In my article "Baptismal Efficacy and the Incarnation," I compare the sacramental union with the hypostatic union of the Incarnation, both of which are discussed in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I believe this same line of thought can be helpful in discussing the nature of the presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord's Supper. I will make reference to the Eutychian and the Nestorian views of the Lord's Supper. By this, I don't mean that I have studied the views on the Lord's Supper that were held in history by actual Eutychians and Nestorians. What I am referring to is a comparison of the way these various views explained the relationship of the human and divine natures in the one Person of Christ, to explanations of the relationship of the sign and the thing signified in the Lord's Supper elements.
The Westminster Larger Catechism does address the question of the relationship of the sign and the thing signified in the Lord's Supper in question 170:
Q.170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord's Supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein? A. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death. According to this view, Christ is "spiritually present to the faith of the receiver." I will first examine the views that Christ is present in the Lord's Supper ontologically and locally. Then I will return to the view found in the Westminster Larger Catechism.
The Roman Catholic view is that there is an ontological real presence described in terms of the Aristotelian categories of attributes (or accidents) and substance. The attributes are what we sense with our senses. The substance is the ontological reality, the material stuff that has weight and inertia. Apart from attributes, the substance is beyond our perception. Apart from the substance, the attributes lack any physical reality. These are philosophical concepts intended for the abstract discussion of reality. They are not components which can in reality be separated from each other. Yet this is what the Roman Catholic view, called transubstantiation, claims to do. The elements of the Lord's Supper retain their attributes, continuing to look, smell, feel and taste like bread and wine. Yet they miraculously become in substance the body and blood of Jesus. In transubstantiation, the elements are miraculously transformed into a third sort of matter that combines their attributes with the substance of our Lord's body and blood.
This view of the real presence in the sacrament is truly analogous to the erroneous teaching of Eutyches regarding the Incarnation. According to Eutychianism, the human and divine natures of our Lord combine in His Person as a third sort of nature which is neither fully divine nor fully human. According to transubstantiation, the transformed elements of the Lord's Supper are a hybrid substance that is neither truly bread and wine, lacking their substance, nor truly our Lord's body and blood, lacking their attributes. According to this view, the amplified words of institution are, "The substance but not the attributes of this bread is My body."
The local real presence view is the Lutheran view, which is called consubstantiation. I will argue that the Lutheran view is Nestorian. I know that when one thinks of the Lutheran view, what first comes to mind is Eutychianism. That is true on one level, when one is thinking of the theological background necessary to the Lutheran view. Lutheran theology teaches that the human nature of Christ can partake of the attributes of the divine nature of Christ, and that at His ascension "the human nature of Christ passed into the full enjoyment and exercise of the divine perfections, communicated to it in the incarnation, and thus became permanently omnipresent" (Berkhof's Systematic Theology, page 351). This is the doctrine of ubiquity which is the foundation of the local view of the real presence. Since the physical body of our Lord is now everywhere, it can be in, under and with the elements of the Lord's Supper in a special way.
Lutherans often choose not to use the word "local" when referring to their view of the real presence in the Lord's Supper elements, but the issue here is merely that of defining one's terms. By local, they are referring to a presence that exclusively fills a space the way water fills a glass, and the body and blood of Jesus could not be present in the elements that way. Here is an illustration of the sort of local presence I am talking about. The resurrected Jesus suddenly appeared to the disciples in that room with all the doors locked. The only possible explanation is that the resurrected Jesus was able to miraculously pass through the door or walls into the room. Think about that moment in time when Jesus in His glorified body was in the process of passing through that wall or door. The body of Jesus is present in the bread the way it was momentarily present in that door or wall.
With that understanding of local, the Lutheran view is that the body and blood of Christ are locally present in the elements of the Lord's Supper. The only union between the elements and the physical presence is that they are occupying the same space. According to this view, the amplified words of institution would be, "This is bread, and My body occupies the same space with it." This error regarding the sacramental union is analogous to the Nestorian error regarding the hypostatic union. The Nestorian view of the Incarnation is that the divine Logos merely indwelt the man Jesus. The human person and the divine person occupied the same space but lacked true personal oneness. The Nestorians "saw in Christ a man side by side with God, in alliance with God, sharing the purpose of God, but not one with Him in the oneness of a single personal life, - a Mediator consisting of two persons" (Berkhof's Systematic Theology, page 307).
The third view is the one found in the Westminster Larger Catechism, and it is truly incarnational; that is, its concept of the sacramental union is truly consistent with the orthodox view of the hypostatic union. This view is called the spiritual presence view, but we mustn't misunderstand that as if there is anything docetic about this view. The word "spiritual" refers here not to our Lord's body and blood but to the Holy Spirit as the agent of our union with His body and blood. Our Lord's glorified physical body is currently locally present at a place called the right hand of the Father, and will not return to earth until that event called the Second Coming. We have union and communion with Christ not through His physical body's coming to earth prior to the Second Coming but through the Holy Spirit's miraculously and mystically raising us to the heavenly realms through a mystical union with Jesus. Jesus is present among us through His Spirit, who unites us not merely to His body but to His total Person. God has "raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6). We are comers unto Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22).
Here is a helpful summary statement by Dr. Ligon Duncan:
The consensus of Reformed teaching on the way in which Christ is present in the Lord's Supper may be summarized as follows: there is absolutely no corporeal presence of Christ whatsoever in the Lord's Supper. Christ is not elementally, spatially or locally present in the Supper in any way. There is no change or conversion of the elements in the Supper. The believer does indeed receive Christ in the Supper, but not by the mouth, rather by faith. Nor does Christ's humanity come down to the believer, but by the Spirit the believer is raised in heart to receive Christ in his ascended glory.1The sacramental union is based on the mystical union which is experienced on the human level as saving faith. The worthy receiver communes with the body and blood of Jesus in terms of the sacramental union just as truly as the Man from Nazareth is the second Person of the Godhead in terms of the hypostatic union. Here is the definition of both the hypostatic union and the sacramental union found in the Westminster Confession of faith:Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. WCF 8.7There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. WCF 27.2According to this view, the amplified words of institution are, "This bread is the sign and seal of My body as the sacrifice for sin, a means of grace which the Holy Spirit uses to work faith as the human experience of the mystical union." The Holy Spirit uses the sacramental sign and seal to confirm and strengthen that faith which He first establishes through the preached word in the hearts of God's elect.In saying that Word and Sacrament are in a sense incarnational, we must not forget the uniqueness of the Incarnation. Word and Sacrament are incarnational only by way of analogy with the union of human and divine in the Person of Jesus. The Incarnation is the root of all revelation, and the incarnational work of Christ is the basis for all true communion between God and humanity. Those who begin actually worshipping and adoring either the pages of the Bible or the elements of the Sacraments have compromised the uniqueness of the foundational Incarnation. We should treat the Word and Sacraments with respect as means of grace, but Jesus is the only agent of revelation and reconciliation whom we should actually worship and adore.
Footnotes
1 Ligon Duncan, editor, The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century: Volume 2 (Mentor, July 2004), p. 441, in the article "True Communion with Christ in the Lord's Supper" by Ligon Duncan.