Against Communion wafers

(and against bad-tasting Communion wine, too!)

Hello everyone! I am at last emerging out of a particularly busy period of my doctoral work; I spent October finishing preparations for my major comprehensive exam and then flew back from Edinburgh to Canada to attend a conference and take the exam. Apologies for the longer-than-normal period of silence. I’m back in Edinburgh now, though, and the concentrated focus on sixteenth century sacramental and ecclesiological debates of the last little while have given me lots to write about here! So, with no further ado…

One of the less well-observed rubrics in the English Book of Common Prayer, as far as I can tell, is the requirement that the bread for communion “be such as is usual to be eaten; but the best and purest Wheat Bread that conveniently may be gotten.” Instead of the leavened wheaten bread that the rubric calls for, wafers are commonly used across the Church of England (although CofE readers, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about their prevalence). The case is similar in the Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Canada, and Scottish Episcopal Church, the parts of the Communion with which I am best acquainted: wafers are used more often than not in the celebration of Holy Communion.

It was not always so. Like many aspects of contemporary Anglicanism, what seems to us today to be utterly unremarkable, even obvious — of course we use hosts for Communion, except for the occasional liturgically-outré parish — is a development of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1552 Book of Common Prayer on, the prayer book rubrics called for the use of regular bread in the celebration of Holy Communion. And while the Elizabethan injunctions of 1559 did (controversially!) require the continued use of wafers, despite what the prayer book rubrics ordered, her successors did not renew the injunction. In the Stuart church, ordinary leavened bread seems to have replaced the wafers essentially everywhere.¹

It was the Ritualist movement of the nineteenth century that reintroduced the use of wafers in Anglican churches. Indeed, the use of wafers rather than the customary leavened loaves of bread was one of the so-called Six Points of advanced ritualism, along with eastward celebration, incense, altar lights, the mixed chalice, and eucharistic vestments. And, like the rest of these points, the use of wafers was originally condemned in the strongest terms. The 1871 judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Hebbert vs. Purchas declared the use of wafers illegal, for “the law of the Church has directed the use of pure wheaten bread”, a law which excluded wafers. But just as with vestments and the rest, this judgment was eventually largely ignored, and what was once highly controversial came to be seen as standard Anglican practice.

Are there good reasons to consider using actual bread (whether leavened or unleavened) rather than wafers, beyond fidelity to traditional Anglican practice? I think there are. I hasten to say at the outset that I think this question is adiaphoral; every church at which I’ve served has used wafers, and I don’t think that they invalidate the sacrament. But I do think that there are very good reasons to use bread “such as is usual to be eaten,” and the “best and purest” that can be attained — and, for that matter, delicious communion wine — and I think that Bullinger and Calvin help us see why this is so.

Both Calvin and Bullinger draw upon Augustine to argue that in the sacraments, there is an analogy between the physical sign and the spiritual thing signified, an analogy designed to lead us from the physical to the spiritual. Thus Calvin writes in the 1559 Institutes that “from the physical things set forth in the Sacrament we are led by a sort of analogy to spiritual things”; the physical sign of the sacrament symbolizes the invisible gift which the Spirit imparts to the faithful recipient via the sign. Similarly, Bullinger says in the Sixth Sermon of the Fifth Decade that one of the ends of the sacraments — along with sealing God’s promises, gathering us together into one, and reminding us of our duty - is to “resemble…by likeness and by a certain imitation” God’s spiritual gifts.

Why is this analogy is so important? According to both theologians, God gives us the sacramental analogy as gracious condescension to our weakness and inability to understand spiritual things. Thus Bullinger writes that “men do more easily conceive and understand the doctrine of heavenly things, when it is shadowed out under some dark and covert sign of earthly things, than when it is nakedly and spiritually indeed delivered.” This is why Jesus preached in parables, and this is also why Jesus instituted sacraments. The water of baptism, and the bread and wine of the Supper, are there to serve as physical symbols of God’s spiritual work, to help us more fully understand and receive God’s goodness to us.

And so, what is it that the bread and wine are to symbolize? Christ’s body and blood, of course — but not just Christ’s body and blood in general, but Christ’s body and blood as given to us for our salvation on the cross.

Bullinger provides a set of physical analogies in the elements and action of the Lord’s Supper to the benefits of Christ’s death for us in the same sermon: as bread nourishes the body, so "the body of Christ, eaten by faith, feedeth and satisfieth the soul of man, and furnisheth the whole man to all duties of godliness"; as wine is drunk by the thirsty and makes us glad, so Jesus' blood, drunk by faith, "doth quench the thirst of the burning conscience, and filleth the hearts of the faithful with unspeakable joy." The breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine represents Christ’s death. We tear the bread because by our sins we crucified Christ. We take both elements into our hands because we believe that Christ suffered for us and has communicated his gifts to us. Just as bread and wine are changed into the substance of our body, so Christ, eaten by faith, is united with us by the Spirit so that we dwell in him and he in us. And we communally partake of the one bread to show and achieve mutual friendship among Christians.

