Truth Unites - Craig and Ortlund Clash on the Eucharist (Respectful Dialogue)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Gavin Ortlund and William Lane Craig discuss their differing views of the eucharist.Previous Dialogues with William Lane Craig:William Lane Craig Defends His View on the Historical Adam: ⁠   •��William Lane Craig Defends His View on the... ⁠William Lane Craig Discusses the Atonement:⁠   • William Lane Craig Discusses the Atonement  ⁠Truth Unites (⁠https://truthunites.org⁠) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: ⁠https://truthunites.org/donate/⁠Patreon: ⁠  / truthunites  ⁠FOLLOW:Website: ⁠https://truthunites.org/⁠Instagram: ⁠  / truth.unites ⁠X: ⁠https://x.com/gavinortlund⁠Facebook: ⁠  / truthunitespage  

It's no wonder that the majority view since the 11th century would be real presence because it became obligatory on pain of excommunication. But the rule among the church fathers is diversity. And I don't think you get clear real presence views among the fathers until the fourth century with Ambrose. And the temptation here is to read them through the rear view mirror. of Christian history rather than read them in their own context. I guess a concern I would have is the danger of overreaction, where we don't want to go so far from Catholicism and the errors that you and I agree are there

that we end up moving away from just Catholicity. Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am here with Dr. William Lane Craig, who is a world leading Christian apologist and philosopher who really needs no introduction. What an honor for me to be able to speak with him. And we're going to talk through the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper, where we agree on that, where we disagree on that.

And I'll frame this a little more in a second. But first, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time. It's an honor to talk with you. Oh, it's my delight, Gavin. I really enjoy your podcasts, and it's a pleasure to be a guest on your program. Yes, and we've done this a couple times before. People might be interested in my interviews with you on the Atonement and on Adam and Eve. So we've had a few of those chats people can check out.

In fact, I'll put those in the video description as well. But let me just say right out of the gate, I want viewers to know how much I love William Lane Craig, both as my brother in Christ and as a friend, but also as someone who I see as an example of giving one's life for a defense of the gospel. And so you've been a great hero of mine, and so it's an honor to talk with you. Now, we're going to talk through an area of disagreement about the Eucharist, but it comes in the context of tremendous admiration and, from my side. So that, I want that to be the very first thing we we talk through here. And I'll just give- And the feelings are mutual, Gavin. I think you know that. We've had a great friendship and this will be a great chance to even further that, I think.

Let me just, for people who've clicked on this video and don't know any of the backstory, let me explain what leads us to the present moment. So they'll be caught up to speed. I had done a video of about a five-minute video on the Lord's supper outlining a reformed view of real presence or spiritual presence that's sometimes called the view of people like John Calvin and Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigley and Heinrich Bullinger and Thomas Cranmer, people like that. And Dr. Craig put out two response videos interacting with that critically. And rather than the back and forth, sometimes it's just better to get together and talk. So I thought, in light of our friendship, why don't we just get together and just

talk through, you know, where we agree and where we disagree and without necessarily even a view to either of us changing our minds, but just with a view to clarifying, delineating, helping viewers sort out their own convictions as they think about something so important. So is that a fair summary of the backstory here? Yes, I think that's great. Okay. So what we'll do, I'll set expectations for the viewer here. What we'll do is, I think maybe just start with some issues of terminology. I was thinking of the metaphor of if an American and a Brit are debating whether football is the greatest sport, they will need to define their terms.

And I think that would be a great place for us to start as well, defining two terms in particular, real presence and then sacrifice. In what sense do we speak of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, if at all? And just work through, you know, what do we mean before necessarily even arguing what is right and what is right? wrong, let's just get conceptual clarity on the table if that sounds okay to you to start. And by the way, maybe a fun question too would be this topic comes up for you in the context of your writing, I understand. Do you want to just share a little bit about what you're working on on this topic? Yes, I find myself now on the fifth and final volume of my systematic philosophical theology. And this volume deals with ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church. And I expected this, frankly, to be the most boring of all

of the volumes that I would write. But as I plunged into this subject of the sacraments and particularly of the Lord's Supper, I have found it to be absolutely fascinating, just really intriguing. and the differences among Christians on this issue and its importance. And so that's how I find myself working on this topic at the present moment. Is there a favorite book or a favorite author that has stood out to you that you could say as a way of recommending something to viewers? Well, I think among contemporary authors, I really do like Stephen Nemesh's book. His name is spelled N-E-M-E-S, N-E-M-E-S, Nemesh,

Eating Christ's Flesh. I think it's a really good book. It's biblically, historically, and unusual, philosophically solid. I think it's very odd to have that triplex combination among authors today. So that would be a contemporary work that I found helpful. Okay. What about historically? Anything as you've...

Yes, Francis Turutan or Turitan's institutes of elenctic theology. This man was a genius. He is the Thomas Aquinas of Protestant Reformation theology. And he has a lengthy extensive discussion of the Lord's Supper from different ecclesiological perspectives. And so I find that with Turitan, I always read him with Prophet. And you can pronounce his name better than I do. So that's double win there.

