It is argued by some that to be Baptist is to be anti-sacramental.[1] However, seeing the Lord’s Supper in a sacramental light does not necessarily relegate one to a transubstantial view of the Supper; nor does it necessarily undermine the power and presence of Christ in the everyday life of the believer. In fact, seeing the Lord’s Supper as sacramental can serve as a beautiful expression of that power and presence. However, if one is going to hold to some sort of sacramental notion of the ordinances, then one ought to have a clear explanation for how this sanctifying grace is applied to the believer. At the same time, this explanation ought to avoid collapsing into a Roman Catholic view, while also upholding the Christological doctrines we hold dear.
While Baptists land in various places regarding their view of the Lord’s Supper, it is my conviction that we should neither have so thin a memorialism that we render the Supper arbitrary or meaningless, nor should we posit a vague and under-explained conception of spiritual presence. Rather, we ought to affirm that the Supper plays a serious role in the life of the believer, and although mysterious, serves a purpose in blessing and encouraging believers. Thus, my hope here is to provide a metaphysical and theological overview that can be used for articulating how the Lord’s Supper benefits the believer without becoming more than it is.[2]
Sign and Signification
The institution of the Lord’s Supper is seen in Matthew 26:26-28, when “Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” In this passage, Jesus establishes and institutes a continual practice for the Christian Church, namely, the Lord’s Supper. (1 Cor 11:23-26) The Apostle Paul would go on to say that this practice is not merely an illustration or example, but a participation in the body and blood of Christ. (1 Cor 10:16). This would seem to imply that when Jesus says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” he is not merely providing an abstract word picture or illustration to make a point, but establishing a means for the believer to participate in Christ in a unique manner. In other words, the connection between Christ’s body and blood and the bread and wine are not merely illustrative examples, but the establishment and grounding of a continual practice for Christians down through the ages.
Considering the establishment of the Supper, the concept of speech act theory can be extremely helpful.[3] Within the framework of speech act theory, a speech act contains a locutionary act (the words spoken), an illocutionary act (the action that comes about by those words), and a perlocutionary act (the effect those words have on the hearer). Within this framing, the locutionary act is Christ’s utterance, “This is my body” and “this is my blood”; the illocutionary act is the establishment of the continual practice of the Supper; and the perlocutionary act is the benefits and effects believers receive in the Supper.
In Christ instituting the Lord’s Supper by means of a speech act, he establishes the grounds by which the elements of the Supper continually serve as signs of his body and blood, and as signs, the elements become a means of truly signifying Christ. At this point, one should ask what kind of sign the elements constitute. Augustine posits that there are natural and conventional signs. He states that “Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire.”[4] In contrast to this are conventional signs, which “are those that living beings mutually exchange for the purpose of showing, as well as they can, the feelings of their minds, or their perceptions, or their thoughts. Nor is there any reason for giving a sign except the desire of drawing forth and conveying into another’s mind what the giver of the sign has in his own mind.”[5] There is a sense in which the elements of the Lord’s Supper can be considered a conventional sign; Christ is certainly conveying the relationship of the elements and his body and blood to the mind of his audience in a way that could not be naturally learned from bread and wine. However, one ought to make a distinction between mere conventional signs instituted by creatures and those instituted by divine mandate.
Christ ordaining the elements to communicate his body and blood should be distinguished from a creature attempting to establish a conventional sign. A creaturely convention can only communicate insofar as the recipient of that sign recognizes the signification; without any recognition or knowledge of the signification, the recipient cannot receive the sign as such. This being the case, the ability for one to establish a signification is limited by the reception of another. When humans determine a signification, the actuality of that signification is dependent upon the recipient recognizing it as such. If the recipient does not recognize the signification, the signification is only potential. This dependence entails that creaturely signification is limited. A signification brought forth by God, however, is not something that exists as mere potentiality. As Kevin Vanhoozer puts it, “Creaturely images of God can only bring about some effects through speaking, but God’s speaking is universally effectual. Human speech acts fail—warnings go unheeded; promises left unfilled; truth claims prove false—not so God’s word. God’s speech acts confer being […] God’s speech generates and governs.”[6] By virtue of Christ’s declarative power, the sacramental elements become signs, not potentially, but in actuality. As such, sacramentality is not a potency added to the element that is subsequently actualized by the creature. As God is a se, the effectual power of His acts (including speech acts) is not dependent upon creatures for them to be realized. Thus, a signification instituted by God is established in a manner independent of creaturely actualization; the divinely instituted signification is not something that exists in potentiality, awaiting an actualizing agent, but is brought into actuality by the power of God.
