THE FALSE MYSTERY IN THE LORD’S SUPPER OFTEN PRESENTED
By Guillermo Santamaria
FOREWORD
Some Baptists treat this ordinance as if it were some mystical internal ritual that they have to carefully review.
MAIN WAYS PEOPLE EAT AND DRINK UNWORTHILY THE BREAD AND THE CUP
1. Turning it into something that is no longer the Lord’s Supper
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:17–20
“When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper.” (v.20)
Violation:
The gathering has become so twisted (factional, selfish, abusive) that Paul says: What you’re doing doesn’t even count as the Lord’s Supper anymore.
2. Making it “your own supper” (privatized, selfish feasting)
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:20–21
“For in eating everyone taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken.”
Violation:
Treating the Supper as a private meal or clique-feast.
Each “his own supper” rather than a common participation in Christ.
3. Gluttony and drunkenness at the table
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:21–22
“One is hungry, and another is drunk. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?”
Violation:
Using the ordinance to gratify bodily appetite and excess. The holy meal is swallowed up by ordinary indulgence.
4. Despising the church and shaming the poor
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:22
“or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?”
Violation:
Treating poor/low-status believers as nobodies at the very table that proclaims Christ died for them.
Turning the Supper into a display of social status, not gospel equality.
5. Eating and drinking “unworthily” (in an unworthy manner)
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:27
“Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”
Violation:
Not “unworthy people,” but an unworthy way of partaking—defined by the behaviors in vv. 18–22 and v.29: factionalism, selfishness, disregard for Christ’s body.
6. Failing to examine oneself
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:28
“But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.”
Violation:
Coming to the table in a careless, unreflective way when your behavior is actually contradicting what the Supper proclaims (e.g., you’re part of the very injustices Paul is rebuking and you don’t even bother to “look in the mirror”).
Note: the command is examine and then eat—not “examine and stay away forever.”
7. Not discerning the Lord’s body
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:29
“For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
Violation:
Treating the elements as common, not as a solemn sign of Christ’s crucified body.
And, in Corinth’s context, failing to recognize and honor the church as Christ’s body (compare 1 Cor 10:16–17; 12:12–27).
To despise the gathered saints is to “not discern” the very body you’re claiming to commune with.
8. Refusing to “judge ourselves”
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:31–32
“For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord…”
Violation:
Persisting in the abusive pattern (despising the church, shaming the poor, etc.) without letting the Lord’s warnings correct us.
Refusing self-judgment leads to God’s fatherly judgment in sickness and even death (vv.30–32).
9. Not waiting for one another
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:33–34
“Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home…”
Violation:
Treating the meal as a race or private feast instead of a shared act.
The fix Paul gives is concrete: wait for one another, and if you’re just hungry, eat at home.
10. Mixing the Lord’s table with idolatrous fellowship
Text: 1 Corinthians 10:14–22
“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.” (v.21)
Violation:
Trying to hold communion with Christ while also sharing in pagan/idolatrous worship.
Treating the Lord’s table as compatible with rival “altars.”
11. Keeping open, scandalous sin at the table
(1 Cor 5 applied to the Supper)
Text: 1 Corinthians 5:1–13, especially v.11
“with such an one no not to eat.” (v.11)
Given that “eating together” in Corinthian church life centrally includes the Lord’s Supper, this implies:
Violation:
A church knowingly maintains table fellowship with someone in gross, public, unrepented sin that Paul says must be excluded.
Using the Supper as a mask for rebellion against Christ’s command for discipline.
12. Party spirit / factions carried into the Supper
Text: 1 Corinthians 11:18–19; cf. 1:10–12; 3:1–4
“I hear that there be divisions among you…” (11:18)
“every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos…” (1:12)
Violation:
Treating ministers or groups as party leaders, then sitting at one table while hearts are divided into camps.
Confessing “one bread, one body” (10:16–17) while practically behaving as multiple parties.
Big picture
When you stack all of that together, violations of the Supper in Scripture look like:
Selfish feasting instead of shared remembrance.
Status games that shame the weak.
Carelessness about what the Supper means.
Factions, idolatry, and open scandal carried right into the ordinance as though Christ’s death had nothing to say about them.
Or in one line:
The Supper is violated whenever we, by our behavior, visibly deny the crucified Christ and the one-body fellowship that the Supper proclaims.
