T H E C H R I S T I A N PA S S OV E R

By the same author:

The Christian Philosophy of Education Explained, 1992
Christianity and Law, 1993
The Nature, Government and Function of the Church, 1997
A Defence of the Christian State, 1998
The Political Economy of a Christian Society, 2001
Common-Law Wives and Concubines, 2003
The Problem of the “Gifted Speaker,” 2009
Baal Worship Ancient and Modern, 2010
The Great Decommission, 2011
 THE
C H R I S T I A N PA S S OV E R
Agape Feast or Ritual Abuse?

STEPHEN C. PERKS

KU Y P E R F O U N DAT I O N
tau n t o n  •   e n g l a n d
2012
 Published in Great Britain by
THE KUYPER FOUNDATION
P. O. BOX 2, TAUNTON, SOMERSET,
TA1 4ZD, ENGLAND

Copyright © Stephen C. Perks 2012

All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9522058-4-5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain

 P R E FAC E

The original version of this essay was first published in Christianity

& Society Vol. x, No. 2 (April 2000). The present version has been
significantly reworked and expanded to more than twice its origi-
nal length, primarily (but not exclusively) by the addition of Part
Two, which gives a brief account of the practice of the agape
feast and its relationship to the Eucharist in the early centuries of
the Church’s history, and an Epilogue.
 TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Part One: The Christian Passover

1. Introduction ....................................................................... 9
2. Spirituality and Fellowship ................................................... 11
3. The Biblical Pattern v. Spiritual Immaturity ........................... 16
4. Fellowship as an Optional Extra ........................................... 19
5. The Real Thing: A Christian Passover ................................... 22
6. Conclusion to Part One ........................................................ 27
7. Postscript ........................................................................... 29

Part Two: Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church

1. The Apostolic Age ............................................................... 31
2. The Sub-Apostolic Age ........................................................ 33
3. Tertullian and Beyond .......................................................... 39
4. The Separation of Agape and Eucharist ................................. 41
5. Conclusion to Part Two ....................................................... 46

Epilogue .................................................................................. 48
Excursus .................................................................................. 52
 pa rt o n e

T H E C H R I S T I A N PA S S OV E R

§1
Introduction

Some years ago morning worship at an Anglican church I used

to attend was suddenly subjected to some changes by the Church
leaders. In particular we were asked to treat the ten minutes or
so before the service started as a time of preparation for worship,
and in order to achieve this state of preparedness we were asked
to desist from talking and join in chorus singing or engage in quiet
meditation instead. Some weeks later this ten minute spiritual
warm-up ceased to be optional. The whole congregation was di­
rected from the front by the singsong maestro to join in with the
chorus singing. No choice for the individual was deemed appropri-
ate any longer and an attempt was made to make sure everyone
joined in with the chorus singing. A “spiritual” equivalent of the
three line whip was imposed.
The obvious implication of this is that talking prior to the
start of the service is not appropriate and hinders the creation of
the right mood for morning worship. By way of justification for
these changes we were asked to consider that we must constantly
examine what we do in church to ensure that it helps us to focus
on the transcendence of God.
This kind of attitude to worship is not an idiosyncrasy of the
particular church I then attended. It is common across the whole
spectrum of Church life in the UK: among the Reformed Churches
no less than the charismatic, in non-conformist Churches and
9
10 The Christian Passover
Anglican Churches, low Churches as well as high Churches. The
creation of the right mood or state of mind is deemed essential
to “spiritual” worship. It would not be going too far to say that
for many Christians this kind of mood is equated with being led
by the Holy Spirit; i.e. it is considered to be a state of being “in
the Spirit.” Such a mood is deemed especially appropriate if we
are to partake of the divine mystery of the Eucharist (the Lord’s
Supper), which is, as befits such an understanding of being in the
presence of God, a most solemn, indeed almost morbid, event
celebrated with the utmost gravitas.
Now, it is true that we must understand the transcendence of
God and that our worship must express our recognition of this
attribute of the divine nature. But Christianity teaches also the
immanence of God. To downplay either side of this theological
equation will result in an unbalanced practice of the faith, both
in personal life and in corporate worship. It is my belief that the
Church’s understanding of this truth is, on the whole, unbalanced
and that this imbalance works itself out in the practice of the
Christian life both individually and corporately, and among other
things in the way that we worship together.
Of course, I agree that we should constantly examine what
we do in church carefully. Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda—“The
Church reformed must be ever reforming”—was a shibboleth of
the Reformation that has too often been forgotten by the heirs of
the Reformation. Reform according to the word of God is a biblical
ideal. However, the argument that we should desist from talking in
church, that church is for “spiritual” services and activities, makes
a number of assumptions that I believe cannot be justified from
Scripture. It is true that we should examine what we do in church,
and it is because this is true that I want to discuss this issue in more
detail, try to expose some of these assumptions, and see what the
Bible has to say about how we should worship together. Perhaps I
ought to make it clear at the outset, however, that I fundamentally
disagree with the idea that worship requires the creation of a mood
that is only consistent with quiet meditation or chorus singing.
Speaking personally, I find that the singing of choruses and the
 Spirituality and Fellowship 11
kind of mood that is supposed to be created by them does not
direct my mind or body to the worship that God requires of us as
I understand this biblically. Furthermore, this perspective assumes
that talking to each other is somehow inherently unspiritual and
inappropriate in church. This also I profoundly disagree with. I
object as much to the imposition of this erroneous idea of “spirit­
uality” on the Church as those who object to the talk they deem
inappropriate before the church service starts because they believe
this time should be used for getting oneself into the right mood.
So how are we to arrive at a common mind on this issue? Well,
the only way, i.e. the only Christian way, is to search the Scriptures
in an attempt to ascertain what it is that God’s word requires of
us in worship. If we are truly seeking God’s will, we should then
be able to unite on the way forward. Theoretically! In this essay
I shall attempt to point the way to what I believe the Bible really
says about how we should worship, particularly in the context of
the Christian Passover, i.e. the Eucharist.

§2
Spirituality and Fellowship

First, let us consider the notion of spirituality. What is spirituality?

Is it a mood? Is it, as was claimed by the leaders of the Church
mentioned above, an appreciation of “the mystery and wonder of
the transcendent God”? Many ideas of spirituality abound today.
Unfortunately, very few are biblical. Spirituality, if we must use the
term, is summed up in the phrase “Trust and obey.” That’s it. To
be spiritual is not to have some mystical feeling, nor is it a mood
of contemplation or piety. It is simply trusting and obeying God.¹
If our worship is to be spiritual, therefore, we must seek to obey
the Bible in the way that we worship. Only then will our worship
be “in spirit and in truth” ( Jn 4:24).
¹ For a full explanation of this point see “What is Spirituality?” in my book
Common-Law Wives and Concubines: Essays on Covenantal Christianity and Contemporary
Western Culture (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2003), pp. 91–112.
12 The Christian Passover
How is it, therefore, that chorus singing, or any other form
of “preparation” or “spiritual” exercise for that matter, prepares
people for this worship whereas talking to each other does not?
Before I can accept this I need to see some explanation, i.e. bibli-
cal explanation, of this assumption. I need to understand why it is
that the cessation of talk, the singing of choruses or the creation
of a quiet contemplative mood equips me for worship better than
talking to other believers does. And I need to be shown that this
is what the Bible says is what equips us for worship, and indeed
whether in fact the Bible requires this mood worship of us at all.
Because if it does not, this whole notion of spirituality is blown
clean out of the water and we had better start thinking again about
what spirituality is.
The implication is that talking in church is not spiritual, that
communication between believers—i.e. fellowship—prior to the
service starting is a hindrance to worship and true spirituality. But I
object to this attempt to curtail Christian fellowship in the church,
which really amounts to no more than an attempt by the chief
“spiritual” persons in the Church to inflict their own mediocre
musical tastes and their own ideas of spirituality on everyone else,
with the implication that unless one follows suit one is insensitive to
the Spirit. And I object because I do not think it can be defended
biblically, indeed makes assumptions that are not defensible bib-
lically; in short, is unbiblical because it undermines the biblical
concept of both spirituality and fellowship. The idea that worship
is a matter of mood, of setting aside the mundane world in which
we live in an attempt to attain a higher plane or more “spiritual”
mood or state of mind is inherently dualistic and assumes a sacred/
secular dichotomy that is not found in the Christian Scriptures.
This concept of spirituality combines elements of mysticism and
paganism, but is essentially a notion derived from the Greek du-
alistic perspective that underpinned the Alexandrian world-view,
which has afflicted the Christian Church from the beginning (and
our society at large as well). It is this Greek dualistic heritage that is
the source of pietism, which mood worship is a good example of.
Spirituality, biblically speaking, is not an attempt to escape from or
 Spirituality and Fellowship 13
rise above this mundane world in any sense, but rather the proper
dedication of this mundane world to the service of God.
Second, I also disagree with the notion that the singing of cho-
ruses (or hymns) is somehow essential to the creation of the right
attitude in worship, and if singing choruses and hymns does not in
itself create the right kind of attitude why should we sing so many
choruses and hymns in church? Most Churches already sing an
inordinate amount of choruses and hymns in their worship services.
There is a significant imbalance between this and the fellowship
we get together in church. I can only call the kind of worship we
get today in most churches the tyranny of hymns and choruses.
Someone once commented that if the words for Roll out the Barrel
were put up at the front of the church the congregation would
probably sing it without realising what it is. I know of instances
where such experiments have been carried out with interesting
results, namely a tendency for congregations to sing whatever is
put up on a screen at the front of the church or dictated from the
front by the singsong maestro regardless of the meaning of the
words, which demonstrates the mindlessness that prevails in much
congregational singing. There is a natural tendency for singing,
which is primarily a musical activity, to direct the emotions rather
than the intellect, so that the mind is not as consciously engaged
with regard to the meaning of the words as it is with the music.
Hence, it has been observed of musically intense worship services
that the emotional intensity reached in congregational singing often
relates to musical climaxes not to climaxes in the meaning of the
words being sung, since the two are not necessarily coterminous. As
long as the appropriate degree of musical intensity is reached the
singing is believed to be a good time of worship despite the con-
gregation’s being oblivious to the theological content of the songs.
With most traditional hymns and Psalms a proper under­standing
of the meaning of the words being sung requires the engagement
of the mind in theological reflection, and in modern Churches
both leaders and congregations tend to abominate the very idea
of theological reflection, which is often seen as an activity of the
mind rather than of the spirit, and because of this deemed to be
14 The Christian Passover
a work of the “flesh,” despite the fact that this idea directly and
in principle contradicts Scripture. Hence even when hymns and
songs with good theological content are being sung the primary
effect is often an emotional one that does not engage the reason.
Yet Christian worship, according to Scripture, should be reasonable
worship, i.e. worship that engages the mind or intellect : “I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom.
12:1–2). The word translated here as “reasonable” (λογικός) is the
word from which we derive our English words logic and logical.² John
Murray makes the following interesting comment on this verse:

