Eucharistic Ecclesiology

The Example of the Early Anabaptists

(avg. read time: 15–31 mins.)

Since Reformation Day will be at the end of this month, I have decided to post a couple of matters related to different aspects of the Reformation (rather than Halloween, since I have already written what I have wanted to say here and here). As with my various posts on Tolkien, I write this despite my lack of personal affinity with these theological traditions. I have posted on Tolkien and his theology without being a Roman Catholic. I will post later about Luther and his theology of resurrection without being a Lutheran. And today I am posting about Anabaptism without being an Anabaptist. I know this might be something of a more niche interest among the subjects I post on, but I have been surprised before by just how many people read posts I expect not to get much traction. Sometimes my expectations on these matters are just plain wrong.

This comes from a project I did for my class on Anabaptism. I decided to write on the ecclesiology of the early Anabaptists, since there would be plenty of material to work with. But I did not want to focus on their ideas about baptism, since their commitment to believer’s baptism was too obviously central for them. The name for the overall tradition came from the fact that everyone in Europe were baptized as infants, but those identified as Anabaptists insisted that baptism was only appropriate upon explicit confession and profession of faith. One could even say that it was such a prominent emphasis for them that it was for them what soteriology was to Luther and his followers.

But what about their ideas concerning the Lord’s Supper? For all that Protestant traditions have departed from Roman Catholic theology concerning sacraments, even to the point of eschewing the very language of “sacrament” (Anabaptists and others have preferred referring to “ordinances”), they have still maintained the Eucharist as an important ritual practice by which we identify ourselves as Christians. This is also true of the Anabaptists. And the importance of the Eucharist extends beyond the action itself, as it also has significance in shaping larger ideas of ecclesiology. To illustrate this, I want to consider the example of the early Anabaptists and how the Eucharist contributed to their ecclesiology and their larger worldview. As such, I consider in this analysis how the early Anabaptists viewed the Supper in general, how they practiced it, its meanings for their understandings of the Church, how it informs an overall Anabaptist worldview, and what impact early Anabaptist eucharistic ecclesiology could have on the Church today.

What Is the Supper Among Early Anabaptists?

Anabaptists in general were more closely aligned with the Zwinglian memorialist view than either Catholic transubstantiationism or Lutheran consubstantiationism (which is unsurprising considering that some of the earliest Anabaptists were his students).¹ Some Anabaptists directly argued for the absence of Christ from the elements of the Supper because he had ascended into heaven and therefore could not be present with the bread and wine.² Conversely, to claim that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus or that Jesus was with the bread and wine amounted to a denial of the efficacy of his sacrifice and of his ascension.³ Thus, what seemed to them to be the simplest interpretation of the Supper most in accordance with the Bible (especially the words of institution in Luke 22 and 1 Cor 11) was that the Supper is a memorial and proclamation of the suffering of Jesus’s body as well as the shedding of his blood.⁴ The body of believers came together to commemorate and to give thanks for this sacrifice of their benefactor and exemplar by which the community was constituted.

Also, similar to Zwingli, they interpreted the Supper symbolically.⁵ After all, if the elements of the Supper are not the substance of Christ, or at least the approximate location of that presence, they must have symbolic significance. According to Hans Denck and Pilgram Marpeck, the elements were signifiers and parables of the spiritual nourishment and joyful refreshment that belong to the believer who receives them.⁶ With this dual-layered significance—consuming material bread and wine along with spiritual bread and wine—the Supper was as much a unifying action as a signifying action in that it united physical and spiritual, which Marpeck identified as the unifying work of the Holy Spirit.⁷ Jörg Volk similarly expressed a parabolic view, but he interpreted the bread as the gospel and the cup as the suffering of Christ (and thus of the believer).⁸

Because of this symbolic interpretation, the Anabaptists rejected the notion that the priest had a role in making the Supper efficacious for the congregation.⁹ Rather, in line with their vision of the believers’ Church, whatever effect was intended in the Supper was made efficacious through the presence of faith.¹⁰ The Supper was meaningless to the one who has no faith and that person could thus not receive the nourishment it symbolically/spiritually provided.

An even deeper similarity stems from the association Zwingli and the early Anabaptists made between the Supper and the formation of fellowship.¹¹ At the Frankenthal Debate in 1571, the Anabaptists and their Reformed critics were able to agree on Article XIII concerning the Supper, “that communion is not merely a remembrance of Christ's suffering, but that it also teaches forgiveness of sin, love for one's neighbor, and the fellowship of believers with Christ and with one another.”¹² In the same way that the love of God and love of neighbor coinhere, so too does the remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ and the remembrance of the covenant to which the believer had pledged himself/herself.¹³ It was a reminder of a past event; a present manifestation of covenantal love for God and for the covenantal community; and an assembly anticipating when Christ would return from the right hand of the Father to consummate his eschatological purposes. In the celebration of its past, present, and future meaning, the celebrants of the Supper demonstrated union with Christ and union with each other at the table by the acts of common assembly and common consumption in obedience to Christ.¹⁴

