What does the Bible have to say on church unity and the Lord’s Supper? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever, Jonathan Leeman, Bobby Jamieson, and Mark Feather start their conversation by addressing Francis Chan’s recent comments on the Lord’s Supper and church unity before walking through the history behind communion. They explain why it is important to center your worship services around the pulpit and how Biblical preaching can further church unity. They finish their conversation by explaining the Lord’s Supper and its purpose.

• Addressing Francis Chan’s Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper
  
• History of the Lord’s Supper
  
• Why is It Important that the Pulpit is the Center of Your Service?
  
• Biblical Preaching Builds Church Unity
  
• Explaining the Lord’s Supper

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Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Jonathan Leeman:

Hi, I am Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever:

Yes, you are.

Jonathan Leeman:

And with me is Mark Dever?

Mark Dever:

Yep.

Jonathan Leeman:

And welcome to this episode of Nine Mark’s Pastors Talk. Now Mark Cities does this. We did Tuesday. Here we are two days later doing another one in order to build healthy churches, which is what we’re all about. Learn more ninemarks.org.

And today, Mark, we’re going to veer from our normal practice of discussing general topics that we hope are perennially useful for pastors. Instead, we’re going to wait a little bit into the current Christian events, current events.

Addressing Francis Chan’s Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper

Recently well-known preacher and pastor Francis Chan preached a message called Church Together and I want to start by playing about a three-minute clip of that sermon and focusing on communion and preaching. Here it is.

Mark Dever:

Well, wait. Before you get to it, I just want to make it clear this is not teaching that Jonathan and I are encouraging you to think is true.

Jonathan Leeman:

Correct.

Mark Dever:

This is simply something that was enunciated publicly and it’s gotten a lot of attention and we want to make sure you hear it exactly in his own words before Jonathan and I reflect critically upon it.

Jonathan Leeman:

Right. Thank you. Anyhow, here it is. Without further ado, Francis Chan.

Francis Chan:

Taking of the Body and Blood of Christ somehow in some real way. Again, I am not making any grand statements. I’m just saying some of the stuff I didn’t know. I didn’t know that for the first 1500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ.

And it wasn’t until 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s just a symbol and nothing more. I didn’t know that. I thought, wow, well, that’s something to consider.

And while I won’t make a strong statement, I will make a statement about this. It was at that same time that for the first time someone put a pulpit in the front of the gathering because before that it was always the body and blood of Christ that was central to their gatherings for 1500 years.

It was never one guy and his pulpit being the center of the church. It was the body and blood of Christ. And even the leaders just saw themselves as partakers and oh man, we’re not worthy. We’re not worthy. We’re not worthy.

I say that because the church is more divided than at any time in history. What does this book tell us? Clearly he does not want any divisions in his church. And for a thousand years, there was just one church.

Do you know that we’re so used to growing up in a time when literally there are over 30,000 Christian denominations right now, but for the first thousand years there was just one? What was interesting is communion was at the center of the room every time they gathered. And it wasn’t a pulpit where a guy preached after studying in his office by himself for 20 hours.

See, right now we’ve got guys like me that go in a room study. That’s what I was doing for years. Meanwhile, other guys went in their rooms and studied and then we started all giving different messages, so many contradicting each other and pretty soon, well I follow Piper, I follow Chan, I follow.

It’s just like everyone’s following different guys. I’m just saying I believe there was something about taking communion out of the center of the church and replacing it with a gifted speaker. Not that that gifted speaker is not a part of the body of Christ and a gift to the body of Christ, but the body itself needs to be back in the center of the church.

You guys, I’ve been dreaming about this. I’ve been praying about this going, man, I would love it if one day in our country here in the US people understood the body of Christ, that they were just a part of it and they got excited to gather and partake of the body and blood of Christ and they celebrated together and that’s why we gathered.

Jonathan Leeman:

To help us discuss this, we have a couple of brothers here with us. First, we have Bobby Jamison who’s written a couple of books on the Lord’s Supper. Thanks, Bobby.

Bobby Jamieson:

Happy to be here.

Jonathan Leeman:

And we have Mark Feather, who is on staff at CHBC and is an all-around smart guy and Canadian.

Mark Feather:

Canadian. Yes, that’s right. No books written, but I’m Canadian.

Jonathan Leeman:

Which is similar.

Mark Feather:

That’s right. Yeah, I would say even better.