The service here in view is worshipful service and the apostle characterizes
it as “rational” because it is worship that derives its character as accept-
able to God from the fact that it enlists our mind, our reason, our intellect.
It is rational in contrast with what is mechanical and automatic. A great
many of our bodily functions do not enlist volition on our part. But the
worshipful service here enjoined must constrain intelligent volition. The
lesson to be derived from the term “rational” is that we are not “Spiritual”
in the biblical sense except as the use of our bodies is characterized by
conscious, intelligent, consecrated devotion to the service of God.³

What real value “spiritually” therefore does this obsession

with choruses and hymns have? I suggest that for the most part
singing choruses, before, during or after the service has no real
effect on our spiritual state of mind or on the spiritual character
of our actions—though many Christians may think it does, largely
because they confuse spirituality with a particular kind of mood.
This is not to say that singing choruses is necessarily wrong—I do
not think it is. But chorus singing has become a substitute for wor-
² See further my essay “The Antithesis” in Christianity & Society, Vol. xvii, No.
1 (Summer, 2007), p. 37aff. See also “What is Spirituality?” in my book Common-
Law Wives and Concubines, p. 103ff.
³ John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965), Vol. II, p. 112; my emphasis.
 Spirituality and Fellowship 15
ship in many churches today, not an aid to it. Far from preparing
us for true worship, I believe singing numbs our minds to what we
should be doing in church.
Third, in the worship services of most churches I have attended
there has been no time for fellowship with others. Fellowship is
not seen as central to what we do in church. This is unbiblical
because fellowship is central to the biblical concept of corporate
worship. Of course, there is often coffee after the service, to which
all are cordially invited. But this is just the point. Fellowship is an
afterthought, an extra for those who want it, or who are prepared
to create it. Fellowship is not central to what we do in church. We
don’t get fellowship as part of what we do in church so we tag it on
at the end. What we do in church is meetings that are inherently
fellowshipless. And the truth is that coffee after the service does not
provide fellowship for everyone. And even if it does for some, they
have to go to church and endure up to ninety minutes of ritual to
get ten minutes of fellowship. But don’t expect to discuss the faith
over your coffee, or anything relevant to it, especially anything
chal­len­ging—the weather will suffice nicely for pre-Sunday lunch
chit-chat! (I am not criticising ritual per se or coffee after the church
service, only the balance between ritual and fellowship, the priori-
ties that we have set for what we do in church). Coffee time after
church services, while in itself entirely laudable, is a poor alternative
for the fellowship that the Bible shows us should be at the heart of
Church life.
Fellowship is not sitting bolt upright in a pew facing the front
of the church; nor is it singing choruses together, nor even kneel-
ing in prayer individually and listening to what is being said by
the clergy at the front. Neither is it saying the liturgy together
(again, please remember I am not criticising these things per se,
only the balance between these things and the fellowship we get
in church). Fellowship is not listening to homilies and sermons or
attending organised prayer meetings. The Church of England
has tried to remedy this problem with a user friendly “peace” slot
in the middle of the communion service. But this does not make
up for what is so obviously missing in the life of the Church; in
16 The Christian Passover
fact, because fellowship is missing from so much of what we do in
church, the user friendly peace slot is actually embarrassing and
awkward for many, especially newcomers, because it only makes
sense if there really is fellowship, and usually there is not. Again,
I am not arguing that we should not do these things, merely that
on their own or even together they do not constitute fellowship,
and when they take place in a context other than fellowship they
lose much of their meaning. Without fellowship there is something
missing from Church life on Sundays, something that house groups
on their own do not rectify.
My point, therefore, is that Sunday worship in most churches
is unbalanced by the near total lack of fellowship, since fellowship
is the interaction of people with each other and this is impossible
without communication, without talking to each other, something
that is virtually impossible to reconcile with the ritual that passes
for worship in most churches.

§3
The Biblical Pattern v. Spiritual Immaturity

How, then, are we to rectify this? How do we best get this fellow­
ship? Well, the best, most congenial, the most efficient and most
enjoyable way of having fellowship is at a shared meal. Eating
together is the best way to have fellowship. Just on a practical
level, it is interesting to observe that it is virtually impossible for
anyone to monopolise a conversation at a table and eat a meal at
the same time. At a meal all have opportunity to contribute to the
fellowship, the discussion, and all have to shut up at some point
while they service their stomachs. A meal, therefore, creates the
ideal, the perfect conditions for the natural participation of all in
fellowship.
Not surprisingly, therefore, a shared meal is the context of one
of the most important Christian rituals in the life of the Church:
the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, which was originally, as practised
by the early Church, a fellowship meal, i.e. a feast. This surely
 The Biblical Pattern v. Spiritual Immaturity 17
says something about what is really important to the life of the
Church from a biblical perspective. The Last Supper, which was a
Passover meal and the model for the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist,
and therefore the first Christian Passover,⁴ was not even remotely
like the Eucharists or communions we celebrate in church today;
neither was the Jewish Passover. The Passover was a shared meal,
a fellowship meal. The ritual and the worship and the fellowship
were not distinguishable practically. Analytically we can distinguish
the various parts, but to separate them out in practice would have
been to wreck the whole event. And all are part of what should
characterise our Eucharist services in church since the Eucharist
is the Christian Passover (if you are not Anglican just substitute
“Lord’s Supper” or “communion” for the term “Eucharist”—
whatever your Church happens to call it). Why did God make this
important and oft-repeated ritual a meal ? Because, obviously, an
essential part of this important ritual is fellowship, and fellowship
is best had round the table at a shared meal.
There is something extremely practical and well-suited to our
constitution as human beings in the way that God has structured
our worship, or at least what our worship should be. Contrary to
long established opinion, God does not delight in worship that
causes the worshipper pain and suffering, whether of a physical
or mental character. I personally judge chorus singing a form
of mental torture, though this does not mean it should not be
enjoyable to others. And I find hymn and Psalm singing just as
excruciating as chorus singing (in fact many choruses are Psalms
or based on Psalms)—again, not because there is anything wrong
with singing Psalms per se, but because we have stylised such forms
of worship into rituals that are almost devoid of meaningful context
and therefore fail to inspire any genuine heartfelt response (I speak
for myself, though I suspect rather more people feel the same way
than are prepared to admit it). This is only exacerbated by the lack
of any aesthetic qualities that I can appreciate. Granted, these
things on their own do not constitute the whole of the service, but
it is not much better when we come to the other parts. Preaching
⁴ See further p. 22ff. infra.
18 The Christian Passover
is virtually devoid of any content, any real explanation of God’s
word that applies to the reality of life or challenges the idolatry of
our culture. Church services have become to me a mirage. They
promise so much but deliver nothing; they are like deserts, without
spiritual, cultural, aesthetic or intellectual nourishment, or even
any real fellowship with other Christians. The result is that I go the
church hopeful and come away vexed and troubled, simply bored
at best. And this is not a flippant attitude on my part; rather, it is
the result of over 35 years of exposure to such torture, a period
in which I have genuinely tried to engage with what goes on in
church. But the older I get the more difficult this becomes because
the type of praise and worship that prevails in church services is
for the most part infantile. What we get in the name of worship
is adults behaving like children. Most church praise and worship
services would not be out of place in a primary school assembly,
which seems to be the general level of maturity at which such
worship functions. We are even directed from the front to “do
the actions” that accompany the choruses like little children in a
school assembly, and in one sense this is appropriate because in
many churches the rest of the service, including (especially!) the
sermon, often takes place at an equally infantile level. This is the
level of praise and worship in most churches today. One chorus I
have heard being sung in church services includes the words: “Bop
bop showaddy-waddy, bop bop showaddy-waddy.” Utter drivel!
But it is not merely drivel. It has a seriously debilitating effect upon
the life of the Church because it trivialises the faith and demeans
it.⁵ These comments are not directed only at the Anglican Church;
they are the result of my experience of virtually the whole spectrum
of Church life in the UK, traditional and evangelical (including
every major Protestant denomination).
But God has not instituted singing as what should be at the
heart of one of the most important Christian rituals, much less
the Christianised rave and heavy rock music that constitutes “wor-
⁵ Unfortunately the problem goes much deeper than congregational singing.
The infantile level of praise and worship that prevails in Church services today
is really a symptom of a much more profound problem, namely the general level
 Fellowship as an Optional Extra 19
ship” in many modern charismatic Church services or the kind
of in­fantile choruses that are frequently sung in many evangelical
Churches; rather he has put fellowship at the heart of this ritual
by making it a meal. Why? Because without this important ele­
ment of fellowship our Christian lives are impoverished, and no
amount of chorus singing or attempting to create the right mood
will ameliorate this deficiency. It is a deficiency that can only be
remedied by fellowship.

§4
Fellowship as an Optional Extra

But Churches have house groups and the like, someone will say.
Well, I do not think there is anything wrong with house groups per
se. In fact I think they can be very good and sometimes are, though
not always. But they cannot take the place of what we should be
doing on Sundays as the Church but in fact do not do. Not only
are we impoverished by our lack of fellowship on Sundays. As a
result we offer God less than he demands of us in terms of wor-
ship. Fellowship is not optional in the biblical scheme of worship;
it is at the heart of worship. If we cannot square worship and
fellowship as taking place at the same time, the problem is our