I love Francis Turritin as well. I was just reading him this morning after your email. And I just find him so organized, which is helpful, so compact. And whatever you're looking for, you know right where to find it. And he sets it up so clearly. In fact, the books right over my shoulder there are his institutes that you just referenced there. So I keep them close by in a pinch. I'll recommend a contemporary book as well. George Hunsinger's The Eucharist and Ecumenism, really interesting book that gets into some of these issues.

So that's when I'll throw out there. I agree with you. This topic is not boring. It is absolutely fascinating from a personal angle as well as from a theological angle. So now for viewers, we have less than an hour as of this moment. So let's just dive right in. We'll make haste. We'll talk this through. And we'll just have a hard cut off a little less than an hour from now, but we'll have a great discussion here. Why don't we start with defining terms? And I want to be sensitive to not talk too long. So if I start going on too long and you have a thought and it's going to leave your mind, feel free to interrupt me, that I won't take offense at that. But maybe I could take just one or two minutes and share, not as an argument, but just for clarity, conceptually, how I would define real presence and then lay out a taxonomy of views that are possibilities just for conceptual clarity

at the front end. And the reason I'll start with this is in your videos, you defined real presence as, and I wrote this down so I made sure I'd get it right. Quote, we actually eat the physical body and drink the physical blood of the historical Jesus now risen and ascended to heaven. And I, what I heard that, lot. I hit a command F on the transcript of your two videos responding to me, and you use the word physical or the adverb physically 19 times to describe the manner in which we feast upon Christ in a real presence view. And so if I could just interact with that a little bit and share how I'm looking at it, and then I'll kick it over to you and see how this strikes you, if that sounds okay. So I would say that you could look at a taxonomy of different views of the Lord's

Supper maybe in four or five categories. So we've got, we might think of transubstantiation as the Roman Catholic view, as defined at the Council of Trent, for example. Thomas Aquinas is often seen as an exemplar of this. Then we could think of other Eastern views like Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox, which are real presence, but they're a little more averse to defining the philosophical categories. They don't like scholastic distinctions as much. They want to emphasize the mystery of it a little more, but they're definitely still a real presence. And in some cases, you can even find the word transubstantiation, but it's still a little different. Lutheran would be the third option. This would be pretty similar to number two. So there's a strong

emphasis upon real presence, but it doesn't have the substance accidents distinction in the Roman Catholic view. And there's some other differences with Lutheran views as well, but it's still real presence. A fourth option would be my view, which is the reform view, someone like John Calvin, which is sometimes defined as spiritual presence, because it says we truly and substantially feast upon Christ, but not locally or corporeally. And those adverbs we're going to get to, I'm sure we'll work through those. A fifth option would be a Zvinglian view

in which it is a memorial. It is our act of remembering Christ, but we are not feasting on Christ in any special sense. So that would not count as a real presence view. The others you mentioned would. That was what I was about to say, that in this taxonomy, numbers one through four are typically

defined as different species of real presence. And then number five would not be real presence. So that would be, and I see that pretty consistently in the literature. I wrote this down. This is a quote. I'll say the quote first and let people watching this wonder who said this. Okay, quote, we firmly believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which is spiritual and yet certain, end quote. That is a quote from Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher. And this is why I'm always emphasizing that historic Baptist views have sometimes fallen away a little bit from contemporary Baptist views because that's representative of the 17th and 18th century Baptists who will just flat out say, we believe in real presence and here's what we mean. You want to jump in there? If I might interrupt, Gavin, could you read the quote from Spurgeon again, please?

Yes. And I'm going to follow this up with a few others as well in a moment if that would help flesh it out. Here it is, we firmly believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which is spiritual and yet certain. Yeah, see, the problem there is that he doesn't define what he means by real presence. I think in saying he believes in the real presence of Christ, that's consistent with saying that Christ is personally present in the Eucharist. And I think it's really important in these distinctions that we clearly differentiate between Christ's personal presence and his real presence.

The personal presence means that the person of Christ is there, and even Zwingli would acknowledge that. Christ is there wherever two or three are gathered in his name. but that doesn't mean that his flesh and blood are there or are consumed. And so when we talk about the real presence, we're talking about the flesh and blood of Christ, and that's different than personal presence. Let me ask a question of clarification, and you've introduced this category of personal presence. Yes. Would it be fair to your view of this, that Christ is present in the participation of the Lord's Supper,

basically in the same kind of way he's present during prayer, singing songs of worship, reading scripture, etc. Or is there any unique sense of his presence in the Eucharist? I am inclined to say that there isn't any unique presence of Christ in the Eucharist that could not be had in worship and prayer and Bible meditation. it seems to me that this will, in that sense, I have, I don't think of the Eucharist or baptism as sacraments in the sense of special means of grace. Yes, there are means of grace, but so is prayer and worship and fellowship and so forth. So yes, I would tend to think myself that the presence of Christ

is available to us not simply through the quote-unquote sacraments. Okay. That's helpful and that's clarifying. And it's also good that we've got this sense of real presence as a broader term, which applies not merely to say a Roman Catholic view, for example, but also to the view of someone like Luther or Calvin. Now, could I just take a moment and read through some passages, not passages, just three quick quotes that would explain why I think your definition of real presence is not accurate to the reformed view. Now, I also want to say in passing, I do not want in any way our Lutheran or Roman Catholic viewers to feel thrown under the bus in any way. So I want to acknowledge that I think they also would object to the adjective physical and the adverb physically for their view as well.

