A Wesleyan Theology Of The Lord's Supper

To John Wesley, the Lord's Supper was a powerful sacrament. He believed that even repentant unbelievers could take of the bread and cup and find salvation. Above all, Communion was a means of santification by which believers are transformed into the image of Christ.

Wesley's Understanding of the Eucharist In his eucharistic thought, John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of Methodism, was consciously and faithfully Anglican. As such, in his Articles of Religion for the Methodists, he took over verbatim the twenty-eighth article of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1563), which rejected transubstantiation to be a senseless opinion hurtful to piety (Works of John Wesley 7:64; 9:278). He was just as strongly opposed to Luther's view of consubstantiation. He insisted that Christ is bodily present in heaven and not on the Table in either the Catholic or Lutheran sense. However, Wesley did believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, putting him in opposition to Zwingli's memorialist view as well. Much of the eucharistic teaching of John and Charles Wesley is found in the volume of Hymns on the Lord's Supper, which they first published in 1745. As a preface to the hymnbook, Wesley printed an abridgment of Daniel Brevint's Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, the structure of which forms the outline for the grouping of the hymns under three categories: a memorial of Christ's past sufferings, a means of present graces, and a pledge of future glory. If the first sounds Zwinglian, the other two counter that impression. In spite of some memorialist language in Wesley, he does not conform to the Zwinglian model. The Lord's Supper is a real means of grace. At the Table, there is a real communion with the living Christ and a real reception of his body and blood, albeit in a spiritual—not physical—manner. In the sacrament, believers receive not only the sign of Christ's body, but along with the sign the thing signified—namely, all the benefits of his incarnation and passion. Wesley's view is one of "Spiritual Presence" closer to that of Calvin than to that of either Luther or Zwingli. This reflects his Anglican heritage, because Cranmer's eucharistic thought was arguably closer to Calvin's than to that of the other Continental Reformers. But Wesley's conception of spiritual presence differs somewhat from Calvin's. Whereas Calvin spoke of the presence of Christ's body in terms of power, mediated to us by the Holy Spirit (Institutes 4.17.24–33), Wesley stresses the presence of Christ in terms of his divinity—the whole Trinity being present in the Supper bestowing the benefits of Christ's redemptive act (see Hymns on the Lord's Supper, nos. 53 and 155). The Lord's Supper as a Converting Ordinance Wesley looked upon the Lord's Supper as a converting sacrament. An unconverted person could come to the Table with a repentant heart and find forgiveness. "Inasmuch as we come to his table, not to give him any thing, but to receive whatsoever he sees best for us, there is no previous preparation indispensably necessary, but a desire to receive whatsoever he pleases to give .… No fitness is required … but a sense of our state, of our utter sinfulness and helplessness" (Works 1:280). In such cases, the act of receiving the bread and the cup could be the very means of conversion, not merely something added to it. Although Wesley's followers have never practiced closed Communion in the sense of barring from Communion those from other denominations or theological persuasions, not all have been comfortable with their progenitor's belief that an unbeliever may be converted to Christ by coming to the Lord's Supper. But Wesley insists that "the Lord's Supper was ordained by God, to be a means of conveying to men either preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace, according to their several necessities" (Works 1:280). Thus, the Lord's Supper is a means of preventing grace to restrain them from sin, of justifying grace to show their sins forgiven, and of sanctifying grace to renew their souls in the image of God. Sanctification The idea of sanctifying grace lies at the heart of Wesley's eucharistic thought. It was in his emphasis on sanctification that Wesley made one of his most significant contributions to both Christian theology and Christian spirituality. In his sermon on "The Duty of Constant Communion," he says: "As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and the blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection" (Works 7:148). Sanctification, in its broadest sense, is the gracious lifelong process by which Christians are transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18) and conformed to his likeness (Rom. 8:29). Wesleyanism understands the Eucharist to be that means of grace, instituted by Jesus Christ, to which we are invited for repentance, for self-examination, for renewal, for spiritual sustenance, for thanksgiving, for fellowship, for anticipation of the heavenly kingdom, and for celebration in our pilgrimage toward perfection in the image of Christ. All these are involved in our sanctification, and all these are benefits available to us at the Table of the Lord.