformation, oddly enough. From my experience, Evangelicals are memorialists on the Eucharist, holding that the Lord’s Supper is merely symbolic. This view is best expressed by the Southern Baptist Basic Beliefs page, stating:
The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members … memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.
While Southern Baptists aren’t necessarily evangelicals, they represent the evangelical view of the Eucharist best.
Growing up in evangelical circles, I took memorialism as given, seeing that communion is just a symbol and something we do every once in a while for some reason. For example, I largely took Christ’s statements in the Mark 14:22–24 as symbolic:
While they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
I thought it was so obvious that Christ was just using a metaphor here, and that the meal wasn’t something real. However, a friend of mine disagreed and simply said “is means is,” as though it was obvious to him. This really struck me, that we could both think we were clearly in the right, but with opposite views.
Upon further investigation, I found not only was my opinion less common than I initially thought, but it was virtually absent in the Early Church. In his Epistle to the Romans, Ignatius of Antioch (35–108) writes,
I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.
It’s pretty clear here that St. Ignatius, a direct disciple of St. John the Apostle, considered the bread to be Christ’s body and the wine Christ’s blood. In his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, St. Ignatius notes that the gnostics in his era wouldn’t take the Eucharist because they knew it was Christ’s body and blood, which would naturally conflict with their dualist view of reality. If they took the Eucharist, they’d affirm that Christ became physical, so they didn’t take it.
Further, St. Irenaeus (130–202) writes on the Eucharist several times throughout his life. In his famous Against Heresies (Book V, Chapter 2), he comments the following:
He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.
Responding to critics of his day — and perfectly predicting attacks from many evangelicals today — Irenaeus also argues that the eating isn’t carnal eating of Christ, but spiritual eating of sorts. Clearly, people at the time knew that the Eucharist was Christ’s physical body and blood, so he took the time to defend it. In a fragment of his writings, Irenaeus argues:
And therefore the oblation of the Eucharist is not a carnal one, but a spiritual; and in this respect it is pure. For we make an oblation to God of the bread and the cup of blessing, giving Him thanks in that He has commanded the earth to bring forth these fruits for our nourishment. And then, when we have perfected the oblation, we invoke the Holy Spirit, that He may exhibit this sacrifice, both the bread the body of Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ, in order that the receivers of these antitypes may obtain remission of sins and life eternal. Those persons, then, who perform these oblations in remembrance of the Lord, do not fall in with Jewish views, but, performing the service after a spiritual manner, they shall be called sons of wisdom.
Clearly, St. Irenaeus is not operating under a memorialist framework.
I could continue with many Church Father citations, but these are just a few examples of early (Ante-Nicene) Christians supporting doctrines that were quite obvious to them. Returning back to the Scriptures, I find holding a memorialist view quite difficult to hold in light of 1 Corinthians 10:16:
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?
I’m not sure Paul can get any clearer than this, but to be thorough, I’ll leave the words of Ss. Augustine and Irenaeus here:
St. Augustine (354–430):
That chalice, or rather, what the chalice holds, consecrated by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. Through those elements the Lord wished to entrust to us his body and the blood which he poured out for the remission of sins. If you have received worthily, you are what you have received.
St. Irenaeus:
And adds, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? “. But if this indeed do not attain salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body.
Later, St. Paul expands his discussion of Communion to show that eating and drinking Christ’s body and blood unworthily is a very dangerous practice. 1 Corinthians 11:27–29 says:
Therefore 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 eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
How exactly would one eat and drink judgment on themselves if this meal was simply a symbol? On a side note, this is also why we practice closed communion as Lutherans (and other denominations in general that support the Real Presence): we don’t want the unworthy to bring judgment on themselves in eating the body and blood! This is for their own sake.
For a more detailed and thorough analysis of the issue, please visit my friend’s blog on the matter where he examines the aforementioned texts and more in light of the Old Testament and culture in the New Testament. However, I hope our brief discussion of the matter has shown the obvious truth: Christ is physically present in the Eucharist.
Baptism
Evangelicals, alongside Baptists and Pentecostals, tend to see baptism primarily as a public profession of one’s faith in obedience to God. They like to use passages in Acts as examples of people having a “conversion experience” then being baptized in front of others to show that they’ll now follow God. The Pentecostal Tabernacle writes:
We believe that baptism by immersion in water is commanded by the Scriptures. All who repent and believe in Christ as Savior and Lord are to be baptized. Thus, they declare to the world that they have died with Christ and that they also have been raised with Him to live a new kind of life. This ordinance should be administered in the name of the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:16; Acts 10:47–48; and Romans 6:4).
Once again, though the Pentecostal Tabernacle is technically not an evangelical group alone, their statement represents the view of the Evangelicals well.
