Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For all this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (1 Cor 11:28-30 | NRSV)
This is a text that many Catholic apologists (e.g., John Salza, The Biblical Basis for the Eucharist) have used to support the concept that the Apostle Paul taught that Jesus was present substantially (á la the dogma of Transubstantiation as defined in 1215) during the celebration of the Eucharist. As one Catholic theologian wrote about the expression, “discerning [alt. distinguishing] the body”:
This last expression should destroy all desire to water down the apostle’s thought: for him what is present on the holy table is really the body and blood of Christ. Many Christians had already been struck by illness and even death, precisely because they had treated the consecrated bread and wine without recognizing anything else in them: namely, the very body of Christ. Each unworthy action towards the consecrated bread and wine is, then, by that very fact a sacrilege against the body and blood of Christ. (M.E. Boismard O.P., “The Eucharist According to Saint Paul” in The Eucharist in the New Testament [eds. J. Delorme, P. Benoit, J. Dupont, M.E. Boismard, and D. Mollat; trans. E.M. Stewart; Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1964], pp. 125-39, here, p. 130)
However, as others have noted, the “body” in this text is not a reference to the bread of the sacrament, but the ecclesiastical body. Eric Svendsen, when discussing this pericope, noted the following:
Here Paul informs the Corinthians that their actions at the Lord’s Table are resulting in the death of some in the community. This divine judgment seems to have been swift, for many had already died in the presumably short lapse of time between their abuse of the Supper and Paul’s hearing about it. As in the case of the immoral man of 1 Corinthians 5, the Corinthians are virtually oblivious to this abuse. On the surface, one principle seems to be that if the church will not discipline its members by exclusion from table fellowship, God will do it for them—only in a much more drastic way! In either case exclusion from table fellowship is effected.
On a deeper level, however, one must ask why the participants of the meal had already incurred death as a divine judgment, whereas the immoral man of chapter five had not. The answer seems to be in what table fellowship signifies in the Christian community. Paul points to the Corinthians’ lack of “recognizing” the “body of the Lord” as the cause of this judgment. There is some ambiguity as to what is meant here by “body” (σῶμα). Marshall thinks that σῶμα should be understood in light of v. 27 where it refers to the bread of the Eucharist. Theissen sees the phrase μὴ διακρίνων τὸ σῶμα (mê diakrinôn to sôma) (v. 29) as referring to the failure on the part of some to distinguish between the food which belongs to the Supper and the food which belongs to the “private meals,” although Fee is probably right that this interpretation “must be ruled out as totally foreign to the context.” A more likely referent of σῶμα is the local group of believers in Corinth. This is the meaning Paul gives to σῶμα in 1 Cor 10:17; and, it is clear from the context that concern over the rich abusing the poor at Corinth is topmost in Paul’s mind. It seems likely, then, that σῶμα here is a reference primarily (if not solely) to the community of believers rather than to Christ’s physical body. Not to “discern the body of the Lord” is, in this case, tantamount to not recognizing that the poor at Corinth were to be esteemed as participants of Christ’s body. Exclusion from table fellowship was a serious consequence of sin—one that was not to be taken lightly, but was to be exercised only as a last resort in the discipline process. The rich were, without proper cause, excluding the poor from table fellowship. The deadly and ironic result was that the rich were in turn being excluded from that same table fellowship. (Eric Svendsen, The Table of the Lord: An Examination of the Setting of the Lord's Supper in the New Testament and its Significance as an Expression of Community [rev ed.; Atlanta: New Testament Restoration Foundation, 1997], 47-48)
