Eucharistic Fellowship in the Third Millennium?

The Question of the Eucharist in Future Ecumenical Discussions

Many people find it increasingly incomprehensible that Christians of different traditions cannot celebrate a common eucharist. Especially in areas where people of different churches live side by side, marry across confessional lines and share their life in society together, many can no longer see any reason why they should not also go together to the table of the Lord. The situations in different contexts and the reactions to them are diverse and complex.

Some are putting their hopes in the coming of a new millennium; specifically, many Germans are hoping that it will be possible to hold an ecumenical Kirchentag in 2003 with a common eucharist between Protestants and Catholics. Is there warrant for this hope? What would be the prerequisites for such a celebration?

In this article I will try to shed some light on the present situation and identify directions for further ecumenical work on this. In so doing I shall limit myself to the situation in Western Europe, where the focus is especially on the constellation of Reformation churches and the Roman Catholic Church. But in order to understand this better, I would like also to place this in the broader context of the discussion with Orthodoxy, first because the Catholic position does not exist in isolation but in the context of relations to the Orthodox churches, and second because an encounter with and deeper knowledge of Orthodoxy is of decisive importance for the future of the ecumenical movement.

Progress in recent decades

Without question the so-called Lima document on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, worked out with the participation of all the major Christian traditions, represents one of the greatest steps forward on the question of the eucharist in recent years. The primary effort in this text was to formulate together what can be said together. The eucharist is described as thanksgiving to the Father, as anamnesis or memorial of Christ, as invocation of the Spirit, as the communion of the faithful and as meal of the kingdom of God.

In addition, positions which have been the subject of controversy are brought closer to one another. For example, the Lima document seeks to resolve the controversy over the understanding of the Lord's supper as a sacrifice by linking this understanding of the eucharist closely with the memorial aspect: "The eucharist is the memorial of the crucified and risen Christ, i.e. the living and effective sign of his sacrifice, accomplished once and for all on the cross."(1) The hope is that the idea of the Lord's supper as memorial meal can facilitate reconsideration of historic controversies over "sacrifice". So too the authors of the Lima text no longer place the old controversy from the time of the Reformation concerning the question about the presence of Christ in the centre as a divisive issue. Formulations were found with which, it was hoped, all traditions could agree - for instance, "The eucharistic meal is the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, the sacrament of his real presence ... The church confesses Christ's real, living and active presence in the eucharist."(2) It is left to the churches to decide whether their differences of opinion "can be accommodated within the Convergence formulated in the text".(3) Other controversial views, for example the question of the transubstantiation of the eucharistic elements, are taken up without any proposals for resolving them.(4)

Moreover, the analysis of the official responses of the churches to the Lima document indicates "broad agreement or convergences on the Trinitarian structure and meaning of the eucharist, the inseparability of word and sacrament, the 'real, living and active presence' of Christ and the commemoration of his sacrifice, the mutual reference of anamnesis and epiklesis as well as the ethical, missionary and eschatological dimensions of the Lord's supper".(5)

These convergences have been taken up by several churches in such a way as to grant eucharistic hospitality to other churches. An example is the so-called Meissen Declaration of 1992 between the Church of England and the Evangelical Church in Germany, in which, with reference to the Lima document, mutual eucharistic hospitality is agreed.(6) Conversations with a similar goal are now underway between the Church of England and the Protestant churches in France. Another example is the Porvoo Declaration of 1996, in which the Anglican churches of Britain and Ireland the Lutheran churches of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries have agreed on full church fellowship, also in reference to the Lima document.(7)

All in all, therefore, progress can be noted here, especially between the Anglicans and other Reformation churches.

Continuing difficulties

At the same time, seen from the perspective of the ecumenical movement as a whole, considerable difficulties still remain, especially between the churches of the Reformation (including the Anglicans) on the one side and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches on the other. If one considers the official responses of the churches to the Lima document, it is true that the convergences which it detects are by and large confirmed. At the same time, however, the remaining divergences which the text set forth are also confirmed and sometimes even sharpened. Especially the understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Lord's supper stands out as an important question to which very different answers are given. From the Catholic point of view, for example, the question mentioned above about whether the different views can be accommodated within the convergence formulated by the text is given a clearly negative answer.(8) Consequently, transubstantiation would seem to remain an issue of controversy. Certain Protestant churches take a stand against any idea of transubstantiation, while it is precisely this aspect which is important for the Roman Catholic side.(9) By contrast, all traditions can to a certain degree find themselves in what is formulated about the sacrificial character of the eucharist.(10)