<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Look no further for the perfect intro to the subject!
Review: I will briefly list the reasons I like this book:
(1) Brevity: Letham gives an excellent introduction to the Lord's Supper in less than 70 pgs.
(2) Clarity: Letham does not leave the reader in the miry goo of ambiguity -- something difficult for this topic!
(3) Organization: Letham takes you through very systematically, starting from the basic issues, and then proceeds from there.
(4) Beginner Focus: Letham assumes that the reader knows nothing about the subject previous to the reading of the book.
(5) Biblical: Letham argues for the Reformed, or Calvinistic (viz., Calvin's), understanding of the sacrament, and does a service to the church in reviving this long-forgotten doctrine today.
(6) Comprehensive: keep in mind that I am qualifying "comprehensive" with "brevity" -- that is, for it's brevity, it is surprisingly broad in discussion. For instance, he includes within his discussion the controversy of Paedo-Communion, the proper elements to be used, and provides simple but reliabe exegesis on key NT passages. I could only wish that he would've included a little bit on the Lord's Supper in early church history.
Buy this book, and then read Mathison's "Given for You"!!
Rating: 
Summary: Teaches Traditional Reformed Views on Lord's Supper
Review: Letham takes 64 brief pages to lay out the traditional reformed views on the Lord's Supper both in theory and in practice. Unfortunately only 17 pages of that attempts to make a Biblical case for the supper and the way in which he asserts it should be practiced. There are four chapters with an introduction and an epilogue:1. Biblical Foundations of the Supper
2. The Lord's Supper in Church History
3. The Lord's Supper in Reformed Theolgoy
4. The Lord's Supper in Practice Beginning with the proposition that the Lord's Supper is not a modified Passover meal at all but is instead looking back to Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and Israel's elders on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24:1-1, Letham sets out to describe what does and does not happen at the Lord's supper. Both Biblically and traditionally (citing much from classic treatises, catechisms, and confessionals) Letham disputes Rome's view of Christ's physical presence through transubstantiation and Luther's view of the same through consubstantiation. He argues for a very real spiritual presence and communion taking place through Lord's Supper, making communion much more than the simple "remembrance" of most evangelicals. It is after this point (after the second chapter) that the Bible begins to play a very minimal role in the work. Chapter three's goal is to expound the views of the Lord's Supper as taken by (1) Calvin and (2) The Westminster Standards. Then Chapter four tells how the Eucharist has traditionally been taken: administered often by an ordained minister from a single loaf and a single cup, using wine and any kind of bread, and administered to confessing, baptized believers. Unfortunately, I feel that the conclusions of this book come far to heavily from traditional views, seeming in many instance to set tradition almost on par with scripture (I am not at all implying that this was Letham's intent). Much of my mild disappointment with this book came from misplaced expectations. I was expecting a thoroughly Biblical exposition of the Lord's supper in doctrine and in practice. The purpose of this book seems to be, rather, a call for Presbyterians to return to their traditional roots, especially in regard to the sacrament of the Eucharist. Understanding this, I would recommend this book as a useful tool to simply and tersely summarize a biblical and the traditional reformed view of the Lord's Supper.
Rating:
Summary: in broken bread
Review: Robert Letham's book is a reasonably good short introduction to Reformed eucharistic theology, only 75 pages and with fairly large print, making it accessible to the educated layperson not only in content, but also in format. He ranges through many of the typical topics: New Testament terminology, Passover, Jesus' bread of life discourse (John 6), historic views regarding the real presence of Christ and related issues, questions of practice and frequency, and the eschatology of the Supper.
There is much here that is good and edifying and needs to be heard by the evangelical church. Letham begins by pointing out the degree to which the historic Reformed understanding of the Lord's Supper has be marginalized, especially in the American context, and even by great defenders of Reformed orthodoxy such as Charles Hodge. With regard to the dispute between Hodge and John Williamson Nevin, Letham happily admits that the "verdict of history has been that Nevin was right and that Hodge had failed to grasp his own theological tradition" (p. 2). Thus, as he notes later, Reformed evangelicals need to recover a biblical understanding of the eucharist as "central to the gospel" (13).