Jonathan Leeman:

Thank you for being with us.

Mark Dever:

It’s as rare as a moose in Connecticut. That’s right.

Jonathan Leeman:

Brother Mark. Why is it important for us to diverge from our normal practice and discuss this particular clip?

Mark Dever:

Well, I had a number of people just mention, Hey, this is going on, this is going on. And I just think generally when people would send me alarmist communications, I just assume the thing itself will be unremarkable.

Jonathan Leeman:

He’s talking about me.

Mark Dever:

Well, no, no, no, I’m not. But when you were the one that sent me the clip, I saw it on Twitter and thing, but you sent me a link to a clip of it so I watched it and I was saddened. I mean I know Francis a little bit personally.

You met him. Yeah, had some conversations with him and I wish him well I thought he sounded sincerely excited and really uninformed and I feared he would have the effect of deceiving people, which I’m sure he wouldn’t want to do, but I thought, oh, he’s going to mislead a lot of people with this because people trust him and he has a lot of passion

Jonathan Leeman:

Our goal is to respond here to have a public mature, hopefully, conversation, responding in charity and clarity. He made some public statements. We want to offer some counter thoughts in response to that. Mark, was he, let me put it a little provocatively though. Was he at risk of undoing the reformation?

Mark Dever:

Oh, I think the reformation can survive. Whatever Francis Chan thinks. I think

Jonathan Leeman:

That’s not my plan. I think

Mark Dever:

The Reformation is going to be just fine.

Jonathan Leeman:

Thank you. Was he working against in a sense the things that he was saying?

History of the Lord’s Supper

Mark Dever:

Yeah, I don’t know if he meant to be doing that. He was clearly working with some false ideas about church history and theology. He seems to think that transubstantiation was believed by everybody before the Reformation, when in fact it’s only at the,

Jonathan Leeman:

He said, yeah, for 1500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ.

Mark Dever:

And it is true that became a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in 1215 at the Latter Council, but it had not been an official teaching of the church before that. So it was the official teaching of the church for about 300 years before the Reformation. That would be accurate.

Jonathan Leeman:

Now there’s some precedent, isn’t there, Bobby, in early church fathers for language? That sounds a little that way.

Mark Dever:

Well just to be sorry. I know you asked Bobby, but I think the first advocate to articulate this doctrine was Red. So the ninth century. Ninth century. And that’s over and against the more standard view of Augustine in the company, which would be a more kind of spiritual presence. It sounds like Calvin sounds kind of like what we would think.

It’s just not this idea of the physical body, of the physical blood. So actually I think Francis there is simply misinformed. I don’t know what he read that made him think this, but I think that there’s more reading he could do and he might be a little surprised to find out how much, there was not a unified understanding of this at all in the ninth century or the sixth century, the third century. There certainly was not in the first century.

Jonathan Leeman:

It was interesting following the, going around of this particular clip, I saw three different responses on Twitter. I saw Baptists saying, looks like Francis Chan is becoming a Roman Catholic. Oh no. I saw Roman Catholics, a bunch of them saying, it looks like Francis Chan is becoming a Roman Catholic. Yay.

But then I saw those Rascally Presbyterians saying, hold on. Now there’s always been a concept of real presence in Protestant theology. Bobby, what’s going on here? Who’s right?

Bobby Jamieson:

Well, I didn’t see all those statements and you wouldn’t call Presbyterians rascally. No,

Jonathan Leeman:

That’s an affectionate way of referring to them. Just to be clear,

Bobby Jamieson:

If I were to just offer a summary evaluation, I think the, as it were, two responses on either side looks like he’s becoming a Roman Catholic. That’s either good or bad. At least the logic of his statement would seem to support that conclusion regardless of whatever the particular decisions he’s making or how he’s thinking about church.

Particularly because he doesn’t just advocate for a literal understanding of the Lord, suppers of the body and blood of Christ. He doesn’t just say that the Lord’s supper should be more central and more important than the sermon.

He then goes after the clarity of scripture in what would appear to me to be a somewhat self-defeating way as a guy who presumably studied for this sermon and then delivered the sermon. He criticizes guys going into their studies and studying for sermons and delivering sermons as a cause of division.

He blames divisions within the body of Christ on what I presume him to take to be the sort of problem of the private interpretation of scripture of people understanding it in different ways. So that sort of joined-up collection of ideas sounds like a Roman Catholic apologetic.

