Eucharist and Lord's Supper

THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY
significanceof the phrase 'the New Covenant in My Blood' in connection
with the second paragraph of the berahah alX"clt the Old Covenant, which
was rewritten in terms of the new christian meaning to form the christian
eucharistic prayer. In the circumstances, the disappearance of these two
all-important items from the christian chabUrah meal would be a quite
sufficient differentiation between the two somewhat similar rites of the
agape and the eucharist for jewish christians, but probably not for gentile
converts from paganism. This, as well as the care and delicacy with which
the separation was made, needs to be taken into account in considering by
whom and when the 'four-action shape' of the eucharist was organised, a
point which remains to be discussed.
The Separation of the Eucharistfrom the Agape
At first sight S. Paul's evidence in I Cor. xi. appears to be decisive that
the eucharist and agape were still combined in a single observance when
that epistle was written. But upon closer inspection this interpretation,
though still, I think, the most probable, becomes less certain than is
generally supposed. The difficultyis partly due to the difficulty of deciding
how far S. Paul's use of quasi-technical terms is already in line with that
which became normal in the second century; and partly to the tantalisingly
obscure way in which he refers to the actual practices at Corinth to which
he is objecting, which he and his correspondents could take for granted,
but which are by no means easy for us to make out.
S. Paul has just been rebuking the Corinthian peculiarity of allowing
women to pray unveiled and concluded that 'we have no such custom, nor
have the churches of God', as a decisive reason against it (v. 16). 'With this
watchword' he continues 'I praise you not that you hold your liturgical
assemblies not for the better but for the worse.' His converts, to whom he
had taught the rite of the New Covenant, have evidently made some change
in their method of celebrating it, which they thought to be an improvement,
but to which he takes serious objection. But, 'First, when you hold your
assembly in the ecclesia, I hear there are quarrels among you, and I partly
believe it' (v. 18). Having dealt with this, he comes to the main point.
'Therefore when you assemble as the ecclesia it is not to eat the Lord's
supper, for each one greedily starts on his own supper at the meal, and one
goes hungry and another gets tipsy'. Having regard to the fact that the
'Lord's supper' in the second century means the agape apart from the
eucharist proper, and that the first phrase can perfectly well mean 'When
you assemble as the ecclesia it is not possible to eat the Lord's supper', it
would be legitimate to understand this as meaning that the ecclesia is not
the right sort of occasion at all for celebrating the agape, but only for the
eucharist; i.e. the two rites have already been separated and the innovation
of the Corinthians consisted precisely in combining them again. Such an