Letham goes on to ably defend the historic and Reformed understanding of John 6 as having at least some important reference to the eucharist. Among other things, Letham notes that from the standpoint of John as the Gospel-writer and of his audience, the eucharistic overtones would have been unmistakable. After all, Jesus' miracle in John 6 is described in terms of the eucharistic action-he took bread, gave thanks, and distributed it (Jn 6:11).
The fact that the Supper had not yet been instituted does not count against Jesus' speaking of it here (especially in the context of John's Gospel) since Jesus repeatedly speaks of things that would only make full sense after his death and resurrection (e.g., the need to receive the Spirit, Jn 7:37-39). I would add that Jesus' action in John 6 occurs against the backdrop of the Passover (v. 4) and Israel's meals in the wilderness (v. 32), just as the institution of the Lord's Supper does, though, oddly Letham seems to want to downplay any connection between the Passover and eucharist (more on that below).
John 6, then, can provide us with an important understanding of the Lord's Supper, Letham notes, as a means by which we truly feed upon the body and blood of Jesus, through faith, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through this eucharistic feasting "we are introduced into the living fellowship of the Triune God" and by means of it "we receive eternal life" (14-15). There is no baptistic memorialism here!
After chapter two's historical survey, Letham spends the third chapter giving a useful summary of the views of Calvin and the Westminster Standards as illustrating the biblical doctrine he has already unfolded. His analysis of the Westminster Standards is particularly helpful for those who seek ordination in one of those bodies that requires subscription to the Standards, especially given to what degree the actual teaching of the Confession is often neglected.
In the fourth chapter, Letham moves quickly though several questions of practice, some of which he had touched upon already. He argues that the use of a single loaf and a single cup is the most appropriate way of administering the Supper, noting that for Presbyterians to do otherwise is actually a violation of Confessional standards. Moreover, he urges us to throw off our capitulation to the 19th century temperance movement and put real wine back into the cup, thereby conveying "the intoxicating nature of the gospel" (53).
Regarding the use of leavened or unleavened bread, he argues that the Scriptures leave this matter as open as whether we use burgundy or port and I find his argument convincing. He ends the chapter looking at the question of the frequency of communion and, while he does not think churches should be required to celebrate the Supper with any particular frequency, it is clear that he thinks the biblical example and impulse of the Reformation strongly weigh in favor of weekly communion.
The epilogue provides a brief devotional meditation upon the Supper as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in which we already have begun to participate by faith and through the Spirit who unites us with the worship of the angels.
Despite all there is to recommend in Letham's treatment of the Supper, there are several areas in which I found his comments puzzling, overly-narrow in their understanding, or simply mistaken. First, there is his puzzling attempt to distance the Lord's Supper from Passover. Letham points to discontinuites between the practice of the Supper and that of the Passover seder, the probability that Jesus shared his last meal with his disciples the night before the actual Passover (Jn 18:28), and the idea that the Supper is more clearly connected to the covenant meal on Mt. Sinai in Ex 24 than it is with the Passover festival.
I think, however, that Letham fails to make his case. The fact that the Lord's Supper does not resemble the Passover seder in its precise form does not indicate that there is no deep connection between them. The eucharist fulfills all Old Covenant sacramental meals from the trees in the Garden and the bread and wine of Melchizedek to the sacrificial system of Leviticus and the great feasts of Israel (an observation that is noticably absent from Letham's account). The Passover connection is one of many, but it is not absent, though I'm not entirely sure it is helpful to try to identify the eucharist with one Old Covenant meal or event as somehow more relevant than others. Nonetheless, even if Jesus did not share his meal with his disciples on the actual feast of Passover, it cannot be doubted that Jesus understood what he was doing with them as a Passover meal (e.g., Lk 22:8, 15).
