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The Mass and the Finality of Calvary

The argument in short

The eucharistic sacrifice question is separable from the presence question. A church can get the presence question right and still hand back what the Reformation recovered. Rome's modern formulation is careful: the Eucharist is a sacrifice because it re-presents Calvary, memorialises it, and applies its fruits. The refutation runs through Hebrews, and it turns on a posture. The Levitical priest stands, because his work is never finished. Christ sat down. There is a truth buried in the Catholic instinct that Protestants should keep, and the Wesleyan formulation preserves it exactly: the Supper is a showing forth of Christ's death, not an offering up of the elements.

Table of Contents

  1. #Separating the questions
  2. #The Catholic claim at its most careful
  3. #Hebrews and the seated priest
  4. #The pastoral consequence
  5. #How the drift happened
  6. #What is true in the Catholic instinct
  7. #Showing forth, not offering up
  8. #Table or altar
  9. #Sources

Separating the Questions

Two questions get run together in most Protestant treatments of the Mass, and they should not be. The first is whether Christ is present in the elements and how. That is Transubstantiation and The Ascension and the Presence of Christ.

The second is whether the rite is a sacrifice offered to God. A church could answer the first question correctly and still slide into the second error, which is what Schaff argues happened in the patristic period.

The Catholic Claim at Its Most Careful

The modern Roman formulation is more careful than the arguments against it usually allows. Usually the critiques from Protestants are little more than strawmen.

Allison records it: "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruits" (Allison, 2011). The claim is not that Christ is killed again. It is that the one sacrifice, being an act of the eternal Son, is made present in the rite so that its fruits are applied now.

Trent stated it as the same Christ who offered Himself on the cross as a bloody sacrifice "is offered again in the Mass as a bloodless sacrifice," described as truly propitiatory and offered for the living and for the dead in purgatory (Allison, 2011; Grudem, 2020, quoting the Catechism and Ott).

Two things are being claimed, then: that the rite is propitiatory, and that it is offered by a priest on behalf of the living and the dead. Both of these fail.

Hebrews and the Seated Priest

The word ἐφάπαξ (ephapax, eh-FAP-ax), "once for all" in Hebrews 10:12 qualifies the offering of Christ's body and "evokes the crucifixion as the climax of a life and ministry that perfectly displayed submission to the will of God," with the result that "his sacrifice requires no repetition" (Lane, 1991). The tense matters: the aorist "indicates here that the action is past and complete."

Lane draws out the contrast that is the argument's rhetorical heart, and it is a contrast in posture.

Hebrews 10:11-12 - ESV

11. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
12. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

The Levitical priest stands, because his work is never finished. Lane notes that the text stresses he ministers day after day, offering the same sacrifices repeatedly, "which can never remove sins utterly," and that "the cumulative effect of these phrases is a heightened impression of the futility that characterizes the ministry of the Levitical priests."

Christ sat down. "Even his posture declares the sharp difference between Christ and the Levitical priests. His unique sacrifice accomplished, 'he sat down at the right hand of God'… Jesus sits because his sacrifice requires no repetition" (Lane, 1991).

There is no chair in the tabernacle. That truth has a theological point: the priest's work was never done, so there was nowhere for him to sit. Then Hebrews flips it and puts a man on a throne.

Lane is careful to note that sitting does not mean inactivity. The session "puts Christ in a position where he may provide assistance to his people without having to offer sacrifices" (Lane, 1991). Our high priest is working. He is simply not sacrificing.

Allison attacks the underlying premise from a different angle. The Catholic notion that Christ's cross-work participates in divine eternality or atemporality, "so as to be made present now," has "no warrant whatsoever" (Allison, 2014). That is the key assumption of the whole re-presentation framework, and it is asserted rather than demonstrated.

