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UPDATE: Just banned a commenter. The admonition to “stop wasting my time” and “leave the SBC” was unacceptable. New commenters- read FAQ section 10 please.

For the past two years, I’ve been trying to get a single question answered:

What are the actual historical evidences, before Zwingli, for the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper?

I’ve asked this question high, low, in-between and everywhere I could get a hearing.

Long story short: No answer. If there are evidences, then someone needs to write a book, asap. It’s long overdue.

Now let’s be clear what I am saying and not saying. My reading of the New Testament is deeply shaped by my Baptist upbringing, and it’s hard for me to read anything in any discussion of the Lord’s Supper that isn’t a version of the Zwinglian position. Baptists, at their best, such as in the Second London Baptist Confession, articulated a view quite similar to the language of John Calvin: in the Lord’s Supper, we feed on Christ by faith. As I have demonstrated in past posts here at IM (See the Baptists category), I believe there are many confessional resources in the history of Baptists to articulate a richer, deeper theology of the Lord’s Supper than what is commonly heard from Baptist pulpits: a deconstruction that virtually has taken the supper out of church life and the discipleship experience of most American Baptist Christians.

But I am not talking confessional resources, I am talking historical evidences, between the New Testament and Zwingli.

I have not changed my mind that Jesus inaugurated a re-imagined Passover meal, with the meaning changed to his own death on the cross as the ultimate Passover lamb.

I see nothing of any kind of transformation happening in any New Testament text on the Lord’s Supper.

I do, however, see that Paul’s words in I Corinthians, written before any of the Gospels, emphasize both the presence of Christ and fellowship with Christ.

The Didache, a second century document, describes the Lord’s Supper in language that connects it to thankfulness for creation, remembrance of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises and an image of Jesus’ eternal-life giving relationship to the church.

The Didache neither “confirms nor denies” any particular view of the Eucharist. Evidence in its language can be used by every position.

Beyond the Didache, the evidence veers decisively to a recognition of the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist.

The Baptist position requires that the early church go decisively wrong in a critical matter following the second century, with not only no dissenting majority, but no dissenting minority. Until Zwingli, the historical evidence for the Baptist position is restricted to interpretation of the New Testament and the Didache.

I am not opposed to seeing the church as mistaken when the evidence is persuasive. I believe the early church did go off track in some significant ways in the later second century. I believe the evidence from respected scholars such as Everett Ferguson, G.R. Beasley-Murray and David Wright, as well as ecumenical documents on the history of baptism, all indicate that infant baptism developed in the second century. While there are various theological ways to interpret this development, I see no evidence that infant baptism and its accompanying theological justification is anything other than reasonable second century developments.

But I do not see this development with the Lord’s Supper. The evidence that I see at this point has convinced me that something more like the eucharist as it is celebrated among Lutherans and Anglicans is more faithful to the Biblical evidence AND the historical evidence as well.

This has nothing to do with the Baptist celebration of the Supper or my participation in it. It is only a comment on the evidence in history for the Zwinglian position.

COMMENT RULES: 1) We won’t be arguing the Catholic view of the Eucharist. 2) We can discuss the POST. 3) I’m not going to be involved in a debate. 4) Don’t make this a big deal. It’s a matter of historical evidence and that’s it. I’m not going to any other denomination. I’m just fine as who I am: A Baptist with a Catholic wife, Anglican Children, a Presbyterian interim pastorate and a gig with the Mennonites next weekend. It’s fun being me. 5) I want to know if there are any significant differences in the Lutheran/Anglican view of the Eucharist, aside from closed communion.