Through Christ’s institution, the elements of the Lord’s Supper function as communicative signs, conveying Christ’s body and blood to believers. Augustine states that, “The word is added to the element, and there results the Sacrament, as if itself also a kind of visible word.”[7] The notion of the sacrament being a visible word is significant in that it brings to fore the idea that the sacrament truly does communicate something to the participant. In other words, the elements do not function as passive artifacts in which the believer views them and applies a meaning to themselves via their own intellect. Rather, the elements are visible words communicating meaning to the believer. In this sense, the believer is the one who receives communication and meaning from the Supper. The Lord’s Supper thus continually functions as a speech act of God that communicates the presence of Christ to those who participate.
As a speech act of God, the signification and effects of the Supper exist independently of the human mind. The signification, then, is not conceptual but has a real existence. If such a sacramental signification is real, then it can be argued that there is a real union between the elements and Christ himself. Wilhelmus à Brakel touches on this when he states that the union between the elements and Christ is “not a union established by way of human imagination, but it is a union in the true sense of the word. However, it is not a local or physical union, but a spiritual union that is founded upon and derives its veracity from Christ’s institution.”[8] A large part of this “spiritual union”, in my understanding, has to do with the divinely instituted signification of the bread and wine. However, this signification entails a potential understanding of the relational mode of the elements to Christ in which we may be able to posit a more robust metaphysical foundation for the spiritual union between the elements and Christ.
Real Relation and Instrumentality
Since there is a real signification established between Christ’s body and the Supper’s elements, it can also be posited that there is a real relation established between the two. Ames states that “This union [between the elements and Christ] is neither physical nor yet imaginary; it is rather a spiritual relation by which the things signified are really communicated to those who rightly use the signs.”[9] How does one understand such a spiritual relation? On one hand, it cannot be merely conceptual, which would entail no real relation at all. Nor can the relation be physical, which would entail either a substantial change or the mixture of two substances into one. Thus, a spiritual union, in some way, must be distinct from these two options. However, to complicate the matter further, we are considering the relation of the elements to a person in whom two natures are united. On one hand, to propose a real relation all the way down would entail a real relation between created elements and the divine nature. On the other hand, positing a purely mixed relation would neglect the genuine human nature of Christ by which he can genuinely experience a real relation to creation. So, the relation between the elements of the Supper and the person of Christ can be considered, in one sense, as mixed (according to the divine nature) and, in another sense, as real (according to the human nature).[10]
Since Christ has a human nature, we can conceive of the elements as having a real relation with Christ according to that human nature. By there being a real relation between the elements and Christ, there is a mutual relationship that allows for Christ to be communicated to the believer via the elements, allowing for the believer to truly participate in Christ’s body and blood per 1 Corinthians 10:16. As a new signification is applied to the elements by Christ’s speech act, a new mode of relation is established between the elements and Christ’s flesh and blood. This new relation can provide a helpful category for understanding how Christ is truly communicated via the elements in a way that is distinct from the Catholic or Lutheran views.
The elements, by way of the new relation they share in Christ, can truly present Christ’s body and blood to believers through a signifying communication. By way of illustration, a mirror participates with a subject and by relation to that subject reflects the image without becoming the subject itself. In a similar way, the elements participate with Christ in a new relation, presenting him to those who can perceive by faith in the power of the Spirit.[11] Calvin uses this mirror analogy in speaking on the sacraments in general, saying “we might call them mirrors in which we may contemplate the riches of God’s grace, which he lavishes upon us.”[12] While this is certainly true, the analogy can be pressed a bit further. Since the bread and wine specifically signify Christ’s body and blood, it is not just God’s grace in general that is communicated and perceived, but Christ himself.