And so I guess I just want to acknowledge that, but I won't try to defend their view because I don't hold that. But I would acknowledge they would have discomfort with that as well. But certainly for the reformed view, if I could just take a moment and explain why I would look at that differently. And I would say the reformed view doesn't believe in an eating of Christ's physical body, or drinking of his physical flesh. And I would agree that that view is problematic. Now, you see that view in church history. Some of the reactions against Beringar that you referenced in your video.

You'd reference Beringar. Some of the folks coming against him really have a crude understanding of real presence. Well, the church really came down on him hard. They condemned him as a heretic because he didn't believe that we chew and tear the flesh of Christ with our teeth. He was censured for sure, and what I'm saying is some of the views against him prior to Thomas Aquinas, because things are really in tension in that medieval era. And so prior to Thomas, some of these views you will find are pretty crude in how they're construing real presence. Here's how a spiritual presence view goes. I think this quote that I'll read from

Martin Busser is representative, and the adverbs here are trying to make a distinction. He says, the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, but not locally and carnally present and given in the supper. So truly and substantially, yes, carnally and locally, no. I've amassed about 20 quotes here, but I'll only read the first three that are like this to just make the point, that the consistent vocabulary is yes to truly, substantially, really, and sacramentally, these are adverbs that would, the reformed view of real presence would affirm, no to locally, carnally, or corporeally,

which the, this is not a ranking in the army, the adjective corporeal means, I'm just saying this for viewers, I actually had to remind myself of what's the difference between corporeal and corporal? Corporeal means physical or relating to the physical body. And so what you will find, even in the Second London Baptist, confession, which is the most popular Baptist confession of all time, is that worthy partakers of the

Lord's supper inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally or corporeally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified and the benefits of his death. Here's one more. William Milligan, he's an 18th century Baptist theologian, the worthy receivers of the Lord's Supper are not after a corporeal or carnal manner, but by the spirit and faith made partakers of his body and blood with all his benefits to their spiritual nourishment and growth and grace. Got a lot of other quotes like this pretty much hammering it in slightly different language. Sometimes it'll be, we're made partakers of his body and blood. Sometimes it is we are feasting on his body and blood.

But the consistent, I would say absolutely consistent emphasis is not in a corporeal manner, not in a carnal manner and not in a local manner. Christ's physical body is locally circumscribed in heaven, and it is a spiritual eating. Now, whether that is coherent, whether it is correct, and all of that is still to come, but just to define it accurately, I would love to protest that we strike that adjective physical from the definition, because that that is not, I think, what the reform view is. How does that strike you? It seems to me that in especially the first quotation you read, what is being denied there is that the flesh and blood of Christ are spatially located on the altar or in the bread

and wine so that in eating them we eat Christ as well. As you say, for Calvin and reform thinkers, Christ's body is. is risen and ascended into heaven. It is not spatially located on the altar. That's the Lutheran and Catholic position. Well, at least the Lutheran position. We could talk about Catholicism later. But I think if the reform view is not going to collapse

into Zwingli's view, who was also very willing to talk about spiritually eating Christ's body and drinking his blood, but meant that in a figurative sense or metaphorical sense. If this is going to be real presence, then somehow we have to eat and drink the flesh and blood of Jesus that is risen and ascended into heaven. And here, I think, one of the strong points of

Calvin is that like Zmingley, he had a physical view of Christ's resurrection body. Christ rose physically from the grave, and he ascended physically into heaven. So that unlike the Lutheran view, where the attributes of the divine nature are communicated over to the human nature of Christ, so that Christ's body and blood become ubiquitous and invisible and intangible. They no longer deserve to be called a body. For Zwingli and Calvin, Christ has an honest-a-goodness body, and this is the body that was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified on the cross, raised from the dead, and then ascended into heaven. So given that anti-dosetic view of the resurrection body of Christ, it seems to me that you've either got Zwingliism, which is not a real presence view, or if you try to say that we feast upon Christ's resurrection body spiritually, then it's incoherent.

