Are there passages that refer to THE Lord’s Supper?
Question:
We have been studying the Lord's supper issues and one of our main concerns is about a second offering in which only a few partake, for the reasons you listed in your article (not doing it together). We have been questioning the idea of everyone taking it a second time. We have been cautious in this because it would be so against the grain of tradition and we know how that can be taken sometimes.
I enjoyed your outline. I would like to point out one thing - you use I Corinthians 11:20 as a passage to talk about it being THE Lord's supper. However, in the original Greek, the definite article is not there. I was wondering if there are any passages that do contain the definite article. Also, I was wondering if there are any other reasons for not taking it twice.
Thank you for your time. I appreciate the study and resources you have on your site.
Answer:
There is a difficulty in dealing with material written in another language: we often tend to apply the rules of our own language to the other language. You are correct, I Corinthians 11:20 does not contain a singular article before the phrase Lord's Supper. The verse in Greek is: Sunerchomenôn (coming together) oun (therefore) humôn (you) epi (into) to (the) auto (same) ouk (not) estin (it is) kuriakon (Lord's) deipnon (supper) phagein (to eat).
The keywords are:
- estin: (it is) verb, third person singular, indicative, present tense, active voice
- kuriakon: (Lord's) Accusative, singular, neuter
- deipnon: (supper) noun, singular, neuter
Literally, in English, the phrase is "it is Lord's supper," but buried in all the terms is that what is being discussed is singular. We express this in English by using a singular article, but in Greek, such is not always necessary since the words contain case endings to indicate such ideas as singular versus plural, nominative versus accusative, and gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). A part of the "joy" of learning Greek is memorizing all the various case endings because they are critical in understanding the text. Yet these very case endings give Greek its reputation for being a very precise language.
There is an event referred to as the Lord's Supper. The singular nature of the words does not indicate how often the event was conducted. For example, in I Corinthians 14:26, there are several events listed that take place in worship: psalm (song), teaching, tongue, revelation (prophecy), and interpretation. Each is stated in the singular form. However, in the following verses, Paul directs that tongues and prophecy should be limited to two or three in a worship service. Having a song (psalm) does not imply only one song is sung in the worship service.
Looking at the arguments again, I realized that arguing from the case that the Lord's Supper was taken once was invalid, so I changed the outline.
