The connection of the Eucharist with the original consciousness regarding the unity of the Church



John Zizioulas

The identification of the Eucharistic assembly with the Church of God herself in the use of the term church would make no sense, if there did not exist in parallel a very profound connection between the Divine Eucharist and the primitive Church's consciousness regarding unity. This connection, which extends beyond the terminology used for the Church into the early theology regarding the Church among the first Christians, is brilliantly expressed by the "theologian of unity" par excellence,³⁷ the Apostle Paul. Addressing the Corinthians, the Apostle writes: "Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion (koinonia) in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."³⁸ In this highly significant passage, the dominant idea is that "the many" form "one body" identified with the bread of the Eucharist. Since this idea was to have a decisive influence on the whole formation of the Church's unity, it is necessary to look at it in more detail at this point while we are examining the presuppositions of this unity.

The connection of the Divine Eucharist with the consciousness that the "many" are united through it and in it into one body, and not just any body but the "body of Christ"³⁹ - thus forming not "one thing" in the neuter but "one" in the masculine,⁴⁰ the "one Lord" Himself⁴¹ - is deeply rooted right in the historical foundations of the Divine Eucharist and the Church alike. A careful examination of the texts referring to the Last Supper with which the origin of the Eucharist coincides historically⁴² shows convincingly that despite their many differences on various points,⁴³ they all agree on the connection of the Supper with the "many" or "you" (pl.), "for" or "in the place of" (anti or peri) whom the One offers Himself.⁴⁴ This relationship of the "many" with the "One"⁴⁵ who offers Himself for them connects the historical foundations of the Eucharist with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the servant of God or servant of the Lord⁴⁶ which again is connected with Jesus Christ's understanding of Himself⁴⁷ and goes back to the people of Israel's consciousness of unity.⁴⁸ In this way, the connection of the Eucharist with the consciousness that the "many" are united to the point of identity with the One who offers himself on their behalf is shown to be as ancient as Christianity itself.

This connection of the Divine Eucharist with a sense of the unity of the "many" in the "One," effected through the tradition of the "Servant of God," is already firmly established in the consciousness and life of the primitive Church by the first century as shown by the oldest surviving liturgical texts after the Last Supper. Thus in the most ancient liturgical prayer of the Roman Church, which certainly goes right back to apostolic times and is preserved in 1 Clement (96 A.D.), we repeatedly read the phrase "of Jesus Thy Servant," clearly in connection with the hymns of the Servant of God in the Book of Isaiah.⁴⁹ The same thing can be seen even more clearly in the Eucharistic prayer of the Didache, also very ancient, where we read: "We thank Thee, holy Father, for Thy holy Name which Thou hast caused to make its dwelling in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy servant." ⁵⁰ This fact is of particular significance given that, as a rule, liturgical texts preserve very ancient traditions. If indeed this is coupled with the existence of the Servant of God tradition also in other very ancient hymns of worship, such as we most likely find included in Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (2:6-11),⁵¹ the connection between the Divine Eucharist and the Servant tradition should be considered something very ancient in the mind of the Church. In this way the "many" of the Servant tradition, the "many" of the Last Supper and the "many" of Paul's epistles meet and are identified with each other through the synthesis achieved by the systematic thought of the great Apostle \ when he writes, "... one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

But the connection of the Eucharist with the primitive Church's sense of the unity of the "many" in the "One" goes back to the historical foundation of the Church also by way of another fundamental tradition, that of the Lord as "Son of Man." This is especially true of the Johannine Churches, which, while not unaware of the connection of the Eucharist with the Servant of God tradition,⁵² nevertheless preferred, at least on the evidence of the Fourth Gospel, to connect it with the "Son of Man" tradition. This tradition, which also goes back to Jesus' understanding of Himself⁵³ and through it to the Judaeo-Christian foundations of the Church,⁵⁴ has justly been regarded as the source of the idea of the Church.⁵⁵ For interwoven with this tradition, we find the paradoxical relationship of the unity of the many in the one which can be seen more generally in the Judaeo-Christian consciousness⁵⁶ taken to the point of identity.⁵⁷