You cannot eat a physical body and drink physical blood in a spiritual sense, unless that is meant, figuratively, in the way that Zvingly argued. So my concern is that the reform view either collapses back into Zwingli's view or else it's just incoherent. Incoherent. Okay. Well, let's, boy, let's probe this a little bit. I see less, I don't see the danger of incoherence with occupying a space between those two alternatives. Let me share a little bit why. First, you know, you mentioned, and I share your concerns about the Lutheran Christology. I've done some videos on that. I think that is troublesome. And I think both, actually Thomas Aquinas and Calvin are both very clear. Christ's physical body is finite and locally present in heaven. And so our Eucharistic understanding of feasting upon Christ is nothing to do

with the body of Christ being omnipresent or something like that. But I think... Can I just interject here again? I just think this is so important, Gavin, because I think that a lot of contemporary theologians that I read have what I would call a dossetic view. of Christ's resurrection body. They think that this resurrection body is now somehow a spiritual, invisible, intangible, immaterial, quote-unquote body. And it was my work on the resurrection of Jesus so many years ago that convinced me that that is a fundamentally unbiblical, un-pawline view of the resurrection body of Jesus. And so you and I want to affirm in common an anti-daucetic view of Christ's resurrection body. And then that's going to occasion these

profound questions about the real presence of that body and blood in the Eucharist. Yes. Sorry for interrupting, but I just think it's so important. No, that's good. And we are absolutely in lockstep on that. My favorite theological topic of all time is to consider the resurrected body of Christ and the nature of that body, which is absolutely new, and without any precedent in history or eternity, because it is a physical body, and yet it is indestructible and will never die again, which is a mind-blowing concept. I think where we differ here is, you know, your definition of real presence, I really think is just targeting the extreme. Even if you said, well, the reform folks over here, they don't believe in a eating of the physical body and blood, but they just have an incoherent view.

That would be a better definition of real presence, I think, because it would alert people to say, oh, okay, John Calvin and these others in this tradition of thought don't think. I mean, the adverbs here are applied to the manner of eating. So, you know, the other thing that comes up here is it's not an eating just with the mouth. It is a full spiritual incorporation and reception with the soul through the elements. It is a dynamic presentation of the risen Christ and his benefits to the believer in this very particular and special way. Now, if it's incoherent, it's at least not physical. I mean, that's where I think that would.

So what I'm trying to put forward here is can we agree that actually under the label of real presence, there's a broader taxonomy of views, many of which I don't even actually think that all the Lutherans and Catholics are going to be happy with us if we leave that adjective physical up for their views. But certainly the whole point of these reformed statements, what they're always chipping away at, almost every time they define real presence is it's not carnal, corporeal, or local. And so the whole point is to say it's not that we eat a physical body. It is a spiritual eating. Now, if the concern is of incoherence, I think that's a actually, I'm much more sympathetic to that concern because I hit limitations in my understanding

of this, and I could try to defend that on the basis of the doctrine of union with Christ, and we could work through that. But that, I think, would be a better criticism than the description of a real presence view as eating of a physical body and drinking of physical blood because, again, the emphasis of this view is it's not physical. It is a spiritual eating. But then you're back to Zwingli again, it seems to me. The reason I want to insist on physical, at least with respect to the body, that it's a physical body that's risen and ascended, is that if we give that up, then that allows for all kinds of aberrant theological views, you don't really have a corporal resurrection body of Christ.

And we just feed upon his mystical presence and enjoy the closeness of mystical communion with Christ. But that leaves out the fact that his flesh and blood are the very flesh and blood that was crucified, laid in the tomb and now risen and descended for us. That's what Calvin understood and emphasized, you know, that there's this historical continuity. So I'll give up that we physically eat and drink the body of blood of Christ.

As you say, you don't want to rule out of you simply by defining it out of existence. But if what we, but I don't want to give up the edge. objective physical to describe the actual body and blood themselves. Yes, yes, yes. There we are agree. Christ's body right now is physical. He has lungs. He has toes.

He has hair. It's a physical body. A resurrected physical body. He can eat fish in Luke 24. Absolutely that. The distinction I would draw is the manner of eating. That is what is spiritual. It is a spiritual eating.

And that is the sense in which we use the adjective spiritual there. So I would say a criticism of a reform view could say it is incoherent and here's why. But it's still, I don't think it is either physical or collapses in disvingly. I think if I'm looking at it rightly, it's a view that would be an intermediate between them because it's saying the body's physical, our manner of incorporation of the body and blood of Christ, is a spiritual one through the elements. whether it's correct or not, I'm still just trying to hammer out. I think that's what it is saying and should be described accurately.

Well, then here, the burden, it seems to me, lies upon the reformed theologian to give us a meaningful, coherent account. I think the dilemma that faces the reformed theologian is Zwinglianism on the one hand versus incoherence or meaninglessness on the other. other, what does it mean to eat and drink flesh and blood spiritually, if not figuratively or metaphorically? And that's Vingley's view. Yeah. So now that would be the criticism then. That would be the criticism, but not the description of the view as eating of a physical body. Yeah, I'm willing to give up the adverb physically for the sake of describing the view.

