The Southern Presbyterian Journal/Volume 13/Number 49/The Lord's Supper
Articles on the Westminster Confession
by Gordon H. Clark
The Word of God (WCF 1)
Creeds
Knowledge and Ignorance
The Trinity (WCF 2)
A Hard Saying (WCF 3)
Providence (WCF 5)
Creation (WCF 4)
Healthy, Sick, or Dead? (WCF 6)
The Covenant (WCF 7)
Christ the Mediator (WCF 8)
Justification (WCF 11)
Sanctification (WCF 13)
Free Will (WCF 9)
Effectual Calling (WCF 10)
Adoption (WCF 12)
The Law of God (WCF 19)
Assurance (WCF 18)
Saving Faith (WCF 14)
Repentance (WCF 15)
Good Works (WCF 16)
Christian Liberty (WCF 20)
Perseverance (WCF 17)
Worship and Vows (WCF 21, 22)
The Sacraments (WCF 27)
Baptism (WCF 28)
The Church (WCF 25)
The Civil Magistrate (WCF 23)
The Lord's Supper (WCF 29)
Censures and Councils (WCF 30, 31)
Resurrection and Judgment (WCF 32, 33)
As one might expect, the Westminster Confession in explaining the Lord's Supper emphasizes the distinction between the evangelical and the Romish views. The two most important points at which Romanism has departed from Scriptural teaching are its theory of transubstantiation and the derivative doctrine that the mass is actually an expiatory sacrifice.
Transubstantiation is the theory that the bread and wine, by the magic pronouncement of the priest, become in substance the very body and blood of Christ. Inasmuch as the sensible qualities (i.e. the color, taste, consistency, etc.) of the elements remain unchanged, Rome supports the theory of transubstantiation by an appeal to the philosophy of Aristotle in which a particular relationship between substance and accident is elaborated. Aristotle's philosophy is too subtle to be discussed here, and the Bible centered thinker can hardly make Aristotle his guide for the Lord's Supper. As a Scriptural basis for transubstantiation the Romanists teach that Christ's words, "This is my body," changed the bread into his body. And even the Lutherans, though they repudiate transubstantiation, take these words literally and insist that the verb is can have only one meaning. It requires no profound scholarship to see that this is not so. The verb to be in Scripture can and does take on figurative as well as literal meanings. When Christ said "I am the door," he surely did not mean that he was an oak panel three inches thick. Again, "I am the resurrection," does not mean literally that Jesus was Lazarus walking out of the tomb. In the book of Revelation the verb to be is frequently used in the sense of to represent. For example, "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks… are the seven churches" (Rev. 1:20); "these are the two olive trees" (Rev. 11:4); and "the seven heads are seven mountains" (Rev. 17:9) . Now, in the same sense in which the seven heads are or represent seven mountains, so the bread is or represents Christ's body. The one is the figure of the other.
What further makes transubstantiation abhorrent to those who abide by the Scriptures is the inference drawn from it. If the bread is literally Christ's body, and if the priest breaks the bread, then Christ's body is broken again and the sacrifice of the cross is repeated every time the mass is said. The Council of Trent (Twenty-second Session, chap. 2) asserted that "this sacrament is truly propitiatory…, for the Lord, appeased by the oblation thereof,… forgives even heinous crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same." Against this view the Scriptures are particularly explicit. Hebrews 9:22-28 can hardly be misunderstood: "Nor yet that he should offer himself often . . . but now once in the end of the world . . . So Christ was "just once (once for all) offered to bear the sins of many."
For these unscriptural theories imposed by the arbitrary authority of the Roman Church, a number of subsidiary objectionable practices follow. For once the rule of Scripture is bypassed, there is no restraining man's fertile imagination. Hence the Roman church "reserves" some of the body and blood of Christ and carries them around in processions. Instead of celebrating the Lord's Supper as a common meal, it serves private masses. Contrary to the express command of Christ, it denies the cup to the laity; and it has even done away with the bread in favor of a glucose wafer. Then too, whereas Christ instituted the Lord's Supper after the regular Passover meal, the Roman church, again by an arbitrary act of authority, requires its people to fast from midnight until they receive the wafer in the morning.
But if the Roman church is so obviously not a Christian church, what shall be said of modernistic churches? When ministers reject the sole authority of the Bible, where can they find the rules and practices of the Lord's Supper—or any any part of ecclesiastical administration—except in their own arbitrary imaginations? If it seems aesthetic to them, they will push the pulpit and its Bible over to one side, abolish the communion table, and put up an altar against the back wall. Now, it is easy to understand why they wish to remove the Bible from its place of central importance; but what do they put in its place? What are they asking the congregation to center attention upon? That piece of furniture they call an altar—what do they sacrifice upon it? Surely they do not hold to transubstantiation. Unfortunately they do not believe that even Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was satisfactory to his Father's justice. In fact, we might ask why such churches go through the motions of celebrating the Lord's Supper. What do they mean by it? Such questions, I fear, cannot be answered clearly because these people have no infallible rule of faith to direct them how they should glorify and enjoy God.
On the contrary, a confessional church, if it believes its Confession, knows what the significance of the sacraments is, understands why it administers them, and, instead of relying on vague answers, unguided imagination, or aesthetic taste, can give clear-cut, above-board explanations from the word of God.