This is My Body: A Review of Matt Colvin's "The Lost Supper"

Christians have severely divided over the phenomena of the Lord's Supper. Should you use leavened or unleavened bread (dividing east from west)? How do you receive it? More importantly, what happens to the elements when the Lord's Supper is performed? Is there a moment of "change" and if so what is the change? Is it bread and wine anymore? What does it mean to "be" the body and blood of Christ? And how does a Christian partake of it? However, the most important question that has been buried under a mountain of theological speculation is simply what this meal was to Jesus and His disciples who celebrated it?

Colvin intervenes here to recontextualize the historic Last Supper. Historians of the period have often been perplexed at the institution of this rite. While for a long time presumed to have some connection to Passover, twentieth-century scholars moved away from an uncritical reliance on medieval (or post-Second Temple Judaism) texts to inform Jewish practices. Even so, it was hard to precisely determine what Jesus was precisely up to in the meal and how this translated into the markedly different ritual of the eucharist. At some point, scholars began to abandon the question altogether. The Last Supper may in fact have no relation, whatsoever, to the eucharist. Instead, historians turned to Greco-Roman rituals of table fellowship and com-pan-ionship and convivum. The assumption was that the eucharist must have developed out of some melange of mystery religion (like the Eleusinian rite) and shared collegiate life. The Last Supper as a textual memory then recombines to shape this otherwise Gentile practice. Thus, the truth of what happened at Jesus' last Passover was lost to history. Many academic theologians accepted these pronouncements (or even ratified them), creating a gulf between Christian theology and the historical dimensions of the New Testament.

However, recent scholarship has questioned both the polarity between Jew and Gentile in the world of the Second Temple, as well as their collapse into a vaguely generic "Hellenic" world. Jews kept themselves distinct in a variety of ways, not always consistent with each other. Similarly, critical use of late Roman rabbis and medieval Jewish traditions has yielded fruit in understanding the origin of far earlier practices. As Alan Segal showed in his work on plurality in Jewish views of God, later texts showed scars of battles with apparently successful efforts of Christians to woo Jews from the synagogue to the church. And finally, and most importantly, there has been a recent turn to finally treat the New Testament (especially Paul) as Jewish literature. Ignoring the common matrix from which both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism emerged, allowed both Jewish and Christian theologians to avoid the other. Christianity became increasingly identified as a Gentile phenomenon.

Matt Colvin intervenes here, drawing heavily upon the erudition of David Daube who (far earlier than most) rejected many of the above dichotomies. Perhaps because he was a philologist with a sharp eye for detecting a puzzle, Daube focused on micro problems in narrative and law, yielding a rich harvest. Daube had done this for the New Testament, particularly the Last Supper's connection to a messianic banquet. The afiqomen, later a strange ritual hide-and-seek during the Passover, was a remnant of Passover's distinctly messianic resonances. Thus, the Last Supper was not only a Passover meal, but involved ritual elements that Jesus assumed to himself. If Jesus was taking an otherwise annual ritual and inserting a radical change into it, why so little instruction? Why did the disciples (who often throughout the gospels express confusion at Jesus' words and doings) seem to "get it"? To point at the bread and cup, saying "This is my body..my blood", was Jesus' indirect identification with the messiah and the coming kingdom of God.

Colvin's work goes beyond Daube, not only reconstructing the historiography of how this argument progressed (with the eccentric career and work of Robert Eisler and the work of Joachim Jeremias), but how it makes the most amount of sense with the text's narrative. Drawing on later Jewish ritual writings and commentary (Mishnah and Talmud), Colvin critically examines how these rituals bore scars of purging the Christian sounding elements out. Reference to human mediator, linked to messianic expectation, are diminished if not erased. Christians similarly moved their own liturgical referents away from Israel in their own narrative memorial. The result was covering over the link where Jesus emerged from a distinctly Jewish milieu of messianic expectation in a new Exodus. Colvin draws extensively from N.T. Wright and Richard Hays, who see this narrative expectation not only weaved throughout the New Testament, but constitutive of Second Temple Jewish thought in general. Colvin deploys these to solve several textual riddles along the way. For example, why did Jesus use such a strange word for "daily" in the Lord's prayer? Answer: it's an eschatological prayer "the bread of tomorrow", which fits with the rest of the prayer, which calls God's future into the present. Many of these puzzles become clearer when the Aramaic context of both Jesus' speech, and many narrative arcs, is explicated. This is especially the case for Mark's Gospel (drawing on the work of Maurice Casey who sees Mark as not only clearly the work of an Aramaic-speaking Jew of the 1st c., but that this work forms the spine for the later Grecian works of Matthew and Luke, who rework the Marcan material)