Calvin makes a similar point in the 1559 Institutes:

…when bread is given as a symbol of Christ's body, we must at once grasp this comparison: as bread nourishes, sustains, and keeps the life of our body, so Christ's body is the only food to invigorate and enliven our soul. When we see wine set forth as a symbol of blood, we must reflect on the benefits which wine imparts to the body, and so realize that the same are spiritually imparted to us by Christ's blood. These benefits are to nourish, refresh, strengthen, and gladden. For if we sufficiently consider what value we have received from the giving of that most holy body and the shedding of that blood, we shall clearly perceive that those qualities of bread and wine are, according to such an analogy, excellently adapted to express those things when they are communicated to us.

So, the bread (because it nourishes and sustains us) and the wine (because it quenches our thirst, strengthens us, and makes us glad) help us understand what Christ’s body and blood do for us: nourishing and strengthening our spirits, quenching the thirst of our conscience and filling us with joy. And as noted above, Bullinger goes on to outline various other analogies between the physical action of the Supper — the breaking, the pouring, the taking, the eating — and our feeding upon the body and blood of Christ crucified.

Now, what does all this have to do with the use of wafers vs that of bread? Well, if we accept that the bread in the Supper analogizes or represents the nourishment that Christ’s body offers, then the bread used should be physically nourishing and sustaining. And, if we’re to go with Bullinger’s fuller set of analogies, it should also be able to be broken and torn to represent Christ’s death for us and crucifixion because of us. Only thus does the analogy between physical and spiritual work.

And therefore, I am not convinced that wafers are the best choice of bread (frankly, calling wafers ‘bread’ is a bit of a stretch) to analogize the nourishment that Christ’s body offers. They are largely tasteless, not particularly nourishing. It’s hard to imagine upon eating a wafer that it is physically sustaining you in any particular way. But according to the analogy between the bread and Christ’s body, surely the bread the symbolizes the body of Christ should be nourishing and delightful to the body, as Christ’s body nourishes and delights the soul!² I still think of the bread that is used for Communion at the Society of St John the Evangelist, the Episcopal monastic community in Cambridge, MA. It is delicious; the sort of bread that you would actually choose to eat. This, I think, is the sort of bread which we should use to celebrate the sacrament. Whether leavened or unleavened is not important, although it seems to me that where leavened bread is ordinarily eaten, such bread should also be used for communion. What is important is that it be bread, and good bread at that, to show us by our senses the goodness that Christ’s body invisibly gives us.

The case is the same for the sacramental wine. If the wine of the Supper represents to us the way that Christ’s blood quenches our spiritual thirst and gladdens our hearts, surely it should be appetizing! It is a question of enabling the wine to most fully function as an analogy for Christ’s blood, to most delight the recipient and thus put in mind the delight that Christ’s blood offers. And thus the wine should be delicious, should gladden the senses and thereby teach us sensorily about the sweetness of Christ’s blood shed for us.

Incidentally, this also suggests to me that recipients should be encouraged to consume more bread and wine in the Supper than is often the case today. If you look at churchwardens’ reports from, say, the eighteenth century Church of England, you will see that large quantities of both bread and wine were acquired for Communion Sundays. And this was for good reason. If the analogy is that Christ’s body nourishes you just as bread nourishes you, you should actually eat enough bread to nourish you! If the analogy is that Christ’s blood refreshes and gladdens you just as wine refreshes and gladdens you, you should drink enough wine to refresh and gladden you! And indeed, taking a bit more time to eat and drink allows one to more fully reflect on the nourishment that Christ gives invisibly through (as well as outside of) the visible nourishment of the bread and wine.

Now, again, the point is not the use of communion wafers somehow invalidates the sacrament. Christ really offers himself to you via a host as much as via a chunk of good bread. And I do recognize that wafers certainly are very convenient and may have other advantages.³ But I have found myself increasingly convinced that the the Church of England taught that real bread be used for a good reason — and not just for the avoidance of superstition, as the prayer book rubric says, but also to allow the sacramental elements to more fully symbolize Christ’s body and blood. And so, when I return to McGill next academic year and start celebrating a weekly prayer book service again, I intend to use real bread (we already use quite tasty wine, if I may say so), and to encourage people to take a bit more of each, if they feel comfortable doing so. It is my hope that this will help the Supper more fully show forth physically what it is spiritually: the sign, seal, and instrument of our receipt of Christ’s body and blood for our salvation.

1. There is some scattered evidence for occasional use of wafers among high churchmen, and Cosin apparently wished to amend the rubric in the prayer book to allow their use in the negotiations leading up to the 1662 BCP. But Cosin was not successful in his attempt, and the use of leavened bread was standard practice until the rise of Anglo-Catholicism.

2. To be sure, I affirm that the bread and the wine of the Supper do more than symbolize Christ’s body and blood; they are instruments by which Christ’s body and blood are truly offered. But they are not less than symbols, even if they are more.

3. While I believe that the elements should be treated reverently, I do not get over-worried about crumbs — the avoidance of which I have often heard given as another reason why wafers are preferable to bread. But this might be a topic for another Substack.