of spiritual immaturity that pervades the Church. Nor is this a problem that
is easily corrected since it affects the leadership of the Church. The spiritual,
theological and intellectual immaturity of the clergy is replicated in the Church
generally as a consequence of continual congregational exposure to weak leader-
ship that encourages a culture of spiritual immaturity in the Church. Since future
clergymen are nurtured in the faith in congregations immersed in this culture
of spiritual immaturity the problem gets passed on to the next generation. The
result is that the Church has succumbed to a general dumbing-down process that
has enfeebled her witness to the world. Spiritual maturity and growth in under-
standing the faith is essential if the Church is to fulfil the Great Commission. Yet
this is conspicuously absent in the modern Church on the whole. This problem
seldom gets addressed in the theological colleges since those who run and teach
in the colleges are themselves the product of the same culture of immaturity. As
a consequence the spiritual, moral, theological and intellectual decrepitude of
the Church becomes more severe with each generation.
20 The Christian Passover
dualistic world-view not the biblical requirement for worship that
is fellowship based. In this respect it has often stuck me as odd that
so many Christians will make such a fuss about how Christians
should attend church every Sunday because we are required to
meet together (i.e. have fellowship with each other) frequently in
Scripture (Heb. 10:25); yet what happens when we get to church
can hardly be described as fellowship at all much of the time.
This is to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel (Mt. 23:24). We
are encouraged to meet together frequently in Scripture precisely
so that we can encourage each other in the faith—something it is
impossible to do if we are not permitted to talk, i.e. communicate
with each other.
Fellowship in the biblical scheme of things is not an optional
extra thrown in at the end of the church service. It should be as
much at the heart of the life of the Church worship service as
anything else that takes place in the service. Otherwise why would
such a central ritual as the Lord’s Supper be a shared meal? If
there is no real community, no fellowship, there is no Church, no
matter how good the sermon is, or the hymns and choruses, or the
liturgy and “sacraments.” Fellowshipless worship is not the kind of
worship that God requires of us.
Yet, if I want fellowship in the Church I must create it outside
the Church’s official services on a Sunday. Why? Because in reality
there is no fellowship in the Eucharist as practised today (and this is
as true of the communions celebrated by nonconformist Churches
as it is of the Anglican Eucharist). It has become a mere rite, devoid
of the context that originally gave it meaning. Everyone remains
isolated from each other and maintains a solemn silence. And I
suspect there would be a good deal of disapprobation from most
Church leaders if people were to start having fellowship during the
Eucharist service—despite the fact that biblically the Lord’s Supper
has been instituted precisely in the context of such fellowship—
because such fellowship would spoil the “spiritual” mood that is
deemed so important. But what is left of the shared meal, the fel-
lowship around the Lord’s table, at the Eucharists or communion
services in our “Bible believing” Churches? Nothing!
 Fellowship as an Optional Extra 21
I think this is wrong. I believe it is a perversion of what the Lord
Jesus Christ instituted at the first Christian Passover. Fellowshipless
worship services, and especially fellowshipless communions, are
an abuse, a form of ritual abuse of God’s ordinance, the Christian
Passover, which was never instituted to be celebrated in the way
that it is celebrated in churches today. Rather, the communion
was a fellowship event as much an anything else. To strip it of
its fellowship context is to strip it of meaning as a covenant sign
celebrated by the body of Christ, i.e. the Christian community.
Today the Eucharist bears almost no resemblance to the Christian
Passover meal that it was originally. Does anyone think there was
silence at the celebration of the Passover, that everyone sat silently
minding his own business? Celebrations are not usually like that.
Funerals are though. Unfortunately, the Eucharist is more akin to
a funeral service than a celebration of our deliverance from sin
by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The refusal to take seriously the context of the communion
service, i.e. the Christian Passover meal, a feast celebrating our
deliverance from sin by the Lord Jesus Christ, is a serious failure
of the Church’s duty to God and to her members. Doubtless there
are all sorts of reasons why the Church should not follow the Bible
in this matter but follow the inventions of men instead.—Oh dear!
We might even have to include our children in a shared meal. How
dreadful!⁶
Communion is no longer a fellowship meal around the Lord’s
table. It is a solemn rite, a mere ritual. Instead of having fellowship
we sing choruses or sit quietly communicating with no one while
we are subjected to the ubiquitous chorus on the assumption that
late twentieth-century love ballad-style pop music is somehow
more spiritual than the fellowship that the Lord Jesus himself
instituted as central to the life of his Church. I believe that such
mood creation is no more spiritual than talking with each other
in church, indeed is a hindrance to true spirituality because the
stripping of talk, communication, fellowship, from our activities in
⁶ On the inclusion of children in the Eucharist see “Covenant Signs and
Sacraments” in my book Common-Law Wives and Concubines, pp. 32–46.
22 The Christian Passover
church does not enhance or enrich our worship together; rather,
it impoverishes our life as the Church, i.e. as a community of faith.
It is as if fellowship together in church were not really central
to our Church life, but an optional extra after the real business of
meeting as a Church has been accomplished. I disagree entirely.
I see nothing inherently spiritual in working oneself into an emo-
tional or mystical mood by the use of music or any other form
of “spiritual” exercise. Is this not really a Christianised version of
the chants that pagan religions use anyway? Certainly the effect
seems to be similar, namely, a largely mindless time of emotional
incontinence or mystical self-indulgence.

§5
The Real Thing: A Christian Passover Feast

The Lord Jesus Christ is the true Passover sacrifice, of which the
Jewish paschal lamb was the type. The Last Supper that Jesus
celebrated with his disciples was the culmination of the Jewish
Passover, since Christ is the antitype to which the Jewish type
pointed. Just as the Jewish Passover pointed forward to the sacri-
fice of Christ on the cross, so the Christian Passover, the Lord’s
Supper, points back to the sacrifice that Christ made once and for
all time. The true celebration of the Passover, therefore, passed
from the Jewish rite to the Christian rite, i.e. the Lord’s Supper,
the Christian Church’s celebration of the salvation that Christ ac-
complished for his people by his life, death and resurrection. The
model for the latter, the Lord’s Supper, is the Last Supper, which
was the last Jewish Passover⁷ and the first Christian Passover. Our
Eucharist or Lord’s Supper celebrates this salvation by pointing
⁷ Obviously, the Jews continued to observe the Jewish Passover after Christ’s
passion, but in reality it became after this an empty form, devoid of true meaning,
since the purpose for which it was instituted, i.e. to typify the sacrifice of Christ
for sin, had been fulfilled in Christ’s passion, rendering its observation ineffectual,
just as the other sacrificial and ceremonial rituals of the Old Testament became
ineffectual after Christ had sacrificed himself on the cross for sin once and for
all time because what they pointed to had been fulfilled.
 The Real Thing: A Christian Passover Feast 23
back to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the true paschal sacri-
fice. The Lord’s Supper (or communion or Eucharist) is therefore
the Christian Passover celebration.
But the first Christian Passover gives us, in fact, a very different
model of what should happen at the communion service, indeed
a radically different model, from anything I have experienced at
the Eucharists or communion services of most Churches. In the
original Christian Passover service we have a meal—the archetypal
fellowship situation. People are talking to each other, discussing
their situation and the meaning of the events of which they are
a part. Jesus is speaking to them about the same events. They ask
him questions and he teaches them. They eat a meal together.
When Jesus breaks the bread and says “This is my body” he does
it in this context. The Jewish Passover, on which the Christian
Passover is based, is a shared meal, not a service of the type we
are accustomed to in church today. The Eucharistic practice of
the Church today is a ritual designed by clergymen for clergymen,
not a fellowship meal designed to equip the saints for service (Eph.
4:12).
The Church has signally failed to appreciate the importance
of the shared meal in Scripture. As a result the quality of Church
life has suffered significantly. This emphasis on the mundane
act of eating shows how, in Scripture, there is no sacred/secular
dichotomy. All of life is religious. Eating a meal together should
be just as much a spiritual activity as praising God by singing
a hymn; indeed, in Scripture sharing a meal together has a far
greater significance and importance than singing of any kind.
Many, however, cannot conceive how such a mundane activity as
eating can be spiritual. But it is. Not only can eating be a supremely
spiritual activity when thanks are given to God, it is part of one of
the most important rituals in the life of the institutional Church.
Men cannot do anything more spiritual than eating together with
others when their attitude is right. But when did your Church last
eat together as a Church? I don’t mean when did you last ingest
a five millimetre cube of bread—or perhaps it was a stale wafer
with the exciting taste of cardboard—and a sip of wine in church;
24 The Christian Passover
nor do I mean when did your Church last have a social occasion
that some members of the Church attended. I mean when did
the Church last have a meal in the context of a service, or rather,
a worship service in the context of a shared meal, which is what
the Christian Passover is? The importance of communal eating,
fellowship around the Lord’s table, has been missed by the Church.
This is because Christians spend too much time in church doing
things that the Bible does not require and too little doing those
things it does require.
We need to take seriously the importance of fellowship and
eating together in the Bible. Eating together is inherently fellowship
oriented. That’s why people go out for a meal together, or have
people round to their homes for a meal. And that is why Christ has
made eating together the context of one of the most important
rituals in the life of his Church. Because the Church has failed to
listen to the Bible at this point she has seriously underestimated
the importance of fellowship and has substituted singing, ritual
and the spiritual mood for true fellowship. This failure has blighted
the life of the Church.
In the first Christian Passover, as with the Jewish Passover,
fellowship together in the context of a social meal was a vitally
important element. It is in the context of fellowship that the Lord’s
Supper finds its meaning, and this is why the shared meal is so
important. To strip away the fellowship is to strip away at least half
of the meaning of the rite. Yet this is precisely what the Church has
done by instituting clergy-designed communion services instead of
communion services based on Christ’s design. Some reassertion of
balance is called for in our corporate worship. The first Christian
Passover (communion) gives us much food for thought.
First, as mentioned already, the context of the communion
should be fellowship over a shared meal, not a clergy-oriented
performance. Fellowship is not an afterthought; it is at the heart
of the rite; indeed it is the entire context. This means that talking,
discussion, interaction, communication is essential, just as teaching
is essential. This is why a meal is so important in Scripture, and
should be to us. Breaking bread together does not mean “having
 The Real Thing: A Christian Passover Feast 25
a communion service” in the modern sense, where everyone re-
mains quiet and isolated from each other, maintaining their own
personal piety or spiritual mood. It means, on the contrary, hav-
ing fellowship, having a meal together. This is so important to the
practice of the Christian faith that the Lord Jesus Christ made the
remembrance and celebration of the salvation he accomplished
for his followers part of a shared fellowship meal. We celebrate
our deliverance from sin around his table at a feast. This is what
Scripture teaches about the Lord’s Supper.
Second, singing hymns and choruses is not stressed in the Bible
as an important part of the Lord’s Supper (though music and sing-
ing are stressed in other contexts⁸). In fact at the first Christian
Passover it is singing that has the place of an afterthought at the
end of the meal. “And when they had sung an hymn, they went out
into the mount of Olives” (Mt. 26:30; Mk. 14:26). Please observe
the word in italics. They sang an hymn at the end. No mention
of getting into the right mood and all that. They sang an hymn at
the end. In other words, at the first Christian Passover, singing had
the place that coffee after the service has in most of our churches
today. It seems the clergy-designed communion service with its
emphasis on “spirituality” has got a number of its priorities upside
down here.
Third, in the early Church this emphasis—i.e. the biblical
emphasis on the context of the Lord’s Supper—continued after
the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The Lord’s Supper of the
early Church was celebrated in the context of the agape feast (cf.
Jude 12).⁹ This was the antithesis of what happens in church today.
Communion is a feast at the Lord’s table, a communal celebration
of Christ’s victory over sin and death and of our deliverance from
the same. Without this feast around the Lord’s table communion
loses much of its significance and resembles a funeral service more
than a feast of celebration.
⁸ On the use of music in church see further my essay “Some Thoughts on the
Use of Music in Church” in Christianity & Society, Vol. xix, No. 1 (Summer, 2009),
pp. 54–57.
⁹ For the historical evidence on this see Part Two infra.
26 The Christian Passover
Fourth, at Corinth, the New Testament’s archetype of what
can go wrong in the life of the Church, the agape feasts were be-
ing abused—i.e. the members of the Church, the body of Christ,
were abusing each other. They turned the agape feast into drunken
revelry and disregarded each other, thinking only of themselves¹⁰
(1 Cor. 11:20ff. The pagan religious background of the Corinthian
culture may have had an influence in this. The cult of Dionysus—
the Roman Bacchus—was celebrated at wild riotous festivals in
ancient Greece). In doing this they failed to discern the body, i.e.
they failed to appreciate that in treating each other in this way they
were abusing Christ himself (Mt. 25:40, 45). Paul dealt with this by
applying some discipline to their gatherings. He tells them to eat at
home, thereby separating the agape feast from the covenant signs of
bread and wine and putting a stop to the former. Why? Because of
the abuse. He did this in order to restore order and compassion in
their meetings, which had become a disgrace and abusive. He did
not do it to established a new paradigm for the Church universal
to follow, and there is no hint of such in 1 Cor. 11:20–34. This was
a disciplinary measure. The New Testament does not institute this
disciplinary measure as a new practice to be followed by the whole
Church. If we read the New Testament in context we should see
this more clearly. Paul does not lay down a disciplinary measure
intended for one Church as a paradigm to be followed in Churches
where such abuse was not present. If such an interpretation were
valid we should have to conclude logically that excommunication,
a disciplinary measure for those who have apostatised, should also
be practised as a matter of course in all church services regardless
of whether there is apostasy. Such reasoning would be absurd. And
it is just as absurd to apply Paul’s disciplinary measure aimed at
an abusive situation in Corinth to all church services regardless of
whether there is any abuse. Excommunication is not part of the
normal life of the Church, it is a remedy used in extreme cases
of apostasy. Likewise, the separation of the agape feast from the
covenant signs of bread and wine was an extreme disciplinary
measure aimed at a Church that had abused the agape feast.
¹⁰ See further the quotation from Godet at note 21 on p. 32f. infra.
 Conclusion to Part One 27
The Church has now almost universally normalised an extreme
disciplinary measure as the abiding practice for the celebration
of the Lord’s Supper. This means that the Christian Passover has
become for many primarily a means of discipline; indeed some
Churches and clergymen will argue that the Eucharist is primarily
a means of discipline, which really means, if the matter is to be
stated honestly, that it is a means of maintaining their own power
and authority. And of course we have the problem of restriction,
i.e. who can come to the Lord’s Supper, since despite the fact that
all who love the Lord are invited to the “table” in most churches
children are usually forbidden from partaking (i.e. they are auto-
matically excommunicated for being children, and this contrary
to the specific command of the Lord Jesus Christ himself—Mk
10:14; Lk. 18:16). We observe the Lord’s Supper in a disciplinary
form, i.e. a form designed for a disobedient Church that cannot
be trusted to practise the faith properly. Now, if our Churches are
disobedient and abusive when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper we
need to repent. If not, we need to rehabilitate the normal biblical
procedure for the celebration of our deliverance from sin at the
Eucharist—the Christian Passover feast. The feast, and therefore
the fellowship, should be part of the celebration of our deliverance
together around the Lord’s table, not an added extra tagged on at
the end or after the service has finished. The Eucharist should be
the feast. Until we restore this biblical emphasis I suspect that many
of our Churches will continue to fall short of being a Christian
community, much less a social order, and remain a collection of
individuals who attend some of the same church rituals.