However, the early Anabaptists were not strictly Zwinglian and manifested important differences in three respects: 1) their precise understanding of the union with Christ and each other represented in the Supper; 2) the manner in which some retained and altered sacramental terminology; 3) the sense in which some argued that Christ was still present in the Supper. First, for historical as well as hermeneutical reasons, the early Anabaptists put a strong emphasis on the necessity of suffering in the life of the believer.¹⁵ The suffering expected of disciples was cruciform: they were to be conformed to the suffering and death of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.¹⁶ When they viewed the Supper through that lens, the breaking of bread and the outpouring of blood signified the call to suffering—for God and for one’s siblings in Christ—which was intrinsic to discipleship.¹⁷ As Christ suffered, his followers would suffer. This paradigm was part and parcel of the pledge Anabaptists took in their baptism. Thus, in essence, the Supper was the continual renewal of the pledge of baptism to this same life of perseverance in suffering faithfulness.

Second, while many Anabaptists preferred to use the term “ordinance” (ordnung) for the Supper (and for baptism), others preferred to retain the traditional terminology of “sacrament.”¹⁸ Of course, they did not simply keep the term; they altered it in light of their ecclesiological vision. Catholics had defined sacraments as outward, visible sign-actions which conveyed internal, invisible grace ex opere operato. It was as Alvin Beachy summarizes, “Within Roman Catholicism, particularly, the doctrine of transubstantiation, together with the whole sacramental system, combined to make the church both the creator and the distributor of grace.”¹⁹ The Anabaptists who retained sacramental terminology, however, located the bearer of grace outside the elements. For Pilgram Marpeck, the Church was the bearer of grace and was so because of the convergence of the Spirit and faith in the Church which unites material and spiritual, human and divine.²⁰ Even more extensively than Marpeck, Balthasar Hubmaier maintained a sacramental understanding of the Supper. However, what he identifies as the sacrament is not so much the Supper itself as what it embodied: the same pledge of love to God and to each other made in baptism that is renewed at each Supper.²¹ To borrow Marpeckian terminology, the remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ and the pledge of love were co-witnesses to the manner in which the Supper represented the constitution of the Church.

Third, despite the common rhetoric of “real absence,” some Anabaptists believed that it was still meaningful to speak of the “real presence” of Christ, though not in the traditional sense. Marpeck used the traditional affirmation of the two natures of Christ to argue that the divine nature of Christ—which he identified as the Holy Spirit—was in fact present in the Supper as a result of immanence.²² But, as in the Incarnation, both the divine nature and the human nature remained present on the earth, the latter being manifest through the community of believers (which Hubmaier and Philips also argued).²³ Even without Marpeck’s specific idiosyncratic argument (which could be regarded as problematic for its imprecision on Trinitarian matters), it would still follow for the Anabaptists to claim that the real presence of Christ was in the believers, and the elements function, to use Marpeck’s term, as mitzeugniss (“co-witnesses”) to that presence.²⁴ Christ was present and he was present in those people who partook of this bread and this wine to signify that they are the body of Christ on earth. The Church was the body of Christ on earth because it was where Christian faith was present and thus where the Holy Spirit resided.²⁵ The presence of Christian faith was an identifying mark of the work of the Spirit because sanctification, like faith, had a Christomorphic telos. One such expression of that telos was, of course, the Supper.

The Supper in Anabaptist Liturgy

Given the above levels of meaning, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper was clearly integral to Anabaptist liturgy. According to one Congregational Order of 1527, some Anabaptists believed that the Supper should be celebrated at every assembly of the body of believers.²⁶ It was also an essential point that it was a communal meal, and thus no person could no partake of it alone.²⁷ Since orders of liturgy seem to have been different for different groups, this analysis is not so much concerned with describing the order of Anabaptist worship and where the Supper fit. Instead, it seems more fruitful to note general practices associated with the observance of the Supper.

One important theme that emerges from studies of early Anabaptist liturgy is the preparation for the Supper. Because the Supper was a proclamation of Jesus’ death, as well as an enactment of communal commitments and unity, the preparation would involve the reading of Scripture, teaching, and self-examination.²⁸ The Scripture-reading would tell the story which defined this event and the story which the Anabaptists used to define themselves. They also used Scripture—in the vernacular—for the words of institution.²⁹ The subsequent teaching would be an exposition on the Scriptures and the meaning of the Supper to clarify for the community why they practice it so that they may be united in understanding. In at least some cases, as Hubmaier in particular emphasizes, there would be a time for inquiries on the part of the congregation so that the more learned could help everyone to understand the Supper’s significance and why the congregation partook of it. Eddie Mabry observes of this discussion (though it could well apply to the whole liturgy), “This, of course, presupposed that church members were thinking, reasoning persons, rather than children or infants, since the community was to be capable of receiving instructions.”³⁰ Self-examination entailed several means of preparation. Each believer was to be penitent, to hunger and thirst spiritually for the Supper, to demonstrate gratitude to God, to take on a prayerful disposition, and to renew the pledge of love.³¹