WHAT THE LORD’S SUPPER DOES NOT MEAN
Short answer: A lot of evangelicals act as Paul wrote,
“Whoever is an unworthy person, let him stay away,”
instead of what he actually wrote:
“Whoever eats and drinks in an unworthy manner…”
Here are the big misreads.
1. Turning “unworthily” into “unworthy person.”
Common evangelical move:
“Don’t take the Supper if you’re not living a victorious life, fully surrendered, with all known sin confessed. Otherwise, you’re eating and drinking judgment.”
Problem:
The Greek word is an adverb (“unworthily”), describing the manner of eating, not the quality of the person.
In context, the “unworthy manner” is:
- Party spirit and factions (vv. 18–19)
- Selfish feasting (v. 21)
- Shaming the poor (v. 22)
- Not discerning the body (v. 29)
Paul never says, “The standard is: be a high-grade Christian or stay away.”
He’s rebuking how they behave at the table, not grading their spiritual temperature.
The unintended effect:
Tender consciences stay away from the table, and the self-righteous march right up. That’s exactly backwards.
2. Reducing it to private, mystical introspection
Common pattern:
A long “quiet time” before communion.
Heavy emphasis on “search your heart for every sin.”
Almost no mention of the body (the church), the poor, or visible divisions.
So the Supper becomes:
“Me and Jesus, having a deep personal moment.”
But in 1 Corinthians 11, the sin is corporate:
“when ye come together” is the refrain.
The abuses are social, relational, visible.
Paul’s solution is also corporate:
- Wait for one another (v. 33).
- Stop shaming the poor (v. 22).
- Discern the Lord’s body (v. 29)—which, in this letter, clearly includes the church (10:17; 12:12–27).
In other words, you can have a very intense private mystical feeling, yet still be violating the passage if you’re despising Christ’s people.
3. Using it as a recurring “Am I really saved?” exam
Many evangelical churches treat the Supper like a mini altar call:
“Before you take the elements, make sure you are truly a Christian… if not, abstain.”
Now, yes: unbelievers shouldn’t take the Supper.
But Paul’s “examine yourself” is not:
“Re-run the whole question of your salvation every month.”
It is:
“Look at whether your behavior at the table is contradicting what the table means.”
The Lord’s Supper is a covenant meal for believers, not a recurring conversion test for the anxious. Constantly turning it into “assurance roulette” is a misapplication of this passage.
4. Making the Supper less frequent because of fear
You know this line:
“This is very serious. People got sick and died. So we’d better do this rarely, and only when everyone is really ready.”
So the logic becomes:
Serious warning → reduce frequency
The New Testament logic is the opposite:
Serious warning → correct the abuse and keep the ordinance rightly
Paul never suggests:
“Given the risk, you might want to dial this down.”
He says:
- Judge yourselves (vv. 31–32)
- Wait for one another (v. 33)
- Eat at home if you’re just hungry (v. 34)
The corrective is reform, not retreat.
5. Treating the warning like “any unconfessed sin = God might kill you.”
You’ll sometimes hear something like:
“If you come with unconfessed sin, you might get sick or even die like those Corinthians.”
Notice what Paul actually ties the judgment to:
- Abusing the Supper
- Not discerning the body
- Despising the church
- Turning the ordinance into a place where some are full, and some are hungry
This is not a generic “any sin at all” clause.
It is a specific judgment on specific sacramental hypocrisy: using the Lord’s table to act out something that denies the cross.
That doesn’t make sin “safe,” but it means this passage is not a general boogeyman against every struggling, repentant believer who feels unworthy.
6. Ignoring the social-justice edge in the passage
In some evangelical contexts:
1 Corinthians 11 gets quoted to threaten individual sinners,
while the actual abuse being rebuked—humiliating the poor in the assembly—is rarely addressed.
Paul explicitly says:
“shame them that have not” (v. 22).
If a church:
- Systematically sidelines the poor, ethnic minorities, or socially “unimpressive” believers,
- Then takes the Supper smilingly,
That is much closer to Corinth’s sin than the average believer who is painfully aware of his or her spiritual failures.
Yet the text is often only applied to private morality, not to structural contempt or favoritism in the body.
7. Building elaborate extra rules around the table
Different tribes do this differently, but a lot of evangelical practice looks like:
Turning “examine yourself” into a detailed psychological ritual.
Treating certain emotional states (warmth, tears, intensity) as the real sign you’re “ready.”
