Cornerstone Curriculum, Official Certification Edition

280 / CORNERSTONE CURRICULUM STUDENT WORKBOOK

2. Consubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Jesus without ceasing to be bread and wine. This is the view of the Lord’s Supper held by Lutheran churches. This view accepts the basic idea discussed above that the real body and blood of Jesus is present in the Lord’s Supper but has a different explanation of how they are present together. 3. The third view is the Reformed view. Presbyterian and Reformed churches teach that the body and blood of Christ are given to us in the Supper, not physically, but spiritually through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. This tradition would point out that in the John 6 passage that as Jesus teaches about eating his flesh, he goes on to emphasize this as a spiritual truth: John 6.60-63 – On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” In this sacrament Christ is present not bodily but spiritually. . . . His people receive him not with the mouth, but by faith; they do not receive his flesh and blood as material particles, but his body as broken and his blood as shed. The union thus signified . . . [is] a spiritual and mystical union due to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The [effectiveness] of this sacrament as a means of grace is not in the signs nor in the service, nor in the minister, nor in the word, but in the attending influence of the Holy Ghost.

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C hr i s t i an M i n i s t ry

~ Charles Hodge. Systematic Theology . Abridged edition. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992. pp. 496-498.

a. Col. 3.1