§6
Conclusion to Part One

In conclusion I want to reiterate that the form of our commu-

nion service today is itself a form of abuse of Christ’s ordinance.
My comments about this are not directed only at the Church of
England. Communion has become many different things to dif-
28 The Christian Passover
ferent Churches. The Lord’s Supper is the Christian Passover, a
celebration of our deliverance from sin through the sacrificial death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. In some Churches, however, communion
has become a form of discipline (e.g. Presbyterianism). To others
it has become a magical rite and a substitute for adherence to the
covenant (e.g. Episcopalianism). In other Churches it is like a fu-
neral service where people beat their chests to atone for their own
sin (e.g. Brethren and assorted Free Churches). All these practices
are abuses of the original institution. There is no wonder people
are deserting the Church in droves. What they get when they go
to church is often a perversion of the biblical message and the
biblical emphasis to which the Church should aspire.
The Church is not an attractive community to many non-
believers. The Church is not an attractive community to many
believers. And this is because usually the Church is not a community at
all, but rather a mere venue for a series of ritual acts that people do
at the same time in the same place. In other words, in church so of-
ten what we have is not corporate worship but people worshipping
individually in the same building at the same time. The Church
often does not function as a community at all. Now, it would be
odd indeed if the members of a family never talked to each other
when they sat down together for a meal. Such a family would be
considered dysfunctional. And a Church, which is part of the family
of God, that acts in the same way is also dysfunctional. Yet this
is precisely the case every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
And it is no good hiding behind the Church’s rules, procedures
and traditions. When clergymen want to change things, even on a
local basis, they usually have no problems doing so. Yet so often
when we wish to follow the Bible, tradition and Church rules are
cited as the reason for not doing such things, or we are told such
things are not practical. These are excuses for the preservation of
“services” that amount to little more than ritual abuse.
How can I expect non-believers to give a hearing to what I
myself find to be a perversion of what the Bible sets forth—and
many in the Church of England have tacitly acknowledged this
deficiency by their endorsement of the social meal setting of the
 Postscript 29
Alpha course.¹¹ And if we don’t like the ritual abuse that goes on
in church we are deemed unspiritual (I refer here not merely to
Church of England ritual, but to the rituals of most denomina-
tions, which in substance vary very little from each other). Until
the Church is prepared to address this issue I fear she will merely
continue to manage her own decline nicely, oblivious of the remedy
that is set forth in the Bible. I suggest that the first thing we need
to do is to stop numbing our minds with more of those choruses
and hymns and start thinking seriously in church, in the worship
service, about what it means, not to go to church, but to be the
Church—i.e. a Christian society, indeed a Christian social order—
and therefore about what it means to celebrate the Lord’s Supper
together.

§7
Postscript

The more I read and study the Bible the more I find the context
of Church life, and especially the Sunday “services,” alien to what
I read in the Bible. I find it increasingly hard to reconcile the
Scriptures with the context of Church life. The Church seems to
live on a different planet, a planet where God does not speak the
message of the gospel in the way that he spoke it in the Bible. On
the Church planet there is no relevant relationship between what
goes on in church and what goes on in the world God has put us in
or the nation we are commissioned to disciple.¹² When we go into
church we enter a different world, a world that is secluded from
the world that God made and that he addresses so uncompromis-
¹¹ Unfortunately, it appears that a high proportion of people who attend Alpha
courses never make the transition to regular attendance at church services. It has
been observed that “One reason for the high drop-out rate from church of Alpha
‘graduates’ may be that they do not find the social meal setting in church—i.e.
they are introduced to one expression of Christianity via Alpha and then expected
to adapt to another, less natural one, later on.”
¹² On the nature and meaning of the Great Commission see my essay The Great
Decommission (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2011).
30 The Christian Passover
ingly in the Scriptures. And yet, when we get round to discussing
anything that is not directly related to the Church’s ritual activities
it turns out that precisely the same range of opinions and attitudes
that characterises the world-view of non-believers is to be found
among believers. The sacred/secular dichotomy has come home
to roost! So, we are supposed to get ourselves psyched up into a
“spiritual” mood for Sunday worship so that we can appreciate the
“mystery and wonder of the transcendent God” but this has no
relationship to the real world in which we live, does not affect how
we think about the issues that face us as members of society, sent
out into that society by the Lord Jesus Christ with a commission
to bring it into subjection to his will. We continue as before with
the same set of worldly opinions about education, politics, welfare,
economics, crime, etc., all of which remain largely untouched by
our encounter with the transcendent God. This just does not make
sense biblically.
The problem discussed above regarding the Christian Passover
is merely one aspect of this dichotomy between the practice of
the Church and the message of the Bible. However, because the
meeting of Christians together for purposes specified in Scripture
is so important, including their equipment for service in the
world (Eph. 4:11–16), it is necessary that we think seriously about
reforming what we do as the assembled community of faith in
accordance with Scripture if we are to be effective missionaries
in our daily lives, thereby serving and bearing witness to God in
our vocations. I am not saying that reformation of the worship
service and restoration of the Christian Passover is all we need to
do. Far from it. But it is essential because I believe that without it
the body of Christ as a whole will continue to fall short of being
the community of faith, the social order, that the Bible shows she should
be and therefore devoid of the spiritual renewal, moral strength,
and religious vision she needs to go out into the world and bring
it into subjection to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
 pa rt t w o

E U C H A R I S T A N D AG A P E I N
T H E E A R LY C H U RC H

§1
The Apostolic Age

It has been accepted by virtually all Christian traditions that the

Last Supper was a Passover meal (Mt. 26:17–30; Mk 14:12–26;
Lk. 22:14–38; Jn 13ff.). It has also been accepted by virtually all
Christian traditions that in the early Church the Lord’s Supper,
for which the Last Supper is the model and pattern,¹³—since, as
mentioned above, Christ is the true paschal sacrifice of which the
Jewish paschal lamb was the type—was celebrated as part of a
common fellowship meal, the agape feast,¹⁴ although the precise
relationship between the Eucharistic rite (the giving of thanks for
and consuming of the wine and bread that symbolise the blood and
broken body of Christ) and the common fellowship meal has been
subject to some debate.¹⁵ Nevertheless, it is clear that the two were,
at least in the primitive Church, celebrated together, indeed were

¹³ It seems, however, that very little of the liturgy of the Jewish Passover, with
the exception of the cup of blessing and the prayers of thanksgiving, survived
into the practice of the Christian Passover, i.e. the Lord’s Supper. See Augustus
Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church (Edinburgh: T. and T.
Clark, 1851), Vol. I, p. 448f.
¹⁴ Cf. Joseph A. Jungmann, S.J., The Early Liturgy To the Time of Gregory the Great
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, [1959] 1960, trans. Francis A. Brunner),
p. pp. 30–34.
¹⁵ See A. J. Maclean, “Agape” in James Hastings, ed., Encyclopædia of Religion
and Ethics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark), Vol. I, p. 166bf.

31
32 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
initially indistinguishable.¹⁶ This is evident from Paul’s criticism
of how the Corinthian Christians came together to celebrate the
feast¹⁷ (1 Cor. 11:20–34). It is generally agreed by commentators that
this was a combined Eucharist and agape feast, and the Church
Fathers who refer to this Scripture all consider this to have been
the case.¹⁸ According to the Church historian Augustus Neander:
“After the example of the Jewish Passover, and of the original in-
stitution, the Lord’s supper was accordingly at first united with a
social meal. Both constituted a whole, representing the communion
of the faithful with their Lord, and their brotherly communion
with one another; both together were called the supper of the Lord
(δεῖπνον τοῦ κυρίου, δεῖπνον κυριακόν) the supper of love (ἀγάπη).”¹⁹
Likewise, Lightfoot states: “In the Apostolic age the eucharist [sic]
formed part of the agape. The original form of the Lord’s Supper,
as it was first instituted by Christ, was thus in a manner kept up.
This appears from 1 Cor. xi.17 sq (comp. Acts xx.7), from which
passage we infer that the celebration of the eucharist came, as it
naturally would, at a late stage in the entertainment.”²⁰ Of course
the agape feasts of the Corinthian Church had degenerated into
an unacceptable abuse. Frederic Godet summed up the problems
with the Corinthian agape feasts in the following way:

all the provisions should have been put together and eaten in common by
the whole Church. But selfishness, vanity, sensuality, had prevailed in this
usage, and deeply corrupted it. These Agapæ at Corinth had degenerated
into something like those feasts of friends in use among the Greeks where
men gave themselves up to drinking excesses such as we find sketched
in the Symposium of Plato. And what was still graver . . . each was careful
to reserve for himself and his friends the meats he had provided; hence
it was inevitable that an offensive inequality should appear between the
guests, becoming to many of them a source of humiliation, and contrast-

¹⁶ See W. Lock, “Love-Feasts” in James Hastings, ed., A Dictionary of the Bible

(Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1900), Vol. III, p. 157af. Cf. M. H. Shepherd, Jr,
“The Agape” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1962), Vol. 1, p. 53af. and “Lord’s Supper” in ibid., Vol. 3, p. 158bf.
¹⁷ See p. 26 supra.  ¹⁸ Maclean, op. cit., p. 167b.  ¹⁹ Neander, op. cit., p. 442f.
²⁰ The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp (London: Macmillan and
Co., 1889, Second Edition), Vol. II, p. 313b.
 The Sub-Apostolic Age 33
ing absolutely with the spirit of love, of which such a feast should have
been the symbol.²¹

As discussed above, Paul’s remedy for this abuse was to separate

partaking of the covenant signs of bread and wine (the Eucharist)
from the social meal and to put an end to the latter. But this was
not a prescription for the Church generally. It was a disciplinary
measure aimed at stopping an abusive practice in a particular
Church at a particular time. We do not know whether or when the
agape feast was subsequently restored to the Church at Corinth,
but the combined Eucharist and agape feast continued for some
considerable time in the wider Church, and there is no teaching in
Scripture requiring the permanent separation of the two by Paul
or any of the other apostles. The epistle of Jude also refers to the
Church’s love (i.e. agape) feasts ( Jude 12, cf. 2 Pet. 2:13), similarly
warning the Church of those who abuse them, but there is no
attempt to bring the practice to an end and no criticism per se of
the combined Eucharist and agape feast.