Imposing criteria Paul never mentions (“Did you have your quiet time?” “Are you on good terms with all your relatives?” etc.)
The irony:
Paul is trying to stop them from adding their own agenda to the Supper.
Then many later traditions add… their own agenda to the Supper.
His concern is pretty concrete:
- Don’t use this to feed your belly.
- Don’t humiliate the poor.
- Don’t play party games.
- Recognize Christ and his body.
That’s refreshingly sane compared to some communion-prep theatrics.
So what did evangelicals often miss?
In short:
They individualized what Paul wrote as corporate.
They psychologized what Paul wrote as social and visible.
They weaponized the warning to scare tender consciences,
while often soft-pedaling the very sins the passage actually names: factionalism, social contempt, and turning Christ’s ordinance into a tool of status and appetite.
Underneath all the misuse, the text itself is fairly straightforward:
Don’t turn the Lord’s Supper into a selfish, status-marking, church-despising performance.
Judge that behavior, stop it, and then come and eat as one body at one table, proclaiming one crucified Lord.
HOW DOES THE DESCRIPTION OF NOT WAINT FOR THE OTHERS HAVE HAPPENED IN THE TYPICAL WAY THE SUPPER IS CONDUCTED IN BAPTIST CHURCHES?
Short version: most Baptist churches don’t repeat Corinth’s exact abuse (rich folks stuffing themselves while others go hungry), but they often land in the same neighborhood in spirit, just dressed in a modern suit.
Let’s lay it side by side.
1. What was happening at Corinth?
Reconstructing 1 Corinthians 11:
- It was tied to a real meal, not tiny crackers and thimbles.
- The rich arrived early with food and wine.
- The poor (slaves, day laborers) arrived late with little or nothing.
The result:
Some are full and even drunk.
Others are hungry and shamed.
Paul’s verdict: “this is not to eat the Lord’s supper” (v. 20).
You’ve turned Christ’s table into a status party.
So “eating before others” isn’t just bad manners; it’s class division and contempt enacted in the ordinance.
2. What usually happens in a typical Baptist church?
Huge variety, but in broad evangelical-Baptist practice (especially in the US):
The Supper is not a meal but a ritual with tiny elements.
Usually:
- Pastor reads a passage (often 1 Cor 11).
- There is an exhortation to self-examination.
- Deacons/servers pass plates of bread, then trays of juice.
- People wait to eat/drink together at the pastor’s cue.
It’s quiet, orderly, individual, often monthly or quarterly.
Structurally, that means:
- Nobody is getting full.
- Nobody is drunk (unless somebody has been extremely ambitious with the little cups).
- Everyone has access to the same amount, at the same time.
So in the literal, surface sense:
We are not repeating “some are feasting early while others arrive hungry.”
The specific abuse “eating before others” is mostly blocked by the ritual itself.
That’s the good news.
3. Where the principle comes back to bite us
Paul’s concern wasn’t simply, “Don’t be rude and wait your turn.”
His concern was: “Do not use the Lord’s Supper to enact selfishness, social division, and contempt for Christ’s body.”
Now hold that beside typical Baptist practice:
A. Extreme individualization
In many Baptist churches, the entire emphasis is:
“Search your heart.”
“Make sure you are right with God.”
Very little is said about:
- The poor in the congregation.
- Broken relationships between members.
- Actual practical care for one another.
So the Supper becomes:
“Me and Jesus, having a moment, surrounded by some people I barely know.”
That’s almost the opposite of Paul’s burden, which is deeply horizontal:
- one bread, one body (1 Cor 10:16–17)
- divisions, factions, shaming the poor (11:18–22)
We fixed the timing problem (we all eat together),
but we often keep the relational vacuum (we don’t actually live as one body).
B. Respectable segregation instead of raw class contempt
Corinth’s version:
Rich at the front, plates piled high.
Poor late, maybe standing at the back, hungry and embarrassed.
Modern Baptist version is subtler:
- Church located, styled, and scheduled to fit middle-class culture.
- The poor, the socially awkward, the “messy” rarely make it to membership.
- Or if they do, they orbit the edges.
Nobody is literally feasting in front of a starving member in the fellowship hall—but the net effect can still be:
The Supper is functionally the sacrament of the respectable.
Corinth shamed the poor at the table.
We often filter them out before they ever get near the table.
Different method, similar heart problem.
