Truth Unites - Do Baptists Believe in Real Presence in the Eucharist?

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

In this video I define "real presence," and argue it is the predominating historic Baptist view of the Eucharist. I also distinguish it from transubstantiation and discuss where it is present. Nadya Williams' Cultural Christians In the Early Church: https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Christians-Early-Church-Introduction/dp/0310147816/ Michael Haykin book: https://www.amazon.com/Amidst-Our-Beloved-Stands-Recovering/dp/1683595858/ Thomas Watson, The Lord's Supper: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Supper-Puritan-Paperbacks/dp/0851518540/ Richard Barcellos, The Lord's Supper As a Means of Grace: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Supper-Means-Grace-Memory/dp/1781912688/ Stanley Fowler, More Than a Symbol: https://www.amazon.com/More-than-Symbol-Baptismal-Sacramentalism/dp/1597527335/ Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

People are often surprised to discover that I, as a Baptist, hold to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper. But did you know? People love to dismiss Baptists, and sometimes we deserve it. But Baptists are very much, but yeah, we are caricatured a lot. You know, this issue is a great example. Did you know that the predominating historic Baptist view is real presence? It's true. I will show that if you watch at the end. In fact, you don't even have to watch at the end.

Just watch halfway through this video, and you will see that. Let's do four things in this video. First, I want to just define a Baptist view of real presence amidst a broader taxonomy of different views of the Lord's Supper, and specifically Christ's the mode of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper. Second, I want to draw attention to historic Baptist affirmations of that, drawing from Michael Haken's book, a really good book I'll talk about. Third, I want to explore how the Baptist's.

view of real presence is different from other views of real presence, especially Lutheran and Roman Catholic views, so we'll talk about others a little bit. That will be less trying to argue one for the other and more just trying to get conceptual clarity about the differences, because they are important. I'm not acting like any kind of real presence is the same, far from it. And then fourth, I want to address a practical question. I've never addressed before, and people have asked me about this a lot. If you are at a church that doesn't explicitly teach real presence, does real presence still happen there during the Lord's Supper? That's a fascinating question. The goal here partly is to defend Baptists for mischaracterization, but mainly it's to encourage my fellow

Baptists to give more consideration to this aspect of our heritage. Okay, before I dive in, I want to do a book recommendation. I've been reading through this book this afternoon, cultural Christians in the early church. Absolutely fascinating. We often tend to think that cultural Christianity is a modern phenomenon, and the early church was more, rigorous and countercultural and so forth, getting persecuted and so forth. And Dr. Williams, Nadio Williams, does a fantastic job, kind of giving you real concrete anecdotes and stories that basically show cultural Christianity has been a problem from day one. It's always been a problem. And she kind of humanizes the early church. This is a really relevant book for my

channel. It's relevant for today. You know, how do we think about different views of culture, Christian nationalism, all those conversations. It's very relevant to all that. It's also relevant to how we view church history. And this big thing that always comes up in my discussions, we really miss each other on just the nature of the church. And how does the church, simple question, what is the church? That question. That book helps out with that. So I'm going to put a link to that in the video description and encourage people to check it out. It's a really, really great book. Okay, first section, what is real presence? The view that I hold and that I detect as kind of the historic Baptist view would be the Reformed view. John Calvin's view, sometimes it's called spiritual presence. It's been articulated very well by Thomas Cranmer,

Heinrich Bollinger, Martin Bucer, and Peter Martyr Vermeigley. I've especially drawn for a dialogue I did with Brett Salkeld, whom I'll talk about him and his book in a second, especially from Cranmer and Vermeckley. Really helpful books. Shorthand definition of this view is to say Christ is really present in the supper. The person who partakes work. that is by faith, is feasting upon Christ and upon his benefits in the gospel. So the emphasis in this view is on the Holy Spirit, creating it. That's why we call spiritual presence. Spiritual doesn't mean lightweight or something like that.