Besides, the establishment of the covenant with Israel on Sinai, including the elders eating with Yahweh and the blood of the covenant sprinkled upon the people (Ex 24), was part of the meaning of Passover. In the first century, Passover was a celebration and commemoration of God's having delivered his people from Egypt for the purpose of establishing his covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. It also served to renew that covenant in the present and anticipate God's final consummation of that covenant in a future restoration. All of that is caught up into the meaning of Jesus' Last Supper as he goes to the cross to accomplish all that Passover represented: deliverance, renewal, and restoration.
Second, I find Letham's historical overview of the Supper also to be a bit puzzling. To term "transubstantiation" and "consubstantiation" as modes of "physical presence" seems misleading at best, even if that is how those views may have been popularly understood by those whose churches held to them. But Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic theologians are very clear that the presence of Christ in the eucharist is a different mode of presence from what I believe we would ordinarily think of as "physical."
I also find it odd that Letham traces transubstantiation back to the earliest centuries of the church when it is far from clear that the varied views of the Fathers really would count as a belief in some kind of "corporal" presence of Christ, even if their views proved an impetus to later developments. Additionally, aligning the notion of "eucharistic sacrifice" in the writings of the Fathers with a belief in Christ's corporal presence not only misconstrues the patristic understandings of that presence, but also what many of the Fathers meant by that "sacrifice" (see de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum for elaboration).
As for Lutheran views, whatever we may think of the notion of the ubiquity of Christ's body (which isn't necessitated by Lutheran doctrine in any case), the Formula of Concord is quite clear that communion with the body and blood of the Lord in the eucharist is not to be understood in a carnal or corporal manner, an error they term "Capernaic" after the misunderstanding of the Jews in John 6. Rather, the Lutheran standards insist, the mode of Christ's presence is a "celestial" one.
Third, Letham summarizes the eucharist in three aspects: [a] a memorial, [b] a proclamation of the gospel, and [c] a participation in the body and blood of the Lord (pp. 6-7). Throughout the book, however, he concentrates on explicating [c] and seemingly treats [a] and [b] as if they were uncontroversial and agreed upon. But this seems to me to be an overly-narrow understanding of what it means for the Supper to be a "memorial" and a "proclamation."
What is usually meant by a "memorial" in evangelical circles is an individual and subjective remembering of Jesus and his work, and that is the understanding that Letham seems to assume. But it is not clear that this is the primary intent of what Jesus established since, in the Scriptures, a "memorial" is not so much a subjective remembering but an objective commemoration before the face of God and people (as Jeremias and Thurian have shown). Arguably, it is such a notion of an objective memorial that the Westminster Confession has in mind when it speaks of the Supper as "a commemoration of that one offering up" of Christ (29.7).
On this understanding, the action of the eucharist is one by which the people of God make remembrance of Christ's one sacrifice and do so before the face of the Father himself, confessing thereby that Christ alone is our propitiation and life, and pleading the promises held forth in him. This view is standard among Reformed divines as diverse as Perkins, du Molin, de Mornay, Turretin, and Polanus. Richard Baxter, for example, writes that the Supper is a means by which the church, "might show the Father that sacrifice, made once for sin, in which they trust, and for which it is that they expect all the acceptance of their persons with God, and hope for audience, when they beg for mercy, and offer up prayer or praises to him" (The Christian Directory II.xxiv. Direction II.ii).
If this is what Jesus meant by establishing the Supper as a "memorial," then we may also ask if this is the manner in which the Supper "proclaims the Lord's death" and if God is a primary audience for that proclamation.
Fourth, Letham needs to take greater account of the ecclesial context of the Supper as something that thoroughly informs how we think about the Supper as a memorial, as a proclamation of the Lord's death, and as communion with Christ. While he does note that we have "communion with Christ, and at the same time and as a direct corollary, communion with the body of Christ" (p. 39), he does not trace out the profound implications of this insight, even if he does speak against American evangelical individualism.
