In the Evangelist, bread and wine are—as is evident to anyone who will take the trouble to acquaint himself with his presuppositions in the spiritually related works of Ignatius, Justin, and Tertullian—not the body and blood of Christ, but the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. In this change in the expression lies the logic of the thought. The elements of the Lord’s Supper perpetuate the appearance of the Son of Man in the world inasmuch as they, as being the flesh and blood of that historic Personality, possess the capacity of being vehicles of the Spirit. As a combination of matter and Spirit which can be communicated to the corporeity of men, they execute judgment. The elect can in the sacrament become partakers of that spiritual substance, and can thus be prepared for the resurrection; others who are not from above, and are not capable of receiving the Spirit, receive simply earthly food and drink, and fall a prey to corruption. Therefore the Evangelist makes the Lord close His discourse about the eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of the Son of Man with the words, “It is the spirit that giveth life.” This is the language of the early Greek theology, which explains the working of the sacraments by the combination of the Spirit with matter which takes place therein. The Fourth Evangelist projects this later view back into the discourses of the historic Jesus, and makes Him prophetically announce that after His exaltation a time will come when the Spirit which is now in Him will unite itself [pg 201] with the bread which, by the miracle of the loaves, has just been raised in a significant way out of the category of simple earthly elements, and will subsequently manifest its power in preparing men for the resurrection. In this sense, as vehicles of the Spirit, the elements carry on the manifestation of the Son of Man; in this sense it is possible to speak of eating and drinking His flesh and blood, and to regard this as necessary to life. But all this is not thought of “corporeally” in the naïve sense of an eating and drinking of the body and blood of Jesus, but can only be understood on the basis of the doctrine of the working of the Spirit in the sacraments. Apart from the Spirit, there is in the Supper no body and no blood of Christ.