Perhaps the most noteworthy accompaniment of the practice of the Supper in Anabaptist liturgy was the exercise of the ban.³² Church discipline—of which the ban was the consummate expression—was a special focus for the early Anabaptists since they believed that baptism was a pledge of incorporation into the community of believers and of subjection to the authority of that community. If the community subjected a person to the ban (disfellowshipping), a key consequence would be that he/she could not take part in the Supper. After all, in accordance with the overall vision of the believers’ Church and the importance of holiness, Anabaptists had a closed communion view that one can only participate in the Supper if one is a believer in good standing with the community.³³ The ban was thus a restriction from full participation in the community and its climactic embodiment in the Supper (i.e., one could not truly express oneself as a Christian in the absence of the community and the Supper). The ban could be reversed in the event of the person’s repentance. Among the Swiss Brethren, at least, there was a reconciliation formula recited before the Supper for such occasions (as well as for any conflicts in the congregation).³⁴ The community of faith could not be a community of faith unless it had either purged itself of whoever lived contrary to the will of God or reconciled with the repentant. The community needed to be whole in one sense or the other before inherently claiming to be so in the Supper.

Anabaptist Eucharistic Ecclesiology

This analysis now turns to drawing out some of the ecclesiological images implied in several of the observations above. To describe this aspect of Anabaptist theology is not to claim that Anabaptists simply had a eucharistic ecclesiology. Their ecclesiology was multi-faceted and eucharistic ecclesiology represents but one lens through which to view it. However, it is a rather important lens since the Supper represented a key metaphor for Anabaptist ecclesiology and functioned as a crystallization of it.

First of all, since the Supper was the proclamation of Jesus’s death, and since that proclamation involved the reading of Scripture in the celebration of the new covenant life, it seems that the Supper is what might be called a “gospeling” event. The gathering of believers to consume symbolically the body and blood of the Lord given in sacrifice is itself an embodiment of the gospel. It is an enactment of the gospel story—read in Scripture—that defines who they are as believers in the incorporation of the life of Jesus into their own lives and in the pledge of love they make by sitting down at one table with other believers who have believed and pledged their allegiance to the God embodied in this same story. Precisely because the gospel should be embodied—not simply proclaimed—it is not enough to know the meaning of the Supper; one must eat and drink it. The Church is the community which breaks this bread, drinks this wine, and embodies this gospel.

To follow upon that last point, the Supper signified the constitutive meal of the community. Every person who was part of the believing community was who he/she was because of Christ. The sacrifice they commemorated in the Supper was what brought them together. It was this sacrifice which made them the community of the redeemed and of the obedient “little Christs.”³⁵ They were also constituted by the pledge of love which all of them made in their baptism. The Supper, in which they sat at the table with their brothers and sisters in Christ and remembered the death of Christ, was an acknowledgment of these constitutive aspects of their identity as a community. The Supper served as a badge of identification as a Christian. Because it was a constitutive marker of Christians, the effects of the ban became particularly poignant whenever the Anabaptists celebrated the Supper. The person subject to the ban could not properly express a Christian identity until reconciled with the Supper-partaking community.

Because the Supper was an identifying marker, one of the most important ecclesiological images Anabaptist writers used was rooted in it. This image, which appeared as far back in Church history as the Didache (9:4), was the analogy of the grains and grapes being made into one loaf and one cup.³⁶ Many grains are ground and mixed to become one loaf and many grapes are crushed to make one cup of wine. Individuality and individual interest disappear or are at least subsumed for the sake of the unity of the whole (to return to the analogy, any unground grain and any uncrushed grape would naturally be removed by the consumer because they are not a true part of the bread and wine). The actions of this analogy also served the Anabaptist emphasis on suffering in discipleship. The grains must be ground and changed to become a loaf, and the grapes must be crushed and changed to become a cup of wine. In the same way, Christians must suffer in order to become united as a community conformed to the image of Christ.

The Hutterites focused on one particular communal function this analogy illustrated. For the Hutterites, to have true community entailed having a community of goods. As long as a person owned private property, that person represented the unground grain and the uncrushed grape. The unity symbolized in the participation of the Supper needed to be worked out in the unity of the entire communal life, which involves meeting the needs of every member.³⁷ Menno Simons, though not a Hutterite, makes a similar point in condemning self-proclaimed Christians of his day for eating of the Supper with the poor but refusing to meet their needs.³⁸ There is an implied closeness of fellowship in the practice of the Supper, one in which material needs are known and thus should be met. In non-Hutterite Anabaptist congregations, this level of fellowship meant having at least a readiness to meet material needs.³⁹ If one is willing to share the consummate meal of fellowship with another person to signify their unity in Christ, there should be no reason to shirk the responsibility of sharing in other capacities.

