Was C.S. Lewis or Martin Luther Right about Holy Communion?
Why Lewis & the Church Fathers embraced the Real Presence of Christ AND the Sacrificial Nature of the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy/Mass
When I as beginning to study the church fathers at a much deeper level and the ancient church’s perspective on the Eucharist, I discovered a little know quote by C.S. Lewis that seemed to match up with what many of them were say. He writes,1
“‘Hebrews 10:1. ‘The Law, having a shadow of good things to come.’ We are all quite familiar with this idea, that the old Jewish priesthood was a mere symbol and that Christianity is the reality which it symbolized. It is important, however, to notice what an astonishing, even impudent, claim it must have seemed as long as the temple at Jerusalem was still standing. In the temple you saw real sacrifice being offered – real animals really had their throats cut and their actual flesh and blood were used in the ritual; in Christian assemblies a ceremony with wine and bits of bread was conducted. It must have been all but impossible to resist the conviction that the Jewish service was reality and the Christian one a mere substitute – wine is so obviously a substitute for blood and bread for flesh! Yet the Christians had the audacity to maintain that it was the other way round – that their... little ritual meal in private houses was the real sacrifice and that all the slaughtering, incense, music and shouting in the temple was merely the substitute.”
What is interesting about this quote is that Lewis acknowledges that Holy Communion is more than a mere memorial or commemoration. He also admits that the Lord’s Supper is more than a spiritual appearance of Christ among us. Unlike most Protestants, he embraced the historic Christian view that the Eucharist is the same ‘once and for all’ sacrifice of Christ re-presented to us during our worship. There are 3 kinds of sacrifices in the New Testament, and Lewis embraced all 3 while Luther only embraced the first 2.
The ‘once and for all sacrifice of Christ’ upon the cross (The Gospels)
Our ‘sacrifice of praise’ in church worship such as giving God thanks for our blessings and harvest of food. This category also includes our personal sacrifices in tithing towards the church to supports its pastors and priests. Lastly, the ‘sacrifice of praise’ also includes our own lives becoming ‘living sacrifices’ (See Romans 12:1) in obedience to God, and if necessary, in martyrdom.
The ‘sacrificial meal of the Eucharist’ or Holy Communion when we partake of Christ’s once and for all sacrifice mystically and sacramentally but truly (His Spiritual & Physical presence, His Humanity & Divinity). As the author of Hebrews writes, “We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat.” St. Paul also writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16,18, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?… Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?” (Also see John 6).
It is this last category of sacrifice that Martin Luther clearly rejected (along with all Protestants with the exception of some Anglicans like C.S. Lewis and even King Henry VIII who condemned some of Luthers’ views but eventually broke away from the Catholic Church). Martin Luther writes,
“In the first part I have overthrown the devil’s ungodly un-Christian priesthood and also proved that the mass may not be called a sacrifice. I have stopped up the mouths of the opposition so that they can bring up nothing in the way of counter-argument but their own dreams, customs, human wickedness and violence, all of which, as everyone knows, are worthless in divine matters and in establishing faith. In addition, I have consoled those whose consciences are weak and have instructed them so that they may know and recognize that there is no sacrifice in the New Testament other than the sacrifice of the cross (Hebrews 10:10) and the sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) which are mentioned in the Scriptures; so that no one has any cause to doubt that the mass is not a sacrifice.”
-Martin Luther, The Misuse of the Mass (1521)
Should we believe Luther’s words and conclude that C.S. Lewis was a weak, poorly informed Christian when it came to doctrine or historic beliefs regarding the Eucharist?
What about the Church Fathers? Were they all confused about Scripture and Apostolic Tradition? Hardly! It is a bit ironic that Luther admitted that he gets everything from the Bible and St. Augustine (per church historian, Allister McGrath)2 when he clearly departs from the teaching of St. Augustine on this matter. Let’s begin with St. Augustine since he was Luther’s favorite theologian (he was an Augustinian monk before leaving the CC):
"Was not Christ once for all offered up in His own person as a sacrifice? And yet, is He not likewise offered up in the sacrament as a sacrifice, not only in the special solemnities of Easter, but also daily among our congregations; so that the man who, being questioned, answers that He is offered as a sacrifice in that ordinance, declares what is strictly true? For if sacraments had not some points of real resemblance to the things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. In most cases, moreover, they do in virtue of this likeness bear the names of the realities which they resemble."
-St. Augustine of Hippo (4th/5th Century, died 430 AD, Letter 98 408 AD)
St. Augustine is clearly teaching in line with many of his contemporaries that the once and for all sacrifice of Christ comes to us today through the power of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic meal.
St. John Chrysostom also writes,
"He is Himself then both victim and Priest and sacrifice. . . For we always offer the same Lamb, not one now and another tomorrow, but always the same one, so that the sacrifice is one. And yet by this reasoning, since the offering is made in many places, are there many Christs? But Christ is one everywhere, being complete here and complete there also, one Body. As then while offered in many places, He is one body and not many bodies; so also [He is] one sacrifice. He is our High Priest, who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us. We now offer that victim which was then offered, which cannot be exhausted."
-St. John Chrysostom (4th/5th Century, died 407 AD)
Now that the Latin and Greek Christianity has been represented, let’s turn to the Father and Poet of Syriac Christianity, St. Ephrem of Syria:
The Seraph did not touch the coal with his fingers. It touched only the mouth of Isaiah.[The Seraph] did not hold it, and [Isaiah] did not eat it. But to us our Lord has given both.
