Thursday, August 13, 2009

Beza on what is communicated to us in the Supper




By the fact that we receive and eat the bread, and drink from the cup, we are assured that Jesus Christ is truly communicated to us, as we said before. For the Holy Spirit knows how to join closely, by the bond of faith, those things which, according to spatial distance, are very far apart. Therefore, as we receive the natural symbols in a natural way, and eat and drink them, so that by the power of the natural faculty, they are united with our substance, thus also, in a heavenly and spiritual mode, Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh is now in heaven and nowhere else, is truly communicated to us, so that we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; that is, so that we are made one with Christ and inserted into his body through faith, whence we draw eternal life. (Taken from Keith Mathison's Given for You, p. 61)