I'll address that concern in a second, but it's the Holy Spirit affecting a union between the Eucharistic species, the consecrated bread or wine, and the body and blood of Christ. Christ's physical body is locally present in heaven. change, but there is a, through the Holy Spirit, a union that happens, and it's mystical. We don't, we can't explain it any more than we can explain our own union with Christ. One of the images that Vermeagely draws from the church fathers that George Hunsinger talks about as trans-elementation is that of an iron rod being put in the fire, and through that being placed onto the fire, it has a kind of union with the fire, and it takes on its heat and power.

But it's not a transubstantiation. It's still an iron rod. The substance of the rod is not changed. So that's one image that has been used to describe the nature of this, but more commonly, it's just left mysterious. We can't explain it. How do we explain how we are, I mean, if there's anything you get from Calvin, the best, people often ask about resources for this.

I think the best thing to read is just through the institutes in the relevant sections. You could also read this great book by Thomas Watson that I've done a video on before, one of the great Puritans wrote a book on the Lord's Supper. It's very edifying book, as the Puritans often are. You could also read this book by Richard Barcellos, The Lord's Supper as a means of grace, more than a memory. I'll try to remember to put links to all these. I usually have been good at that.

If I ever say I'm going to leave a link, and I don't just remind me in the comments, and hopefully I'll see your comment. I don't read every comment, but I browse now and again. And then the book I'll draw more from in a moment. Michael Haken amidst us our beloved stands recovering sacrament in the Baptist tradition. I'll say more about this excellent book in a moment. but if you read through Calvin, you realize there's nothing that he emphasizes more than the mysterious nature of this union affected by the Holy Spirit between the bread and the wine and the

body and blood of Christ. We can't say how it happens. And the emphasis is upon this as one function of our broader union and communion with Christ. That's another great emphasis. So I'm just trying to introduce this, sketch this out just a little bit, and let me defend this against a charge. Sometimes people will say, you know, well, that's not a real, real presence. That's kind of a second-rate version of real presence. I don't think that's fair. There is a, in a spiritual presence view, if you go back and read like Calvin, there's a real feasting upon Christ. I mean, you know, I think I mentioned, I've mentioned before, my favorite passage in the institutes on this is where Calvin talks about, through the Eucharist, Christ is pouring his life and his very self into our bones and marrow.

Okay, that's more than just us subjectively remembering Christ. Christ is doing something there. So this view is not like a memorialist view, where the emphasis is just upon our act of remembrance. That view is often associated with Zwingli, one of the other reformers, although this gets so complicated because there's some nuances to his view. So let me put up these four buckets you might think in terms of. Memorialist views, I'm going to oversimplify for the sake of having a heuristic to start with, okay?

Memorialist views, that's us remembering Christ, spiritual presence, that's what I've just recounted, Then you've got Lutheran views, and this view is something in this general ballpark. I'm not trying to say they're all the same, is often present in some of the Anglo-Catholics. You can see it arguably through our church history a bit, I'm going to argue, but something in the broad realm of consubstantiation as a third option. I know the Lutherans don't like that label, and that label has its own history going back to like the Lollards and other people like this, but I'm just, for the sake of simplifying here, I've got to give a label. So in this view, the substance of the bread and the wine coexists with the body and blood

of Christ in some way. You'll find the language of in, with, and under, something like this. So it's not, it's different from transubstantiation, but it's still a very robust account of real presence. And then fourth, transubstantiation, which is the belief that the substance of the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ after the consecration. And so far as I can tell, I'll talk a little bit about, well, I'll just say right now, I guess. So far as I can tell, the Eastern Orthodox view is pretty much right there with number four, the Roman Catholic view. I would welcome correction on this.