Jonathan Leeman:

And my sense of the conversation or of the little statement is that in fact the way he goes after preaching and pits it against the supper is a bigger deal. Would you guys agree with that?

Bobby Jamieson:

Sure.

Jonathan Leeman:

Help us understand what’s wrong with going after the sermon like that and is he not right about perch years going into their separate studies, coming up with their understanding of scriptures, then standing in the front and center of the church, bringing division to all these different 33,000 denominations. Now he says, I dunno if that’s true, but

Mark Dever:

Well, I mean problems with that historically are first of all there was a division that had nothing to do with the centrality of the sermon or with the nature of the Lord’s Supper when the Eastern church pulled off by not recognizing the bishop of Rome as chief among the patriarchs. So that was already going on in the 11th century.

Jonathan Leeman:

So

Mark Dever:

That division has already happened. So he doesn’t seem to take cognizance of that there. Plus he’s not at all mentioning the centrality of the sermon in places like Hippo with Augustine preaching or Constantinople with Christon preaching or we could mention so many other powerfully used noted preachers where the sermon was very much at the center of the weekly Christian gathering. So again, it looks like he’s had an exceedingly partial, I don’t know, a book that he read or someone’s summary of history that he read that is frankly just very inaccurate.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, it was funny, Mark, as I was listening to him, he was saying the opposite of what I’ve heard you say many times, particularly on the architecture of, well, he was saying the same thing at the Reformation. The pulpit came into the center, but he was giving it a completely different

Mark Dever:

Emphasis. He assumes that’s a novelty, I assume it’s a reassertion that there’s no innovation going on there. The Protestants did not like all being called innovators, which is exactly what Francis is calling them. They would say they are restorers, they are the ones advocating the primitive way.

Why is It Important that the Pulpit is the Center of Your Service?

Jonathan Leeman:

Why is it important that the pulpit is in the center?

Mark Dever:

I personally

Jonathan Leeman:

Not the body and blood of Christ.

Mark Feather:

I think there are a number of problems with the way that he’s working, the relationship between the word and the sacrament. I think one of them is to see the sacrament as a more intimate way of God relating to his people than his word. It’s almost like his word is coming through some human mediator and is therefore less intimate than God’s presence with his people.

But I think whenever you see God speaking in scripture, it is always the God of the Bible who speaks that wherever God’s word is, God himself is. And so we always, even in human preaching, we have the Lord of the covenant preaching and teaching his people feeding them through his word.

So I think that’s a significant problem. But I think to get to what the reformers saw, I think very clearly, especially in Calvin and in others, is that the gospel pictures that we have in the sacraments have to be given sense through gospel words in the preaching of the word that apart from the gospel interpretation and the content of the gospel as preached from the word, the gospel signs become useless and senseless.

He would call them dumb signs, Calvin Wood. And I think that to divorce those two and to make the signs preeminent apart from their content is to ultimately break apart what God has designed to feed his church

Mark Dever:

And which was recognized as going together in the early church.

Mark Feather:

That’s right.

Mark Dever:

They were not pitted opposed to each other in the way that I think Francis misunderstands the Protestant Reformation did

Jonathan Leeman:

Well in the sense that you have the Lord’s supper being practiced in liberal gospel denying Jesus resurrection, denying Bible denying churches, churches, to your point that just the sacrament or the ordinance or whatever you call it, there isn’t sufficient. You need to explain what this means.

Mark Feather:

That’s right. It doesn’t have any power in and of itself to give grace as Roman Catholics would say. It only gives grace insofar as it strengthens faith and a holding fast to Christ. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of problems there.

Mark Dever:

The sign needs to be connected to the thing signified.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, in fact, Luther, sorry, Calvin has a wonderful quote along those lines, Calvin says there is no reason for anyone to object that this is a figurative expression by which the name of the thing signified is given to the sign. I indeed admit that the breaking of bread is a symbol. It is not the thing itself.

But having admitted this, we shall nevertheless duly infer that by showing the showing of the symbol, the thing itself is also shown. So even Calvin is admitting no, there’s not some sort of mystical presence as it were as I understand it. And

Mark Dever:

What is shown is not the sacrificing of Christ, it is the sacrifice of Christ, the once for all times sacrifice of Christ.