These images and responsibilities show that partaking of the Supper was to be the sign of full participation and incorporation into the community who shared life together as they shared the bread and wine. As a complement to this incorporation into the community, the Supper also signified incorporation into Christ.⁴⁰ The theological entailment here is based on: 1) the inextricable link between love of God and love of neighbor (who is created in the image of God); and 2) the belief that the Church is the body of Christ. Also, the act of consuming the Supper symbolizes that incorporation. As the believer consumes the symbolic body and blood of Christ, incorporating them into himself/herself, he/she becomes incorporated into that same body and blood by the conforming work of the Holy Spirit through faith.

Similarly, the Supper expressed another dimension of the Church’s union with Christ. Because the Anabaptists often emphasized ethics/obedience and Jesus as exemplar, it has often been thought that they are fundamentally presenting a theological ethic of imitatio Christi. Yet, it seems that the Anabaptist ecclesiology goes deeper still. In other words, they are not only presenting a vision of imitatio Christi, but also of participatio Christi.⁴¹ The Anabaptist perceived themselves as participating in the life of Christ insofar as they obeyed him. When they followed his example, his way of life, they too would suffer as he suffered and thus would receive the benefits he received because they had so identified themselves with him. This participation was, of course, presented in the image of the Supper through the elements and through its function as a memorial of Jesus’s death, a death which many of the earliest Anabaptists could expect to emulate.

As indicated above, this theme of participation is borne out especially in the Anabaptist emphasis on suffering in discipleship. Even if the Anabaptists repudiated the Catholic notion of the Mass as a sacrifice, they still argued that the crucifixion did not only happen on Calvary. The death they remembered with the Supper needed to occur in the life of each believer and in the life of the community as a whole. Perhaps no one stated this belief as succinctly as Leonhard Schiemer: “It is true, Christ’s suffering destroys sin but only if he suffers in man. For as the water does not quench my thirst unless I drink it, and as the bread does not drive away my hunger unless I eat it, even so Christ’s suffering does not prevent me from sinning until he suffers in me.”⁴²

It was only through cruciform suffering—the conformation of the believer to the image of the suffering Christ—that one could have assurance of salvation. For the Anabaptists, participating in such suffering meant that the believing community was the community who participated also in the eschatological benefits of what Christ had accomplished.⁴³ They celebrated what they had received thus far and anticipated what they would receive in the eschaton when they came together at the Supper. In these senses, from this perspective the Church could be defined as the eschatological community currently constituted around allegiance to the eschatological gospel signified in their constitution by baptism and gathering for the eschatological meal of the Lord’s Supper in anticipation of Jesus’s Second Coming.⁴⁴ The Church occupied the time between the two advents of Christ and, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, represented his presence in the world in the meantime.

In this light, the body of Christ symbolized in the Supper became a key metaphor for the Church’s identity and vocation. As noted above, for Hubmaier in particular, what the Supper signified was the visible Church herself as the body of Christ, his “real presence.”⁴⁵ In a manner of speaking, the bread and wine were the body and blood of the Lord because they indicated that the community which consumed them was his body in the present age of the world while he resided at the right hand of the Father.⁴⁶ The body metaphor was an essential one for the early Anabaptists as it symbolized organic union with Christ and organic union with the community of believers who were considered members of one body. The use of the body metaphor signified that the Church believed its vocation was, in general, twofold: 1) to be Christ in the world; and 2) to be one in unity.

Furthermore, this metaphor of the body for the Church and the Supper had the effect, especially in Marpeck’s theology, of making the Church a functional re-enactment of the Incarnation, which she acknowledged in the act of the Supper.⁴⁷ The community of believers represented the physical presence of Christ in the world. It was here that the Holy Spirit was present in humanity as he had been in Christ. As noted above, Marpeck expressed this belief in his argument that the Supper had the significance of unification between material and spiritual, heavenly reality and earthly reality because believers simultaneously consumed material and spiritual nourishment. Essentially, the implication of this theological feature of the Supper was that the Church was where heaven and earth came together in a way which anticipated their union in the age to come when Christ would return.

Finally, this realization of the “not-yet” quality of the kingdom brought with it an awareness of the yet-to-be-finished nature of sanctification in the present time. The Anabaptists expected believers to be keenly aware of their sinfulness and to express this awareness through the disposition of self-examination and repentance prior to consuming the Supper. The Church is the community of the repentant and they demonstrated this repentance through the initial act of baptism, the way of life they lived in obedience to Christ, and in their repentance before the Supper in which they signified that they themselves were the body of Christ. The only way to reconcile such a high and holy calling with the fact of sinfulness was through repentance, especially in anticipation of the Supper.

The Supper in an Anabaptist Worldview⁴⁸

By way of summary, it seems necessary to examine the role of the Supper in an Anabaptist worldview according to the four major functions of worldviews as N. T. Wright identified, as I used in my dissertation. These four interpenetrating functions are classified as story, symbol, praxis, and answers to basic worldview questions (see here for more).⁴⁹ For the Anabaptists, the Supper and its resultant eucharistic ecclesiology contributes substance to each of these four worldview functions.