C. Turning the Supper into a tiny, tacked-on ritual
Another angle:
In many Baptist churches, the Supper is:
7–10 minutes at the end of the service,
quickly executed,
often less central than the announcements.
Compared with Paul’s picture:
The Supper is a big ecclesial event—a proclamation of the Lord’s death and a discernment of the Lord’s body.
Abusing it was serious enough that people were getting sick and dying (11:30).
So where Corinth swallowed the Supper up into a big private feast,
we often shrink the Supper down into a semi-optional ritual.
Different distortion, but still a mismatch with Paul’s sense of weight and communal meaning.
D. When churches do combine meals and the Supper
This lands closer to Corinth, and you know this world:
Some Baptists (including some Primitive/Old School churches) will:
- Have a fellowship meal.
- Sometimes connect a “love feast” or extended table fellowship to communion.
That can be beautiful and much closer to the NT picture.
It also means Corinth’s warning becomes more directly relevant:
- Are there cliques at the meal?
- Are some regularly left out or treated as less?
- Do the same people always serve/sit together while others hover on the margins?
You don’t need literal drunkenness or Roman patrons for the same disease to show up.
4. So how do they compare?
Concrete summary:
Formally / outwardly:
Typical Baptist practice does not replicate the “some are full, some starving, some drunk” chaos.
The ritual structure usually ensures everyone eats/drinks together in equal measure. That’s a real improvement over Corinth’s mess.
Functionally / in principle:
Corinth: used the Supper to act out social hierarchy and contempt right in Christ’s ordinance.
Many modern Baptists: use the Supper in a way that is so individualized, respectable, and minimal that it can quietly tolerate:
- distance between rich and poor,
- unaddressed divisions in the body,
- and a “me and Jesus only” mindset that barely notices the people at your elbow.
So the sin doesn’t usually show up as:
“I ate my roast before you got off work, peasant.”
It shows up as:
“I take the bread and cup while barely recognizing you as the Lord’s body at all.”
Which, if Paul is to be believed, is just a sleeker version of the same problem:
not discerning the Lord’s body, while using the Lord’s Supper.
WHAT IS A LOVE-FEAST?
A love-feast (Greek: agapē) is basically a Christian fellowship meal—a shared table meant to express and embody the love and unity of believers in Christ, often with special concern for the poor and for mutual encouragement.
Think of it as:
“A church meal where the main dish is love, and the side dishes are everything else.”
1. New Testament roots
You see the idea in a few places:
- Acts 2:46–47 – the church is “breaking bread from house to house” and eating together “with gladness and singleness of heart.”
- 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 – the Corinthians are having a common meal that is supposed to be connected to the Lord’s Supper, but they’re corrupting it with selfishness and class division.
- Jude 12 – false teachers are “spots in your love feasts (agapais), when they feast with you…” – This is the one explicit NT use of the term.
Most scholars understand these “love feasts” as communal meals of the early church, often associated with or wrapped around the Lord’s Supper, especially in the first century.
2. Early-church practice
Over the first few centuries, the pattern looks roughly like this:
1st–early 2nd century:
Christians gather for a shared meal (the love-feast) where they also celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
The meal is meant to foster fellowship and provide for the needy; abuses (like at Corinth) lead to warnings and reforms.
2nd–3rd century:
The Eucharist/Lord’s Supper gradually gets separated from the full meal and moves into the more formal worship service (usually in the morning).
The agapē/love-feast remains as a charity meal and fellowship supper, often in the evening, more focused on mutual care and supporting the poor. Tertullian explicitly describes such an agapē as a “modest supper” where they eat, pray, sing, and give offerings to help the needy.
Later church councils start restricting or banning love-feasts inside church buildings because of abuses, but the idea — a shared meal of fellowship and charity — lingers in various forms.[1]
3. What a love-feast is, in simple terms
Historically, a love-feast is:
- A communal meal of Christians,
- Meant to express brotherly love and unity in Christ,
- Often linked with care for the poor (people bring food, and excess is given to those in need),
Sometimes paired with:
- prayer,
- hymn-singing,
- exhortation,
- and, in the earliest period, the Lord’s Supper.
Over time, the Lord’s Supper is pulled out into its own rite, and the love-feast becomes just the fellowship meal, not the sacrament itself.
