Thinking aloud about the Lord’s Supper

I had a recent discussion with a friend about the nature of the Lord’s Supper.  My brother’s opinion was that the Reformation formulation of the theology of the Lord’s Supper was driven by political polemics against the Roman Catholic church, and thus needed to be revised.  Implication 1: the Reformed eucharistic theology is not an appropriate guide for 21st century Christians in Sydney.  Implication 2: we need to go ‘back to the Bible’ and revise our doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

Now, this all sounds fairly persuasive on the surface, and I hadn’t considered it that way before.  However, before long I realised that it poses a few problems:

1. This same argument could be turned back upon any number of Reformation doctrines.  Perhaps the Reformed position on justification was simply a culturally-conditioned polemic against Rome?
2. I’m not sure one can agree with the Anglican 39 Articles of Religion, because they explicitly quote the Reformed doctrines pertaining to the Lord’s Supper (moreover, they bear the Augustinian sacramental maxim of visible signs of invisible realities).
3. This argument makes an implicit historical theological claim that the Reformers weren’t sticking to their Sola Scriptura principle.  In other words, it makes the claim that polemics trumped exegesis in the Reformation debates about the Lord’s Supper.  And I think that this presupposition is most likely false.

Why do I think this argument is faulty?  Why do I think that exegesis and theology actually drove the reformers more than polemics?

1. Because a cursory glance through the Reformers work on the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts yields a great deal of evidence that biblical exegesis underpinned their eucharistic theology.
2. More specifically, John Calvin (whose theology is passed into the Anglican sacramental theology via Peter Martyr Vermigli) makes numerous exegetical remarks in his commentaries regarding the Lord’s Supper.  Check out Calvin on Luke 22:19 and 1 Cor. 11 for example.  Having recently passed my honours thesis on Calvin’s sacramental theology, it is clear to me that Calvin is being guided by exegesis and that is undergirding his polemics.
3. Lastly, many of the English reformers were killed for their biblically based beliefs in the reformed theology of the Lord’s Supper.  It wasn’t mere polemic for polemic’s sake – it was their stand upon what they believed Scripture taught.

Let me finish with some of the words of Bishop Nicholas Ridley, who wrote his treatise on the Lord’s Supper while imprisoned.  These words are the preface to his exposition on the Lord’s Supper :

O good Lord, give me, I beseech thee, thy grace, so here briefly to set forth the sayings of thy Son our Savior Christ, of his Evangelists, and of his Apostles, that, in this aforesaid controversy, the light of thy truth, by the lantern of thy word, may shine upon all them that love thee.

Of the Lord’s last supper do speak expressly three of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke; but none more plainly nor more fully declareth the same, than doth St Paul, partly in the tenth, but especially in the eleventh chapter of the First Epistle unto the Corinthians. As Matthew and Mark do agree much in form of words, so do likewise Luke and St Paul; but all four, no doubt, as they were all taught in one school, and inspired with one Spirit, so taught they all one truth. God grant us to understand it well. Amen.