In positing a new relation between Christ and the elements, the sacramental nature of the elements can be understood as a divinely grounded signification with an objective subject that is signified. In other words, the signification of the elements is not determined by the intellect of the participant, but by God’s supernatural ordering of the elements in a real relation to Christ on the occasion of the Lord’s Supper. This is not a conceptual determination but a real act of God, who determines the signification by His word. Interestingly, Zwingli provides a helpful analogy for what I’m saying. Zwingli famously states that:
The ring of the queen, your consort, with which Your Majesty was betrothed to her, is not valued by her at the price of the gold, but is beyond all price, however much it is gold, if you regard its material — for it is the symbol of her royal husband. […] So the bread and wine are the symbols of that friendship by which God has been reconciled to the human race through His Son, and we value them not according to the price of the material but according to the greatness of the thing signified, so that the bread is no longer common, but sacred, and has not only the name of bread but of the body of Christ also, nay, is the body of Christ, but in name and significance, or, as the more recent theologians say, sacramentally.[13]
However, to take Zwingli’s analogy a bit further for our own purpose, the King’s ring is not so valued simply because it represents the king. Rather, the value of the ring is due to there being a real relation between the ring and the king who grounds such a representation. Should a random person have given the queen a ring and said “this ring represents the king”, its value would be that of any ordinary ring, since there is no real relation to ground the ring’s signification as truly representing the king. However, it’s because the ring has a real relation to the king via ownership and bestowal that it bears a meaningful signification. Again, this is merely an analogy, but it provides a useful point: a genuine signification is contingent on a genuine relation to the thing that is signified. Without such a relation, the signification can only remain conceptual and would lack a genuine union between the sign and the signified. It is because of a real relation and genuine signification that the elements of the Supper are able to truly communicate Christ.
Due to there being a genuine signification and real relation between the elements of the Supper and Christ, the elements can function in a sort of instrumental manner in communicating Christ to believers. As Billings says, “In the sign-act of the Supper, God gives an instrument to his people to participate in his steady, eternal love.”[14] However, it should be maintained that the instrumental use of the elements does not entail that the elements themselves have the active power in themselves to bring these effects to bear on the believer.[15] This sort of instrumentality is unique from natural instrumental cause.
For instance, when a logger uses an axe instrumentally to chop down a tree, the power to cut is in the axe which is being wielded by the logger. It would not be proper to view the Lord’s Supper in the same way, since this would attribute power to the elements themselves, which God would then subsequently use to bless believers. Since the elements do not have such a power by nature and are not being transformed in their nature, the only place from which this power could come is God Himself. Therefore, while the elements are instrumental in a certain sense, namely that they are being used by God, they are not being used in such a way that attributes power to the elements themselves.[16] In this way, they are more of a signifying instrument that is used to tangibly communicate the work of God in the believer.
The notion of the elements being instrumental is important, since, on one hand, if one rejects the notion of instrumentality completely, it would seem to render the elements arbitrary at best and empty at worst. On the other hand, if one affirms instrumentality in such a way that confers some sort of power in the element itself, then they would have to argue that there is some sort of natural power that can confer sacramental benefits on the believer.[17] Both of these options would seem unsatisfactory; the former seems to undermine various texts on the Supper as well as traditional thought, whereas the latter seems to associate particular powers that are not natural to the substances and opens up the temptation of idolatry or some sort of transubstantiation. By posing an analogically instrumental relation, one can affirm that the sacraments are means of grace without locating the source of grace in the elements themselves; God utilizes the elements for his purpose to communicate the presence of Christ as well as strengthen and build up His people, without the elements themselves being the locus of power for those experiences.
Union with Christ
However, the metaphysical relation between Christ and the elements is not sufficient in and of itself to communicate Christ to those who partake. To consider Zwingli’s analogy of a ring again, one only understands the ring’s relation to the king insofar as they have a prior knowledge of that relation. If one were to come upon the king’s ring without this knowledge, then they could not perceive that it was truly the king’s. This is a crude analogy, but it helps to roughly communicate something similar occurring in the Lord’s Supper. If one partakes in the Supper without a means of perceiving that which is signified, then there is nothing in the elements of the Supper than can accomplish such a communication.