4. Surviving and revived forms
The love-feast never totally disappeared. Various groups have revived or preserved it:
Moravians, Methodists, Brethren, some Orthodox traditions, and others still hold “love-feasts” or agapē meals today as a kind of structured fellowship dinner with prayer, hymn-singing, and sometimes testimonies—but distinct from communion.
So:
Lord’s Supper = the sacramental act with bread and cup, proclaiming Christ’s death.
Love-feast = the broader fellowship meal of the church, originally intertwined with that sacrament, but eventually separated and kept as a kind of holy potluck of charity and unity.
In Corinth, those two things were tangled together in a way that exposed all the ugliness of pride and class; later practice pulled them apart to protect both the sacrament and the fellowship meal from being turned into a social weapon.[2]
THE MYSTICISM IMPLIED IN THE TYPICAL BAPTIST RENDERING OF THE LORD’S SUPPER
Yes, they absolutely do—and in at least two very different ways.
Let’s pick the thing apart a bit, because “mystical” can go wrong in high-church and low-church directions.
1. High-church mysticism: magic in the elements
This is the more obvious one.
Here, the Lord’s Supper is spoken of as though:
- The bread and wine become or contain Christ in some physical/metaphysical way.
- Grace is dispensed through the elements almost automatically:
“You receive grace by partaking; the sacrament itself is a channel.”
That’s where you get language like:
- “The altar” is a little holy hotspot.
- “The host” as an object of veneration.
- The Supper as a kind of spiritual power station: plug in, get grace.
Old School Baptists like Beebe and Trott would say:
The mystery is in the union of Christ and his elect, not in the substance of the elements.
Turning the bread and cup into quasi-magical carriers is exactly the sort of “means” system they rejected: it interposes a religious mechanism between Christ and his people.
So yes, in that sacramental sense, the Supper is often presented as a “mystical event” wrongly, as though the bread/juice themselves are charged with divine energy.
2. Low-church mysticism: magic in the moment
Evangelicals who would deny real-presence sacramentalism still often smuggle mysticism in the back door.
Different style, same disease.
It looks like this:
The whole service is emotionally staged: hushed voice, pads on the keyboard, dimmed lights.
Communion is framed as:
- “a special portal to encounter Jesus,”
- “a unique time when God can really meet you,”
- “a powerful atmosphere where you can finally surrender.”
Then functionally, the Lord’s Supper becomes:
A highly charged, mystical-feeling moment,
where the degree of spiritual reality is measured by the intensity of your feelings.
No one says, “the elements are magic,” but they treat the event as a kind of mini-revival:
“This is when you can finally really get right, really feel him, really experience his presence…”
Old School critique of that:
- You’ve moved the “magic” from the elements to the atmosphere.
- You’ve still made the Supper a special spiritual portal, instead of a simple, obedient remembrance in a church that is already indwelt by Christ all the time.
- You risk teaching people that Christ is more present and more willing in that 10-minute ritual than in the ordinary life of the body.
That’s just another kind of mystification.
3. The subtle mysticism of “converting ordinance.”
Another wrong mystical spin: “Come to the table to get saved.”
This shows up in language like:
- “If you’re not sure you’re saved, this is a time to come to Jesus.”
- “Use this Supper to seal your decision.”
- “Maybe as you partake, God will do something new in your heart.”
That’s the old “converting ordinance” idea dressed up for modern evangelicals: the Supper is treated as a ritual point of contact where grace may be given to the unregenerate.
Old School response:
- Christ gives life directly, sovereignly, by the Spirit—not by sacraments as tools.
- The Supper is for those who have been brought into Christ and his church, not a bait to lure the unregenerate into the kingdom.
Making it a threshold for conversion is exactly the sort of mystical overloading of the ordinance they opposed.
4. What right “mystery” looks like
You don’t fix bad mysticism by flattening the Supper into a dead, bare ritual.
There is the right kind of mystery:
- Christ really is present by the Spirit, not in the bread.
- The church really is his mystical body, and the one bread really does signify that many members are one body.
- In taking bread and cup together, a local church really is publicly proclaiming an unseen union with a crucified and risen Christ.
That’s deep, but it’s not occult.
So, to answer your question straight:
Yes, the Lord’s Supper is often presented as a “mystical event” in the wrong way—
either by loading supernatural power into the elements,
or by loading supernatural uniqueness into the moment,
or by treating it as a special conversion channel.
The old Baptists would want to keep the true mystery (Christ and his body), while ruthlessly stripping off the stage fog.