§2
The Sub-Apostolic Age

There is also evidence from outside the New Testament that the
common fellowship meal, the agape feast, was the context in which
the early Church celebrated the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper.
The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is an early anony­
mous treatise on the Christian life and Church order and part of
the collection of works commonly known as the Apostolic Fathers.
The oldest complete manuscript transcription of the Didache is
dated 1056 a.d.²² but the work is much older than this and its
composition is estimated to have been somewhere between 60 and

²¹ Cited in J. F. Keating, The Agapé and the Eucharist in the Early Church: Studies in
the History of the Christian Love-Feasts (London: Methuen and Co., 1901), p. 48.
²² J. B. Lightfoot, op. cit. (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1891, one volume
edition), p. 216.
34 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
160 a.d.²³ Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 a.d.) quotes directly
from the Didache in his work The Stromata,²⁴ and Eusebius (c. 263–339
a.d.) refers to it in his Ecclesiastical History.²⁵ Since the eleventh cen-
tury manuscript was discovered in 1873 two much earlier papyri
fragments have been discovered, one from the fourth century, the
other from the fifth century.²⁶ The Didache gives instructions for
the prayer of thanksgiving at the Eucharist. It then goes on to
give instructions for the prayers of thanksgiving to be said “after
ye are satisfied.”²⁷ The latter is a prayer to be said at the end of
the meal, and distinct from the earlier Eucharistic prayer.²⁸ The
implication is that the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist and the agape
feast were still celebrated together at this early date.
Ignatius of Antioch, in his espistle to the Smyræans, written
early in the second century,²⁹ makes the following statement: “It
is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize or to hold a
love-feast.”³⁰ Although there has been some debate about it³¹ the
most reasonable interpretation of this statement is that the agape
feast included the Eucharist. According to Lightfoot the words
“either to baptize or to hold an agape” “seem to describe the two
most important functions in which the bishop could bear a part,
so that the ἀγάπη [agape] must include the eucharist. Indeed there

²³ J. A. Robinson, Barnabas, Hermas and the Didache (London: SPCK/New York:

The Macmillan Company, 1920), p. 43.
²⁴ “It is therefore said, ‘Son, be not a liar; for falsehood leads to theft’ ”—Bk I,
Chpt. 20 (The Ante-Nicene Fathers [Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark], Vol. II, p. 324a);
cf. Didache, Chpt. 3, “My child, be not a liar, since lying leads to theft” (Lightfoot,
op. cit. [1891, one volume edition], p. 230).
²⁵ Ecclesiastical History, Bk III, Chpt. 25, §4 in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Father of
the Church, Second Series (Edinburgh: T. and T; Clark), Vol. I, p. 156.
²⁶ H. M. Shepherd, Jr, “Didache” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 1,
p. 841bf. A fragment of a Latin translation also exists (reproduced in Lightfoot,
op. cit. [1891, one volume edition], p. 225).
²⁷ Lightfoot, op. cit. (1891, one volume edition), p. 232f.
²⁸ On the various interpretations of this text and alternative theories regarding
the order of the events described in it see Maclean, op. cit., p. 168, 173b, cf. Lock,
op. cit., p. 157b.
²⁹ Maclean puts the date at c. 110 a.d. (op. cit., p. 168b).
³⁰ Lightfoot, op. cit. (1891, one volume edition), p. 158.
³¹ See Maclean, op. cit., p. 169a.
 The Sub-Apostolic Age 35
would be an incongruity in this juxtaposition, as Zahn truly says
(I. v. A. p. 348), unless the other great sacrament were intended . . .
Nor would the omission of the eucharist be intelligible.”³²
It seems clear from this that the Eucharist and the agape
feast were still celebrated together at the beginning of the second
century. However, Pliny the Younger, the Roman governor of
Bithynia and Pontus from 110–113 a.d., in a letter to the emperor
Trajan c. 112 a.d.³³ regarding the treatment of Christians, makes
the following statement:
They [i.e. former Christians whom Pliny had questioned but who had
subsequently denied the faith—SCP] affirmed, however, the whole of
their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on
a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses
a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath
[sacramento], not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft
or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should
be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate,
and then reassemble to partake of food—but food of an ordinary and
innocent kind. Even this practice, however, they had abandoned after
the publication of my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had
forbidden political associations.³⁴

It has been argued that Pliny’s reference to an oath here was a

misunderstanding. The word used, sacramentum, meant oath in the
ordinary Roman usage of the time. It is believed by some scholars³⁵
that Pliny mistook the Christians’ use of the term to refer to the
Eucharist for the ordinary meaning of the term, i.e. oath.³⁶ The
inference from this is then that the Eucharist had by this time been
³² Lightfoot, op. cit. (1889), Part II, Vol. II, p. 313b.
³³ See ibid., Part II, Vol. I, p. 56.
³⁴ Pliny the Younger, Letters (London: William Heinemann/New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1937, trans. William Melmoth), Book. X, No. xcvi, Vol. II, p.
403f.
³⁵ See for example J. F. Keating, op. cit., p. 54ff.; Lightfoot, op. cit., Part II, Vol.
II, p. 314a; Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ; or The Antiquities of the Christian
Church (London: William Straker, 1839), Vol. V, p. 403.
³⁶ On the meaning of the word sacramentum and its use by the Church for the
rites of baptism and the Lord’s Supper see “Covenant Signs and Sacraments”
in my book Common-Law Wives and Concubines, pp. 32–46.
36 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
separated from the agape feast and was celebrated in the morning
before dawn while the latter was celebrated in the evening. There
are, however, a number of problems with this theory. First, Pliny’s
letter contains the first recorded use of the Latin word sacramentum
in relation to Christian worship.³⁷ The word does not appear in
Christian writings until at least the late second century since there
is little Latin Christian literature before this time.³⁸ It seems that
Tertullian (160–220 a.d., fl. 197–220) was the first Christian writer
to use the word sacramentum in the specifically Christian sense in
reference to baptism and the Eucharist,³⁹ although he also uses it to
mean oath.⁴⁰ After Tertullian sacramentum is used by other Christian
Latin authors in relation to the Christian faith.⁴¹ To assume that
Pliny misunderstood the meaning of sacramentum—if indeed it was
even the word his informers used, which is another assumption that
cannot be proved (see below)—seems to be reading later theological
terminology back into the early second century when there is no
evidence for such usage, and therefore anachronistic. Second, the
use of the word sacramentum by Pliny to mean oath fits the context
precisely. The context does not lend credibility to the idea that
Pliny misunderstood his informers. According to Van Slyke,
Pliny specifies that this sacramentum does not bind Christians to one another
for any criminal purpose. They swear rather to avoid such misdeeds as
violating informal and consensual contracts for sales and loans—misdeeds
that pagans apparently accused Christians of committing. Pliny’s list of
wicked acts that Christians swear not to commit bears some similarity to
the list of deeds that Livy depicts Bacchanalians swearing to commit.
Pliny keeps the Bacchanalian precedent in mind while investigating the
possible crimes of Christians. He also weighs the Christian sacramentum in

³⁷ Daniel G. Van Slyke, “The Changing Meaning of sacramentum: Historical

Sketches” in Antiphon (Society for Catholic Liturgy), Vol. 11, No. 3 (2007), p. 250.
³⁸ Ibid., p. 249.
³⁹ E.g. Against Marcion, Bk IV, Chpt. 34: “ad sacramentum baptismatis et eu-
charistiae admittens” (cited in Lightfoot, op. cit. (1889), Part II, Vol. I, p. 51bf. See
The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 405a); cf. Van Slyke, op. cit., p. 253.
⁴⁰ On Idolatry, Chpt. XIX: “Non conuenit sacramento diuino et humano” (cited
in Van Slyke, op. cit., p. 252; see The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 73b). The refer-
ence here is to the military oath of allegiance.
⁴¹ Van Slyke, op. cit., p. 251ff.
 The Sub-Apostolic Age 37
terms of that sworn by thieves, who do indeed bind themselves together
for a criminal purpose. Pliny’s goal, after all, is to determine whether or
not Christians are guilty of any crimes worthy of punishment.⁴²