This unity of the many in the "Son of Man" is first clearly linked with the Divine Eucharist in the Gospel of John. In the sixth chapter of this Gospei, which obviously refers to the Eucharist,⁵⁸ the dominant figure is that of the "Son of Man." It is He who gives "the food which endures to eternal life."⁵⁹ In contrast with the manna which God gave to Israel through Moses, this food is the "true bread," which as that "which came down from heaven"⁶⁰ is none other than the "Son of Man."⁶¹ Clearly, then, it is as "Son of Man" that the Lord appears in His relationship with the Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel. Hence, communion in the Eucharist is described there as eating not simply the flesh of the Lord, but the flesh of the "Son of Man": "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you."⁶² In this capacity, as "Son of Man," Jesus appears in the Fourth Gospel not only as identified with the bread of the Eucharist ("I am the bread of life"),⁶³ but also as the reality which is par excellence inclusive of the "many": "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."⁶⁴ This abiding in the "Son of Man," though participation in the Eucharist is underlined in chapters 13-17 of the same Gospel, which move within the Eucharistic presuppositions of the Last Supper and are so profoundly connected with the unity of the Church.⁶⁵ The insistent appeal, "Abide in me, and I in you"⁶⁶ should not be understood without reference both to the Eucharistic presuppositions of this text, and to the Lord's property of taking up the new Israel and including it within Himself.⁶⁷

For all these reasons, the Eucharistic character of the Fourth Gospel, which is increasingly being recognized,⁶⁸ makes it a first class historical source for studying the presuppositions on which the formation of the Church's unity in the Divine Eucharist is based. Coming as an indispensable complement to those sources which inform us about the mind of the Pauline Churches, it proves that despite being expressed in ways different from those we encounter in Paul's Epistles,⁶⁹ the consciousness was the same throughout the primitive Church: through the Divine Eucharist the "many" - the new, true Israel, those who make up the Church - become a unity to the point of identity with Christ.

All this demonstrates how incomprehensible the whole ecclesiology of ancient Christianity becomes without reference to the Divine Eucharist particularly in anything to do with the notion of the Church's unity. The principal images used to depict and describe the Church in the New Testament⁷⁰ are based on the relationship of the "many" with the "One," exactly as this is dictated by the Eucharistic experience of the Church. This is especially true of the descriptions of the Church as "body of Christ," "house" or "building" (oikodomι), and "bride of Christ."

The characterization of the Church as the "body of Christ," which has provoked much discussion among modern scholars⁷¹ cannot be understood apart from the Eucharistic experience of the Church,⁷² which was most likely the source of the use of this term.⁷³ Neither the parallels to this term found in Rabbinic sources,⁷⁴ nor Gnosticism,⁷⁵ nor other ideas from the Hellenistic milieu⁷⁶ could have lent this term to the primitive Church, given that its content in the New Testament is sui generis, characterized by its emphasis not on the idea of the "body," but on the accompanying genitive "of Christ." In other words, it is not first and foremost the body of Christians, but the body of Christ.⁷⁷ This takes on its full meaning only within the context of the Judaeo-Christian tradition with which, as we have seen, the Divine Eucharist was connected from the beginning.

It is within this same tradition that the other ecclesiological images, too, take on their full meaning. Thus the characterization of the Church as a "building"⁷⁸ or "house"⁷⁹ does not imply something inanimate, but an organism living and growing⁸⁰ to "mature manhood," ⁸¹"to the measure of the stature of the fullness⁸² of Christ."⁸³ This is not unrelated to the Divine Eucharist.⁸⁴ In the spirit of the unity of the "many" in the One, we can also have a right understanding of the description of the Church as "bride of Christ," through which the faithful are understood as "members of Christ"⁸⁵ in a manner analogous to the union of husband and wife "into one flesh."⁸⁶

These ecclesiological images, of course, require special study which lies outside the scope and nature of the present work. But the point relevant to the very close connection of the Divine Eucharist with the primitive Church's consciousness of unity, is this: that all these images become meaningless outside the ontological unity of the "many" in Christ. Deeply rooted, as we have seen, in the historical foundations of Christianity, this unity found its fullest expression through the

Divine Eucharist. The ancient Church was fully aware of this when she declared, through the first theologian of her unity, "we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."