The Eucharistic Inheritance

An Eastern Orthodox Eucharist 

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

Christians Inherited the Temple and the Priesthood 

Very early on in the substratum of the Christian tradition, Christ came to be identified with the role of the High Priest. The universal scheme of the Book of Hebrews is to show the fulfilling and the continuing of the Hebrew Covenant in Heaven and on Earth, with Christ as both sacrifice and priest, a “Priest After the Order of Melchizedek.” (Genesis 14:18-20 and Hebrews 5:6) Only when Christ’s role in the heavenly temple worship was established could the liturgical continuation of the tradition that God revealed to Moses occur within the “newness” that Christianity brought to the world, bringing over the old categories with new and clarified definitions. Thus, the Church could see Christ’s Words of Institution on earth as a reflection of His Heavenly Work of Redemption, and by tying both of these together through the agency of the Holy Spirit, see the Eucharist as an entrance into a heavenly reality. The “Symbolon” was therefore a “bringing together” of the realities, the true meaning of the word, and not a “figure standing for the absence of something else.” (Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “The Eucharist”, p. 39)

With this paradigm established as the true meaning of the Lord’s Supper, it followed that Bishops and Presbyters were functioning in the role of Christ in their service of the Church and in their celebration at the Holy Table, and were thereby serving as new priests, as “Priests after the Order of Melchizedek”! This was the process that we see occurring very early on, in both the theological explanations of Christ’s work as sacrifice within the Pauline epistles, and also within the New Testamental realization of the Jewish Temple worship reflecting a heavenly reality through the experience of the Revelation of St. John, Hebrews, and the visions that the Early Church reported in such works as the Shepherd of Hermas. This realization of the continuity of the Temple and of the Priesthood, proven in the institution of the Lord’s Supper itself (“this do in anamnesis of me”), provided the Church with the rationale behind its sacramental self-concept – an awe and awareness that its celebration of Christ’s sacrifice had truly cosmic qualities, and that Christ’s claims to Presence within the Bread and Wine were thus to be believed and held as self-evident truth. When St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp refer to the Eucharist, they speak of it in a sacramental light just a few years after the passing of the Apostles. It was not a “corruption” of the biblical Jewish worldview by mysteriological paganism due to Constantine’s conversion and the establishment of a “State Church,” but the ancient foundation of the Church’s own Faith. None of this would have been possible without the sense that the Jewish Temple Worship and the Sacrifice that God Himself had instituted with Adam, Abraham, and Moses, had passed directly into the work of Christ, and was now made available through the broken bread and the uplifted cup of Holy Communion, the “New Covenant” of Christ’s Blood. 

Christians Inherited the Rabbinical Covenantal Meal 

The Rabbinic Tradition had a form of “fellowship meal” focused on the encouragement and resolution of disciples upon a full keeping of the Law, called the “Haburah,” a meal that had special meaning as it brought together the ritual keeping of the Law as it was passed down from Moses, and the Jewish Calendar of Feast Days. This view of the origin of the Lord’s Supper was expounded in “The Shape of the Liturgy” by Dom Gregory Dix, based upon the Jewish records of the Mishnah’s Berakoth (Jerome Kodell, “The Eucharist in the New Testament”, p. 39). This theory would see Christ’s practice of Eucharistic observance with his Apostles as founded upon a pre-existent tradition within Rabbinic Judaism, which was the commemoration of the Law by independent, travelling Rabbis within the context of a meal with their disciples. It thereby extends the Rabbinic practice directly into the Early Church and insists on its practice as a part of the innate self-recognition and continuation of Jewish roots within the Church. 

This Rabbinic view, however, was extensively challenged by the widely received theories of Joachim Jeremias in “The Eucharistic Words of Jesus”, which focuses on the Synoptic Gospel’s record of the Last Supper as already reflecting a contemporary Eucharistic usage from the Early Church that had broken into different local usages by the time of the writing of the Gospels. (IBID, p. 23) The benediction of prayers over wine and bread as a form of “Anamnesis” was a common feature within the Passover, and its inclusion was based upon one of need, and not upon the remembrance of a Rabbinic practice; the early Eucharist also included aspects of the “Todah”, the “thank-offering” of blessed bread, wine, and a sacrificial animal, which was eaten to partake of the sacrifice and participate in the Covenant of God. Kodell write’s in his “The Eucharist in the New Testament”, “With the Todah as pattern, the Lord’s Supper is the thank offering of the Risen Lord in which we participate. The saving death of Jesus is remembered, and salvation is proclaimed in the raising of the “cup of salvation” (Ps 116:14). The old covenant was established in a blood ceremony and so was the second. To share the meal of the sacrificial animal and the bread-offering renewed one’s union with the God of the Covenant. To share the bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper renews ones share in the new covenant in Christ.” (IBID, p. 50) This view insists that the Eucharist was the synthesis of all of the blessings and ritual meals within the Jewish Tradition, and thus, stands above them and represents the entire Jewish experience of the Covenant. 

