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“I didn’t know that for the first 1,500 years of Church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ. And it wasn’t until 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s just a symbol and nothing more. I didn’t know that. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s something to consider.’ … For 1,500 years, it was never one guy and his pulpit being the center of the church, it was the body and blood of Christ.”
– Francis Chan, Protestant author, teacher and preacher
So what happened? How did the unity of one Church that existed for the first 1,000 years since Jesus’ earthly ministry become so divided with belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist dwindling to a mere symbol? Francis Chan offers one simple explanation: “500 years ago, Ulrich Zwingli moved communion off to the side, putting a wooden pulpit in the center of worship instead. When other pastors followed suit, the unifying elements of communion faded. Instead, worshipers began comparing pastors and their theologies, fighting about who’s right.”
Why did this happen? We can point all the way back to the Lord’s Eucharistic discourse when “many of His disciples drew back and no longer followed Him” (John 6:66). They understood only through human eyes and not through the Spirit, the idea of mystery (John 6:63). So it was that after 1,500 years there would come a time when disbelief would flame into a major movement of disunity and conflicting opinions. Throughout Church history its leaders had to define truths and doctrines in order to quell the many heresies that have erupted. Beginning with the Council of Jerusalem in 50AD (Acts 15) which affirmed the role of Gentiles, there simply had to be these councils to protect the Church and keep it united.
The key to understanding the enormous shift that took place in the 16th century was the world view that began to take shape, that of humanism. The American Humanism Association defines humanism as “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism (belief in God) or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.” So this thinking shifted away from a God-centered world view to a man-centered world view, from religion that had been taught by God to one that was taught by man and his own personal conscience. Personally I feel this new thinking was so crucial to laying the groundwork for an explosion of new thoughts and churches, all moving away from the Church of the early Christians to man-made beliefs resulting in rapid division. We know that this is not what Jesus wished when he established His Church on earth (John 17:21).
Another “new” thought that emerged during this time was Nominalism, which according to Catholic Answers’ definition, is “a theory that universal abstract ideas, such as truth and goodness, do not exist because they are not founded upon objective reality. It holds that the words we use for such concepts are merely convenient labels, and that reality cannot be perceived by every human mind through the use of such labels; there are no “universals.”” In other words, this way of thinking rejected Scholasticism which was grounded by faith and reason as taught by the Early Church Fathers. Martin Luther and John Calvin were influenced by Nominalism and its subjective approach to understanding. The rejection of universals helped to usher in the concept of moral relativism which is the denial that any absolute morals exist.
Certainly we cannot leave out the fact that during this time in Church history there was rampant weakness of its leaders who sunk into secular humanism and laxity in their clerical functions. Because many of these clergy were weak in their moral guiding, secular authorities took advantage and began to assert themselves. There were many abuses of “indulgences” which were being used for profit . The Church, the ship that guided Christians for centuries, was in a major storm. Reform was no doubt needed and though men such as Martin Luther, who himself was a priest, fought for this reform, it seems unlikely his focus was to split and push away from the Catholic Church.
The following is a brief summary of the major players in history whose views on the Eucharist were the cause of such disunity in the Church.
Berengarius of Tours
We know from the writings of the Early Church Fathers that there was unanimous belief in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It was not until the eleventh century that any significant questions arose mainly through the writings of Berengarius of Tours. In his book “the Hidden Manna”, James T. O’Connor states, “It is with Berengarius of Tours that the Church began to witness the major periodic controversies provoked by the words of Jesus as recorded in John 6. Indeed, the Berengarian conflict could almost be called paradigmatic for the many disputes that would follow.”
John Wycliffe
Born in England in 1324 John Wycliffe lived well before the actual birth of Protestantism. He is nonetheless regarded as a major forerunner to the Protestant Reformation. He was an ordained priest and professor of Philosophy and Theology. In his book, “The Hidden Manna”, James T. O’Connor writes: “It was in England, where the War of the Roses was soon to erupt, that the remote beginnings of the Eucharistic controversies that would shake Christendom at the time of the Reformation first appeared. And they did so in the person of John Wycliffe.” For a part of his life he accepted the doctrine of transubstantiation but came to eventually reject it as heretical. In his own words we read: “The consecrated Host we priests make and bless is not the body of the Lord but an effectual sign of it. It is not to be understood that the body of Christ comes down from heaven to the Host consecrated in every church.”
