Memorialism

Do this in remembrance of me

Jesus gave the bread with a command:

And He took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body, given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

Luke 22:19

‘Remembrance’ is anamnēsis (ἀνάμνησις). Memorialism puts this command at the centre of the Supper. The meal recalls the salvation Christ won once for all (Hebrews 10:10); in it the church will "proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26); and those who share one loaf show that they are one body. The bread and cup are signs of his body and blood. When Jesus said "I am the true vine" (John 15:1) he did not become a plant, and memorialists read his words over the bread in the same way: the bread represents his body. He also said, "The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63).

This does not mean that Christ is absent. Memorialists hold that he is among his people by the Spirit, as he promised: "where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20), and that believers have fellowship with him by faith; they simply do not tie his presence to the bread and cup. Remembrance is also something every tradition says of the Supper. The Presbyterian commentator Matthew Henry calls it "a sign or memorial of Christ already come, who by dying delivered us" Matthew Henry.

Zwingli and after

The view is commonly linked with Huldrych Zwingli, the reformer of Zurich. In the 1520s he read the ‘is’ of the words of institution as ‘signifies’, and taught the Supper as a meal at which believers thankfully remember Christ's death and confess him together. At Marburg in 1529 he and Luther agreed on fourteen articles but parted over the Supper The Marburg Articles. In later writings Zwingli also spoke of Christ as present to the contemplation of faith, and scholars differ on whether his view is fairly summed up as memorial only.

The Swiss Brethren's Schleitheim Confession speaks of breaking bread in remembrance of Christ's broken body Schleitheim Confession, art. 3, and the view later spread widely among Baptists and among free and Pentecostal churches that call the Supper an ‘ordinance’. Not all Baptists hold it: Reformed Baptists who follow the Second London Confession confess a spiritual feeding on Christ by faith Second London Confession, ch. 30.

Where the traditions differ

Those who hold this view seldom like the phrase ‘mere memorial’. For them remembering is not only recalling a past event but renewing faith, thanks and devotion before the grace of the cross. They want to guard the Supper from superstition, and to keep clear both Christ's once-for-all sacrifice and his bodily place at God's right hand.

Other traditions say the Supper holds more than remembrance. The Reformed, because Paul calls the broken bread "a participation in the body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:16), confess a true sharing in Christ by the Spirit (spiritual presence); Lutherans, Catholics and the Orthodox confess that Christ's body and blood are truly present. The Catholic Church understands the memorial not only as recalling but as making Christ's sacrifice present Catechism of the Catholic Church. Memorialists answer that communion with Christ is not bound to the Supper but is enjoyed by faith at all times. These differences have long run among evangelicals, and every view treasures the Supper as the Lord's own command. The views are set side by side under the Lord’s Supper and in the lesson Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.