However, unlike the analogy of the ring, mere knowledge is not enough to function as a basis for communicating Christ through the Supper because there is not merely an epistemological gap but a relational gap; what is being communicated through the sacrament is not an idea or a concept (where knowledge would be able to serve as a basis), but the very person of Christ. Thus, if there is a relation gap between the one partaking and the one signified, namely Christ, then the one partaking will not perceive Christ.[18]
How then can Christ be perceived if neither the partaker nor the elements themselves can serve as the foundation for that communication? How is the relation gap between the recipient and Christ filled? The answer to that question is union with Christ. The initial and necessary condition for perceiving Christ’s presence is to be united with the person of Christ. This is because Christ is first and foremost present to us by way of our union with him. Yet, it is by the Gospel work of Christ alone that one is regenerated, filled with the Spirit, and united to him. (Eph 1:7-13) Thus, regardless of the metaphysical relation of the elements to Christ, without one being united to Christ, there can be no experience of his presence in the Supper, not because the elements do not have a real signification or relation to Christ, but because union is the basis by which one can participate in Christ’s body and blood in the Supper. Union with Christ serves as the foundation for experiencing Christ in the Lord’s Supper because union with Christ is the basis by which all believers are connected to Christ.[19]
By the work of the Spirit, believers are really united with the person of Christ, and because the person of Christ is omnipresent according to the divine nature, believers genuinely experience Christ’s divine presence at all times; to be united to Christ is to be united to the one whose divine immensity entails his presence in all space and time. However, the experience of Christ’s presence by way of his divine omnipresence does not entail an experience of Christ’s physical presence. This concept is at the heart of the Reformed doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum. The Reformed argued that a necessary characteristic of Christ’s human body is that it is spatially located. However, due to his divinity, his divine life exists beyond the confines of the human body.[20] While this doctrine is crucial, it would be wrong to rely on Christ’s divine omnipresence alone as a means of explaining the experience of his presence in the Lord’s Supper[21] As 1 Corinthians 10:16 makes clear, the participation with Christ is particularly applied to Christ’s body and blood. Thus, the experience of Christ’s presence according to the human nature requires something other than the divine omnipresence of Christ. This is where, I believe, the doctrine of union with Christ comes together with the elements of the Lord’s Supper.
Without union with Christ, the Supper has no ground to communicate Christ. The elements of the Supper cannot bring one into relation with Christ because there is a relational gap between the person and Christ that can only be bridged by the work of the Gospel. Calvin rightly situates union with Christ as a prior reality to the Lord’s Supper. He states that it is because of the very mystery of our union with Christ that God gives tokens for us to see this reality, saying, “Since, however, this mystery of Christ’s’ secret union with the devout is by nature incomprehensible, he shows it figure and image in visible signs best adapted to our small capacity. Indeed, by giving guarantees and tokens he makes it as certain for us as if we had seen it with out own eyes.”[22] As physical creatures who experience through sense perception, the tangibility of the Supper provides a means of experiencing Christ according to our own limitations. Our natural limitations preclude us from tangibly experiencing the presence of something that is not locally present. However, the experience of Christ in the Supper is not dependent upon a natural power to perceive such. While Calvin rightly associates the Supper with union with Christ, he doesn’t fail to recognize that the Spirit and union also go hand in hand. As Calvin so beautifully puts it:
Even though it seems unbelievable that Christ’s flesh, separated from us by such a great distance, penetrates to us, so that it becomes our food, let us remember how far the secret power of the Holy Spirit towers above all our senses, and how foolish it is to wish to measure his immeasurableness by our measure. What, then, our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive: that the Spirit truly unites things separated in space.”[23]
There are genuine realities that have been brought forth in the elements by the instituting act of Christ, but these realities are only apprehensible by the power of the Spirit in our union with Christ. At the same time, the Supper does not function apart from the activity of the Spirit.[24]
As Greggs puts it, in the Lord’s Supper “the believer is freed to participate in its powerful semiotic signification by the Holy Spirit, who enables the believer in space and time to perceive in the symbols of bread and wine something of the immensity of divine grace.”[25] In spite of Gregg’s denial that Christ is specially present in the Supper, I would argue that what is perceived is not merely the image of divine grace, but Christ himself.[26] What the believer perceives in the Supper is the body and blood of Christ broken and shed for his people; the Supper functions as a means of tangiblyperceiving Christ’s presence with us while he is not with us bodily. While Greggs is certainly correct that the Spirit plays an active and integral role in our experience of the Supper, the bread and wine are not expressed as being a participation in the Spirit per se, but in the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:16). This, however, should never be considered apart from the Spirit. For it is by the Spirit that we can experience Christ in the elements.