So, for instance, we might argue that the Supper functions as a commemoration of Jesus' death not merely in its ritual action (as Letham suggests, 50), but particularly as the action of a gathered people who proclaim that death precisely by eating and drinking together-forgiven and forgiving, reconciled to God and to one another, in unity and love (see Leithart's article in WTJ 59). Likewise, the presence of Christ and our receiving his body and blood might also be placed in the context of the ecclesial body, Christus totus.
Fifth, I simply note my belief that Letham is mistaken in his understanding of those who advocate -paedocommunion. While paedocommunion certainly goes against the tide of certain traditions within Reformed Protestantism, there are weighty biblical arguments in favor of it, none of which Letham engages even superficially. His dismissal of it is very strangely tied to his attempt to align it with a belief in either transubstantiation or baptistic memorialism. The irony, of course, is that neither of the major traditions that hold these views actually supports paedocommunion.
Letham also seems unaware that the same arguments by which Reformed theology has always deflected the Baptist requirement for public repentance and profession of faith as prerequisite for baptism might equally be deployed against his requirement for explicit repentance, faith, and self-examination as qualifications for communion. I would suggest, in fact, we should take the requirement of 1 Corinthians 11 for self-examination very seriously. But in context the requirement is that we examine ourselves to determine if we are truly discerning the Body of the Lord (1 Cor 11:28-29), which includes whether or not we are creating unnecessary divisions within the ecclesial Body that gathers around the table (1 Cor 1:11-13; 11:18-22). If we continue to exclude baptized children from that table, however, are we not perhaps the ones in need of self-examination?
In conclusion, whatever the weaknesses of Letham's book-and they are largely ones of omission-he has provided the evangelical and Reformed church a much needed wake-up call. The holy eucharist has too long been relegated to the sidelines of our spirituality, piety, and worship. My hope is that Letham's clear and encouraging tract will bring about the kind of sacramental revival for which the Reformers worked so hard.
Rating:
Summary: Succinctly argued and clearly written
Review: This attractively presented little booklet comes as a helpful introduction to a neglected topic. An attempt to place the doctrine of the Lord's Supper before the mind's of God's people, its succinctly argued and clearly written style should make it accessible to just about every member of the Christian community. Though by no means exhaustive, yet this little work is surprisingly comprehensive for its size. The Supper's biblical foundations are supplied from the Synoptic Gospels, John, and the book of Revelation. Competing theological formulations are discussed in connection with the development of the Eucharist in church history. The elements of the Lord's Supper, together with the question of paedo-communion and the frequency with which Communion ought to be celebrated are all treated in a broad chapter on the Lord's Supper in practice. Finally, an epilogue briefly touching on the eschatological implications of the Supper rounds out this extremely useful volume.
Advocates of paedo-communion may well want to debate the author's statement that giving Communion to infants is presciently opposed in the Westminster Larger Catechism, as they will his conclusion that such a practice fits best with transubstantiation and memorialism. Temperance groups could conceivably want to challenge the use of wine in the Eucharist and this author's exuberant espousal of this. And I can imagine any number of recent commentators wanting to question the relation of Jesus' "Bread of life" discourse in John chapter six with the Lord's Supper. But I cannot see anyone in the Reformed tradition (the audience this booklet was written for) not appreciating Robert Letham's work or commending it as a means of invoking a higher regard for the Lord's Supper.
Pastors wanting to awaken in their congregations a greater sense of the significance of the Lord's Supper will want to make numbers of this booklet available to parishioners, or utilize it themselves in preaching on this sacrament. Church education officers looking for new material for adult Sunday school classes or for a text to cover the Lord's Supper in the context of a new member's class, will also want to obtain and make use of this work. A fine book that anyone can read with profit, I suspect it will keep many from seeing the Lord's Supper as an "optional extra" ever again!
<< 1 >>
|