Thus, Colvin makes a strong case that the Passover meal Jesus celebrated was eschatological, fulfilling the meal as it transfigured into something else. It culminated Israel's story. Like Moses establishing the Passover before the cataclysmic events of judgement which it would later celebrate, so too does Jesus found this meal around his (the Christ's) impending death and resurrection. Colvin summarizes the point well:

"Thus, as we also found in the case of the words over the bread, we discover
that Jesus’ words about the wine are more concerned with using the Passover
to speak to his disciples about his own impending death and its significance
within Israel’s story than they were about explaining the metaphysical relation
of the bread and wine to his body and blood. His words over the bread
identify himself as Israel’s Messiah; his words over the cup are a way of
indicating that he will offer himself as a sacrifice, a new Passover lamb to
accomplish a new Exodus; and that this will bring about the coming Kingdom
of God. Messiah, new Exodus, and coming Kingdom: this is a deeply Jewish
set of meanings for these rituals, full of the themes that were on every mind
and heart at Passover. Jesus in the Last Supper is doing what we should expect
for a Jewish Messiah’s last meal with his disciples; he is doing exactly
what Jews have always done with the food and drink of the Passover: make
them tell the story of God and Israel—past, present, and future—and by ritual
participation inscribe themselves in that story, in those events." (92)

As clear from the quote, Colvin does not leave the work here. Instead, he turns his sights on the development of eucharistic theology throughout church history. Later paradigms of thought obscured the narratival aspect of the ritual, replacing it with an emphasis on substances both visible and invisible. From one end, transubstantiation developed from a medieval context that saw the supper as "medicine of immortality", where bread and wine are vehicles to communicate grace (a substance) to the souls of men. However, the rejection of a "real presence" for symbolism (both in Berenger's heresy as well as in most Reformed confessions) depended on the same semiotic theory of sign/signified. Rather than denying the existence of bread and wine for the supernatural substances of body and blood, the latter become accessible only through faith. For some Reformed theologians, this (like transubstantiation to medieval theologians) is simply a mystery (i.e. they have no idea how one feeds by faith). Others increasingly schematize the process as a series of mental or emotional acts one does in a proper succession. However both miss the key issue: it's the narrative of Israel's story that creates a trans-historical participation, not the substances/accidents of empirical and spiritual realities. Thus, Colvin' work acts as a sledgehammer to any "sacramental" (a taxonomic designation unwarranted from Scripture) theory of sign/signified. In a way, it's a strong rejection of Augustinian sacramentology, which influenced all sides (Roman and Reformed). 

Jesus (like a good Second Temple Jew) focused on bodies in action. Take, eat, take, drink. This emphasis leaves no room for the piety of reverence for the elements, a superstitious addition that confuses the meaning of the rite. It's not about confecting the presence of God through an ordained minister's words, or a believing heart of the recipient, but participation in God's divine story. It's this participation which saves. As Colvin puts it with clarity:

"This is not mere knowledge of facts. It involves what Richard Hays calls
“the conversion of the imagination” and results in worship of Jesus and of
Israel’s God. The great irony is that the disciples on the road to Emmaus
were in a state of confused incomprehension, not understanding the story or
Jesus or themselves, and consequently gloomy and depressed (σκυθρωποί,
24:17)—and all while Jesus was present. No sooner did they recognize him
than he absented himself from them again (24:31–32). This pattern is repeated
at the end of the chapter for the gathered disciples in Jerusalem: Christ
appears bodily to them and blesses them (presence), then is “parted from
them and carried up into heaven” (absence), whereupon they “worshiped
him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Lk. 24:52). In this narrative,
the presence of Christ is not effected by the eating of the bread (still less by
“consecration” of it); indeed, the resurrected Jesus appeared and was bodily
present to his disciples on the road to Emmaus only in order to bring about
the disciples’ participation in his new life, which is the life of the renewed
Israel, the climax and fulfillment of Israel’s story. The goal is participation,
not “presence.” " (98)

Participation, not substance and presence, becomes the metaphysic behind the eucharist's power. It is not about removing the ritual potency of the rite, but recovering it in the New Testament's own terms. Colvin establishes how the rite of Passover, both in the Old Testament as well as in later Jewish commentary, was not simply a mental act reaching backwards. Rather, every celebration of the Passover was to participate in the original. This rite looked backwards and forwards simultaneously, holding onto history as a guarantee of a future promise (a future Exodus). It's precisely this way with Christians who, in eating and drinking as their Lord commanded, celebrate a public memorial, a witness to the atoning death and resurrection of the Christ. The meal not only reaches backwards to the founding act, but to the future redemption of bodies and souls in the Resurrection. The meal celebrates and expresses the Kingdom of God present now, which will one day encompass all things. It's not unlike Irenaeus' view of the eucharist which hung the meal's grace and power in being sealed with a promise:

"And just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season, or as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of God" (Adv Haer, Book V, II, 3)

It's this view which is keenly demonstrated in Paul's relatively sparse reference to the Supper in his First Letter to the Corinthians. Substance ontology confuses the flow of Paul's argument: it was participation in Christ's recapitulation of Israel's story which saves. The bread and the wine are communion (koinonia) which saves, a participation in the divine story. It's the same metaphysical logic about how the Israelites drank the water from Christ, the rock who followed them in the Wilderness. It is not simply anachronism, but a trans-historical union made through ritual story. Thus, the Supper is no less metaphysical or sacred when the emphasis is shifted to story from substance, to social rite from the elements and the individual's conscience. It was not for failure to believe the proper dogma or initiate the right mental act which Paul condemns as "failing to discern the body". It was a failure to conform the public behavior with the rite it was calling down. How can you participate in the saving story if you deny it with your actions? How can you claim unity with the Christ who forgave sins when you trample your brethren, turning the meal into a revel of gluttony and drunkenness? Paul stewarded the mysteries as a herald of the gospel, revealing what God had been up to all along, not the keeper of the cult from prying eyes (as those who participated in the Eleusinian mysteries were sworn to silence).

To conclude, Colvin sets out some applications for contemporary church life. For one, there's no reason to bar small children from communion if they can eat. It is not their knowledge or ability to properly ratiocinate that makes them capable, but belonging to the church. Similarly, while veneration of the elements is out of the question, the disregard of simply dumping them in the trash is also an affront. Framed in a different way: a wedding cake is special and not to be treated with contempt (lest you treat the bride and groom with contempt). However, a crumb of cake falling to the floor is no cause of panic. What if a mouse runs off with it? Such was a serious question for Medieval monks, beautifully illustrated in the Book of Kells (decorating the front cover of Colvin's book). However, to simply dump the cake would be an utter contempt of the wedding as a whole. Properly reverential disposal reflects an understanding of the rite. Ultimately, Colvin's glosses his project with a level of hope. Despite the fact that Christians often failed to grasp the Jewish logic behind the ritual (though not completely, as Colvin notes figures who grasped it, ranging from Medieval critics of Paschasius Radbertus to the 1559 Book of Common Prayer), the rite remained nonetheless. The words of institution were rightly stated before the meal. Despite superstitious adoration of the elements, most people still ate and drank as Jesus commanded. The work of God ultimately prevailed. Additionally, this basis for communion would also allow wider Christian communion, cutting through debate about ontological change on all sides.

The book, overall, is a refreshing return to the sources. Unlike many adherents of the New Perspective on Paul, Colvin is a talented philologist. The focus on the riddles of texts avoids the criticism that the New Perspective(s) advance a more contemporaneous ethos. We're all subjects of our own time, and this criticism deflates many of the novelties that emerge from the academy. However, to simply wash one's hands of it (as many Old Perspective types do) is to deny the fundamental glory of the Renaissance/Reformation project of ad fontes humanism. As Colvin notes (citing Wright), we can ride the hermeneutic spiral to actually discover the reality of the text, triangulated in dialogue between the text (author), the reader, and the context (history). Philology frees man from simply being a prisoner of the age, and instead reinscribes him as a fellow creature in God's world.

One thing lacks for me. Colvin is correct to shift attention away from the elements to the narrative ritual, but he doesn't bother to explain why this shift took place in the ways it did. Perhaps that was ultimately beyond the scope of the project, but it raises additional questions.  Colvin notes the importance of bread and wine: common bread (not circular wafers) and fermented wine (not grape juice). These have symbolic significance. However, the meaning of these elements could use further development. Per the quote from Irenaeus above, the symbolic resonances of bread and wine throughout scripture scream out for a certain kind of meaning. And it's from these particular elements that consecrationism (which Colvin derides) emerged. It was not simply bread and wine, but the Lord's bread and wine. Colvin's reaction to theological dead ends may be necessary (eg when the Supper changes from bread and wine into body, how one feeds by faith, etc), but consecration does not necessitate those things. For Irenaeus, consecreation derived from the fact that the ritual marks out this bread and wine, a kin to how people today pray a blessing over a meal. It's not about substance ontology, but social ontology. This cake, and none other, is the wedding cake (including the significance of actions using it or dishonoring it). Additionally, framed in the worship of the church, these gifts are considered sacrificial. Here Irenaeus frames the eucharistic consecration in these terms:

For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Sprit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. (Book IV, XVIII, 5)

This text has often been used to defend real presence and other sacramental substance ontologies. However, when connected to his later commented quoted above, the point is how this meal bears the promise. The focus on the elements is a necessary correlation, lest one lapse into the idea of a wedding cake without a cake. As Colvin rightly points out, one does not need to eat to participate. It's no affront to the bride if someone who is celiac abstains from the cake, even as they participate. It's an exception that proves the rule. Nevertheless, the ritual subsides in the meal as much as in the social context. For Irenaeus, the bread and wine are body and blood precisely because they bear the promises. To eat and drink is be marked for the future world of resurrected beatitude. And they bear this promise not arbitrarily, but because of the rich symbolic power of both bread and wine. 

This symbolism is not simply intellectual, but physical. Bread means what it means because of how it exists. The breaking of it, the bodily sustenance, its constitution (which Colvin points out about Paul's use of yeast to make an argument). All of these develop what the elements mean as particular bearers of this promise. For Irenaeus, unlike later proponents of the eucharist as a sacrifice, the Christians offer bread and wine (as bread and wine, not body and blood) as a sacrifice to God. These good gifts are given to man by God to enjoy, they are lifted back to God as a thanks-giving (eucharist) and received again, bearing the promise of God's peace and forgiveness, marking the participant for eternal life. This might better explain how consecration may not simply be discarded, but rightly recovered. To properly recognize and sanctify bread and wine qua bread and wine, as why they rightly bear the promises of God in the new Passover meal of the eucharist, does not need to subtract from Messiah's story (even as it often has by replacing it).

Additionally, in consecration, memorializing, eating, this account has deep resonances with Luther's own rejection of Augustinian semiotics. The bread and wine were the Lord's body not according to the dichotomous nature of sign/signified, but through the given word of promise. Christ commands the disciples to do this meal as a memorial, and Paul rightly understand this as proclaiming the Lord's death until Christ comes again. Colvin rejects (correctly I think) the focus on presence, but does not linger on the metaphysical question as long as he should. In his disputation with Erasmus over the free will, Luther scoffs at Erasmus' refined view of God's presence of the world. God was everywhere, not only in golden temples. He was even in the sink! The omnipresence of God meant God was accessible anywhere and to all, and yet this sheer presence was meaningless. The biblical authors were not stupidly anthropomorphic when they used spatial references to God (ie James' "draw near to God"); they didn't think God was "somewhere" in the same way a misplaced key is somewhere. Rather, God's presence referred to a kind of disposition. Hence the importance of the sacraments. These were not a category of given sign/signified referents to access something called grace. Rather, they were where God's presence was given in a significant sense. How do you know where to find a merciful God? How do you know God's actual disposition towards you (in particular)? Through the promises. If God says He is in this meal as forgiveness, then you know there is where you can go to find God's mercy (or, if you profane the meal, to find God's wrath).

Luther's commentary may seem like idle speculation far beyond the concrete elements of the Lord's Supper, but it fits quite well with Colvin's argument. The participation happens through story, hearing and believing (enacted in obediently taking/eating/drinking). And narrative is Word. That was what the Lutherans pursued in arguing against the extra Calvinisticum. The Word was the clear presence of God in the World in a particular way, and that way was inextricably linked to the bodily, historical, reality of Jesus as the Christ. Such is the essence of "magic" (as in the wisdom that constituted the Magi who followed Bethelehem's star). This metaphysic of the Word (against the far more dualistic, and constantly fracturing, sign/signified between the empty vehicle and the invisible real) underwrites a rich metaphysical reality of participation. It prevents any lazy reading of participationist metaphysics, slipping into an intellectualist symbolism. No, the meal has power because God has said so. And that given word is what marks out these rites as "sacraments". It's not a mysterious conjunction between visible and invisible substances, but the power of God in word. 

Without the word, speechless ritual can take its place (whether performed by a hierarch or in the consciousness of the recipient). Hence why Luther raged so violently against the "enthusiasts", those who would cleave God's Word from God's Presence. The latter is meaningless in any ontological sense. It only makes sense in the context of the former. Colvin may rightly criticize Luther's scrupulousness (i.e. licking up spilled communion wine and crying at the tragedy of it), but there's much in common between Luther's word-based metaphysic and the participationist metaphysics that Colvin (et al) have excavated. In fact, their commonality is from attention to text (and not reliance on extraneous metaphysical theory).

I commend Colvin's book to anyone who wants a clear and concise explanation of what the Lord's Supper is and is not. It not only solves textual problems and historical riddles, it opens a wide vista on what the future could be through return.