—St. Ephrem of Syria (4th century, died 373 AD) Hymns on Faith 10:10
Let us consume in holy fashion that Body which the People pierced with their nails; let us drink, as the Medicine of Life, the Blood which flows from His side.
—(Armenian Hymns 48:1)
In the first quote, St. Ephrem poetically references the vision of Isaiah in the Temple (Isaiah 6) where he sees the holiness of God and is left feeling unclean. A fiery seraphim angel brings a fiery coal from the sacrifice and places it on Isaiah’s tongue and is purified. St. Ephrem is stating that not only does Christ’s sacrifice fulfill this vision, but that we Christians may actually eat of THIS SACRIFICE in Holy Communion. In the New Covenant, the Seraphim (the Holy Spirit) brings forth Calvary in time and space to our sacred tables and altars today within the Divine Liturgy or Mass. Though this is difficult to understand, I have been helped by thinking of the Cross as a cosmic event that touches all points of time. The Cross was not only an event in history, but it also stamped the ‘eternal realm’ which makes it still available to us today through the Holy Spirit. (This idea sounds very similar to the Book of Hebrews).
You may have more questions about what some of the earlier church fathers had to say about Christ in the Eucharist the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries Or you may want to dig deeper into the New Testament (1st century) to see if Luther or Lewis was right.
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Be entirely His until the Day!
-Kyle
***We should add that St Ephrem of Syria , St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine all together represent the 3 primary theological streams within church history and hold to this 3rd view of sacrifice that Lewis embraced. The Syriac Church covered the ‘Far East’ from Antioch in Syria through Iraq to India. The Greek Church covered North Africa, Israel, Turkey, Greece, and eventually Russia. The Latin Church largely covered Western Europe from Rome to Spain and England. Historians admit that nearly all church fathers and apostolic churches from Spain to India had this lofty view of Christ in the Eucharist!
Pg. 198 in his book ‘Christian Reflections’ in the volume ‘The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis’ edited by Walter Hooper
McGrath, Alister. ‘Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-first.’ Published by Harper One in 2007.
This was very well written, and I enjoyed the quotations from the fathers, but unfortunately your scholarship of Luther was very misleading. Luther believed that the Eucharist delivered the once and for all sacrifice of God's very body and blood. He disputed that it was an 'active' sacrifice that the priest 'enacts.' Lutherans believe that the Eucharist is God's very body and blood sacrificed for us. It is the presentation of the paschal sacrifice. We make a distinction that it is not a new sacrifice every time we partake, which you even see in the quote you used. Luther says that the only sacrifice in the New Testament is that of the Cross. The Eucharist, according to Luther, gives us the body and blood that was on the sacrifice of the cross. But that does not make the liturgy of the mass an act of sacrifice, but rather an act of being 'served' the 'benefits' of the sacrifice. There's still plenty to disagree on between traditions here, but please do not use quotes from the fathers that Luther and Lutherans fully agree with in a context that makes us look like we don't believe in the actual, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Again, there's plenty to disagree still, but don't misrepresent the Lutheran side.
This is a wonderful, meditative piece. As a lifelong Catholic, but one who, hopefully, has grown in his knowledge and understanding over the years (I know many who have rejected the Catholicism they learned in infant school - hardly surprising as they didn't bother to continue educating themselves in religious matters as one does with every other subject), it's very nourishing to read about subjects from the Orthodox point of view, backed by references to the Church Fathers. To me, one of the curious historical aspects of the Reformation was that the Reformers such as Luther or even Henry VIII - although I think power and money were main issues in his case - thought that they were separating from the Catholic Church and its beliefs, but in reality they were separating from the all the churches which trace their origins back to the Apostles i.e. the Orthodox churches, the Syriac church, the Coptic church etc. Though there are different traditions within these churches and the Latin tradition, fundamentally the core beliefs are the same. The differences are more like squabbles between brothers. Many Orthodox Patriarchs and Popes of recent years have acknowledged this. It's an entirely different case with Protestant churches which to some extent threw out the baby with the bathwater, not only in the case of the Eucharist, but also with other sacraments, Mary, the Theotokos or Mother of God as we recently celebrated with the anniversary of the Council of Nicea. Cardinal Newman became a Catholic, largely though his study of early church history. While I am a great admirer of C.S.Lewis (as was his friend Tolkien) I have always been puzzled by his inability to see the difference between what I call the 'original churches' and Protestant churches which felt they had to reinvent the wheel - which some would say is a very wobbly one. Although the Anglican Church did not welcome Leo XIII's declaration that Anglican orders are 'absolutely null and utterly void', it certainly made them think. After all, how would C.S. Lewis differentiate between the Eucharist in an Anglican Church where the officiating minster believes in the real presence and another where he believes its still just a piece of bread? As a Catholic friend of mine once rather naughtily whispered to me when we attended midnight mass in an Anglican Church, 'The lights are on, but no one's home'. Personally I love the Eastern churches as much as the Latin church. They are the real thing. I think it's sad and somewhat absurd that Catholics acknowledge the validity of orders, sacraments etc. of Orthodox and other Eastern churches but some Orthodox churches apparently think that all orders and sacraments apart from theirs are invalid.