Again, Calvin states that we can experience Christ without his body being spatially relocated “since the Lord bestows this benefit upon us through his Spirit so that we may be made one in body, spirit, and soul with him.”[27] Calvin continues, “The bond of this connection is therefore the Spirit of Christ, with whom we are joined in unity, and is like a channel through which all that Christ himself is and has is conveyed to us.”[28] So, as we are united with Christ by the Spirit, the Spirit also uses the elements to communicate a tangible experience of Christ without the elements themselves literally becoming his flesh and blood. We cannot tangibly experience Christ’s body and blood without a physical substance to impress upon our senses, but the expression upon our senses can only surpass the natural meaning by way of the Spirit.
Since the body of Christ is not spatially located and is beyond our ability to tangibly perceive, the bread and wine serve as significations of his body in which our perception of the elements becomes a spiritual perception of Christ. Because there is a real link between Christ and us by way of our perception of the elements, which are also really related to Christ, we can truly speak of experiencing Christ’s presence; experiencing Christ’s presence is not so done by literally touching Christ’s body and blood, but through union with the person of Christ and experiencing the elements that physically signify Christ’s body and blood. Vanhoozer provides a useful summary of this conclusion, stating:
“The sacraments, like the proclaimed word, are “real presentations” of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who partake in the sacraments in faith really participate in what the symbolic actions signify. We participate in the reality (“the thing exhibited”), but not as Plato thought: the celebration of the sacraments is not an ontological event through which we gain access to a higher level of reality, to a grace “above” nature. On the contrary, the sacraments facilitate a theo-dramatic participation in the eschatological action through faith’s attestation of the work of Son and Spirit. Through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Christ presents himself to believing communicants via a real presentation of the climactic events of redemptive history. By performing the biblical words and the sacramental actions, we are really drawn into the ongoing theo-dramatic action by the Spirit.”[29]
In agreement with Vanhoozer, Calvin rightly states that “the sacraments properly fulfill their office only when the Spirit, that inward teacher, comes to them, by whose power alone hearts are penetrated and affections are moved and our souls opened for the sacraments to enter in. If the Spirit be lacking, the sacraments can accomplish nothing more in our minds than the splendor of the sun shining upon blind eyes, or a voice sounding in deaf ears.”[30] The sacraments themselves, regardless of their metaphysical relation and signification of Christ, cannot effectually bring about an experience of Christ by their own power.[31] While they are sacramental by divine institution, the experience of Christ in them can only be effectual insofar as there is an act of the Spirit in the believer.
[1] For example, see Charles L. Quarles, “Ordinance or Sacrament: Is the Baptist View of the Ordinances Truly Biblical?” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 1, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 47–57.
[2] For those unfamiliar with the category of metaphysics, Ross Inman’s What Is Reality? is a useful introductory work. Inman defines metaphysics as being a non-empirical mode of inquiry that involves explaining what there is, describing the nature of things, and addresses what is possible, necessary, or impossible. See Ross Inman What Is Reality: An Introduction to Metaphysics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), 19. Regarding the topic of the Lord’s Supper, metaphysical tools can help us consider what the Supper is beyond the empirical characteristics of the elements.
[3] The concept of speech act theory originated from J.L. Austin, who posits that linguistic acts were divided into three different kinds, locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words, 2d ed.(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975). Speech act theory was further developed and systematized by John Searle and has since been implemented into Christian hermeneutics by figures such as Kevin J. Vanhoozer. See Kevin J. Vanhoozer “Resurrecting the Author: Meaning as Communicative Action.” In Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998). See also Melvin Tinker “Last Supper/Lord’s Supper: More than a Parable in Action?” Themelios 26, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 23-24.
[4] Augustine On Christian Doctrine 2.2.3
[6], Kevin J. Vanhoozer Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2024.) 204.
[7] Augustine Lectures on the Gospel According to St. John 15.3. Examples this can also be seen in figures such as Calvin and Bavinck. See Calvin Instututes IV.14.6. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Vol. 3, Sin Salvation and Christ, trans. John Vrien, ed. John Bolt. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2006), 479.
[8] Wilhemus à Brakel The Christian’s Reasonable Service 532.
[9] William Ames The Marrow of Theology 1.36.27.
[10] Thomas Weinandy provides a helpful overview of relations in the thought of Aquinas. Weinandy highlights three kinds of relation, namely logical, real, and mixed. A logical relation is when two things are related only on the basis of reason. A real relation is when two things are related to one another in such a way that they are mutually affecting. A mixed relation is that which is real in regard to one subject and logical in regard to the other. See Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Change? (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985), 88-96.