Okay. Okay. So that's good. And then the incoherence concern, I suppose what I would say, and I'll just make this a final comment on this point, and then we can move on to the idea of sacrifice, if that sounds okay to you, is I would say that the doctrine of union with Christ establishes some helpful parameters here. Because I think you and I would agree that when Paul says that we are members of his body, Ephesians 530, or that we become one in spirit with him when we are joined to the Lord, 1st, Corinthians 617, that that's, not physical, and yet there is a genuine act of communion and a genuine spiritual incorporation, and I would locate the manner of reception of Christ in the Lord's Supper as within the broader category of union with Christ, which is more than a mere metaphor. I would argue that when the Bible speaks of us being united to Christ and dead to sin and alive to Christ, that that's more than mere metaphorical language, that there is a real spiritual union that takes place between the

believer and Christ. And I would see that as a sort of parallel category that can help understanding and progress in the understanding of a spiritual reception of Christ or a spiritual eating of Christ and his benefits in the cross. So that's, you know, in case it's helpful for someone watching out there. Anything else you'd like to say at this juncture on this topic that we're working on? Well, I would like our viewers to understand that neither of us believes in transubstantiation. We do not believe that it is only the appearances of bread and wine that remain on the altar, but we think that the bread and the wine continue to exist. They are not changed into the blood and the flesh of Christ as Catholics,

and I think Eastern Orthodox believe. That's correct, yes. I believe that it's bread and wine in substance. And I've, in my videos, you know, tried to make a case for that, even from the Church Fathers, that they are thinking in different categories other than this substance accidents distinction that you get with transubstantiation.

So that's a point of agreement there. What about, okay, so another point that came up in your video, I think it was in your second video responding to me. The idea that the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist is a sacrifice. And if I understood correctly, you responded to this with a level of shock that I would say such a thing. And it seems to understand that in the sense of a Catholic view of Eucharistic sacrifice. Now, I 1,000% agree that that is a very problematic view. I think you're right that the reformers really strongly railed against that.

The idea of it as, for example, a propitiatory sacrifice to God for the forgiveness that will apply even for deceased believers in purgatory. I mean, there's all kinds of issues, and I've laid out in numerous videos my disagreements with that view. But what I would say, and I want to get your thoughts on this is, I mean, when the reformers came along, they didn't say as an alternative to that, that it's not a sacrifice at all. All the way back to the first century in the didache, it's called a sacrificial. All of the major Protestant traditions affirmed the Eucharist as a sacrifice, but they just said the Roman Catholics have a bad theology of that, but they listed a dumb, I mean, Martin Kemnitz, the Lutheran theologian, listed seven different ways in which it can appropriately be called a sacrifice. In the reformed tradition, you'll frequently get language of it. We call it a sacrifice because it is an application of the once for all. sacrifice of Christ, some go a little further. And they say it's in some sense of participation.

Now that goes into the interesting territory. But either way, people like B.B. Warfield, more recently, Charles Hodge, they're calling the Eucharist to sacrifice. And I was trying to think of a metaphor that could help viewers if they're saying, but wait a second, you know, doesn't this puncture and take away from the once for allness of the sacrifice of Christ? And so I did a very dangerous thing and punched this into chat GPT and said, helping come up with a metaphor. And I'm always railing against the dangers of AI from making our brains not active and critical thinking,

but I was absolutely at a wall for thinking of a metaphor. And I still didn't like the answers Chad GPT gave me, but at least it spurred me on to think of a better one, and that is a medical cure. We could say that, I could say the word cure in two different senses. I could say, number one, the doctor discovered the cure for this disease. that's a sort of once-for-all event where the cure has been discovered.

And then I could say, when I got to the hospital, I received the cure. And that refers to an ongoing reception of that once-for-all achievement. And I think that's one way of getting into what many of the historic Protestants mean when they call the Eucharist a sacrifice. It's not a propitiatory sacrifice unto God. it is nonetheless a kind of reception of the benefits of Christ once for all sacrifice freshly appropriated to faith in the moment of faith. Now, whether that is right or wrong, that is pretty standard in historic Protestant theology.

So I guess I wanted to put that out there and see what you think about that. Are you aware of those views? Was it just the Catholic conception? that you wanted to ward against in your comments there, or what would you like to say about this? Yes, my primary concern there is with the Roman Catholic position that the Mass is a representation to God of the sacrifice of Calvary. It's not a new sacrifice. They have this very strange view that the very sacrifice of Calvary, that event, is represented to God in the Mass for the sins of the people.

And the Reformers rightly, I think, and vehemently rejected that view because the Mass or the Lord's Supper is not an offering of the flesh and blood of Christ to God by us. It's not something we offer to God. It's something that he offers to us. And so as you put it, Gavin, it's more like application or reception. And the language of sacrifices got the arrow of directionality going the wrong way. A sacrifice is something we do and present to God, not something that we receive from him. Now, with respect to the early church fathers and the Didiquet and these early writings, they often spoke of a sacrifice of praise that we will offer thanksgiving to God.

And in fact, that's where the word Eucharist comes from, from the Greek word for Thanksgiving. So, yes, in the Lord's Supper, we give thanks and praise to God, we offer. ourselves to him, but we do not offer the flesh and blood of Jesus to God as a sort of sacrifice. So I think that in light of the fact that the Roman Catholic Mass treats the Eucharist as a representation of the sacrifice of the cross, we should do everything we can to avoid this sort of language, less we be misunderstood. Those final comments you made there raise a really interesting point that I don't have a full answer to and don't have full vision of.

