Eucharist and Lord's Supper

EUCHARIST AND LORD'S SUPPER 99
ends of the supper. Neither argument is decisive, indeed, either separately
would seem rather trivial. But they both point in the same direction.
The next point is the introduction of the word 'agape' as a technical
term for the christian common meal (whether with or without the eucharist).
This occurs in the New Testament only at Jude 12 (and perhaps also
in 2 Pet. ii. 13 if apatais be not the true reading) where certain heretics are
denounced as 'blemishes feasting with you in your agapai.' There is here no
apparent reference to the eucharist, but only to a christian 'feast'. The new
term had presumably been introduced to describe a new observance, the
supper apart from the eucharist. But this is found only here, among the
later strataof the New Testament, in the second christian generation.
In the next generation the new word has become a technical term used
by distinction from 'the eucharist' to describe the observance, now becoming
traditional, of the supper altogether apart from the liturgical
eucharist. Writing to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius (c. A.D. 115) warns them:
'Without the bishop let no one do any of the things which pertain to the
ecclesia. Let that be accounted a valid eucharist which is under the bishop
(as president) or one to whom he shall have comInitted (it). Wheresoever
the bishop may be found, there let the whole body be, as wherever Jesus
Christ may be, there is the catholic church. It is not allowed without the
bishop either to baptise or to hold an agape.'! Ignatius is not laying down
a new principle, but insisting on the liturgical basis of the bishop's
authority in his church. Without the exercise of his 'special liturgy'­
either personally or by deputy-there cannot be a valid eucharist, for the
'Body of Christ', the church, is not organically complete without him, and
therefore cannot 'offer' itself or fulfil itself in the eucharist. Anyone can
baptise or hold an agape 'without the bishop'; there is no question of
'validity' in such a case, but 'it is not allowed; to do so, for unity's sake and
for discipline. These are things which 'pertain to the ecclesia' and the
whole life and unity of the ecclesia centre in the bishop as the representative
of the Father and the special organ of the Spirit. 'Apart from the
bishop' and the lesser liturgical ministers 'it is not even called an ecclesia'
(i.e. a liturgical assembly), as Ignatius says elsewhere. The agape here is an
observance as well known as baptism or the eucharist, and independent of
either. 2 The new Greek term, agape, has established itself as the translation
of chabUrah, just as in Ignatius eucharistia is the accepted technical translation
of berakah. The eucharistia is the berakah apart from the chabUrah
supper, and the agape is the chabUrah supper without the berakah.
We need not pursue the question further. Justin, the next christian
author, describes the eucharist but does not mention the agape. Yet it
1 Smyrn., viii.
, Lightfoot in his note (ad loc.) takes the view that eucharist and agape were still
combined. But he produces no instance of agape used to denote both supper and
eucharist combined, and none such exists. On the contrary, they are here distinguished.