The Pastoral Consequence

Grudem draws the consequence:

When we realize that Christ's sacrifice for our sins is finished and completed… it gives us great assurance that our sins are all paid for, and there remains no sacrifice yet to be paid. But the idea of a continuation of Christ's sacrifice every time the Mass is celebrated destroys our assurance that the payment has been made by Christ and accepted by God the Father.
(Grudem, 2020)

A sacrifice that has to keep being applied by a priest is a sacrifice you can be cut off from. That is the pastoral approach of the medieval system, and it is what the Reformation was actually about. Assurance is what ephapax is for.

How the Drift Happened

The ante-Nicene fathers conceived the Eucharist as a thank-offering of the church, "the congregation offering the consecrated elements of bread and wine, and in them itself, to God." Schaff calls this "in itself perfectly innocent," and it is. But he notes that it "readily leads to the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, as soon as the elements become identified with the body and blood of Christ, and the presence of the body comes to be materialistically taken."

The issue appears in Cyprian, in connection with a Judaising conception of the clerical priesthood: "Sacerdotium and sacrificium are with him correlative ideas" (Schaff, History, vol. III). Once you have a priest, you need something for him to offer.

Schaff's judgment on the end result is rough: "The sacramentum became entirely eclipsed by the sacrificium, and the sacrificium became grossly materialized, and was exalted at the expense of the sacrifice on the cross. The endless succession of necessary repetitions detracts from the sacrifice of Christ."

Nobody decided to demote Calvary. The church started with a thank-offering, then materialised the presence, then professionalised the priesthood, and four centuries later the Mass was a propitiatory sacrifice. Every step looked small.

What is True in the Catholic Instinct

Schaff also grants what is true in the Catholic instinct:

In a deep symbolical and ethical sense, Christ is offered to God the Father in every believing prayer, and above all in the holy Supper; i.e. as the sole ground of our reconciliation and acceptance. This is the deep truth which lies at the bottom of the Catholic mass, and gives it still such power over the religious mind.
(Schaff, History, vol. III)

There is something right about coming to the table and pleading Christ's finished work as the only ground on which you stand. That is not an error to be stamped out. It is an error only when the pleading becomes an offering, and the offering becomes propitiatory, and the propitiation requires a priest.

Showing Forth, not Offering up

The Wesleyan tradition preserves that truth without the Roman machinery. Dunning shows that Wesley rejected the Mass unconditionally, noting in his comment on Hebrews 10:15 that the one offering of Christ "renders all other expiatory sacrifices, and any repetition of His own, utterly needless." But Wesley retained sacrificial language for the Supper, borrowed from Daniel Brevint:

This Sacrifice, which by a real Oblation was not to be offered more than once, is by a Devout and Thankful Commemoration, to be offered up every Day. This is what the Apostle calls, To set forth the Death of the LORD.
(Brevint, quoted in Dunning, 1988)

Dunning's summary of the distinction is exactly the line to hold: "What is involved here is a 'showing forth' of the death of Christ and not an 'offering up' of the elements of bread and wine."

Wesley's version: "Unlike the Catholic view, where the priest offers up the propitiatory sacrifice to God in the Eucharist, for Wesley it is Christ who offers up himself" (Dunning, 1988).

This connects directly to Paul's own interpretation in 1 Corinthians 11:26, that as often as we eat and drink we proclaim the Lord's death. Proclamation, not oblation. See The Table and the Body - Unity, Discipline, and Mission.

Table or Altar

Bavinck:

Jesus and his disciples sat at a table when they celebrated the Supper, and also the early Christians knew nothing of an altar. But gradually the difference between the Old and the New Testament dispensation was lost. The gathering place was changed into a temple, the minister became a priest, the Lord's Supper a sacrifice, and the table an altar.
(Bavinck, 2008, vol. 4)

His argument from Hebrews is that temple and altar, priest and sacrifice, are now in heaven rather than on earth. The only altar Christians have is the cross on which Christ offered Himself (Heb 13:10), and from that altar "they eat when by faith they have communion with Christ and his benefits."

His conclusion, quoted from the older Reformed tradition, is the sentence to end on:

This is indeed very certain: that the cross of Christ is overthrown, as soon as the altar is set up.

See also: Transubstantiation | Sacrament or Ordinance | Holy Communion

Sources