The Supper defines an Anabaptist worldview story through its performance and through the accompanying reading of Scripture. Supper and Scripture, work and word combined to proclaim a three-act story. The Supper remembers the past act of the story involving Jesus, his death, and his earliest followers as related in the New Testament. This act ultimately shapes the overall story because it is what constitutes believers as a community in that they receive the benefits of the commemorated death and shape their lives according to the examples of Jesus and his disciples. The present act is about the work of the Holy Spirit through the repentant body-of-Christ community (namely, through the discipleship of suffering), which is encapsulated at each gathering of the community at the table of the Supper to partake of it and to reaffirm the scriptural story. The Supper also anticipates the prophesied future act of Christ’s Second Coming and the eschaton when Christ will vindicate his suffering servants who share this table and will grant them the right to share in his own inheritance.

The Supper proved to be a wellspring of symbols for the Anabaptists to use in expressing their beliefs about their own identity in relation to God, to each other, and to the world. Its unification of material and spiritual benefits illustrates what is expected of the Church as the community who brings heaven and earth together. The loaf of bread and the cup of wine similarly represented the unity of many parts into one whole where individuality and personal desires had to be subjugated to the good of the community. The symbols of the broken bread and the outpoured cup in connection with the death of Jesus provided a framework for faithful suffering discipleship. The acts of eating and drinking indicated incorporation and participation in Christ and in his body, the Church. Furthermore, the Supper as a whole in terms of the elements and the fellowship gathering symbolized the vocation of the Church as the body of Christ. Because of such symbolic meaning, the Anabaptists believed that one should only participate in the Supper if one is a believer.

In terms of praxis, the Supper itself was obviously a defining practice for the Church according to the Anabaptists. The Church identified herself through this action as the community that gathered to remember the sacrifice of Jesus and to participate in the object of that remembrance. Because of its importance, they used many practices in preparation for it, such as reading Scripture, teaching, and repentance. Intrinsic to the practice was the communal pledge of love to God and to each other as a means of affirming that they belonged to the God-intended believers’ Church dedicated to being obedient to the teachings of Scripture. This strong sense of communalism at the Supper manifested in other practices which demonstrated the importance of community fellowship—as opposed to private piety—in early Anabaptism. For the Hutterites, one such practice of true Christian fellowship was the formation of the community of goods to provide commonly for everyone. For non-Hutterites, the Supper still entailed the sort of fellowship which would recognize and be ready to respond to the needs of others sharing the table. Furthermore, the object of remembrance and the symbolic action performed on the bread and wine reinforced the necessity of suffering in Christian discipleship because it symbolized that whoever participates in it participates in the life of Christ, which led to suffering on the cross.

The basic worldview questions, according to Wright’s analysis, are: 1) Who are we? 2) Where are we? 3) What is the problem? 4) What is the solution? According to the lens of eucharistic ecclesiology, who were the early Anabaptists? They are the body of Christ signified in the Supper which represents his presence on earth between his first and second advents. Where were they?⁵⁰ They were in a dark world full of sin—not least amongst self-proclaimed Christians—to such an extent that the only way to be faithful to God was by suffering and in a time which looked backwards at the sacrifice of Jesus while also looking forward to his return. What was the problem? As in the last answer, the problem is one of sin and living in defiance to God, but for the early Anabaptists this problem was most poignantly demonstrated in the self-proclaimed Christians of their era who, so they claimed, perverted the gospel and commands of God. In regard to the Supper, this perversion took the form of distorting the significance of Christ’s sacrifice and essentially denying his ascension by claiming that the elements became him in substance or that he was with the elements rather than with the Father in heaven. What was the solution? The Anabaptists claimed that the Holy Spirit was acting through them to restore the true gospel, the true praxis, and the true Church, which had been perverted out of existence at some point in the past. They were restoring the true understanding of the Supper as a memorial feast, the visible believers’ Church within which the Supper had its true meaning, and the proper ethics of the Supper community.

The Importance of Anabaptist Eucharistic Ecclesiology for the Contemporary Church

To clarify, my purpose here has not been to advocate for Anabaptist views on the matters related herein. I offer neither defense nor critique here, as these things would require a separate project. There is much to appreciate about the emphases presented here, and there are points with which I find some ground for disagreement. But as with other instances of discussing historical theology or, especially, the theology of Tolkien or texts he worked with, my goal has been to present what the sources say in respect of their integrity in the best way that I can. In expression of the appreciation I have for the theological-ethical dimensions of these Anabaptist writers and their texts, I want to focus on what significance has been and can be derived from these ideas about the Supper and its impact on the Church, even for those who are not Anabaptists.

The Anabaptist understanding of the Supper and its consequent ecclesiology have, as a matter of history, had some impact on views in the contemporary Church on the Supper. But perhaps the effects and impacts have not been as robust as they could be if the Church took the Anabaptist vision as a whole more seriously. The major historical impact of the Anabaptist view is one they share with the Zwinglians in the popularity of the memorialist view in the present time, for better or for worse. Especially in the Baptist tradition, one can often hear the language of the Supper being “just” a memorial or “only” a sign/symbol.