Basically, the extent that I can see is it's basically the same, except they just don't cash it out with all the same categories in terms of the substance, accident, distinction. But you can even find in the 1672 Senate of Jerusalem the word transubstantiation, or it's in the verb, transubstantiated. But I've not really chased that down a ton, so I'd welcome if there's anything I'm missing there. Other views, like the Oriental Orthodox, I think, is some general species of real presence pretty similar to transubstantiation. I'm just not sure that they necessarily define it all out as much, okay? So, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to overspeak about

those things, and that's why they're not necessarily listed in this fourfold taxonomy. Now, if you want a good treatment about this from the Roman Catholic side, this, I didn't bring it with me, so I'll put up a picture, but this great book by Brett Salkeld, I had a great dialogue with him a while back, and I really respect his work. Thank God for some people who actually read the reformers. People so often criticize Protestants or criticize, you know, in the case of this video, I've got to talk about Baptists. They don't actually go and read like the Baptist theologians or standards, and so they get these caricatures. But Brett does such a great job of fairly describing. being Luther and Calvin. And he shows, you know, that there are, you know, there are points of similarity actually between Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, even in ways that John Calvin and Martin Luther don't have in their views of the Lord's Supper. So if you want a good treatment of this from a Catholic perspective, check out that book. That's a great book. But the thing to just say here is don't just relegate the spiritual presence view to kind of, it doesn't really count or

something like that. It really is a feasting on Christ. You can disagree with it, but it's still a real presence view. All right. Second section of the video. Is that the historic Baptist view, a spiritual presence view? Basically, John Calvin's view? And I would say certainly not universally, but it's the predominating view. And for this section of the video, I'm drawing from Haken's outstanding book. What he demonstrates is that most 17th and 18th century Baptists were more sacramental, and then that fades away somewhat more starting in the 19th century. So with regard to the Lord's Supper and this question of the mode of Christ's presence, most early Baptists broadly followed Calvin's spiritual presence view in which we feast upon Christ and his benefits by faith through

the Lord's Supper. It's more than a mere memorial. It's a rich means of grace, and it's the occasion for a unique and particular kind of sacred communion with Christ. The Second London Baptist Confession basically followed the Westminster Confession of Faith on the Lord's Supper. So it condemns private masses, the refusal to distribute the Lord's Supper in both kinds to the laity. You know, there's all kinds of concerns. The concerns today are so different from what they were back then. At the time of the Reformation, a lot of the concerns, I mean, transubstantiation was rejected, but that was just one issue of like seven others where there were these concerns.

infrequent participation in the Lord's Supper, only getting it in one kind, not both bread and wine, if you're the laity, adoring it rather than eating and drinking, you know, look spectating rather than imbibing. Those were the kinds of things that were going on. And this one reason why we say without any embarrassment, the Reformation bettered the church, because it caused people to get the Lord's Supper more, to put it simply. But it did come. condemn transubstantiation, but Westminster, as this is the same with the Savoy Declaration, which is a congregational statement of faith that kind of followed the Westminster Confession, and then the same with the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689.

These are three streams that have a kind of a common foundation. So as a Baptist, I see myself as fundamentally broadly within the reformed tradition. All of that is just sort of conceptual terminology stuff. but basically the London Baptist Confession followed Westminster in stating that worthy partakers of the Lord's Supper inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified in all the benefits of his death. It's the same language as Westminster and the Savoy Declaration.

That's probably the most significant Baptist statement of faith ever written. And there it is right there. Let me just mention a few particular Baptist theologians that Haken surveys. Hercules Collins, 17th century Baptist minister in London, claimed that in the Lord's Supper believers are made verily partakers of his body and blood to the working of the Holy Ghost. William Kiffin, another 17th century Baptist London minister, said the Lord's Supper is a spiritual participation of the body and blood of Christ by faith.

Benjamin Keech, another leading Baptist in the 17th century, also pastored in London, said that in the Lord's Supper there is a mystical conveyance or communication of all Christ's blessed merits to our souls through faith. He also called the supper a soul-reviving cordial. Into the 18th century, Haken draws attention to William Miller, who's an important Baptist, who taught that in the Lord's Supper Christ's death and blood is showed forth, and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by the spirit of faith made partakers of his body and blood with all his benefits to their spiritual nourishment and growth and grace.

