Mystery in the New Testament
The Christian mystery has two poles or foci, which are already clearly discernible in the New Testament. We may call them the Synoptic and the Johannine types, if we see that the ideas to some extent overlap. The first is the thought of the Saviour as personally present at the eucharist; the second, the thought of the sacred elements as channels of Divine power and grace. It must be added that the line was perhaps never very sharply drawn between the presence of the Lord at other times, when the two or three are met in his name, and his sacramental presence; but it is with the latter that we are specially concerned.
We begin, then, with the thought of the presence of the Lord at the eucharistic meal. The meal at Emmaus may serve as a type to show how the primitive eucharist united with the experience of social fellowship that of the presence of the Risen Lord in the midst, the Lord who had been visibly present at the Last Supper. The elements are his body and blood; they symbolise the presence of the Crucified, and they constitute a link with his passion.
This brings us to the records of the institution. In the Synoptic accounts Mystery finds expression in the equation of the bread with his body, the wine with his blood. Even if we were to give the phrases a purely symbolic meaning—“this represents my body”—the act of consuming the symbols would lead beyond the region of symbolism to that of Mystery. As we have seen, the ideas of sacrifice and of communion-fellowship are inseperable from the action, particularly in the Markan record; in Luke and in Paul the idea of the Covenant predominates with regard to the chalice. The primary aspect, however, is that of communion with the Lord. We need not again discuss the complicated problems connected with the accounts, and it will be permissible now to sum up the element of Mystery therein contained, in the following theses:
(1) In the eucharistic meal there is the experience of the presence of the Lord and of communion with him.
(2) The presence is associated with the bread and wine, and is defined by the way in which Jesus himself used these elements at the Last Supper.
(3) Hence any physical identification of the bread and wine with the material flesh and blood of Jesus is impossible, even apart from the Jewish sentiment, which viewed the drinking of blood with abhorrence. The words, so interpreted, would be meaningless, since at the Last Supper Jesus was sitting at the table with the disciples; and the copula—est, is—which was been taken in some later controversies as proof of a corporeal identity, was certainly lacking in the original Aramaic. It is the form which the words taken when translated that has contributed to the localising of the presence in the elements.
(4) Yet since the presence is associated with the elements, the repetition of the Lord’s action in the church’s eucharist makes really present that which his action at the Supper symbolised—his self-oblation to death; and the elements thus guarantee the connection of the rite not merely with the historical Saviour, but with his finished work of redemption.
(5) Hence the act of eating and drinking must express the receiving of the wholeness of his nature, and the fruits of his redemptive work. (Yngve Brilioth, Eucharistic Faith and Practice Evangelical and Catholic [trans. A.G. Herbert; London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930, 1934], 54-56)