Pliny’s statement makes complete sense in itself. It does not leave

us with questions and doubts about what is being referred to if we
read it in a straightforward manner. According to Lightfoot “It
would seem as if Pliny had here confused the two sacraments to-
gether. The words ‘se sacramento obstringere’ [to bind themselves
by an oath] seem to refer to the baptismal pledge, whereas the
re­currence on a stated day before dawn is only appropriate to the
eucharist . . . This confusion he might easily have made from his
misunderstanding his witnesses, if these witnesses related the one
sacrament after the other, as they are related e.g. in Justin Martyr
Apol. i.65, and in Tertullian de Cor. 3; more especially as it was the
practice to administer the eucharist immediately to the newly
baptized.”⁴³ Similarly, Van Slyke says “many questions remain
about this episode” and asks “What Christian phenomenon does
Pliny have in mind? Does Pliny understand that Christian prac-
tice accurately? Pliny might be referring to the rites of Christian
initiation, although this is by no means clear.”⁴⁴ But this passage is
only unclear if we insist on presupposing that Pliny’s informers did
not say or at least mean what he understood them to be saying, in
other words if we insist on reading his account anachronistically.
If we do not allow our reading to be coloured by later theologi-
cal terminology such questions do not arise. Third, however, and
ostensibly weighing against the above argument for taking the
word sacramentum in its straightforward Roman sense, it has been
claimed that the early Christians of this era would have objected to
taking an oath of any kind⁴⁵ as a consequence of Christ’s teaching
against oath taking (Mt. 5:33–37). It is assumed, therefore, that the
word sacramentum must have had some other meaning for Pliny’s
informers and that Pliny misunderstood what he heard. But on
closer examination this objection will bear little weight. Here an-
⁴² Ibid., p. 250.  ⁴³ Lightfoot, op. cit. (1889), Part II, Vol. I, p. 52a.
⁴⁴ Van Slyke, op. cit., p. 250.  ⁴⁵ See for example J. F. Keating, op. cit., p. 55.
38 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
other of Van Slyke’s comments is highly pertinent: “What word did
the Christians whom Pliny interrogated use, since they likely did
not speak Latin?”⁴⁶ Pliny was in Bithynia and Pontus, not Rome,
and the lingua franca of the Roman empire at this time was koine
Greek, not Latin. It is more than likely that sacramentum is Pliny’s
word for what he understood his informers to be talking about but
not the actual word they themselves used. If this is so, as it almost
certainly is, then this fact lends even less credibility to the idea that
the Eucharist is what Pliny’s informers were referring to and that
he got his account of the matter garbled. The most obvious and
reasonable interpretation of the account is that when the Christians
met in the morning before dawn the Ten Commandments were
recited and the congregation gave an undertaking to keep the law
of God in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ (Mt. 5:17, 28:20;
Jn 14:15) and apostolic teaching (Rom. 13:8–10). This does not
imply the formal swearing of an oath in the sense forbidden to
Christians, though Pliny may naturally have understood it to be the
kind of oath he was used to hearing, and therefore used the term
sacramentum in his letter to the emperor.⁴⁷ Making a promise, i.e.
giving one’s word, is not the same as swearing an oath in the sense
forbidden to Christians, and the former is accepted by Christ (Mt.
5:37) and does not compromise Christian conscience. To assume
that there is a reference here to the Eucharist is a great deal more
far-fetched than assuming merely that the early Christians pledged
themselves to keep God’s law in their daily life, as the testimony
of Justin Martyr shows,⁴⁸ and Pliny’s account fully bears out this
interpretation. It seems justifiable to conclude that there is in Pliny’s
letter no valid reason to assume or infer that sacramentum here refers

⁴⁶ Van Slyke, op. cit., p. 250.

⁴⁷ According to Van Slyke, the word sacramentum came to mean “oaths, loyal-
ties, and commitments made by four other groups [besides the military—SCP]:
philosophers, barbarians, gladiators, and thieves. Of these, the sacramentum of
thieves most directly impacts the nascent Christian use of the term” (op. cit., p.
247).
⁴⁸ The First Apology of Justin Martyr, Chpt. LXV (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I,
185a); cf. The Apostolic Constitutions, Bk II, Chpt XXXVI, (The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
Vol. VII, p. 413af.).
 Tertullian and Beyond 39
to the Eucharist, and therefore no reason to conclude that Pliny’s
letter is evidence of a separation of the Eucharist from the agape
feast prior to Pliny’s edict forbidding political meetings. Neander
comments regarding the Lord’s Supper and the agape feast that
“we find them both united in the first church at Corinth; and so it
probably was with the innocent, simple meal of the Christians of
which Pliny speaks, in his report to the emperor Trajan.”⁴⁹ Even
Lightfoot, who on balance accepts the argument that Pliny’s let-
ter is evidence that the Eucharist had by this time been separated
from the agape feast,⁵⁰ admits that the inference from Pliny’s let-
ter is “precarious.”⁵¹ Of course, Pliny’s letter does also state that
the evening meeting had been abandoned by the Christians as a
result of his edict forbidding political societies, and it is therefore
conceivable, though by no means conclusive, that the Eucharist
was separated from the agape feast thereafter, at least in Bithynia
and Pontus.

§3
Tertullian and Beyond

It seems, however, that by the time that Tertullian was writing in

the late second and early third centuries the Eucharist had become
separated from the agape feast. In his Apologeticus, dated between
c. 198 and 204 a.d.,⁵² Tertullian makes the following statement
about the agape feast:

Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affec-
tion. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with
the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you,
do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities,
selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it
is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly. If the object

⁴⁹ Neander, op. cit., p. 443.

⁵⁰ Lightfoot, op. cit (1889)., Part II, Vol. I, p. 52b.
⁵¹ Ibid., Part II, Vol. II, p. 314a.
⁵² The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 17a, note 1.
40 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations.
As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty.
The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much
is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the
chaste. They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during
the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that
the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution [i.e. washing of
hands—SCP], and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth
and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from holy Scripture or one
of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the
feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed. We go from it, not
like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out
into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity
as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet.⁵³

It is clear from the references here to worshiping God in the night

and the bringing in of lights that the agape feast ran into the eve-
ning. However, in his treatise De Corona (or The Chaplet ), dated c. 204
a.d.,⁵⁴ Tertullian makes the following statement: “We take also, in
congregations before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the
presidents, the sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord both
commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken
by all alike.”⁵⁵ It appears from a comparison of these two passages
that the Eucharist had in Tertullian’s time been separated from the
agape feast and was celebrated in the morning before dawn while
the latter continued to be celebrated in the evening.
It is doubtful there was ever complete uniformity in the way
the various Churches throughout the Roman empire celebrated
the agape feast, but the above account indicates the general
practice. Canon 28 of the Council of Laodicea, which took place
sometime between 343 and 381 a.d., forbade the holding of agape
feasts in churches,⁵⁶ although agape feasts were not forbidden
⁵³ Apology, Chpt. XXXIX, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 47af.
⁵⁴ The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 93a note 1.
⁵⁵ Chpt. III, (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 94b.)
⁵⁶ “It is not permitted to hold love feasts, as they are called, in the Lord’s Houses,
or Churches, nor to eat and to spread couches in the house of God” (The Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, The Seven Ecumenical Councils [Edinburgh: T.
and T. Clark], Vol. XIV, p. 148).
 The Separation of Agape and Eucharist 41
altogether.⁵⁷ The Council of Gangra, held sometime between 325
and 381 a.d., defended the agape feasts and anathematised anyone
who despised them or those who attended them.⁵⁸ The practice
of holding agape feats in churches, however, does not seem to
have come to an end entirely with the Council of Laodicea since
Canon 74 of the Council of Trullo or Quinisext Council in 692
a.d. repeats the Council of Laodicea’s ban.⁵⁹ It seems the agape
feast eventually fell into complete disuse after this.

§4
The Separation of Agape and Eucharist

The questions we must consider now are these: first, why was the
Eucharist permanently separated from the agape feast, and second,
why did the Church ban the holding of agape feasts in Church
buildings, with the eventual result that they ceased altogether? J.
A. Robinson gives the following four reasons for the separation
of the Eucharist from the agape feast: (a) the increase in numbers
of Christians made holding the feast more difficult in itself and
unsuitable as the context for the celebration of the Eucharist. (b)
Abuses such as those at Corinth in apostolic times were always
likely where large numbers met together to feast.⁶⁰ (c) There was
a great expansion of liturgical developments accompanying the
Eucharist, and (d ) celebration of the Eucharist was restricted to
occasions when a bishop or his deputy could be there to officiate.⁶¹
Of these four reasons the first two are logistical and Church dis-
⁵⁷ Canon 27 states: “Neither they of the priesthood, nor clergymen, nor laymen,
who are invited to a love feast, may take away their portions, for this is to cast
reproach on the ecclesiastical order” (ibid.).
⁵⁸ “If anyone shall despise those who out of faith make love-feasts and invite
the brethren in honour of the Lord, and is not willing to accept these invitations
because he despises what is done, let him be anathema” (Canon 11, ibid., p. 96)
⁵⁹ The Canon ads the warning: “If any dare to do so let him cease therefrom
or be cut off ” (ibid., p. 398).
⁶⁰ See further the Excursus on p. 52ff. infra.
⁶¹ J. A. Robinson, “Eucharist” in Encyclopædia Biblica (New York: The Macmillan
Company/London: Adam and Charles Black, 1903), Vol. II, col. 1425.
42 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
cipline problems respectively that are not insurmountable and
therefore do not per se constitute valid reasons for separating the
Eucharist from the agape feast. The real reasons for the separa-
tion of the Eucharist from the agape feast are to be found in the
last two causes mentioned by Robinson: liturgical expansion and
growth of clerical control over the Church, and these two causes
really amount to the same thing. “The agapæ” says Robinson “lost
more and more their semi-eucharistic character. They became in
some places occasions of unseemly riot or mere excuses for wealthy
banqueting; and Clement of Alexandria, at the close of the second
century, is already indignant that so lofty a name should be given
to them, and complains that ‘Charity has fallen from heaven into
the soups’.”⁶² According to Neander the reason for the abolition
of the agape feast was that “these meals were especially calculated
to excite the jealousy of the heathen, and gave birth to the strang-
est and most malicious reports, a circumstance which may have
early led to their abolition or less frequent observance.”⁶³ There
were indeed malicious false reports about what Christians got up
to at the agape feasts, and these included accusations of sexual
immorality, incest and cannibalism. But these rumours were easily
refuted⁶⁴ and were not the reason for the Church’s abandonment
of the agape feast. Robinson summarises the reasons for the aboli-
tion of the practice more realistically:
the original institution underwent a twofold development, according as
the liturgical or the social character of it came to predominate. In the one
case, the supper itself disappeared, or was but symbolically represented
by the consumption of small portions of bread and wine; the spiritual
significance was emphasised, and the Eucharist became the centre of
the Church’s worship. In the other case, the supper was everything, and
the eucharistic acts which accompanied it were little more than graces
before and after meat; the spiritual significance had passed elsewhere,
and, though under favourable conditions the agapè still had its value and

⁶² Ibid., col. 1425      ⁶³ Neander, op. cit., p. 443.