Andrew Gifford, another pastor in London, this time in the 18th century, had a clerk in his congregation who kept a diary, and he records Celebration of the Lord's Supper as serving as its purpose, among other things, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body. Haken argues that that language of feasting on Christ is probably consciously drawn from Calvin. All of these figures I'm mentioning had a wide influence, and they appear to be representative of the 17th and 18th century Baptists rather than just exceptions. You could also see Andrew Fuller. Sin is washed away in baptism in the same sense as Christ's flesh is eaten and his blood drank in the Lord's Supper. The sign when rightly used leads to the thing signified. That right there,

I mean, you know, just meditate on those words. Think about what that is saying. The sign when rightly used, that's a great emphasis of the Baptist tradition. You have to have faith. For both sacraments, you have to have faith. But when it's rightly used, so it's done in faith, as opposed to just some unregenerate person who doesn't actually love Christ. But if it's someone who loves Christ, they have faith in Christ, and you do it. It leads to the thing signified in both sacraments. People often don't understand Baptist views of baptismal sacramental efficacy either. And yes, historically we call it both a sacrament and an ordinance historically. Read this book, more than a symbol. If you want to know historic Baptist views of

baptism, and it's just completely false that we believe it's just a sign. Into the 19th century, the memorialist view does come to predominate here, but it's not universal. Spurgeon, for example, had a very high view of the Eucharist. He called it the nearest communion with Christ that we have ever known. Basically, the appeal here is for Baptists to really do some reckoning with our own tradition. I would recommend the work of the Center for Baptist Renewal. If you want to check them out, I'll link their website. They're doing a lot of great stuff, encouraging Baptists to retrieve our own heritage when it comes to the sacraments and liturgy and things like this. So, you know, people, and then for others looking in, you can still disagree with Baptists, but again, you can just

try to be accurate about what we historically have believed and not assume, well, just because what I see today in the contemporary sociology is this, therefore I'm able to close around the entire tradition based upon my anecdotal observations because people just refuse to let go of that sometimes. It's like, you know, it's not fair. Anyway, third section in the video, let's identify where a spiritual presence, understanding of real presence, in other words, option two in the fourfold taxonomy, differs from some of the other options, and especially from transubstantiation, the Roman Catholic view. I might make observations about the Lutheran view a little bit, though actually in some ways, people are not going to like what I'm about to say. But I think this is true. In important

ways, options two and four on the taxonomy are closer than options two and three. So in other words, yeah, people are going to go nuts about this one. Spiritual presence is closer to transubstantiation in many important respects than it is to the Lutheran view. Because Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin both agree, Christ's body, his resurrected ascended body is locally present in heaven. Let me mention, and here I'm drawing from my dialogue with Brett, three ways that spiritual presence, option two, is different from option four. Number one, in the communication of Christ to the believer, the bread and wine do not cease to be bread and wine. So this is basically the issue here is we reject transubstantiation. And that's why in the ecumenical dialogues, transubstantiation is

one of those sticking points. We can all agree on real presence. That we can come around that, but transubstantiation has the anathemas with it. You know, this is a sticking point. The substance of the bread remains bread. The substance of the wine remains wine. When you partake of the Lord's Supper, the substance of these elements is still the same. It's just ordinary bread, ordinary wine, but think of it more in additive terms rather than transformational terms. So something is being conjoined to it. rather than it's changing into something else. And I would have to say that I'm convinced from Vermeagli and Kranmer

that that's more of the patristic point of view, because they just compile all of these quotes from the church fathers who are arguing for an understanding of the mode of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper that is Chalcedonian. That is to say, just as Christ is both human and divine, so the Eucharistic species is both bread and Christ's body, or both wine and Christ's blood. It's a both and. And I just think that is more of the patristic view.

