Koinonia - Participation in the Body and Blood

The Text

The word behind "participation" is koinonia (koy-no-NEE-ah). It means sharing, fellowship, having something genuinely in common. It is the word you would use of two people who actually share a life together, rather than the word you would use of looking at a photograph of somebody who is not in the room.

Both clauses are rhetorical questions expecting yes. Paul is appealing to something that he assumes the Corinthians already grant.

Why the Context is Half the Argument

This verse is regularly quoted with the context stripped off, which weakens it considerably. Paul is in the middle of an argument about idol meals. The conclusion he is driving toward is this:

He needs an analogy strong enough to make attendance at a pagan temple meal unthinkable, and the analogy he reaches for is the Lord's Table. That only works if something genuinely occurs at both tables.

A memorial does not create a conflict of allegiance. If the Supper were purely a mental exercise in recollection, a Corinthian could perfectly well recollect the cross on Sunday and eat at Serapis' table on Tuesday, since neither act would put him in contact with anything. Paul's argument is assuming contact. That is why the verse carries the weight it does.

The Benefits Reading at Its Strongest

The strongest deflationary reading is Thomas Schreiner's, who takes koinonia to denote "the benefits of Christ's blood": "Those who drink of the cup are partaking of the benefits of Christ's death on their behalf. Similarly, those who consume the broken bread share in the benefits of Christ's body" (Schreiner, 2001). He also warns, rightly, against magical readings: "No magical benefit accrued to the Israelites simply because they ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink. Nor should the Corinthians think that participating in the Lord's Supper shields them from demonic powers. The Lord's table does convey a benefit, but only for those who are devoted to the Lord."

Wayne Grudem reads the phrase the same way, glossing it as "apparently meaning a sharing in the benefits of Christ's body and blood given for us." But he draws a firmer conclusion than Schreiner does about what follows from it, and his warning is aimed at his own side:

We must be careful here, as with baptism, to avoid the mistake of overreacting to Roman Catholic teaching and maintaining that the Lord's Supper is merely symbolic and not a means of grace.
(Grudem, 2020)

His summary is that the Supper "is not simply an ordinary meal among human beings, it is a fellowship with Christ, in his presence and at his table," and that "there is a spiritual union among believers and with the Lord that is strengthened and solidified at the Lord's Supper, and it is not to be taken lightly."

Where the Benefits Reading Stops short

Analysing the relationship between the elements and the body and blood, Ridderbos insists that it "does not rest… on the physical constitution of the elements of the Supper, but arises from the nature of the fellowship of the Supper as a sacrificial meal."

He who enters into communion with the thing also enters into communion with the person. For the Crucified One is the Living One.
(Ridderbos, 1975)

Benefits are not detachable from the person who secured them. You cannot receive Christ's benefits while Christ Himself stays in the next room, because the benefits are not a substance He dispenses at a distance. They are what union with Him produces.

The Spirit joins us to the person, and the benefits arrive because the person does.

Ferguson's Critique of Evangelical Minimalism

Sinclair Ferguson presses the same point with a charge aimed squarely at evangelicals. Reflecting on Calvin's realism about feeding on Christ, he notes that "the same could surely be said of the language of John 6:51-58 and, for that matter, of 1 Corinthians 10:16; we must be careful lest parity of reasoning would imply that discomfort with Calvin's language masks a discomfort with the language of Scripture itself" (Ferguson, 1996).

That is a serious accusation (whichI think it is correct). Much of the minimising of this meal is simply embarrassment. We are uncomfortable sounding Catholic, so we flatten Paul's vocabulary until it sounds safely Protestant.

But Paul chose koinonia. If the word makes us nervous, the problem is ours.

Verse 17 and the One Loaf

Fee flags verse 17 as something easy to miss: this is "the only interpretation of the bread as such in the NT."

Everywhere else the bread appears alongside the cup in the words of institution, where it refers to Christ's physical body given in death. Here Paul singles it out and draws a completely different conclusion, that those who eat of the one loaf "are now to understand themselves as one body, with all their old, thoroughly ungodly, distinctions, rich/poor, Jew/Gentile, free person/slave, absolutely set aside at the one table that unites them all" (Fee, 2014).

Bavinck "as out of many grains one meal is ground and one bread baked, and out of many berries, pressed together, one wine flows… so shall we all who by true faith are incorporated in Christ be altogether one body" (Bavinck, 2008, vol. 4).

Augustine had already turned it into a charge to the congregation, and it is still the best line anyone has landed on this verse: "One bread; what is this one bread? The one body which we, being many, are… Be what you can see, and receive what you are" (Augustine, Sermon 227, quoted in Allison, 2011).

This verse is also what makes 1 Corinthians 11v17-34 - Discerning the Body understandable. When Paul later says the Corinthians are eating and drinking "without discerning the body," he has already told them, here, that the loaf they share is what makes them one.

What Calvin Does with Verse 17

Calvin's application is the sharpest one I could find:

We shall benefit very much from the Sacrament if this thought is impressed and engraved upon our minds: that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time, injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do… that we ought to take the same care of our brethren's bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body.
(Calvin, quoted in Billings, 2018)

Where I Land

Four claims, in order of confidence.

1. Koinonia denotes genuine sharing, not recollection. The lexical range does not stretch to "think fondly about," and the rhetorical questions assume the Corinthians already agree.
2. The context requires it. Paul's argument against idol meals collapses unless something occurs at the Lord's Table that competes with what occurs at the other one.
3. The sharing is in the person, not merely the benefits. Ridderbos is right that the two cannot be separated, because the Crucified One is the Living One.
4. Verse 17 makes the meal irreducibly corporate. Whatever else Communion is, it is the thing that makes many people one body, which means a theology of the Supper that stops at "me and Jesus" has not finished reading the paragraph.

This is the strongest single verse in the case for real presence. Anyone holding that the Supper is bare symbol has to get past Paul's word choice first.

See also: Anamnesis - Remembrance and the Lord's Supper | Spiritual Presence | The Table and the Body - Unity, Discipline, and Mission

Sources

• Allison, G. R. (2011). Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine. Zondervan.
• Bavinck, H. (2008). Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (J. Bolt, Ed.; J. Vriend, Trans.). Baker Academic.
• Billings, J. T. (2018). Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord's Table. Eerdmans.
• Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Revised ed.). NICNT. Eerdmans.
• Ferguson, S. B. (1996). The Holy Spirit. Contours of Christian Theology. IVP.
• Grudem, W. A. (2020). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (2nd ed.). Zondervan.
• Ridderbos, H. (1975). Paul: An Outline of His Theology (J. R. de Witt, Trans.). Eerdmans.
• Schreiner, T. R. (2001). Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. IVP Academic.