And that is, as Protestants, because I'm aware there will be our friends from outside of Protestantism who will watch this video and say, oh look, these two Protestants are disagreeing. See, they can't get along on even something as important as the Eucharist. And to that I would say, we have so much in common. We are allowed to talk through areas where we disagree, and I don't think that's a good criticism of Protestantism. But it raises this question of how much are, when we react against errors we perceive in Roman Catholicism, is there a danger of going so far in the other direction, out of any, out of concern

of something we believe being misconstrued in a Roman Catholic sense that we go too far in the other direction? This is an area where I would have that because the language of sacrifice is so, I would say, ubiquitous throughout from the first century. For as you say, often in the sense of a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God, but often also in the sense of the metaphor I used of a cure. So Keminence, again, in the Lutheran tradition, will speak of the Eucharist as a sacrifice in that it is the sealing and application of Christ's accomplishments to the believer by faith in that moment.

Now, whether he's right or wrong, that's the sense in which he is defending. And I guess a concern I would have is the danger of overreaction, where we don't want to go so far from Catholicism and the errors that you and I agree are there that we end up moving away from just Catholicity in our language and in our categories. What do you think about that? Oh, I have absolutely no desire to be anti-Catholic. My entire desire is to be biblical. And when I look at the passages in the New Testament that deal with the Lord's Supper,

and these would be the gospel narratives of the last supper, and then Paul's treatment of the Lord's Supper in Corinth in 1st Corinthians 10 and 11, and then finally, many would see John chapter 6, the bread of life discourse, as relevant to the Eucharist. When I look at those passages, I do not see that the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice that we offer to God, especially that we are offering the body and blood of Jesus to God. So my concern is not born really out of any Catholic sentiments whatsoever. It's born entirely out of my commitment to sola scrupura and wanting to be biblical in my

doctrine of the Lord's Supper. And that's, by the way, one reason I'm a little bit hesitant to think of the Lord's Supper even as a special way in which Christ is present to us, because although that seems very natural and probably experiential, I don't find it taught in the New Testament. In those narratives or those passages I mentioned, none of them promise Christ's personal presence to us in the Lord's Supper. So that's an extra-biblical element that we might want to add, theologically or experientially, but when I'm doing biblical theology,

I want to stay close to the text. And so you don't find that language of sacrifice, I think, in connection with the Lord's Supper and the New Testament. Well, let's do turn there, now, because as the time is going quickly, we have a few moments left. I think that'd be a good topic to get to. Just to follow up, I a thousand percent agree with you that you are not anti-Catholic in any way. You're very gracious to those across the way. You probably do far, and not probably, you do far less defending of Protestantism than I do. Really? You really have done a great job just with

Christian apologetic, just defending Christianity. And as much as I've gotten pulled into Protestant things, that actually is probably more my deep heart is to just commend the gospel. I just get pulled into these conversations because people are wrestling with it. And so it does sort of come up in the context of life. But if I might interject at this point, too, I have always tried to be a defender of mere Christianity, as C.S. Lewis called it. And to supply a defense that all Christians of any confession, could find helpful.

But in writing this systematic theology, I, like you have found myself pulled into this, almost unwillingly. And if I'm going to treat the sacraments and the Lord's Supper, I've got to speak to it. And so it has been a little bit awkward for me, and I sure wouldn't want to be perceived as being anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox or anything of that sort. Yeah, no, your heart there comes through very clearly and is a wonderful thing.

And I think what you were saying a moment ago about, you know, Sola Scriptura, I think one of the areas where we would have a slight difference, though not an absolute difference, is just what it looks like to function in line with Sola Scriptura. Because I would say that the New Testament teaching about the Eucharist is fairly slender. It's not whole epistles. But we have this curious language. This is my body. This is my blood. And I would say that if we find relative unanimity, that that means something more than merely a symbol in church history, that will weigh significantly upon us. And I would just say, I want to hear your thoughts about this, but I would say watching your videos, I really, I guess I would just need to emphasize, I think some species of real presence is the overwhelmingly predominating position of church history.

I noticed you quoted, I agree with you, Retromness is a little tricky in the 9th century. I actually have appealed to him for years, and I've actually had to pull back into a position of uncertainty about retromness because his statements are tricky and ambiguous in places. So I've actually had to pull back from using retromness until I've given a more careful reading of him. But in general, I would just say, I really think some species of real presence is pretty much, I think I need to say, everywhere. And I know you will probably differ on that.

So we can maybe just, at least we don't have to agree with each other, but at least I want to be able to us to each share our perspective. That is my perspective. I hear people appeal to certain figures as though, oh, he believed in a Zvinglian view before Zvingli. A lot of the times, though, if you just look at the other things they said, Tertullian would be a good example of this. Tertullian speaks of the Eucharist as Fee's.

on the body and blood of Christ. And so you'll find that language along with language of it being figurative. And so you say, okay, how do you put both of those things together? The one thing I'll say, so we're into the realm of church history here, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. The one thing I will say is your quotation, you had a quotation from Pelican, Yaroslav Pelican.