However, this last observation could present—and has presented—some problems with how the Church approaches the Supper. Even if one is inclined to agree with the Anabaptist understanding of the Lord’s Supper, there should be caution in adopting their language of the bread and wine being “only” bread and wine. It is clear that the Anabaptists used the modifier of “only” as a way to contrast their own understanding with the Catholics and Lutherans, who posited that the substance of the bread and wine became Christ or that Christ was present with the elements. But the risk of using the language of “only” is that it could consequently devalue the Supper, as if the “only” significance of the action is coming together to eat bread (or crackers/crumbs) and drink wine (or grape juice) simply out of an obligation to practice the ritual from time to time (often with far less frequency than the early Anabaptists). If one insists so strongly that it is “only” bread and wine, or “only” a memorial, it is easy to lose the deep significance of this action. For the early Anabaptists, it was as Robert Friedmann states,

the assembling and breaking of bread and drinking of wine meant a great deal to the brethren. Otherwise they would not have risked their clandestine celebrations even at night in remote places, forest glens or abandoned mills, for this express purpose. This eating and drinking in brotherly fellowship gave them strength and encouragement and the certitude of belonging to a company of redeemed souls, and of being part of the “true body of Christ.”⁵¹

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the position that the Supper is a memorial, it seems clear that the Anabaptists point to a way to hold that view on the one hand while appreciating its deeper significance for the identity and life of the Church on the other. It is precisely in this latter area that the Church as a whole should be willing to give more of a hearing to the Anabaptists.

The contemporary Church can learn from the early Anabaptists how to regard the Supper as an embodied story and a gospeling event rather than as simply another ritual. There was a deep intentionality and preparation to the Supper amongst the early Anabaptists involving scriptural storytelling, teaching, prayer, self-examination, and repentance. These elements are often missing from Protestant observances of the Supper. While the contemporary Church does not necessarily need to adopt the form of Anabaptist practice in this regard, it would do well to take lessons from the Anabaptists on preparation for the Supper.

The Church as a whole can also learn from the early Anabaptists how to tell the story of the Supper.⁵² For them, the story of the Supper was such that one could reasonably view it as a perpetual Advent feast. Though not all congregations celebrate the season of Advent, where it is observed the community simultaneously commemorates the First Advent of Jesus Christ and looks forward to the Second Advent, holding together history and eschatology and letting both inform the present time. Many of the early Anabaptists assigned precisely this significance to the Supper as a feast between the advents, a time to reflect on the theological-ethical significance of both as believers have fellowship with other members of body of Christ in the present.

Regardless of how else one interprets the Supper—whether it involves transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or a memorial sign—one should acknowledge the validity of the point made by the Anabaptists that Christ is present through the Holy Spirit in the congregation. Such a claim must be acknowledged if one is to take seriously the belief that the Church is the body of Christ in whom dwells the same Spirit who was in Christ. When the Church allows the Supper to be a reminder of this ecclesiological identity, the Supper can become an occasion for profound meditation and imaging of the Church’s vocation to participate in Christ and to be as Christ in the world. Christ calls the Church beyond only proclaiming the gospel to embodying the gospel as he did/does. This vocation resonates especially in the Gospel according to John (which the early Anabaptists seem to have favored in expressing their beliefs about the Supper), but it is also present throughout the New Testament (also see here).⁵³ It is a calling to which the Church must become ever more attuned to hearing as well as—in the case of the Supper—seeing and tasting, thereby submitting to the sanctifying work of the Spirit in conformation to it. However else Christ may (or may not) be present in the Supper, he is certainly present in this respect.

When congregations partake of the Supper, they can also take its significance for fellowship much more seriously if they pay heed to the statements and praxis of the early Anabaptists. The Anabaptists placed as much emphasis on the pledge of love entailed in the practice of the Supper as they did on its function as a memorial proclamation of Christ’s death. For them, the act of partaking of the Supper created and maintained an interpersonal responsibility for all who gathered at the table and thereby acknowledged being of one body, one loaf, and one cup. The Church should follow the example of the Anabaptists and be more intentional about communicating this aspect of the meaning of the Supper. She must always remember that the Supper should convey—as does all of Scripture—that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparably connected.

1. For a side-by-side comparison between Zwingli and Conrad Grebel, one of the earliest Anabaptists, on the sacraments, see Heinhold Fast, “The Dependence of the First Anabaptists on Luther, Erasmus, and Zwingli,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 30 (1956): 116–19.

2. “The Trial of Michael Sattler,” Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources, Nook ed., ed. Walter Klaassen (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1981), 9.4: 170–71; Neal Blough, Christ in Our Midst: Incarnation, Church and Discipleship in the Theology of Pilgram Marpeck, (Kitchener: Pandora, 2007), 170–71; Balthasar Hubmaier, Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism, ed. H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder (Scottdale: Herald, 1989), 27; Hubmaier, “The Sum of Christian Life,” Outline, 9.2: 169; Franklin Hamlin Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Church: A Study in the Origins of Sectarian Protestantism, 2nd ed. (Boston: Starr King, 1958), 69; Eddie Mabry, Balthasar Hubmaier’s Doctrine of the Church (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 171–72; Gerhard J. Neumann, “Anabaptist Position on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 35 (1961): 148.