Biblical Preaching Builds Church Unity

Jonathan Leeman:

Now clearly an animating concern for Francis Chan is the unity of the church. And that’s a good thing. Isn’t there a risk of making preaching central and the inevitable divergent perspectives that are going to come from preaching, going to lead to a disunity that the supper is supposed to work against? That seems to be his logic. What are your brother’s thoughts?

Bobby Jamieson:

One thought would be, and this would be a genuine question I would pose to Francis, can scripture correct the church? If it can correct the church? Then by listening to scripture, reading scripture, and studying scripture, we can attain a greater unity with one another the more we are conformed to God’s word.

So actually I think healthy biblical preaching and teaching a collective effort to submit to scripture will result in greater unity, not less. If scripture can’t correct the church, well then we better look somewhere else for a final source of authority. We better find somebody to tell us what God’s will really is.

But if scripture can correct the church, then I would think that no, actually we should lean more into faithful biblical expositional preaching. And if I would just add one other thing, just having recently preached through John 17

Mark Dever:

Exactly what I was

Bobby Jamieson:

Thinking, which often gets appealed to as a kind of unity is the highest good type of passage. It’s just so fascinating for those whom Jesus is praying for to have this unity. In verse six, it’s those the Father has given to the son, and at the end of verse six, they have kept your word. It’s those who have kept the word in verse eight.

I’ve given them the words that you gave me. They received them and have come to know the truth that I came from you in verse 20 right before this explicit prayer for unity. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. So the presupposition, the definition of the group he’s praying for to be unified is those who have accepted the apostolic word.

Jonathan Leeman:

They’re united around the word.

Bobby Jamieson:

They’re united around the word. Their common confession of that word is the presupposition of their unity.

Unity in the Truth

Mark Dever:

So their unity is unity in the truth. Right?

Bobby Jamieson:

And apart from that truth, it disappears. There’s no

Mark Dever:

Unity.

Jonathan Leeman:

Right. Okay, so are we making too big a deal of the fact that we would put the pulpit at the center?

The Word of God is Primary

Mark Dever:

Well, that symbol is just slightly too strong. I know what you mean when you say put the pulpit at the center. I don’t really think physically a lectern, a wooden or plastic or metal lectern. That’s not, yeah.

So I want to be careful with just that image since I don’t know how people are going to hear what we’re saying. I think what’s important is that the teaching of God’s word, the teaching, and preaching of God’s word we understand is what God’s holy Spirit uses to create the church, universal and local, and continues to stand at the center of the continuing life of the church regardless of where the physical location of the pulpit is in the building.

Jonathan Leeman:

Right. Theologically you’re asserting that the word of God is primary.

Mark Dever:

Yes.

Jonathan Leeman:

And there’s a sense in which even classic Protestant definitions of the church, which maybe he’s disputing, I don’t know where the church is, they always mention the word preached first. Right? Wherever the word is preached and the ordinances are rightly administered, there seems to be a logic in that.

Explaining the Lord’s Supper

I think I’m going to move back to the question of presence here in a second, but anything else to say on this? I think the more important issue of the word versus pitted against the supper. Anything else on this topic?

Okay, how do we understand the presence of Christ? Is that a thing versus a mere memorial? Because that’s something he criticizes at one point in his thing. He says it’s only 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s just a symbol and nothing more.

Mark Dever:

Well, Jesus is the one who said, do this in get ready nice remembrance as a memorial of me. That’s not vly. It’s Jesus Christ.

Jonathan Leeman:

Okay? But Jesus also said this is my body.

Mark Dever:

He said, I am the door, I am the way. There’s symbolism that people understood. No disciple reached over and tried to start eating his forearm.

Is Christ Physically Present in the Body and the Blood?

Jonathan Leeman:

So is Christ present in the blood? Is Christ present in the cup in the bread?

Mark Feather:

If we’re talking about the real presence of Christ being the physical presence of Christ’s human body and blood, we would have to say no. And I think that here we looked at Vly and others who in their disputation with Lutherans and others would argue that to make Christ’s body and blood ubiquitous is to confuse the natures of Christ.

It is to make the divine nature and the human nature mixed up like a thing of chocolate milk such that his human nature takes on divine characteristics and to do that makes Christ less human and less God. And so we actually have to be really careful about mixing those two up.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well said. Bobby, what’s the question?

Mark Feather:

Christ is the answer.

Jonathan Leeman:

Jesus Christ is present in the bread and cup?