Yes, yes. And so I was surprised at this because I, you know, he was a Lutheran who went Eastern Orthodox. I'm pretty certain that Yaroslav Pelikan wasn't saying that what you were using him to say. So I went back and I just pulled up and I just read through very carefully this morning to refresh myself. I think he's pretty clear that real presence was the position universally in the early church. And I've got several statements from Pelican on pages 167, 168. I could read through to document that.

But so I guess I'm just saying, you know, we can work through the details. but big picture, even though I think the scripture is the only infallible rule, when I see such overwhelming testimony in church history that is significant to me in the interpretation of scripture. Let me let you jump in. Yeah, I would appreciate if you can send me those Pelican passages that you referred to. The passage that I was referring to, he said that among the church fathers, nobody clearly took a position on this. He said, Tertullian and Oregon come close to affirming a purely figurative view and that who was it?

Was it Ambrose and someone else? Iranaes maybe came close to affirming a real presence view, but he seemed to pull back from saying they actually did. And when I read church historians for example, Gary Macy on theologies of the Eucharist, he characterizes the patristic period as the period of diversity. And he said that diversity existed right up until the 11th century when the church came down on Barangar and proclaimed the real presence

as Catholic doctrine that was obligatory or you were excommunicated as a heretic. So it's no wonder that the majority view since the 11th century would be real presence because it became obligatory on pain of excommunication. But the rule among the church fathers is diversity. And I don't think you get clear real presence. views among the fathers until the fourth century with Ambrose and Cyril of Jerusalem, then you start getting clear affirmations. But prior to that, they're ambiguous, and the temptation here is to read them through the rearview mirror of Christian history

rather than read them in their own context. And so I don't read it the same way. that you do and I think that I can appeal to recognized authorities on dogmatic history who would concur with that view of the diversity in the patristic period okay well I'll just share my take on this and you do not have to agree with me but I'll at least lay out how I'm looking at it because I did look up both Macy and Pelican and I don't I think the diversity being referred to is not about real presence, in my opinion, because with Pelican here, I think I know the passage you're referencing, but I'll just, I mean, I'll just read it. So he says, no, it does seem clear and express that no Orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record

either declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic, although Clement in origin came close to doing so. And then he says, they also didn't work out a developed theory of how it changed either. And then he says, within the limits of those to excluded extremes, was the doctrine of the real presence. He then expostulates that from Ignatius and quotes Ignatius' reference to the bread and wine is the body and blood of Christ from Ironaeus, who's got some real zingers for real presence. Tertullian, who he shows also spoke of feasting on the body and blood of Christ. These are not, you know, this is like right out of the gate. Ignatius was a personal disciple of John. And then he concludes by saying these theologians,

this is page 17, 168, did not have adequate concepts within which to formulate a doctrine of the real presence that was evidently already believed by the church. So he's saying they didn't have, there was some diversity, they didn't have all the categories, but the doctrine was believed by the early church. And I, you know, you don't have to agree with me. I would just, I would say, it's not just after Beringar. It's right out of the gate, the first and second generation disciples who speak of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ, feasting on the body and blood of Christ, et cetera. So that, that weighs upon me, because I want to honor the, the legacy that is established right out of the gate in church history. But I'm talking to.

much. Jump in. Well, one of the things that we have to be careful about, again, in interpreting these early thinkers, is a point that Augustine made, and that is that very often people will refer to the signs by the names of the thing signified. So, for example, I point at a portrait of George Washington. And I say, that's George Washington. Well, I don't mean that that piece of paper or oil and canvas is George Washington. I'm using the name of the thing represented to refer to the representation. And so it's not surprising. The church fathers would say, for example, in the Eucharist, we feast on the body and blood of Christ

if they're using the names of the thing signified for the signs. And in the absence of detailed expositions of what they mean, we're really, I think we're really in the dark on a lot of the interpretation of these early fathers. there wasn't a treatise on the Eucharist until Radbarotus, as you mentioned, in the 9th century. So this doctrine wasn't fully developed and explained. And Augustine himself will often use the names of the things signified to refer to the sacramental signs. But then on other occasions, he makes it really clear that he's just talking about.

about the bread and wine on the altar. Okay. Well, we're in the spirit here of noting where we agree and disagree. Sure. So I do agree with the principle that sign and things signified can stand in for one another linguistically. I'm not persuaded that that accounts for all these passages, especially some of the Iranian passages and others. But let's not get too bogged down here. Our goal here is just...