⁶⁴ See for example Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, Chpt. III (The Ante-
Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 130b); Theophilus of Antioch, Theophilus to Autolycus, Bk
III, Chpt. IV (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 112a); Tertullian, Apology, Chpt. VII
(Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 23bf.).
 The Separation of Agape and Eucharist 43
lingered long, it had no principle of vitality left, and its place was filled in
time by more appropriate methods of charitable assistance.⁶⁵

In other words, on the one hand the Eucharist became a “sac­ra­

ment,” controlled by the clergy and attended by developed liturgi-
cal rituals, while the agape feast, on the other hand, became little
more than a means of helping the poor that was superseded by
more appropriate works of charity.
The real reason for the separation of the Eucharist from the
agape feast, therefore, is intimately connected with the demise of
the latter and to be found in the fact that it was difficult to trans-
form the agape feast into a clergy-controlled and regulated ritual,
whereas the Eucharist, separated from the Agape and accompa-
nied by an expanding liturgy, was easily transformed into a rite
that could be sacralised and subjected to clerical domination. The
ritualisation of the Church’s cultic activities was essential if the
clergy were to take control of Christ’s Church. The separation of
the Eucharist from the social meal along with the sacralisation of
the former and abolition of the latter as the permanent practice of
the Church, however, goes against the institution established as the
norm for the Church by the Lord’s own example and command at
the Last Supper. In other words, in order to consolidate their power
the clergy hi-jacked the Eucharist and dispensed with the agape
feast, since the latter was a hindrance to their ability to control
the life of the Church. The life of the Church was then redefined
and its most important communal expressions were transformed
into rituals performed by the priesthood (sacerdotalism). The
ability of the Christian community, the Christian society or nation
(1 Pet. 2:9 cf. Ex 19:5–6),⁶⁶ to achieve the potential of its life as the
true social order, although by no means completely suppressed, was
nevertheless curtailed and restricted as an inevitable consequence.
The development of this sacramental theology and practice, to
⁶⁵ Robinson, “Eucharist,” Encyclopædia Biblica, Vol. II, col. 1426.
⁶⁶ On the political nature of the Christian faith and the Church as a political
community see my essay “Christianity as a Political Faith” in Christianity & Society,
Vol. xiv, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 16–23; see also the “Editorial” in the same is-
sue.
44 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
put the matter in its true light, was the tool used to bring about
the centralised bureaucratic control of the Church by clergymen.
This problem can be observed in an incipient form in the efforts
of the apostle Peter to establish control of the Church by means
of ecclesiastical law-making prior to Pentecost (Acts 2:12–26), an
attempt to take the Kingdom by force (Mt. 11:12) that was brought
to nothing by the subsequent calling of the apostle Paul and the
latter’s direct attack on the principle underpinning Peter’s agenda,
namely, knowledge of Christ according to the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16).
Of course, ritual per se is not sin, nor contrary to God’s word,
and in some measure is unavoidable in life. But the development
of a sacramental theology inevitably tied to an expanding ritual
and the preservation and prioritising of the latter by an exclusive
clerical order and its elevation to the most important aspect of the
Church’s life and activity has blighted the mission of the Church
throughout history. Already in the sub-apostolic era we see this
development at work. “It is not lawful apart from the bishop ei-
ther to baptize or to hold a love-feast” says Ignatius of Antioch.
Why not? Whose law is this? Not Christ’s. Such a restriction is not
found in Scripture. These are the laws of the bishops and clergy-
men who benefit from them at the expense of the “laity” and to
the detriment of the mission of the Church and the Kingdom of
God. “We take . . . from the hand of none but the presidents, the
sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to
be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike” says
Tertullian. Why can the bread and wine be received only from
the president? Christ did not command this. Neither does the
subsequent teaching of the apostles. Who gave these bishops and
clergymen this right to restrict the life of the Church in such a
way? Not the Lord Jesus Christ or his apostles. “Charity has fallen
from heaven into the soups”⁶⁷ says Clement of Alexandria.⁶⁸ Such
contempt for the institution established by the Lord himself and the
preference for rituals devised by men in its place is entirely worthy
of the Pharisaism that Christ rebuked so severely. “Sacraments,”
⁶⁷ Or sauces, see further the Excursus on p. 52ff. infra.
⁶⁸ Pædagogus, Bk II, Chpt. I.
 The Separation of Agape and Eucharist 45
which are nowhere to be found in Scripture,⁶⁹ were the invention
of clerics as a tool for consolidating their own power and control
over the Church and an abuse of the legitimate authority given
to those who are elected to positions of oversight in the Church.
As the theology and practice of sacramentalism grew the
Church was increasingly redefined as a clerical order (sacerdotal-
ism). As a consequence the Christian faith and the Christian social
order became over the centuries reduced almost to the function
of the clergy, i.e. the institutional Church, with dire consequences
for the mission of the Church as a social order. As power was con-
centrated into the hands of clerics (prelacy) the Kingdom of God
became a target for those seeking power, as the Lord himself had
fore­warned (Mt. 11:12), and the Church was corrupted not only
from within but also by invasion from without.⁷⁰ If the Church,
as the true society,—i.e. a social order that is commissioned by the
Lord Jesus Christ to transform the whole world by discipling the
nations—is to fulfil the task entrusted to her by her Lord in the
Great Commission, Christians must reclaim their citizenship of the

⁶⁹ On the development of the concept of sacraments see “Covenant Signs and

Sacraments” in my book Common-Law Wives and Concubines, pp. 32–46.
⁷⁰ It was inevitable that once a clerical order developed as the power base in
control of the Church, the latter, as a newly established “principality” (cf. Rom.
8:38; Eph. 1:21, 3:10, 6:12; Col. 1:6, 2:10, 15; Tit. 3:1), should become subject to
invasion from without by those motivated not by service of God but by the acqui-
sition of power, contrary to the command of the Lord himself (Mt. 20:25–28). It
should be remembered, however, that the precursor to this was the development
of centralised bureaucratic control of the Church by the clerical order, i.e. the
establishment of the Church as a principality by the Church leaders themselves.
This development was begun and well advanced before Christianity became the
established religion of the Roman empire. The problem of abuse of ecclesiastical
power and the inevitable corruption that must accompany it, therefore, is not to
be laid at the door of the establishment of the Christian Church as the religion
of the State, as is often quite erroneously thought to be the case, but rather at
the form of government adopted by the Church herself, i.e. prelacy, prior to the
establishment of the Church as the religion of State. This is another aspect of
the life of the Church that requires major reformation, since the present situa-
tion is unlikely to last a great deal longer; but this subject, important as it is, goes
far beyond the scope of this essay. See further “The Establishment Principle” in
my book A Defence of the Christian State: The Case Against Principled Pluralism and the
Christian Alternative (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 1993), pp. 163–173.
46 Eucharist and Agape in the Early Church
Kingdom of God from those who have sought to dispossess them
of it for so long. Centralised bureaucratic control of the Church
by clergymen has vitiated the life of the Church as a social order
and thereby wrecked the mission of the Church. The life of the
Church as the true society, the true social order, must be restored
if the Great Commission is to be accomplished.

§5
Conclusion to Part Two

I am aware that the above account of the baneful influence of the

professional clergy on the development of the Church as a social
order and her mission in the world may well be perceived as a con-
spiratorial interpretation of Church history. But this would be to
misunderstand what I am saying. The truth is rather more prosaic
and yet in reality reveals a fact that is certainly more problematic
and indeed more dangerous to the well-being of society than the
existence of any conspiracy, and it is this, that the logic of an idea,
once it has gained a foothold in the human psyche, has a tendency
to work itself out with a relentless consistency to its ultimate con-
clusions even among men of disparate cultures who have little or
no contact with or knowledge of each other, but more especially
so where that idea is widely accepted by a community—unless it
is effectively challenged. And so it has been with sacerdotalism
and prelacy, which even the Reformation was not able to expunge
entirely from the minds of Christian men, and so the wretched
harvest produced by these ideas began to grow once more before
the dust thrown up by the ploughing of the Reformation had settled
on the ground. And this is all the more remarkable because, as
Max Weber pointed out, “every consistent doctrine of predestined
grace inevitably implied a radical and ultimate devaluation of all
magical, sacramental and institutional distributions of grace, in
view of God’s sovereign will.”⁷¹
⁷¹ Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (University of California
Press, [1968] 1978), Vol. 1, p. 574. According to Weber, this was “a devaluation
 Conclusion to Part Two 47
The Church today desperately faces the need for reformation,
indeed for a reformation as great as, perhaps even greater than,
the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Restoring the biblical
Eucharist and agape feast combined according to the original ordi-
nance of the Lord Jesus Christ must form part of this reform­ation
since it is vital to the well-being of the Church. But it is unlikely
that such a reformation will ever take place while the present
structures of Church authority and the official magic that supports
them retain their stranglehold on the life of the Church. It seems
therefore inevitable, that the precursor to such a reformation can
only be a complete collapse and final discarding of those structures
and the ideologies that give them meaning and life. If the house
is to be rebuilt again according to the Lord’s design, the crooked
foundations on which it previously stood must be cleared away for
good.

that actually occurred wherever the doctrine of predestination appeared in its

full purity and maintained its strength. By far the strongest such devaluation of
magical and institutional grace occurred in Puritanism” (ibid.). And yet even
Puritanism did not succeed in completely eradicating these ideas. See further
“Covenant Signs and Sacraments” in my book Common-Law Wives and Concubines,
pp. 32–46.
 EPILOGUE

Since the original version of this essay was first published in April
2000 I have become convinced that the subject with which it deals
is at the heart of an issue of much greater importance, namely the
need for further reformation of the Church. The fossilisation of
the Church’s social life into a regime of set rituals controlled and
performed by a professional priesthood was a major declension
of the Church from the pattern set by the doctrine and example
of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in his earthly ministry and the
practice of the apostolic Church. This declension has had a serious
impact on the mission of the Church. Nor is it a problem that is
confined to the Episcopal Churches. Protestant Churches have also
suffered from the corrupting effects of the same kind of ideology.
The differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches
with regard to this particular issue have often boiled down to little
more than terminology and fancy dress.
As a social order the Church did not develop under this re-
gime in a natural, i.e. biblically informed, way. After the apostolic
age those aspects of the life of the Church as a social order that
survived and flourished eventually metamorphosed into monastic
orders under the influence of spiritual ideals that were alien to the
Christian faith as understood in terms of a biblical world-view.
According to R. L. Cole:

The most potent of the forces antagonistic to the Agape arose,

however, within the Church itself [sic]. The fourth and fifth centuries
were the age of the monastic ideal in the Church. It began in the East,
but speedily, under Jerome’s example principally, found firm footing in
Western Christendom. There is no doubt that the monastic spirit was
unfavourable to the Agape. The notion propagated was that if there were
48
 Epilogue 49
to be common meals they should be held inside the bounds of the inner
brotherhood of monks; if charity was to be controlled and administered,
who could do so like those who had renounced the world and its gains?
. . . It is much more than a coincidence that the rise of Monasticism and
the fall of the Agape synchronize. There is a causal link between the two
facts.
We have also to remember that the same period as saw the rise of
Monasticism saw also the birth of a deep interest in the ritual of the
Church. The earliest of the great cathedrals were being built, service-
books were being produced, and a new sense of fitness and arrangement
in public worship was developing. It was only to be expected that people
would soon get to recognize the incongruity between the Agape and
ceremonial worship. The archaic simplicity of the Love-feast was irrec-
oncilable with the solemn splendour and the stately offices of a Gothic
or Byzantine building.⁷²

This had a detrimental effect on the wider Church since, as

Ger­hard Uhlhorn pointed out, it had been on the agape feasts
especially that the family-like unity of the Church had been im­
pressed.⁷³
This is not to condemn the life and work of the monasteries
completely. It is widely acknowledged that the monasteries pre­
served learning and by so doing contributed significantly to the
development of Western civilisation. But they also preserved much
of the life of the Church as a social order; yet they did so in a cor-
rupt form that denied a basic God-given aspect of human nature
(sexuality) and that therefore denied the divinely-ordained life of
the family as the basic unit of Christian social order. The mediaeval
Church rejected the family as the basic unit of the Christian social
order and replaced it with the monasteries; the secular Church then
became a mere cult controlled by the official priesthood, which
maintained its power by means that directly conflicted with the
command of the Lord Jesus Christ himself (Mt. 20:25–28). This
had a significant impact on how the Church lived as the wider