3. However, some Anabaptists, such as Pilgram Marpeck, did find ways of making statements to the effect that Christ was present with the elements without resorting to transubstantiation or consubstantiation.

4. “Congregational Order,” Outline, 6.1: 107; Brian C. Brewer, A Pledge of Love: The Anabaptist Sacramental Theology of Balthasar Hubmaier, Studies in Christian History and Thought (London: Paternoster, 2012), 55; Hans Denck, “Concerning True Love,” Early Anabaptist Spirituality: Selected Writings [hereafter, EAS], ed. Daniel Liechty (New York: Paulist, 1994), 117; Hubmaier, Hubmaier, 147–48; Walter Klaassen, Outline, 167; Littell, Anabaptist View, 68–69; Mabry, Hubmaier’s Doctrine, 167; Neumann, “Anabaptist Position,” 148; Dirk Philips, “Concerning the New Birth and the New Creature: Brief Admonition and Teaching from the Holy Bible,” EAS, 207; John D. Rempel, The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism: A Study in the Christology of Balthasar Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, and Dirk Philips, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 33 (Scottdale: Herald, 1993), 33; Bernhard Rothmann, “Confession of Faith,” Outline, 9.11: 175; Menno Simons, “Distressed Christians,” Outline, 9.15: 183.

5. Fritz Blanke, “The First Anabaptist Congregation: Zollikon, 1525,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 27 (1953): 30.

6. Hans Denck, “Recantation,” Outline 9.6: 171; Pilgram Marpeck, “Confession,” Outline, 9.10: 174-175. Also see Dirk Philips, “The Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 9.14: 180.

7. Blough, Christ, 174: “Christ’s presence in his divine nature and the Holy Spirit exist, not only in the Supper, but wherever the inner/outer union or ‘wesen’ is found.”

8. Jörg Volk, Outline, 9.8: 172. Also see Littell, Anabaptist View, 99.

9. Neumann, “Anabaptist Position,” 148. However, see Brewer, Pledge of Love, 52, 68, 72; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 34, 188 on the retention of functional authority for the priest.

10. Blough, Christ, 170; Fast, “Dependence,” 107; Conrad Grebel, “Letter to Thomas Müntzer,” Outline, 9.1: 168.

11. Fast, “Dependence,” 113: “Indeed, the formulations agree so minutely that the first glance shows that it is not a question of a possibility of Zwingli's being the source of Grebel's ideas, but of the certainty that he was that source. In particular it is Zwingli's concept of communion as creating fellowship and obligating to fellowship (which was made known in May, 1524) that constitutes the chief theme also for Grebel” (emphases original).

12. Jesse Yoder, “Frankenthal Debate with the Anabaptists in 1571,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 36 (1962): 119.

13. “Congregational Order,” Outline, 6.1: 107; Denck, EAS, 117; Melchior Hoffman, “Ordinance of God,” Outline, 9.9: 173; Hubmaier, “A Christian Instruction,” Outline, 9.3: 170; Hubmaier, Hubmaier, 75; Hubmaier, “Sum,” Outline, 9.2: 170; Mabry, Hubmaier’s Doctrine, 167; Paul M. Miller, “Worship Among the Early Anabaptists.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 30 (1956): 242; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 35; Peter Riedeman, “Account,” Outline, 6.13: 117; Rothmann, “Restitution,” Outline, 9.12: 176; Hans Schlaffer, “A Pleasant Letter of Comfort,” Outline 9.7: 171–72.

14. Alvin J. Beachy, “Theology and Practice of Anabaptist Worship.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 40 (1966): 174; Robert Friedmann, The Theology of Anabaptism, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 15 (Scottdale: Herald, 1973), 140; Klaassen, Outline, 167; Leo Laurense, “Catholicity of the Anabaptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 38 (1964):268–69; Philips, EAS, 207; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 119; Schlaffer, Outline, 172; Simons, “Distressed,” Outline, 9.15: 183–84; Arnold Snyder, “Was the Bread Only Bread and the Wine Only Wine? Sacramental Theology in Five Anabaptist Hymns,” Conrad Grebel Review 24.3 (Autumn 2006): 35–40; Peter Walpot, “True Yieldedness and the Christian Community of Goods,” EAS, 170–71.

15. Outline, ch. 4 (76–89); Hans Hut, “On the Mystery of Baptism,” EAS, 64–81; Leonhard Schiemer, “Three Kinds of Grace Found in the Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments,” EAS, 91–96. Historically, the Anabaptists did often suffer for their convictions and needed a strong theology of suffering in response to such phenomena. Hermeneutically, the Anabaptists observed that there was an underlying assumption in the New Testament that believers would suffer in the present world (on which, see here).