Could I just say one other thing, though, on this? as an adherent of Sola Scriptura, for me, the views of the church fathers are interesting, but they're not authoritative. They too had to interpret the New Testament, and their statements are to be weighed by the standard of the New Testament. And so I see even the early creeds, even the ecumenical creeds, as a consultative norm, for doing our theology, but not as an absolute norm. Scripture and scripture alone, I think, is the absolute norm. And if it were shown that the church fathers held views that were inconsistent with scripture,

well, I'd say that's too bad, but it's no reason to follow them in their erroneous views. Okay. Well, that may be the issue beneath the issues that would be fun to talk about on another occasion. Kind of what does it look like to function under Sola Scriptura? I would say that for many reasons, one of which would just be, and I'll put this on myself, if I want to be a humble Christian, to me, part of that means I really listen to the testimonies of others. And that means Christians around the world today, our brothers and sisters in the southern hemisphere, but it also means pre-modern Christians who have all kinds of insights that I have blind spots,

and they can help me. So when there's a degree of unanimity that comes high enough, at a certain point, I start to say, wait a second, surely I'm missing something. If all of these Christians thought one way, and then here I come and I'm differing, or here's this tiny little offshoot tradition. And that is somewhat how I feel. I know you see it differently, but to me, Soliscriptura is never, It has never been designed as a way to say there is no authority at all in church history,

but rather it's a way to relativize other authorities under the infallible supreme authority of Scripture, which is really the alternative Roman Catholic view where you've got other infallible norms. So you've got things like the Immaculate Conception of Mary and anathemas with it without any scriptural testimonies, I would argue, because there are infallible rules outside of Scripture. but the alternative to that that I see as healthiest for Christendom is not no authority to church history, but a relativized subordinate authority in various ways that we then flesh out. So that's something that maybe we could talk through at greater length and would be a bigger conversation. But I guess maybe just the only other thing as we're nearing the end of the time here is we'd be remiss if we didn't at least touch a little bit on the New Testament

and just say maybe it's a final topic. I think one of the passages I had brought up, you know, the video you're responding to was three reasons in five minutes. And so there, I'm squeezing down into five minutes. But I did just go to one passage as quickly as I could, and that's First Corinthians 1016. And making the simple point that a koinaea, a fellowship with Christ, is different from a commemoration or remembrance of Christ. And I think that just looking at how that coinonea term is used throughout the New Testament, Philippians 310, for example, fellowship with Christ in his sufferings,

is, it has a sense that implies more than just a remembrance of Christ. But I know you commented on that. I want to give you a chance to share your take on that passage. Yes. I think commentators have come to, realize that that relationship of koinia is not describing the relationship between the communicant and the object of his worship. It's describing the koinonea or fellowship between the participants in the activity. So the participation is that we are partners with our fellow Christians in the Eucharist. And this, I think, is decisively supported by the two analogies that Paul draws.

The people of Israel are said to be partners in the altar, and the pagans are partners in demons. Now, in neither case do the communicants ingest God or demons, but rather they participate with each other or one another in worshipping the God of Israel or in worshipping these demonic beings.

So the relationship of participation here is lateral, as I would put it, amongst the people who are participating. And so you get the metaphor of being like one loaf, one bread. The body of Christ is being used and as a metaphor for the Christian community in Corinth. Okay. Would you believe that I wrote a whole paper on this passage

when I was in seminary and can't even remember what I argued? So if only I could remember it, I would be able to draw from my previous research. I don't know if this happens. I wonder if you interacted with the work of Campbell and Willis. These have been two influential New Testament scholars whose work I find cited again and again on this passage. Yeah, I don't remember that either, but it would depend upon if they were written prior to 2007. As the years rolled by, I'm getting older, and that was when I wrote this paper, which gives me some excuse for having completely forgotten it.

But that would be a great passage to comb through and work through more fully if we had time on another occasion. I know we're near the end of the time. I know people in the comments will be thrilled that we're able to talk and we'll be wanting this to go on and on and on. I would love to do that in principle, but I need to honor your time by drawing things to a close so we don't go beyond the time. So we have just scratched the surface,

and I hope we can continue in dialogue where we have agreements. We have so many agreements. And again, they come in such context of tremendous personal benefit for me, from your ministry. But then we have these disagreements, and I hope we just keep talking about them, and I hope you'll, and I'm excited to read the work that you're writing on this. Good. I hope you'll review it when it eventually comes out.

Yeah. When can we expect that to be able to be able to build? Oh, this one is not going to be a couple of years now, because I'm just starting volume five. It'll take a couple years to finish this, so sorry. Okay. Have you been pleased with the receptions thus far of your work that has just come out? I have to say, Gavin, in all honesty, there hasn't been any reception. I've never, I've not seen any reviews published yet. So I think it's still too new. Both of the first two volumes appear just this year in 2025. And so I'm not seeing any reactions to it. Okay. Well, hopefully that will keep unfolding and come out as we move forward. Bill, thank you so much for the conversation. May the Lord bless you. Hopefully this will be the first of more of continual dialogue and hopefully it's been helpful for our viewers just to locate options think make conceptual distinctions work at their own understanding of this and uh but it's been a joy for me to talk with you well i'll look forward to talking further wonderful okay thanks for watching everybody and we'll see in the next video