Christians Inherited an Anathema from Judaism that made Continued Temple Worship Impossible

The Early Church continued with common worship in the Temple and an attempt to subsidize the synagogue with a household Eucharist, the “Breaking of Bread” that the Book of Acts depicts as going on daily from house to house. (Acts 2:42) Within the Book of Acts, cultural difficulties between the Hellenized Jews and the Rabbinic Jews were already visible, straining the fabric of the Early Church. All of the great controversies occurred around this central contradiction between James and Peter, Paul and Timothy. The final break came with the universalization of the Christian faith for Gentiles under St. Paul and the destruction of Jerusalem in 66AD, but we know that “Judaizers” continued to teach the Christian message in a strictly Jewish context for some time after this era, both from St. Paul’s own writing and those from St. Jerome’s account of the “Ebionites”. These are substantiated by various other references in the “Historia Ecclesiasticus” by Eusebius of Caesarea. 

The greatest single instance that determined the full context of the split, however, was not a Christian rejection of Jewish worship, but by the Rabbinic Council of Jamnia in 90AD, in which Christians were anathematized as heretics and disallowed from the gathering of the Synagogue. The curses on Christians that were formulated in this council still resound in Orthodox Jewish Synagogues on Hebrew holy days until this day. This final expulsion forced the Christians to create their own system of worship, based off of the Temple, Synagogue, and the House Eucharist. The continued similarities and cultural interrelation of these two groups is obvious in the discovery of the church and synagogue of Dos Europos (covered in a sand storm in the late 3rd century), in which we have some of the best archeological evidence of the use of icons within early churches, but also, surprisingly, within Jewish synagogues as well! 

Christians Inherited and Combined the Liturgies of the Synagogue and the Temple 

The Christians inherited a Eucharistic liturgy that reflected all aspects of the Jewish Tradition. The transition from Synagogue to Church is seen in the immediate appearance of the three-part liturgy that reflects all aspects of Jewish liturgical features in a Gentile context. This is clearly illustrated in the Didache’s liturgical structure, in the Liturgy of St. James, and the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, and all point to the practice of the Synagogue transferred into the “Liturgy of the Word” and the psalmody of the Temple and the concept of Temple Sacrifice transferred both to Matins (Morning Prayer) and the “Liturgy of the Eucharist”, thus preserving the Jewish practice by the earliest Christian communities by the creation of a new “Liturgy of Time” (“Introduction to Liturgical Theology”, p. 69). This liturgical concept can be seen as both an eschatological completion of creation, understood to be outside of time in its communion with heavenly realities and a fulfillment of the purpose of creation, and also the process of the redemption of time and the created order, just as the Jewish liturgy had always been focused on time as a lineal process or rectification with God, leading the world up to the end of all things. It was therefore a part, a “foretaste”, of the consummation and that which leads up to the final consummation, the Last Day and the transformation of the created order by the presence of Christ’s Incarnate glory in the Eighth Day, the unending age of the Kingdom! Therefore, the biblical narratives of the Old Testament found in Creation, Fall, Covenant, and Peoplehood was transferred into the increasingly Gentile constituency of the Church. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann says, in his seminal understanding of the origins of the liturgy, “…Comparative study of early Christian worship and the liturgical forms of Judaism, although it is by no means finished, leaves no doubt about the formal dependence of the former upon the later… The newness of Christianity could not be felt and experienced in any other way than in relation to the old, to that which it was fulfilling and consummating, to that which it was renewing.” (IBID, p. 55 & 60) 

Christians Brought Together the Old and the New Covenants, Maintaining and Preserving Both, and Ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven 

Thus, gathered around Holy Communion, the Church formed its liturgies, its patterns of prayer, and became the “New Israel,” a holy people of prayer that calls all to salvation through the Work of Christ and the Power of the Holy Spirit. The Church redeems the physical world by making ourselves and the whole creation a part of Jesus Christ, renewing time by uniting it to a cycle that centers around the celebration of the Eucharist, and a continual remembrance of the Life of Christ in the Church - Christ’s Teaching, Example, Ministry and Miracles, the Mission of the Apostles, and the Reflection of God’s holiness and glory present in the lives of His Saints. Holy Communion ties everything together with the Gospel, and creates an engine of grace that focuses everyone on the process of sanctification, and promises a full completion of God’s work of renewal, reconciliation and restoration at the Second Coming of Christ.