Martin Luther
An Augustinian monk and Scripture scholar, Martin Luther came on the scene in the early 1500’s. So much has been written of him and his scope of influence so vast that I will keep to the focus of his views on the Eucharist and how it shaped much of the Protestant movement.
“Luther maintained that the essence of bread and wine was not removed in transubstantiation and argued that the communion meal was both bread and wine and the actual divine Lord. Here he makes an intriguing analogy, based upon one of Christianity’s most basic doctrines, the Incarnation, in which the eternal Lord became human, born a man. Put simply, the Church has taught definitively since the Councils of Ephesus [432 A.D.] and Chalcedon [451 A.D.] that the divinity of Christ never diminished the humanity of Christ, despite several attempts of heretical communities to assert otherwise. If the humanity of Christ is not diminished by his divine identity, why would the bread and wine need to be evacuated at the time of consecration?
Following this path of reasoning, Luther saw no reason to claim that the bread and wine at Mass lost its identity at the words of the consecration. Rather, he saw the Mass as a celebration of God’s love expressed in a reenactment of the Incarnation. The scholastic argument that the bread and wine ceased to exist at the time of the consecration seemed to Luther to run contradictory to God’s immersion in the world. Later Protestant thinkers applied the term consubstantiation to Luther’s thinking, after his death, the coexistence of bread/wine with the divine presence in the communion sacrament.” (Taken from The Catechist Cafe)
Just as important to Luther’s rejection of transubstantiation was his rejection of the Mass as a sacrifice, which was a held belief in the early Christian Church (see The Mass as a Sacrifice). These radical rejections of Church teachings eventually led to the Council of Trent in which the Church clarified its doctrine on these matters.
What followed in the years after Luther was something he never imagined, a complete rejection of the authority of apostolic succession (see Apostolic Succession) The following words of Luther after his witnessing of new denominations springing up highlight his regret to the damage that had begun: “Who called you to do things as no man ever before? You are not called… Are you infallible?… See how much evil arises from your doctrine.. Are you alone wise and are all others mistaken?.. It is likely that so many centuries are wrong?.. It will not be well with you when you die. Go back, go back; submit, submit”. (Grisar Hartman, Luther)
Offshoots of the Lutheran Church include: The Lutheran Brethren, the Evangelical Covenant Church, the Evangelical Free Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, and the Moravian Church.
Ulrich Zwingli
Born in 1484 Ulrich Zwingli became a priest and was an adversary to Luther. Although he agreed with Luther’s rejection of the Mass as a sacrifice, he rejected the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He writes: “The “Eucharist”, then, or “Synaxis” or Lord’s Supper, is nothing but the commemoration by which those who firmly believe that by Christ’s death and blood they have become reconciled with the Father proclaim this life-bringing death, that is, preach it with praise and thanksgiving.” (Commentary, p.237)
John Calvin
Born in 1509 in France John Calvin, along with Zwingli, became known as the fathers of the Swiss Reformation. Even though he admitted that the early Church Fathers referred to the Mass as a sacrifice, John Calvin along with Luther and Zwingli, rejected the doctrine of the Mass as a sacrifice. This opinion opened the door to all sorts of interpretations on just what was the Mass. In relation to Luther, he rejected transubstantiation and in regards to Zwingli, he rejected the Eucharist as a symbol. So what did he believe? In a nutshell, he believed that the Eucharistic presence was communicated in a spiritual manner rather than by the body being truly present when eaten. Another term for this spiritual presence was called “pneumatic presence.” The offshoots of Calvinism are: The Presbyterian Church of America, the Presbyterian Church in the USA, the Orthodox Presbyterian, the Reformed Presbyterian, the Reformed Church in America, the Christian Reformed, The Churches of Christ.
It’s astounding to think that the explosion that took place in the 16th century caused so much splitting that today we have nearly 33,000 different Christian denominations!
I leave you with this powerful quote by St. Cyprian of Carthage in 251 AD:
“The blessed apostle Paul teaches us that the Church is one, for it has ‘one body, one spirit, one hope, one faith, one baptism, and one God.’ Furthermore, it is on Peter that Jesus built His Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep; and although he assigns like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair, and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Perter was; but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one Chair – the Chair of Peter. So too, all are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he deserts the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?” (De Catholicae Esslesiae Unitatte, 2-7)