⁷² Love-Feasts: A History of the Christian Agape (London: Charles H. Kelley, 1916),

p. 254f.
⁷³ Christian Charity in the Ancient Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883),
p. 252.
50 The Christian Passover
family of God; the result was that the Church came to function
as a principality rather than as a nation (cf. 1 Pet. 2:9). Again, this is
not to say that the Church did not have a decisive and ameliorative
effect on the development of Western civilisation. Much good can
be found in the influence of the mediaeval Church on society.⁷⁴
But it does mean that this influence fell far short of what it should
have been, and must be in future if the Great Commission is to
be fulfilled.
Of course the Reformation brought a much needed correction
to many of the abuses of the mediaeval Church. But it did not go
nearly far enough, and naturally retained much from the Church’s
mediaeval past. At the Reformation the Church took a great step
forward, but she also stepped backwards in some respects. The
Reformed Churches abandoned the monasteries, and with good
reason, but they failed to realise the potential of the life of the
Church as a social order, which had been preserved, albeit in an
inadequate and corrupted form, in the monasteries. For example,
the welfare role of the mediaeval Church, which was largely
concentrated in the monasteries, was neglected by the Reformed
Churches, not entirely, but sufficiently enough to create a vacuum
that the modern idolatrous secular State has in our own age filled,
and it was neglected largely because the importance of the life of
the Church as a social order was not sufficiently understood and
prioritised by the heirs of the Reformation. Nor did the Reformed
Churches abandon centralised bureaucratic control of the Church
by a professional clergy that remained focused, for the most part,
on prioritising the Church’s ritualised cultic activities as the essence
of the life of the Church.
The consequence of this historical development is that the
Church today has reached an impasse, and it has been impos-
sible, and will remain impossible, for the Church to overcome this
⁷⁴ See for example Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of
the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard University Press, 1983) and Stanley L. Jaki,
Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish
Academic Press, 1986); See also my book Christianity and Law: An Enquiry into
the Influence of Christianity on the Development of English Common Law (Avant Books,
1993).
 Epilogue 51
im­passe without a willingness to embrace changes of the most
profound and far-reaching kind. The modern Church in Britain
had two official “decades of evangelism” in the second half of
the twentieth century. Yet the Church still continues to decline.
And she does so because she does not understand her mission.
The gospel she preaches is a truncated gospel devoid of the vi-
sion necessary to breach the impasse, which can only be overcome
by a recognition and acceptance of the truth that the Church is
meant to be a social order, and not only a social order, but the true
social order, the true society, that must grow until it displaces and
then replaces the false and idolatrous social orders of men. For
this to happen the Church must embrace a new reformation that
will clear away the accretions of false doctrine and practice that
continue to vitiate her life as a social order and impede her mis-
sion to the world. Only by doing this shall the Church be able to
overcome the world and flourish, and as a consequence disciple
the nations to Christ. If the need for this reformation is not ac-
cepted and embraced the Church will face a difficult and dark
road ahead of her. The Church today faces a choice, just as the
ancient Hebrews faced a choice after the exodus from Egypt: she
can go forward into the place that God has prepared for her, or
she can spend a generation, or possibly longer, in the wilderness.
The time for making this choice is passing quickly. Unless she acts
soon the decision will be made for her. “I call heaven and earth
to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and
death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou
and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy God,
and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave
unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou
mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Dt. 30:19–20).
 E XC U R S U S

The claim that the agape feasts of the early Church tended to
degenerate into occasions of riotous excess is frequently met with
in both primary and secondary sources. That there were abuses
on occasion is undeniable, as even the New Testament indicates.
That these abuses were one of the main reasons for the eventual
obsolescence of the agape feasts is a claim that should not be taken
at face value. The early Church quickly came under the influence
of an extreme spirit of asceticism the origin of which is not to be
found in the Bible but in the pagan religious world-view of the
age. This kind of asceticism was the way of life chosen by many
of the “spiritual” virtuosi who became leaders and teachers of
the Church, and as it has been pointed out, ascetically constituted
minds frequently took offence at the agape feasts.⁷⁵ Clement of
Alexandra is a good example of this ascetic ideal. He seems to have
had a particular aversion to enjoying his food and says of those
who do that “They have not yet learned that God has provided
for His creatures (man I mean) food and drink, for sustenance, not
for pleasure.”⁷⁶ He complains that “There is no limit to epicurism
among men. For it has driven them to sweetmeats, and honey-
cakes, and sugar-plums; inventing a multitude of desserts, hunting
after all manner of dishes. A man like this seems to me to be all
jaw, and nothing else.” Besides being a vegetarian and generally a
minimalist in all matters culinary he seems to have had a particular
obsession with the evils of sauces (or soups): “Altering these [vari-
ous meats—SCP] by means of condiments, the gluttons gape for
⁷⁵ Gerhard Uhlhorn, op. cit., p. 252f.
⁷⁶ Pædagogus (The Instructor), Bk II, Chpt. I (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 238a),
my emphasis.

52
 Excursus 53
the sauces . . . whence some, speaking with unbridled tongue, dare
to apply the name agape, to pitiful suppers, redolent of savour
and sauces. Dishonouring the good and saving work of the Word,
the consecrated agape, with pots and pouring of sauce . . . But
the hardest of all cases is for charity, which faileth not, to be cast
from heaven above to the ground in the midst of sauces . . . And
how senseless, to besmear their hands with the condiments, and
to be constantly reaching to the sauce . . . For is there not within a
temperate simplicity a wholesome variety of eatables? Bulbs, olives,
certain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds of cooked food without
sauces . . .” Clement nicely sums up his abhorrence of the pleasures
of food in the following way: “We must therefore reject different
varieties [of food—SCP], which engender various mischiefs, such
as a depraved habit of body and disorders of the stomach, the
taste being vitiated by an unhappy art—that of cookery, and the
useless art of making pastry.”⁷⁷ Not surprisingly wine comes un-
der the same condemnation: “I therefore admire those who have
adopted an austere life, and who are fond of water, the medicine
of temperance, and flee as far as possible from wine, shunning it
as they would the danger of fire.”⁷⁸
Clement viewed all human desires in the same negative way.
“Our ideal” he says “is not to experience desire at all . . . We should
do nothing from desire . . . A man who marries for the sake of
begetting children must practice continence so that it is not desire
which he feels for his wife.”⁷⁹ Origen, Clement’s student and suc-
cessor at the Catechetical School in Alexandria, took this kind of
reasoning to its logical conclusion and castrated himself.⁸⁰ And yet
this kind of attitude to the human appetites and desires cannot
be found in Scripture. “Delight thyself also in the Lord ” says the
⁷⁷ Ibid., passim (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, pp. 237–242), my emphasis.
⁷⁸ Ibid., Chpt. II (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 243a).
⁷⁹ Cited in Gail Hawkes, Sex and Pleasure in Western Culture (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2004), p. 50. This quotation is taken from Book III of The Stromata (III.
vii.57–58), which the editors of The Ante-Nicene Fathers published only in Latin due
to the sexual nature of the content.
⁸⁰ Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Bk VI, Chpt. viii, §1–4 (The Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, Second Series, Vol. I, p. 254af.).
54 The Christian Passover
Psalmist “and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Ps.
37:4). Scripture does not teach that human desire per ser is sinful or
to be avoided. It is only the unlawful fulfilment or unlawful objects
of desire that are condemned in Scripture. The Bible is certainly
not a manual of asceticism; the enjoyment of lawful sexual rela-
tionships and feasting are both encouraged in Scripture. “Let thy
fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let
her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy
thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love” (Pr.
5:18–19). In the Old Testament the Hebrews are commanded to feast
three times each year in Jerusalem, using a portion of their tithe for
this purpose (Dt. 14:23). And to those who lived at a great distance
from Jerusalem the following instructions are given:

And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry
it [i.e. the tithe—SCP]; or if the place be too far from thee, which the
Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the Lord thy God
hath blessed thee: Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the
money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy
God shall choose: And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy
soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink,
or for whatsoever they soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the
Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household. (Dt.
14:24–26)

Clement’s condemnation of the enjoyment of food and of feast-

ing is in stark contrast to the teaching of both the Old and New
Testaments. The apostle Paul condemned this attitude of asceti-
cism in no uncertain terms as a departure from the faith:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall
depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of
devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy having their conscience seared with a
hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,
which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which
believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and noth-
ing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified
by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim. 4:1–5 cf. Rom. 14:1–4)
 Excursus 55
It is no wonder the Agape suffered reproach from the ascetic
holy men of the age, “Christian” or otherwise, as did the Lord
Jesus Christ himself, who was also accused of being a glutton and
a drunkard by the holy men of his own time, the Pharisees (Mt.
11:19; Lk. 7:34). For someone with an ascetic world-view such
as Clement’s only the most frugal of diets would be considered
decent and all feasting would be condemned as gluttonous and
degenerate. Given this perspective, the claims of extreme ascetics
such as Clement cannot be relied upon to give a balanced account
of the Christian agape feasts, which by definition must have been
abhorrent to them. Such an attitude seems almost to be a denial
of human nature as God has created it—i.e. all human desires and
appetites are evil per se—and reveals the overriding influence of
the Greek dualistic religious outlook (the Alexandrian world-view),
which sharply contrasted the spirit as the divine spark in man with
matter, which was deemed to be inferior, even evil. Indeed, Clement
says “These gluttons, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-
pans, and wearing their whole life away at the pestle and mortar,
cling to matter like fire,” a statement that reveals the pagan dualistic
perspective behind his condemnation of feasting. Clement’s atti­
tude towards the human desires and appetites was not a genuine
expression of the Christian faith, but rather a corruption of the true
faith—i.e. a Christianised version of the Alexandrian world-view
that was endemic in the Graeco-Roman world. It is interesting
that Clement, while on the one hand rejecting false Gnosticism,
on the other hand identifies the Christian as the true Gnostic.⁸¹
Speaking of the Gnostics Archibald Robertson writes that “in their
attempts at a comprehensive system of religious thought, grotesque
and repellent as these attempts often were, they were in a sense
the precursors of the great Alexandrian school; not only does
Clement habitually use the term ‘Gnostic’ for the fully instructed
Christian, but the theology which appears in its developed form in
Origen is an endeavour to satisfy, on the basis of the Rule of Faith,
the real needs which Gnosticism professed to meet, and to apply
⁸¹ See The Stromata, or Miscellanies.
56 The Christian Passover
in a rational and purified form whatever genuinely philosophical
ideas Gnosticism embodied.” In a footnote Robertson explains
that “The fundamental difference was that between the esoteric
Church of the Gnostics, and the esoteric perception of the meaning of
the common faith, at which Clement and Origen aimed.” ⁸² The
dualistic world-view upon which Gnosticism was based pervades
Clement’s religious outlook.
The ascetic dualism of men like Clement of Alexandria, of
which there were many in the early Church, is thoroughly pagan
and cannot be justified from Scripture, which teaches man to give
thanks to God for the good things of this earth and to enjoy them
as an act of worship. The Lord’s Supper is meant to be a feast
celebrating our deliverance from sin by the Lord Jesus Christ, not
an exercise in asceticism.
⁸² Regnum Dei: Eight Lectures on the Kingdom of God in the History of Christian Thought
(London: Methuen and Co., 1901), p. 152.