As is clear, Evangelicals consider baptism a work of man that one completes for God in front of others. This has led to circumstances where people will give their testimony, then be baptized in front of a group of people. Some people have been baptized multiple times, in fact. However, this is an odd practice in light of the Scriptures and Church History.
First and foremost, baptism saves us. This might sound really odd to evangelicals, going from “this is a symbolic act” to “this gives us salvation,” but there is ample Scriptural support for this. As 1 Peter 3:20–21 proclaims:
Who formerly were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, by which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water. The like figure unto which even baptism does also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
So Noah’s Ark was an image of baptism; the water saved eight souls in Noah’s day, and now, the water of baptism saves us too. Further, Titus 3:5 says:
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit;
The first part of this verse shows that baptism isn’t a work that we’ve done, but rather, something God does in us. Specifically, we receive the “washing of regeneration” in baptism. St. Augustine writes the following on this passage:
For if anyone should ask of me whether we have been saved by baptism, I shall not be able to deny it, since the apostle says, “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” But if he should ask whether by the same washing he has already in every way immediately saved us, I shall answer: It is not so. Because the same apostle also says, “For we are saved by hope.”
Once more, John 3:5 states:
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Clement of Rome (35–99) — a disciple of Ss. Peter and Paul — comments quite clearly on this text, writing:
For thus hath the true prophet testified to its with an oath: `Verily I say to you, That unless a man is born again of water, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For thus the prophet has sworn to us, saying, “Verily I say to you, Unless ye be regenerated by living water into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Notice that he specifically identifies with the baptism of water as regenerative.
John 3:5 is pretty clear: baptism is practically necessary for salvation. Some have tried to take this verse and separate being born of water and the Spirit but that’s a difficult argument to uphold because in baptism we receive the Spirit, as Mark 1 shows us. Rather, this divide here was to show how baptism changed since Christ perfected it when he was baptized. Ss. Bede and Chrysostom both note that Christ’s baptism was primarily to cleanse the waters and perfect baptism so those baptized after Christ would receive the Spirit. Further, St. Bede and Theophylact — in their respective commentaries on Acts 1:5 — suggest that being baptized with the Spirit is a contrast between the baptism of John the Baptist and baptism with the invocation of the Trinity and that the latter remits sins. Of course, St. Paul agrees in Ephesians 4:4-5, writing:
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
So we can’t really make this awkward divide between the baptism of water and that of the Holy Spirit as some evangelicals like to. In philosophical terms, we would say that these are distinct but not separable.
As we see in Mark 1:10–11, the Heavens were opened to Christ in baptism and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove:
And immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
This is clearly an image of our regeneration in baptism, as in our baptism the Heavens open for us.
Baptism, as we’ve alluded to before, remits sins as well. As St. Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:37–38):
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So St. Peter connects baptism to the remission of sins and receiving the Holy Spirit. In his commentary on verse 38, St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes:
Saving holy Baptism suffices for our cleansing of sin, and erases the stain of previous falls.
Further, one of the final statements in the Nicene Creed states:
We affirm one baptism for the remission of sins;
There’s more to baptism than what I’ve simply mentioned here, but these are the main issues that divide Lutherans and Evangelicals on baptism. So with this in mind, baptism is a work of God that saves us by remitting sins, gives us the Holy Spirit, and regenerates us. Again, to show once more that this is a work of God, go to any text discussing baptism and replace that word with something analogous to “good work” and you’ll see that they really aren’t the same thing.
With all this in mind, baptism really isn’t something that evangelicals think it is. It’s not something we do for God, but something God does in us for our salvation. After all, if this was truly something we did in public to profess our faith, why did the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 get baptized alone with Philip immediately after receiving the Gospel?
Now, this is why we practice infant baptism. We want our children to receive the promises of regeneration and salvation. If you look through Church History, infant baptism was actually a common practice; if you only believe in believer’s baptism, you’d have to say that many Church Fathers had invalid baptisms because they were only baptized as children. I often hear the argument, “but infants can’t choose to be born again,” which is absolutely true, but did you choose to be born in the first place?
More importantly, can we choose God at all? The Scriptures are pretty clear that without regeneration, we cannot “choose” God. For example, Paul writes the following in Romans 3:10–12:
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no, not one.
Later, in 1 Corinthians 12:3:
Therefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.
So can we even choose God? No. Now, this is a topic that I may touch on in the future, so this is only a brief defense of monergism.
Conclusion
This was a very long post, but what I’ve said is only the beginning of the discussion on the Sacraments. I believe, however, that this should be sufficient for the time being. In the next post, I will discuss Premillennial Dispensationalism.
