Eucharist and Lord's Supper

EUCHARIST AND LORD'S SUPPER 101
(I) The conditions which dictated the separation were much more likely
to arise in gentile churches with their pagan background than among jewish
christians. We have seen that they arose very quickly at Corinth, despite
the fact that S. Paul had personally instructed the original converts there
on the meaning of the eucharist, and had exercised supervision over that
church afterwards. What of gentile churches which had no such advantages-those,
say, founded by converts ofhis converts? Christianity spread
with extraordinary swiftness among gentiles in the years A.D. 40-60. The
need for such a reform might become pressing and general in quite a short
time. (2) The separation, whenever it was made, was made with great
delicacy and considerable knowledge of jewish customs, by men who
cherished the jewish past. One has only to consider such things as the
retention of the host's invitation to offer the berakah and the guests' assent
before the eucharistic prayer; or the retention ofthe bread-breaking at the
agape despite its duplication of that at the eucharist, because this was the
invariable jewish grace before meals; while the 'cup of blessing', the invariable
jewish accompaniment of the berakah at a chaburah meal, was
not retained at the agape because the latter was not in the same sense 'the'
chabUrah rite for the christians, and the berakah itself had been transferred
to the eucharist. These things speak for themselves. They were done by
jews, and accepted by all at a time when the gentile churches still looked to
jewish leaders in their new faith. That stage did not last long after A.D. 70
so far as we can see. (3) There is the further consideration ofthe universal
and unquestioning acceptance of the 'four-action shape' in the second
century, when most things were being questioned by the scattered churches,
without oecumenical leaders, without generally accepted christian scriptures
and with only undeveloped standards of orthodoxy of any kind.
There was then no tradition whatever of a 'seven-action shape'-such as
the N.T. documents, already in circulation and reverenced though not yet
canonised, proclaimed as original. (4) There are the further indications,
very slight in themselves, that when Matt. and Mark were written (A.D.
65-80) the exact relation of the eucharist to a meal was only of academic
interest to christians.
It is impossible to do more than indicate the probabilities-perhaps only
the possibilities-of the case. But these do point back to the apostolic age
itself as the period of the formation ofthe 'four-action shape' of the liturgy
-after the writing of I Cor. but before the writing of the first of our gospels.
And if we must look for a place whence the new separate rite of the
'eucharist', and the new name for it, spread over all the christian churchesthis
is much more hazardous-there is Rome, the church of Peter the
apostle of the circumcision and of Paul the apostle of the gentiles, in the
capital and centre of the world, which 'taught others', as Ignatius said, and
had 'the presidency of charity'. With a strong jewish minority in a Greekspeaking
church, the need for Greek equivalents to berakah and chaburah