I have lately been thinking about the Eucharist. I affirm a broadly Zwinglian or memorialist account of the Eucharist according to which the Lord’s Supper is a ritual reenactment and personal appropriation of the death of Christ in atonement for the sins of the whole world. …

The claim is often made that Christian theology has affirmed the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharist from its very beginnings. I hold a contrary opinion. I think that the doctrine of the “Real Presence” is only one possible development out…

In this brief post, I would like to explain my own view of the Eucharist and to respond to common misconceptions that people often have about it. What is the Eucharist? In my opinion, the Eucharistic meal which Christians (should) celebrate when they gather together as a body on Sundays and other days is…

Christ tells Peter: Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven (Matt 16:19). The talk of “binding and loosing” is commonly connected to the Pharisees and their presumed authority as rabbis. Assuming one opts for…

There is another passage in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch that many people take to show that he had a very robust understanding of the real corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is from his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 6, 2: Now note well those who hold…

Many times, apologists for Roman Catholicism will cite passages from various Fathers of the Church in order to prove that the earliest Christians believed in the doctrines taught by the Roman Catholic Church. But in at least some cases, these earliest fathers are misquoted. For example, consider the following passage…

On the one hand, the Roman Catholic Church teaches in Dei Verbum that the living teaching office of the Church is “not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord…

When we think and discourse, we are always thinking and discoursing about something or other. The truth of our thought and speech is a matter of their conformity to their objects. As Aristotle said, to speak truly is to say of what is that it is and of what is…

One of the most important controversies of the first generation of the Church was that of the relation between Gentile converts and Judaism. Did the Gentiles who believed in Christ have to be circumcised and take up the Law of Moses, or not? The apostles and the majority of the…