MORE ON OSB VIEWS ON THE SUPPER
They’d see two ditches and hate both:
- magic in the elements, and
- magic in the moment.
Let me walk it out as they would see it, in their own logic.
1. First, what they think the Supper is
Beebe and Trott would start here:
- The Lord’s Supper is a simple, symbolic ordinance given by Christ to visible gospel churches.
- It is not a means to get life, but a memorial and proclamation of a life already given.
- It belongs inside the discipline and order of the church, under an elder’s care, for baptized, walking members (and sometimes strictly recognized sister churches).
So for them:
The “mystery” is Christ and his body,
not the bread, not the cup, not the emotional atmosphere.
2. How they’d view High-Church “mysticism”
If you told Beebe or Trott:
“At the Supper, the bread and wine become Christ, and grace is dispensed through them.”
you’d get something like:
- That robs Christ of his immediacy. He speaks and gives life directly, by his Spirit, not through sacramental machinery.
- That makes an ordinance into a kind of religious technology: do the rite → grace flows. That’s just another “means-system” they spent their lives opposing.
- It shifts faith from:
- Christ and his finished work,
- to faith in a ceremony and a priestly act.
They’d say this is “mystical” in the worst sense: making matter (bread/wine) and ritual (the liturgy) carry what belongs to Christ’s sovereign voice alone.
3. How they’d view low-church “mysticism.”
Then they’d look at the more evangelical style, where no one says “real presence,” but:
Lights dim,
music swells,
voice softens,
and the Supper is sold as “a special time to really meet with God.”
They’d see this as just another kind of sacramentalism:
- You’ve moved the “mystical power” from the elements into the experience.
- The table becomes a mini–revival altar: “Come broken, and maybe in this moment God will finally do that deeper thing.”
- People begin to think Christ is more present in that 10-minute atmosphere than in the regular, ordinary gathering of the body or in the preached word.
They’d call that a kind of Baptist mysticism: not Rome’s, but still centering the soul on a special ritual moment instead of a finished Christ.
4. Their reaction to using the Supper as a “converting ordinance.”
If they heard:
“Use this time to decide for Jesus. Maybe as you take the bread and cup, God will save you,”
You’d watch the ink bottle fly.
For them:
- Regeneration is immediate—God alone, Spirit alone, no tools.
- The Supper doesn’t get you into Christ; it declares that you are in Christ and in his church.
Inviting the unregenerate to the table to “seek grace” is a double error:
- it lies about the table (which is for disciples), and
- it lies about grace (which is sovereign and not dispensed by ordinance).
So yes, they’d say: this is a mystical event presented wrongly—you’ve turned a family meal of known people into a magic gate for strangers.
5. What they would keep: true “mystery” without fog
They wouldn’t flatten the Supper into bare theatrics:
They’d still say:
- Christ is really present with his people whenever they gather in his name.
- The Supper really proclaims the Lord’s death.
- The one bread really signifies one body, one church, under one Head.
But:
- The spiritual weight is in Christ’s person and work, not in the elements.
- The solemnity is in the church’s obedience and unity, not in dim lights and mood music.
- The danger is in lying with your actions (despising the church, walking in open rebellion, treating the ordinance as common), not in failing to feel mystically intense enough.
If you boiled their view into one contrast, it would be this:
Wrong mysticism:
“Something special and supernatural happens because we’re doing this ritual now.”
Their view:
“Something special and supernatural already has happened—Christ has died, risen, and united a people to himself—and the Supper is the church’s plain, obedient way of saying so together.”
That’s how they’d look at the typical “mystical” packaging: too much smoke, not enough cross.
Endnotes
-
[1]
Didache still seems to have the Supper in the context of a meal. Justin shows a fully liturgical Eucharist with no real “supper” around it. Tertullian very clearly distinguishes a predawn Eucharist from a later agapē meal. By Cyprian’s time, mainstream practice had the Eucharist in the morning, love-feast in the evening—i.e., functionally separated from a meal. Summarizing briefly:
Didache (late 1st / early 2nd century). Didache 9–10, 14 speak “concerning the Eucharist” over cup and bread, restricting it to the baptized. Didache 10 begins, “But after you are filled, give thanks thus…,” contrasting ordinary food and drink with “spiritual food and drink and life eternal.” The phrase “after you are filled” strongly suggests a real communal meal in which Eucharistic bread and cup are embedded. Scholarly summaries say the Didache’s Eucharist “appears to be set in the context of a social meal.”