I'll just put up one example that Vermeigli really gets mileage out of from Theodoret, one of his dialogues where the teacher just plainly says, not even after the consecration do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature. They continue in their former essence, both in shape and appearance and are visible and palpable. as they were beforehand. So there you get into this debate about the Greek word. They're translated as essence, and people are saying, oh, well, no, that's not really a denial of transubstantiation, because that word is different from what we later mean by substance and this kind of thing. But I just think, as in so many cases, to defend, like a contemporary Roman Catholic view, you have to read it back in earlier and ignore the colossal differences and changes over time.

I don't think, because Theodora never says anything like that. He never talks about a transubstantiation or anything like that. You have to read that in. The other thing people do is say, well, you must be taking that quote out of context. Nope. I'm not, I've read the entire context, go back and read it. It's online. You can find it online, just read through. And the reality is not that we Protestants are taking the church fathers out of context. It's that people have bought into a simplistic paradigm that thinks that all the church fathers were like proto-Roman Catholics when they plainly were not. And so then when you point out the differences, you're accused of, it's assumed, well, they must be taking it out of context. No, we're not. We're reading

contextually and finding views that are contrary to contemporary Roman Catholic dogmas, and in this case of some other churches as well. Theodore, it's not the only example on this. As I say, vermicly just piles up so many. So the spiritual presence view simply leaves open, the mechanics of how this happens. It's, you know, I mentioned the trans-elementation idea before. we're simply not defining. We say, I don't know. So it doesn't have this Aristotelian ontology of the substance accident's distinction, which is the way transubstantiation is defined.

So you could see a spiritual presence view. It just doesn't tighten the screws philosophically. It just leaves it open. It's mysterious. Now, of course, Roman Catholics will say it's mysterious as well. But in this respect of how you understand the nature of the bread and wine, they go further in trying to explain. that and they require that view, transubstantiation. So that's one difference. Another difference is

that a spiritual presence view basically says you have to have faith. And you can read through in the Summa Theological Theologica Thomas Aquinas is talking about how, you know, what if a mouse eats and they, it's a accidental eating but not a sacramental eating, you know, is the mouse, if the mouse eats the bread that spills and this kind of thing, does the mouse feast upon Christ? And he's saying in some sense, yes, in some sense, no, and so forth. And in the reform tradition, we just say absolutely not. The mouse can't do that because you have to have faith. And the unregenerate person who partakes of the Eucharist is not feasting upon Christ. Not because Christ is not objectively present, but because the unbeliever, anything that can eat, so include

animals, you know, that is not a believer, is not united to Christ, is incapable of this kind of spiritual incorporation of Christ that is going on. The image of Calvin is of a bottle with a cork on top of it, so you can't get any water in the bottle because it has a cork on top. That's the unbeliever partaking of the Eucharist. And so basically, we think that feasting on Christ is something that happens as a function of union with Christ. That's the broader category in which reception of the Lord's Supper is this kind of pinnacle, climactic expression of that. And I, I I would have to say that, again, I'm convinced from Kranmer and others that that is a very patristic way to think.

I can't really stack that up as majority versus minority among the church fathers. I haven't done enough work, but I can say certainly I do see this idea that only the believer feasts upon Christ, and the unbeliever does not feast upon Christ. I think that's pretty explicit in Augustine, for example. So that's one other difference. The third difference is there's this emphasis upon spiritual eating. So this is drawn especially a lot from the Church Fathers as well, Augustine on John 6, for example. I'll come back to John 6.

