The Doctrine of the Lord's Supper

The Doctrine of the Lord's Supper

Introduction

I think that no doctrine inside Christianity was as arguably and problematic as the doctrine of the Lord's Supper (Eucharistic). Not only that century-old fighting's is going on around the text: "This is my body" (1.Cor.11:24) between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but there is nonconformity regarding the question among Protestants themselves. The first notification of the Lord's Supper set a division among Christ's disciples, as they were shocked when Christ told them about the suffering that He must go through, so they said: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6,60). The cause of this fighting is based on a question of understanding the nature of Christ's presence in bread and wine as in understanding the nature of Christ body, the Church.

Those fighting became so intense that the concept of Eschaton in the Lord's Supper (Until he comes, 1.Cor. 11, 26), i.e. the connection of the Lord's Supper and the Kingdom of God that will come , was totally forgotten. And tendency of neglecting the eschatological concept of Lord's Supper would not be so important if it would not have for its consequences the way and oftness of its maintenance , the religiousness of believers and life of a Church and its missionary orientation.

In this paper we will not discuss the questions of Christ's presence in the sights of bread and wine during the Lord's Supper and we will not talk about Luther's, Calvin's or Zwingli's view of Lord's Supper. We will not define it nor will we discuss how often we should participate in it. In this paper we assume that the Lord's Supper for many Christians does not implicate the eschatological concept (which guides the Church and its believers to the Heavenly Kingdom) and has became something static and local. The Lord's Supper is always talked about by its meaning in the past, not its future. It has been forgotten (as the Second Vatican Council says) that “The Lord's Supper (Eucharistic) is the wellspring and the crown of all Christian life, and without it the Church would not exist nor be alive” because she wouldn't have its purpose, and that is eternity. Miroslav Volf in his book After Our Likenes quotes famous catholics theologian Ratzinger,

“Through, baptism, human beings spet out of isolation and into the trinitarian communion, and thus also into the communion of t...

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