16. Blough, Christ, 180; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 118; Rothmann, “Confession,” Outline, 9.11: 175.

17. In the words of Hubmaier, “Instruction,” Outline, 9.3: 170, “Just as they are now breaking bread and eating with one another, and sharing the cup, so each will offer up body and blood for the other, relying on the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

18. Simons, “Distressed,” Outline, 9.15: 183; Simons, “Reply to False Accusations,” Outline, 11.8: 213.

19. Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 170.

20. Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 161.

21. Blanke, “First Anabaptist Congregation,” 20; Brewer, Pledge of Love 57, 70, 72–73.

22. Blough, Christ, 171–73; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 160.

23. Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 175; Brewer, Pledge of Love, 73; Littell, Anabaptist View, 100; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 26, 141. As a further clarification, Marpeck claimed that the glorified human body of Jesus is at the right hand of the Father in heaven while the unglorified body is the Church (see Blough, Christ, 172, 179, 180).

24. Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 175.

25. Blough, Christ, 179; Brewer, Pledge of Love, 55–56 n. 24; Mabry, Hubmaier’s Doctrine, 170; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 34, 87, 161, 186; Snyder, “Was the Bread Only Bread,” 34.

26. “Congregational Order,” Outline, 6.1: 107.

27. Brewer, Pledge of Love, 52; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 119.

28. Blanke, “First Anabaptist Congregation,” 19; Brewer, Pledge of Love, 68–69, 72; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 119; Riedeman, Outline, 6.13: 117.

29. Brewer, Pledge of Love, 52; Grebel, Outline, 9.1: 167.

30. Mabry, Hubmaier’s Doctrine, 173.

31. Brewer, Pledge of Love, 68–72.

32. William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 252; Grebel, Outline, 9.1: 168; Littell, Anabaptist View, 100; Mabry, Hubmaier’s Doctrine, 176; Neumann, “Anabaptist Position,” 147. John Howard Yoder, Anabaptism and Reformation in Switzerland: An Historical and Theological Analysis of the Dialogues Between Anabaptists and Reformers, ed. C. Arnold Snyder, trans. David Carl Stassen and C. Arnold Snyder (Kitchener: Pandora, 2004), 30 notes a parallel with Zwingli’s Ratschlag.

33. Article III of the Schleitheim Confession, Outline, 9.5: 171; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 118.

34. Yoder, Historical and Theological Analysis, 227.

35. Both elements are important here, as the Anabaptists often described Jesus’s death as a sacrifice for them and as an example for them to follow. It is, in part, their emphasis on the latter perspective that has often led to the question of if they were semi-Pelagians.

36. Article III of the Schleitheim Confession, Outline 9.5: 171; Brewer, Pledge of Love 59; Friedmann, Theology, 140–42; Hubmaier, Hubmaier, 75; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 9.14: 182; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 54; Riedeman, Outline, 9.13: 178; Walpot, EAS, 170.

37. Walpot, EAS, 170–71.

38. Simons, “Reply,” Outline, 9.15: 212–13.

39. Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 174.

40. Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 6.15: 120.

41. Ibid., 9.14: 181; Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 173–74; Blough, Christ, 175.

42. Leonhard Schiemer, “A Letter to the Church at Rattenberg,” Outline, 4.8: 80.

43. Robert Friedmann, “Recent Interpretations of Anabaptism,” Church History 24 (1955): 148.

44. On the roles of eschatology in early Anabaptist theology, see Outline, ch. 26 (282–306).

45. Brewer, Pledge of Love, 56–57.

46. Ibid., 58.

47. Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 25–26, 36.

48. Given the diversity within Anabaptism, it seems more accurate to describe “an” Anabaptist worldview than “the” Anabaptist worldview. Also, since the material of this section draws from people as different as Balthasar Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, Dirk Philips, Peter Riedeman, Peter Walpot, and Bernhard Rothmann, all of whom would have significant disagreements between them, the lack of a definite article illustrates that the section only attempts to identify the “raw material” for constructing an Anabaptist worldview rather than identifying any particular person as particularly representative of “mainstream” Anabaptism.

49. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 123–24.

50. In later volumes, Wright adds a fifth question: What time is it? The answer to this second question conflates the considerations of “where” and “when.”

51. Friedmann, Theology, 139.

52. There are some areas, however, in which the contemporary Church could correct the important omissions of the early Anabaptists. As one example, they were so focused on the New Testament that they often neglected how the New Testament emphasizes the ways in which the story of Jesus was the climax and fulfillment of the story of Israel. If Scripture is a story, its early chapters are essential for understanding the story as a whole. As another example, which frequent readers of this site should hardly be surprised to hear from me, their theology was so crucicentric that the resurrection of Jesus often had, at most, only an implied role out of keeping with its prominence in the New Testament.

53. Beachy, “Theology and Practice,” 173–74; Brewer, Pledge of Love, 68; Philips, “Lord’s Supper,” Outline, 9.14: 180; Rempel, Lord’s Supper, 141.