[13] Zwingli A Short Exposition of the Christian Faith in On Providence and Other Essays (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1983), 257.
[14] Todd Billings, J. Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 138.
[15] This is the primary way instrumental causality is understood. Namely, that the instrument is moved by a primary cause, but there is a power that comes from its own nature to bring about the act of the primary cause. See Henri Renard, Philosophy of Being (Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1947), 141. See also Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985), 201-202.
[16] Arcadi’s incarnational model of the atonement seems to make this very mistake. Arcadi posits that the elements of the Supper function instrumentally by means of extending Christ’s body. He states “In the Eucharist, the properly demarcated bread enables Christ to extend his body to be in a location in which he is not organically located. Not organically located, but perhaps we might say artifactually located by means of an artifact qua enabling device. […] I suggest we ought to be willing to allow for a conception of body that moves beyond the organic to include certain artifacts. And if Christ similarly attests to an artifact as being part of his body, we ought to as well. The resulting state-of-affairs is an instance of a co-location of sorts.” James Aracdi “Literally the Body of Christ: Analytic Theology, Declarative Theology, and an Incarnational Model of the Eucharist” 63.
[17] Another option would be to say that the sacramental power was not in the elements prior to becoming a sacrament, but after they do have such a power to affect the recipient. However, the problem with this would be the necessary substantial change of the bread and wine. However, the particular potency of a thing is dependent upon its nature. For something to take on a new potential is to become something other than what it was. See Renard, 26-27. To posit this option would be to go against the entire argument for the bread and wine remaining substantially constant in the Supper.
[18] This does not mean that someone must have a fully developed understanding of the Lord’s Supper to perceive Christ. As I hope will be shown, union with Christ is the basis by which someone perceives Christ in the Supper, whether or not they intellectually understand what is occurring.
[19] Sanders argues that union with Christ is the very center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. See Fred Sanders Union With Christ and the Life of Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2025).
[20] Stephen Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 333. See also Calvin Institutes II.13.4.For an extensive treatment of the extra see E. David Willis Calvin’s Catholic Theology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden, Brill: 1966).
[21] Greg Allison is an example of someone who has tried to pose such idea. Allison, posits a understanding of spiritual presence that is grounded in divine omnipresence. See Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 395. Allison states that “the God-man Jesus Christ, who reigns from heaven, is ontologically present everywhere and spiritually present either to bless or to judge the church’s celebration of his new covenant ordinance of the Supper.” Allison, 397.
[22] Calvin Institutes IV..17.1.
[24] Grant Macaskill, Union with Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
[25] Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019) 215.
[26] Greggs specifically states that “Emphasizing the event of the act of the Spirit in time and space in the celebration of Holy Communion is a means of recognizing the value and power of Holy Communion without in any way thinking that Christ is somehow ‘specially’ present to or in the elements.” Greggs, 215.
[27] Calvin Institutes 4.17.12 See also Joe Mock, “Union with Christ and the Lord’s Supper in Calvin.” Reformed Theological Review 75, no. 2 (August 2016): 122.
[28] Calvin Institutes 4.17.12.
[29] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 412
[30] Calvin Institutes IV.14.9
[31] Macaskill, likewise, states that “Paul’s language and argumentation prohibits us from seeing the Supper as simply an external symbolization of this Spiritual reality: the cup is a κοινωνία in the blood of Christ, the bread a κοινωνία in his body. The sacrament, then, plays a constitutive role in the participation of believers in the death and identity of Jesus, although it does not do so autonomously, but in the context of the Spirit’s work within the divine economy.” See Grant Macaskill, Union with Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 205. Tinker also rightly points out the inefficacy of the sacrament on its own, stating “The Word is the indispensable instrument of the Spirit’s persuasive (perlocutionary) power. On the one hand, the Spirit is ‘mute’ without the Word; and on the other hand, the Word is ‘inactive’ without the Spirit. Word and Spirit together make up God’s speech (speech-act). We would argue the same principle applies to the ‘visible Word’ (which would also include the words of institution and call for self-examination) of the Lord’s Supper. Just as the Word of Scripture does not work ex opere operato, neither does the ‘word of the sacrament. It achieves its effect through the Spirit taking up and applying the words and symbols in the hearts and minds of believers. Tinker, 26.
