Hacker News Reader

Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

Is that last part really a Christian (in a wide sense) thing or just a Catholic thing? I definitely hear it at Catholic Mass but I have not experienced it at most protestant Eucharist ceremonies.

View on HN

There may be some overlap in some denominations I'm not aware of, but as far as the Eucharist is concerned, it's largely only a Catholic thing. In Catholicism, the first Eucharist has a particular significance as Christ/the Spirit dwelling within you. In Protestantism, it's only an ordinance, so is only a representation/ritual/tradition. There is often a component of confessing sins privately before partaking though, but the "Lord's Supper" (as it's called by most protestant denominations) is not a means of grace or sacrament in most protestant denominations. By "means of grace", I mean that taking the Lord's Supper does not lead to salvation or impart God's grace or anything else. It's purely symbolic in probably 95% of Protestantism. In the other 5% of orthodox Protestantism, it's not just symbolic, but is not a means of salvation/grace. In Catholicism (to my understanding of not being Catholic but studying it in a protestant seminary), it is considered a means of grace and imparts some form or measure of grace for salvation.

In all of Christianity though, there is an understanding that our sin is a failure to live up to God's holiness and standards, and that in Protestantism one of the pillars (5 solas) is that it is only through his grace, mercy, and love for us that Jesus came to die, and that our salvation is due to his grace alone and not something individually inherent in ourselves that makes us worthy.

I'm hedging all of that with the fact that there's a lot of religions/denominations/cults that call themselves "Christian", and many believe very different things.

Great summary! It's not actually talked about much, and not even well understood by many Protestants themselves, but it actually is a sacrament in most major Protestant traditions I'm familiar with (Reformed[1], Lutheran[2], Anglican, Methodist[4]). Zwingli was the only major reformer I know of to take purely memorialist stance, while Luther, Calvin, and Wesley all professed some degree of presence (spritual presence or real presence) in the eucharist.

Some non-reformed baptists and non-denominationals are memorialist, but historically most protestant churches do consider it a sacrament.

[1] https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/ccc/westminster/of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_Lutheranism [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_eucharistic_theology [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharistic_theology#Methodist...

Thanks for correcting me, I was completely off on that! I realized after your post that I was thinking of transubstantiation instead of sacrament/ordinance. I'm Baptist and both in the 1689 confession [1] and the baptist faith and message 2000 [2] it's considered an ordinance, so most southern baptist churches to my knowledge consider it an ordinance, even those that are reformed-leaning. There are also other non-mainline denominations, probably mostly non-reformed, where it's usually an ordinance, such as Pentecostalism.

My confusion was that I was equating transubstantiation with it being a sacrament...so to my knowledge only Anglicans have preserved full transubstantiation (with others having some mixture of Christ being present)

[1] https://www.arbca.com/1689-chapter30 [2] https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/#vii

I think it's safe to say that in almost all protestant denominations, the Eucharist is not a means of salvation though. I would hope that all would say salvation is through grace alone through faith alone. Let me know if you disagree though, I'd be curious of exceptions.

No worries, it was something I actually had to research recently myself after seeing the results of a poll of users' beliefs on /r/reformed where people were asked about their own beliefs on eucharistic presence. I was raised methodist and attend a reformed (presby) church now, so I appreciate your perspective as as a Baptist as well! I don't exactly know the difference between an ordinance and sacrament (and the WCF seems to refer to it as both), so I'll check out those links for sure.

Definitely agree that most every Protestant church would agree that it's not a means of salvation, but I do think most would call it a means of grace though.

I've never been to a protestant church where the message was that we were "worthy" of the cross. Everything has always been predicated on grace which is necessarily unmerited.

Yeah don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting that any somewhat mainstream protestant church emphasizes that its followers are worthy. I'm just wondering about literally that line being said before they eat the bread and drink the wine.

The theology of the eucharist/communion is definitely different in protestant churches.

I've never been to a protestant church where they believe you receive a sort of saving grace from consuming the host - though there is agreement it is pleasing to God to do it.

In the Catholic church they definitely believe you receive some sort of grace. What "kind" of grace is something I still haven't wrapped my head around.

As someone who was a practicing catholic for over half my life, its still not exactly clear.

In terms of the specific wording, most anglophone churches that use a historic liturgy have some form of this prayer (it comes from Matthew's gospel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_of_Humble_Access

Reply on news.ycombinator.com