Eucharistic Sacrifice
And What Protestants Get Wrong
The Eucharistic sacrifice is absolutely true, patristic, and as catholic as a doctrine can be. One of the greatest errors of the Reformation was rejecting this essential part of worship and trying to find other ways to explain the centrality of the Eucharist.
I want to very briefly describe a way in which I think that Protestants can enter into a more sacrificial Eucharistic view. The key hang-up seems to be the idea of offering Jesus Christ again, after the sacrifice has already been made once for all. It is an understandable concern. However, the concern itself gives away a lacking sacramental worldview.
The sacraments participate in realities beyond their temporal moments. For example, St. Paul tells us that baptism is, in fact, dying with Christ, being buried with Him, and then being raised up to newness of life. Is our continued practice of baptism infringing upon the once-for-all death, burial, and resurrection of Christ? Of course not. We recognize that our baptism is a participation in this reality, not a repetition of this historical moment in time. Likewise, the Eucharist functions the same way.
The Church, being the Body of Christ, is the Eucharistic sacrifice as it participates in Christ’s sacrifice. We offer ourselves as Christ’s Body up before the Father as a participation and recapitulation of Calvary. What else would we proclaim, plead, and desire the Father to receive from us other than the once-for-all sacrifice of His Son?
We are the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the Father receives this offering and glorifies us by making present, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very sacramental Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. In consuming this divine life at the altar, we ourselves become divine. The Eucharist is a participation in Calvary, but more than that, it also finds its telos in the eating and drinking that occur, which participates (there’s that word again) in the future eschaton where all things are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ Himself — the Church being the chief picture of this.
I truly believe that the Protestant impulse to reject Eucharistic sacrifice is rooted in a lacking sacramental ontology, which sees the Eucharist as repetitious instead of participatory. I stake my reputation on the belief that if one has a robust sacramental theology, Eucharistic sacrifice becomes not merely essential doctrine but the only logical way to make sense of the Church’s historic worship.
Hi Dcn. Jonah,
As you may well know, this is part and parcel of even Reformational Anglicanism: https://anglicanaesthetics.substack.com/p/the-finite-roman-mass-vs-the-infinite
But as it turns out, this isn't even a fair charge of Lutheranism or early modern Reformed thought. David Hollaz affirmed a Eucharistic sacrifice, as did Zanchi.
The impetrative sacrifice I've written about here actually has Reformed and Lutheran advocates: https://northamanglican.com/the-impetrative-sacrifice-of-the-mass/
Thank you, Deacon Jonah, for your explanation. Is the tension with Catholic theology evident during the Eucharist when the Celebrant selects the second option at The Fraction? Many congregants likely do not recognize the difference, and unfortunately, they often do not receive a clear explanation during an Instructed Eucharist. The same concern arises when the Celebrant proclaims during the final verse of The Agnus Dei, “you took away the sin of the world.”