There was a concern of a just flatly crude and mechanical and carnal way of understanding Christ's presence in the supper. That's why you get this language like from Bucer. The body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, but not locally and carnally present and given in the supper. So these adverbs, truly and substantially, yes. locally and carnally know are trying to make a distinction there, that in the context of the 16th century, there was a real concern that this was understood too. And I don't know how anybody can't be sensitive to that concern. If you can't be at least open to the concern here that it can be understood too crudely, then read the medieval tradition, because some of the views that are kind of, the medieval

church is kind of churning through these different options, you know, in connection to Berengar of tours and others who are advocating for alternative views, and so they're trying to work this out. There's definitely views on the table that are too crude, that even like contemporary Roman Catholics would recognize that's not the way we want to go. This is one of the differences for a spiritual presence view. It wants to make a distinction here. It's concerned about, and almost all these statements, there's the distinction. We're feasting upon Christ, but not in a carnal way. And here with Busser, not locally. So one way to put it is this. This is the, this is the, this is the, this is a spiritual encounter. It's dynamic, not static. The organ of reception by which Christ is taken in

is not the stomach properly. It's the soul. The eating is the occasion for this larger spiritual thing that is happening. Don't think of it in terms of containment. Like, you know, Christ's body is now in this little wafer and I can take Christ's body and I can throw it on the ground or I can take Christ's body and chuck it over there. It's like, no, you know, sometimes the language in the reformed tradition will be there's a presentation of Christ rather than just Christ is present. Or it'll be Christ is in and with or in and through the elements. Think of it like this. The Holy Spirit is doing something. Christ is giving himself to us through the elements. Okay. But you have to have faith and you can understand that and too static away.

Okay. So that's why they were so much concerned to eat and drink and not just to look at them. All right. What else do I want to say about this? I guess one of the thing is that there's a big, this is actually an interesting question that comes up. One of the big emphases for a spiritual presence view is that the Old Testament saints feasted on Christ as well. Paul says that explicitly in 1st Corinthians 10, 3 to 4. The Lord's Supper is the pinnacle expression of this more basic reality. The Eucharist is kind of the climactic moment of something that is organically related to our broader union with Christ and communion with Christ. This is, I think, how we understand John 6. It's a mistake to divorce this chapter from our understanding of the Eucharist.

It's also a mistake to restrict what John 6 is talking about when Jesus says, eat my flesh, to restrict that to the Eucharist. It's not just in the Lord's Supper that that reality can happen. Otherwise, Jesus is saying, you know, if you don't eat me, you don't have eternal life, therefore you have to survive for a few more years until I institute the Eucharist. It's like, no, he was saying something that was actionable to the people who heard it. So John 6, I think, is a powerful support for a spiritual presence of you. because we do have to feast upon Christ, but feasting on Christ is not something that happens

only in the first century when this right begins. All right, here's a fourth question. If you are at a church that doesn't have real presence in a statement of faith, are you still feasting on Christ? But let's say you personally, I know a lot of people like this, you personally believe in real presence, but you're at a church and they don't even think about it. So what's happening is your church, you know? Here's my answer.

wherever there is a valid church, there is a potential for a valid Eucharist. And at a valid Eucharist, all such participants who exercise faith in Christ do partake of Christ. So then you say, okay, so what's a valid church? Are valid churches? Are Zvinglian memorialist churches? Valid churches? Absolutely.

A valid church is anywhere where the true gospel of Jesus Christ is present through both word and sacrament. So, in other words, putting those two things together, the answer is yes. There is the potential for real presence to be going on, even when a particular church doesn't have it in its statement of faith. Now, people aren't going to like that, but I've got to say that. In fact, I'll even go this far. Even the participant does not have to have a perfect understanding in their mind of the theology

of the Eucharist in order to experience the reality in their heart and life. What you are experiencing in the Lord's Supper, is not sealed off from your broader experience of union with Christ. And so let's just give some anecdotes to show this. Let's suppose that when I preached on the Eucharist a while back, I shared as an opening illustration, Christians taking the Eucharist in a concentration camp, a bunch of Lutherans in Germany,

and they snuck in some kind of fermented juice and bread, and they didn't have a presiding minister. They didn't have any sort of consecration whatsoever because they had to do it in a kind of clandestine way. so the guards wouldn't notice what they were doing because they weren't allowed to have the Eucharist. So they didn't have a like a consecration or a valid priest or anything like that. They just had some bread and wine

and they kind of very quietly had through signaling to each other or something like this partook of the Eucharist. Is Christ present in that instance? I would say absolutely. I mean, this is one of the great concerns. Again, the actual concerns in terms of Eucharistic theology between like Protestants and the non-Protestant traditions really are not just or mainly about the motive.