Bobby Jamieson:

Well, I think an important verse here is 1 Corinthians 10:16, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break? Is it not a participation in the bread, in the blood of Christ?

Christ Ordained the Supper

So Christ ordained the supper. He made it a sign to be affixed to the preaching of the gospel. And at least in some sense, I think the simplest explanation I could give of 1Corinthians 10:16 is to say that those who partake by faith receive the benefits of Christ’s death.

There’s a kind of subjective appropriation of what’s offered in the gospel. So I think it can be helpful to use the language of Christ’s presence to describe that sharing in the Greek word koinonia is sharing in something with someone we all share together in Christ at the supper.

If you find that helpful in clarifying to use of language of presence, I think that can be helpful. But I would double down on what Mark Feather said, that that’s not a physical bodily presence. Otherwise, we’re confusing the natures.

Mark Dever:

The Christ is present by faith. It does not reside in the physical objects apart from faith. If no one in the room has faith in Christ, there’s no sense in which he’s really present in another way than he’s present in this table right now or in this room. That the presence is there because of our apprehension of the truth of the gospel.

Bobby Jamieson:

Otherwise, no one’s sharing in Christ. There’s no sharing in Christ per one Corinthians 10 16. Without faith

Mark Dever:

I would go ahead, Mark. So just to quote our Presbyterian brethren or really Anglicans, but who were Presbyterian polity, many of them at the Westminster confession worthy receivers outwardly partaking of the visible elements in the sacrament do then also inwardly by faith really and indeed yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified in all benefits of his death, the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally and carnally in with or under the bread and wine,

Jonathan Leeman:

Auntie Luther,

Mark Dever:

Yet as really but spiritually present pro-Augustine present to the faith of believers in that ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.

Jonathan Leeman:

So there’s a spiritual presence, not a corporeal or bodily presence.

Mark Dever:

That’s the way the Westminster Divines put it. And I think they did a good job.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, the Second Baptist confession actually mimics, as you were pointing out to me earlier today, Bo That’s right. It’s virtually the same language. What does it say

Bobby Jamieson:

Almost word for word what Mark just read.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, brothers, we need to wrap this up, but let me first offer my own summary and final thoughts. And I think it comes to that question of unity. The reason this whole conversation and that clip is significant goes back to the source of our life and unity as churches.

And Francis Chan is correct to see the Lord’s table as a picture of the church’s unity. I think of One Corinthians 10 17, Bobby, you mentioned it because there is one bread we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread. But the table is just that. It’s a picture of our unity.

And where we might even say that it creates that unity in kind of an institutional outward sense. We wouldn’t say it creates the unity of the church before the throne of God. Our unity has already been created through the blood of Christ.

And here, just think of Ephesians two, but now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down and has fleshed the dividing wall of hostility that he might create in himself. One new man in place of the two.

So making peace and noticing all of that’s in the past tense. He has done this, he has broken down and he did all of this where well at the cross so that unity has been created and the supper pictures that it doesn’t create it.

That said, what creates our unity, subjectively speaking here on earth is our shared Holy Spirit-given submission to the word of God to the gospel. And that is to say to our shared Holy Spirit, given faith in the preached word and in the gospel. And when you begin to give the table a kind of primacy over and against the preached word in our submission to the preached word of scripture, you create albeit unintentionally a false unity, which is precisely what so many liberal churches do when they insist our unity is in the supper.

I don’t think Chan means to do any of this, but if we were to follow what he says out to its logical conclusion, you’d get a lot of dead lifeless churches, I’m afraid. Anything else to say on this topic?

Mark Dever:

Well, I mean pray for Francis. I’m sure he’s sincerely praying for the unity of the body of Christ. I think if he keeps going down this line. Well, I don’t know. Mark, you were listening to the whole sermon. Do you want to say anything else about the larger context of the message?

Mark Feather:

I think it comes from sincere desire, at least. It seemed to really take what Paul says in One Corinthians 11 seriously. He wants to really do due diligence in the text, but I think he takes a few words in that text and uses it to really deny a lot of what the whole of the Bible is teaching. So I think it really teaches us too that we have to be careful to put the whole Bible together well rather than just using a few different words to burn down the whole system of biblical theology that we have.

Jonathan Leeman:

That’s a good word. Good word. Anything else, brothers? Well, thank you for your time.

Mark Feather:

Thank you.

Mark Dever:

Thank you.

 

To watch the entire sermon referenced in the episode, click here.