EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

It’s a simple question: what happens to the bread and wine in our celebration of the Holy Eucharist? There’s a simple answer: in the Eucharist, the people, the priest, the bread, and the wine are all transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ.

Ok, but what does that mean exactly? Could we be more precise? Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ because starting in the early Middle Ages the Church struggled to define what we mean when we say the the bread and wine become Jesus’ Body and Blood. In the 13th century, Sir Thomas Aquinas explained what happened as transubstantiation. He held that when the bread and wine were conscrated, their ‘accidents’ (by which he meant their outward appearance) stayed the same, but their ‘substance’ (what they really are) changed. This is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer, used the term consubstantiation to explain what happened when the bread and wine were consecrated. By this Luther meant that after consecration the bread and wine AND the Body and Blood of Christ were present and coexisted.

Ulrich Zwingli, another 16th century reformer, held that there was no change in the elements (i.e., the bread and wine) at all. Instead, he believed that the Lord’s Supper (another name for Communion) was a memorial rite and that Jesus Christ was present in its celebration and in the transformed fellowship of all believers present.

Anglicans (which includes Episcopalians), on the other hand, use the phrase real presence to describe what happens to the bread and wine in the celebration of Holy Communion. That’s a way of saying we believe Christ is actually present in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood when they are consecrated, but we stop short of defining precisely how that happens. Rather, we believe what Jesus promised—that he would really be present to the Church gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. That’s a freeing promise for a lot of reasons, including that it frees us from believing we must be able to explain this ‘mystery of faith’ in order for it to be valid. Which is another way of saying that it’s God’s work and not our understanding that cause the bread and wine to become Christ’s Body and Blood.

That said, Anglicans believe that is the action of the whole Eucharist—i.e., the entire celebration from the gathering of the people on and not just the communion—that consecrates. So the whole liturgy is what connects us to God, not just the consumption of the bread and wine. After all, ‘liturgy’ literally means ‘work of the people’ in Greek. And that’s a whole ‘nother conversation which will be well worth having.

Q: I would like to know who actually wrote the story about Adam and Eve’s life when they were the only humans on this earth at the time.

A: An excellent question: if Adam and Eve were the first humans, then who was there taking notes on how they were created?

The answer is, of course, no one. So what’s going on here? What are we to make of this account of the beginning of Creation and of the first humans in it? The best way to answer your question may be to consider what Scripture is and how it works.

When we read a newspaper account of something, we’re looking for facts – who did what, where, when, why, and how. The information in the story depends on those facts. Truth, in this case, is tied to historical accuracy.

That’s one way to convey information (an important and necessary way), but it’s not the only way. Another way we humans learn things is by telling stories, stories about ourselves and our lives. Families, for instance, tell stories about their members all the time. Telling stories is one of the ways families claim their identities as families—the stories bind them together.

The stories in the Bible bind communities of faith together: the Hebrew Scriptures, referred to as the Old Testament by Christians, are at the center of the Jewish faith, and the Old and New Testaments are at the center of the Christian faith. The many books of the Bible tell us about God, about humans, and about God’s revelation of God’s Self and his creation of, care for, and involvement with humanity throughout the ages.

We have inherited a particular cultural viewpoint that privileges one way of knowing things (call it the ‘just the facts, ma’am’ view) over others. We tend to trust scientific ‘fact’ over any other kind of knowledge. And that poses a problem when we read Scripture: the Bible is many things, but it is not a textbook, an historical account (not in the sense of one of David McCullough’s books, anyway), or a biography. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain teachings, or history, or accounts of real peoples’ lives, but the books of the Bible were written long before the modern sense of biographies even existed.

In fact, much of what is in Scripture existed in oral form long before it was written down. The story of Adam and Eve is a case in point. That’s an account that was passed from generation to generation orally long before someone wrote it down. So it’s importance lies less in its historicity (who wrote it and did they get the facts right?) than it does in what it reveals about God and God’s relationship to humans. Next time you read through the story of Adam and Eve, read it with that in mind – what does this story tell us about God and about his care for and relationship to humans?

That’s the long answer to your question. The short answer is the story of Adam and Eve was written by people inspired by God. The Holy Scriptures, as the Book of Common Prayer says, “are the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.” (BCP, 853) The Bible is a living story at the center of a living community, the Word of God for the people of God. It’s a story and a community we are all invited to make our own.