Justin Martyr (mid-2nd century). In First Apology 65–67, Justin describes a structured Sunday gathering with readings, sermon, prayers, the kiss, bread and wine with thanksgiving, and distribution—no mention of a common meal. The Eucharist is now a distinct rite in the assembly, not a full supper.
Tertullian (late 2nd–early 3rd century). In Apology 39 he describes the agapē as a modest evening supper with prayer, Scripture, and aid to the poor. Elsewhere he distinguishes this from the morning Eucharist. So you have:
– Morning: Eucharist in worship.
– Evening: love-feast/fellowship meal.
Cyprian (mid-3rd century). By Cyprian’s time, the pattern is standard: Eucharist is the morning sacrament; any agapē is separate. Councils and canons begin regulating or restricting love-feasts in church buildings, which reinforces the separation between “table fellowship” and “the sacrament.”
So: Didache still looks meal-embedded; Justin, Tertullian, and Cyprian show a trajectory toward a clearly separated liturgical Eucharist, with any fellowship meal moved off to another time. This lines up well with 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul already distinguishes ordinary hunger (“eat at home”) from the gathered Supper. ↩︎ -
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Short answer: In the New Testament period, all the evidence points to the Lord’s Supper being embedded in a meal. Clear evidence that it was celebrated apart from a meal shows up in the early 2nd century and becomes standard by the 3rd.
1. New Testament evidence – still with a meal.
(a) The Last Supper. Jesus institutes the Supper in the context of the Passover meal. Bread and cup come within a larger table setting, not as a stand-alone ritual.
(b) Corinth. 1 Corinthians 11 assumes a full-meal context (“one is hungry, and another is drunken”). Paul’s rebuke, “If any man hunger, let him eat at home,” distinguishes ordinary appetite from the gathered Supper, but the abuse is still happening at a real meal. He is drawing a conceptual line without yet narrating a fully separate ceremony.
(c) Acts. Acts 2:42–46 links “the breaking of bread” with “eating their food… from house to house.” The language suggests overlap between the Lord’s Supper and common table fellowship, even if every instance of “breaking bread” is not strictly sacramental.
So in the NT itself, the gravitational pull is “Supper + meal” together, with Paul putting guardrails in place so the Supper is not swallowed up by the meal.
2. Very early post-apostolic evidence – transition phase.
Pliny’s letter (early 2nd c.) describes Christians gathering “on a fixed day before dawn” to sing to Christ and bind themselves morally, then later assembling again “to partake of food,” an ordinary meal. Already you can see a worship meeting and a separate meal.
The Didache still has Eucharistic prayers tied to eating and being “filled,” suggesting a Supper in the setting of a communal meal, but it also speaks of Lord’s Day gatherings to “break bread and hold Eucharist,” edging toward a more defined sacred act.
3. Mid-2nd to 3rd century – clear separation.
Justin Martyr (First Apology 65–67) describes a Word-and-Table service with no mention of a larger meal: a liturgy of readings, prayer, kiss, Eucharist, and dismissal.
Tertullian distinguishes sharply between the predawn Eucharist and the evening agapē (love-feast). The former is sacramental; the latter is charitable fellowship. Church orders and canons begin to regulate love-feasts, sometimes even banning them in church buildings because of abuses.
Cyprian reflects the mature pattern: Eucharist in the morning as a distinct sacrament; agapē, if maintained, is separate in time and function.
Putting it together:
– In the NT era, the Supper is clearly tied to meals (Last Supper, Corinth, love-feasts in Jude 12), with Paul already distinguishing between “eat at home” and “when ye come together.”
– Shortly after the apostles, you see communities in transition: still having communal meals, but starting to distinguish “ordinary food” from a more sacred act.
– By the mid-2nd to 3rd centuries, Justin, Tertullian, and Cyprian show the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper as a distinct liturgical act in the worship service, with any fellowship meal moved to a separate slot.
So yes: historically, there is solid, early evidence that the Lord’s Supper began as a meal-embedded practice and rather quickly (by early patristic times) became a sacramental rite celebrated apart from a full meal. Modern Baptist practice—simple elements in a non-meal service—fits that later pattern, even if it loses some of the table-fellowship texture of the earliest churches. ↩︎
Agree with the OSB…
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