One Bread, One Cup

Abstract

AbstractWhereas baptism is a once in a lifetime sign of our membership in the one Church, the Eucharist stands a perpetual sign of our membership into the body. Chapter 5 argues that the Eucharist is central to our understanding of how we participate in the one body of the Church by sharing the body of Christ in the one bread. First, drawing from recent work in social psychology, it reflects on the significance of shared experiences and ritualized movement for community cohesion, arguing that this might play a role in the outward forms of unity in the Church. While these accounts can explain the psychological mechanisms behind the Eucharist as a human ritual, and thereby provide some explanation of how the Spirit enacts unity through the sacraments of the Church, an account which is solely psychological risks locating unity in the wrong place. Secondly, then, the chapter offers an account of the Eucharist as unitive through the real presence of Christ. Here, it develops a discussion from the American Reformed theologian John Williamson Nevin as he seeks to emphasize the importance of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist for uniting the Church.