of Christ's presence. It's about all kinds of practical and administrative questions. Like, what is a valid Eucharist? The fact that I'm understood to never have had the Eucharist in my life by Roman Catholics, for example, and some others, is that that would be like a far deeper concern in some respects than anything else. But in that circumstance, I'd say absolutely they have. Now, that was Lutheran. So you'd say, oh, well, they had a theology in their minds of it. okay what about in a remote village on the islands of Papua New Guinea when they acquire the internet and so they read and they become Christians and let's just condense this story really fast basically a church is founded and it's valid in the sense that they have they have the true

gospel okay they through the internet come in contact with the gospel they get baptized and they're worshiping God they're worshiping the Trinity etc and they partake of the Lord's supper, but they haven't really known about all these categories that have developed in church history. They've never heard of the word transubstantiation or real presence or any of these words. And so this person is there in the village, and their church hasn't developed to a point where they have a real technical or explicit theology of what's going on. And all this person knows is, I love Jesus so much. Jesus, this is your body.

This is your blood. Thank you. while I am partaking, I am soaring in my heart with love for you and gratitude for what you have done and it is repairing me inside in the deepest possible ways. That's real presence. You don't have to be in this context. So I guess there's multiple things going on here. One is just the distinction between the experience of it and the theology of it.

And the other is the concern about restricting a valid Eucharist to this line of bishops that's seen as valid bishops. And both of those would be concerns on this point that would incline me to say. Now, this is not a reason to say, well, we shouldn't work on our theology of the Eucharist. But just in those imperfect scenarios, ultimately what is yielded there, what's going on there? And I just think, actually, the generosity of Jesus Christ is relevant to this. Jesus is generous, and he is responsive to faith. So that, you know, but I've, I know I've not given a full treatment just now of that question of valid ministry. I'm not trying to do that now, but I'm flagging it, I'm referencing it, but we need to do more to talk about that.

But I'm just trying to answer this specific question. Yes, you can, because partaking of the Eucharist is not some mechanical thing. This is what people do with theology. This is what they do with church history. They make it into this phariseical system. You know, there are so many irregularities in terms of canon law requirements all throughout church history. So when people act like there can't be a chink in the armor, you know, you have to, you have to be able to trace your line back. Ambrose would not be a validly ordained minister according to a lot of the contemporary standards.

I'm concerned about this. I actually think that very nature of the gospel itself speaks to these questions of, again, the question of exclusivity and how we define the church. That's a big thing we got to, I'm going to return to that in future videos. question, what is the church? And actually our perception of the generosity of Christ is relevant to that. But it is now 4.15, and I have to get in a bike ride before I go home and play with my kids at five. So I'm going to end it. Let me say that I recommend all the books. I think I got through them all that I wanted to. The Vermeckley and Kranmer books are really good. But read Calvin. That's the best way to start because it's so short and he's so easy to read.

If you want to understand a spiritual presence view. Here's the other thing. Final suggestion is to go through Take a book like this because it's really short and readable and devotional. It's not just a theological treatise. It's very devotional. And do a study group at your church. If you're watching this wondering, boy, I'm at a Protestant church. We need to give more attention to the Lord's Supper. We're kind of disconnected from church history on this like many Protestants are.

What do we do? Here's an encouragement. Do a study group at your church. That's what I've done here at our church. We're just studying. And just out of the study, rather than imposing a theological change, out of the study, ask the Holy Spirit to lead people and guide people and direct people into thinking about this. You know, it's just a wonderful way to affect change in your congregation.