The Holy Spirit & the Lord's Supper

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The Holy Spirit & the Lord's Supper

Date Created: Oct 09, 2004, 10:50 PM

I can't believe I haven't seen this before. In conversations (really arguments) with Lutheran seminarians and professors I failed to see the significance of 1 Cor. 10:1-4 in which Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit's role in the communion meal. Lutherans regularly criticize Calvin's emphasis on the Holy Spirit's role in the Lord's Supper. Anyone who has read Calvin's Institutes and his various treatises on the Supper will remember how crucial the Holy Spirit is in his theology of the Supper. The Holy Spirit effects the communication of the glorified and life-giving Body and Blood of the ascended Christ to his people in the Supper. Lutherans say that's speculation. There's no scriptural proof for that, they say. I've never been quite sure why this is such a big deal for them, but it seems to be very important in their argument against the Reformed "understanding" of the miracle of the Lord's Supper.

But notice what St. Paul does in 1 Cor. 10:1-4:

I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same Spiritual food, and all drank the same Spiritual drink. For they drank from the Spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

Paul has a trinitarian theology of baptism and the Supper. God (the Father) brought the Israelites out of Egypt to feast with him in the wilderness on Christ through the Holy Spirit. I've capitalized the translation of the Greek adjective pnuematikos because the reference is to the Spirit. The Israelites and the church feed on Jesus not merely in some vague non-material way, but as the Holy Spirit makes him present.

I'm not sure if Calvin makes use of this verse in this way when he expounds this passage or when he argues his case in his writings. I suspect that he does. I'd be surprised if he doesn't. But I'll have to check. I do know, however, that the Lutheran polemic against the Reformed largely arises after Calvin's death, so it's not reasonable to expect Calvin to have anticipated the argument of later Lutherans.