Book Review: Essays on the Lord's Supper by Cullmann & Leenhardt

Introduction: Two Scholars, One Controversy

One of the most perplexing issues facing any Christian today is how to view the taking of the Lord's Supper. The ancient images of wine, bread, and physical and spiritual sacrifice have undergone extensive debate and reinterpretation throughout all of Christianity. These images, despite the controversy they have inspired, remain central to Christian ritual, communal life, and doctrine. Their controversial nature has spanned from the doctrine of transubstantiation established in the early Catholic Church to the more flexible and metaphorical definitions found in some of today's Christian communities.

In their book Essays on the Lord's Supper, Oscar Cullmann and Franz Jehan Leenhardt offer their own faith perspectives on the issue. Their duality of perspective is particularly instructive — not simply from a theological point of view, but because Oscar Cullmann was a professor of Christianity in France at the Sorbonne, while Franz Jehan Leenhardt was a professor of Theology at the University of Geneva. Their perspective is thus multinational, although both come from the same European Reformed traditions of worship.

The approach of these two authors is therefore complementary yet distinct. It is perhaps because there is no single "correct" way to interpret the Lord's Supper that these authors chose the format of two complementary essays. Rather than offering a singular, linear explanation, they examine the various ways of understanding the nature and centrality of this ritual — stressing both its significance and the importance of understanding the Lord's Supper as part of the full journey of Christ on earth, rather than simply a time to dwell upon the sacrificial nature of Christ's death upon the cross.

Cullmann's Resurrection-Centered Theology

Oscar Cullmann's essay in this volume is entitled "The Breaking of Bread and the Resurrection Appearances." Cullmann, now considered one of the great Reformed theologians of his day, wrote at the time of the book's original publication in the 1950s that "the joy manifested by the early Christians during the 'breaking of bread' has its source, not in the fact that the assembled disciples eat the body and drink the blood of their crucified Master, but in the consciousness they have of eating with the Risen Christ, really present in their midst, as he was on Easter Day" (Cullmann, 16). Cullmann's stated view is thus that the significance of the Lord's Supper lies not in the ritual accoutrements of the Eucharist — not even in the blessing of the wine by an ordained minister — but in the communal nature of the "breaking of bread" as practiced in the early Christian community, a communality of worship that continues to exist in Christian worship today.

This position is in keeping with traditional Protestant contrasts with the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. That doctrine stresses the dual existence of the Host as a material object that becomes, through the blessing of a priest as Christ's representative on earth, the actual body of Christ. Cullmann's view also aligns with the broader emphasis in contemporary Protestant scholarship over the past century — that Christ's resurrection, as opposed to Christ's death on the cross alone, must be restored to its prominent place at the center of the Christian gospel. Cullmann additionally argues that placing excessive emphasis on eating the body and drinking the wine, rather than on a sense of unity with Christ as a risen and resurrected figure, does a disservice to the entire narrative of the Gospels viewed holistically, particularly the Gospel of John, where the Word rather than the body is first referenced.

Over the course of his essay, Cullmann chronicles how, in his view, early Christianity rendered the resurrection — rather than Christ's death or the ritual implements of the Lord's Supper — as the central focus of communal worship. This is one reason, he argues, why Sunday rather than Friday became the holy day of the Christian calendar. Resurrection day, rather than the enactment of the Passion, is what drew the community together. Cullmann's essay is particularly instructive to read during the Easter season, as it forces the Christian reader to contrast the nature of Good Friday — purportedly the saddest day of the Christian year — with that of Resurrection Sunday, the happiest and holiest, the day of Christian spiritual renewal.

Given this temporal contrast, why make the death of Christ so spiritually central, to the exclusion of the resurrection, in Christian doctrine, history, text, and theology? In fact, given the Jewish roots of Christianity, there is evidence that early Christian adherents may have seen Sunday worship not as replacing the Jewish Sabbath on Friday and Saturday, but as adding to the structure of the worship calendar, with modification.

Cullmann admits that such ideas about the significance of Christ's new life may seem strange to contemporary Christian readers, given how powerfully the images of the Mass have conditioned Christians to see Christ's death as central to the Lord's Supper. Within his own belief structure, however, Cullmann considers the question of why Christ had to die to be more challenging, difficult, and yes, sadder than the beauty and glory of the resurrection. Only with the resurrection did Christ's disciples gain understanding of the meaning of his death. Before the resurrection, even Peter denied Christ and then mourned his passing without full understanding. Thomas doubts Christ until the very last moment of touching the Lord's body. Understanding comes only after the full Christian journey has been realized — not simply through death, Cullmann writes.