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 Below is a pastoral teaching outline designed for church use rather than the academy. It is structured so it can be delivered as one extended Communion teaching or a short series (3–4 weeks).

The language is accessible but the theology is thick, faithful to Scripture, and protective against common misunderstandings. It upholds the —we remember / He remembers—refrain and is placed within a covenantal Real Presence framework.

Purpose of the Teaching

To help the church understand Communion as:

• a covenant memorial, not mere reflection
• a real participation in Christ, not repeated sacrifice
• a church-forming act, not a private devotional moment

The aim is not to explain how Christ is present, but to help the church receive what Christ promises to give.

Session 1 — What is a Memorial in the Bible?

Key Text

Exodus 12:13–14
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you…
This day shall be for you a memorial day.”
Teaching Emphasis
In the Bible, a memorial is not about remembering in your head.
A memorial is a sign God responds to.

Teaching Points

1. Biblical remembering is active

• When God remembers, he acts.
• Memorials are not reminders to God but covenantal signs God has bound himself to honour.

2. The Passover was a once-for-all event

• Israel was rescued once.
• The event was never repeated.

3. The feast made the event present

• Each generation didn’t redo the Exodus.
• They participated in its continuing power and promise.

4. Grace comes before law

• Passover comes before Sinai.
• Relationship comes before rules.
• God demanded loyalty, not legalism.

Pastoral Application

• God does not ask us to recreate salvation.
• He invites us to stand inside what he has already done.

Session 2 — Why Jesus Called Communion a Memorial

Key Texts

Luke 22:19
1 Corinthians 11:23–26
“Do this in remembrance of me.”

Teaching Emphasis
Jesus chose Passover on purpose.
“Remembrance” means covenant participation, not mental recall.

Teaching Points
1. Jesus did not say “repeat my sacrifice”
• The cross is once for all.
• Communion does not add to it.
2. Jesus said “Do this”
• A concrete action
• A bodily participation
• A communal practice
3. Remembrance is proclamation
• “You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
• Communion preaches the gospel without words.

4. The table belongs to the covenant
• Bread and wine are visible words
• God has promised to meet his people there

Pastoral Application
• Communion is not about working ourselves into reverence.
• It is about receiving what Christ has promised to give.

Session 3 — We Remember / He Remembers

Key Texts

Genesis 9:16
Acts 10:30–31

Teaching Emphasis
Communion works in two directions.

Teaching Points
1. We remember
• We see the bread and wine.
• We receive them in faith.
• We remember Christ’s body given and blood shed.
• We feed on Christ by trusting his promise.
This is not imagination—it is faithful participation.
2. He remembers
• God “sees” the covenant sign.
• God acts to fulfil his promises.
• Christ is present as covenant Lord.
Just as:
• God saw the blood in Egypt,
• God saw the rainbow,
• God “remembered” Cornelius’ prayers.

So Christ meets his people at his table.
Pastoral Application
• The power of Communion does not come from our intensity.
• It comes from God’s faithfulness to his promise.

Session 4 — Real Presence, Without Confusion

Key Texts

1 Corinthians 10:16–17
1 Corinthians 11:27–29

Teaching Emphasis

Christ is really present, but not in a crude or magical way.
Teaching Points

1. Christ is present as a person, not a substance
• Presence is relational, not mechanical.
• The risen Christ gives himself.
2. The Spirit is the means of communion
• We are lifted into fellowship with Christ.
• Christ does not come down to be controlled.
3. The meal makes us one body
• “Because there is one bread… we are one body.”
• Communion forms the church.
4. Why “unworthy” participation matters
• Because something real is happening.
• The issue is not perfection, but unrepentant hypocrisy.
• Reconciliation matters.

Pastoral Application
• Communion calls us to:
• Repentance,
• reconciliation,
• renewed loyalty to Christ.
• Not to earn grace—but to receive it truthfully.

A SIMPLE COMMUNION LITURGY

Leader:
This table is not our achievement but Christ’s gift.
People:
We remember what he has done.
Leader:
As we receive the sign in faith—
People:
He remembers his covenant.
Leader:
Christ is present with his people.

People:
We receive him with thanksgiving.

KEY TRUTHS TO REPEAT OFTEN
• Communion is not a repeated sacrifice
• Communion is not a mere symbol
• Communion is covenant participation
• Communion forms us into Christ’s body
• Communion joins forgiveness, presence, and obedience

FINAL PASTORAL SUMMARY
Communion is not about going back to the cross.
It is about standing together in its finished work.
We remember.
He remembers.
And Christ is faithful to meet his people at his table.

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I. What “memorial” means in responsible Anabaptist theology

In its stronger Anabaptist forms (e.g., Marpeck; also later Mennonite theological reflection), “memorial” is not thin recollection but covenantal enactment:1

• Ecclesial act: the Supper is something the church does as a visible people, not primarily an individual devotion.
• Ethical seriousness: participation presupposes reconciliation, disciplined discipleship, and a church capable of saying “yes” and “no” to membership in meaningful ways.
• Performative remembrance: remembering is public allegiance—“we bind ourselves anew to Christ and to one another.”
• Anti-automatism: the Supper is not a mechanism that dispenses grace irrespective of obedience; the sign is true only as it is lived.

This yields a “thick memorial”: Christ’s death is proclaimed, the community is re-constituted, and the church’s life is re-aligned with the cruciform Lord.

II. Common patterns in modern evangelical practice

“Modern evangelical” is diverse, but in broad practice (especially in low-church
settings) several recurring tendencies appear:

1 Sources
Primary: Pilgram Marpeck, The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck
Translated and edited by William Klassen and Walter Klaassen;
Secondary: John Rempel, The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism; C. Arnold
Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology.)

1. Event/experience orientation

Communion is frequently appended to a service as an inward, reflective moment—moving from “gathered body” toward “private interiority.”

2. Minimal ecclesiology

The Supper is sometimes detached from a robust account of the church as covenant community—so it becomes a personal act of remembrance rather than a corporate act of renewal.

3. Reduced moral-ecclesial accountability

Participation can be open by default, with limited pastoral framing around
reconciliation, restitution, or church discipline. The tone is often “between you
and God,” even where Paul treats the Supper as a matter of the body’s integrity
(1 Cor 10–11).

4. Atonement framing that can thin sacramentality

Where the Atonement is viewed solely in terms of Penal Substitution, Communion can become a mental return to “payment made” rather than a covenantal meal of communion, union, and proclamation.

5. Token frequency and weak catechesis

In many churches, Communion is relatively infrequent and under-taught. The less often it’s celebrated, the more it risks being treated as an optional add-on rather than a constitutive act of the church.

None of this is inevitable—there are evangelical communities with rich sacramental
practice—but these tendencies are common enough to be worth naming.

III. The core contrast: covenantal enactment vs. devotional recollection A succinct way to express the contrast is this:

• Anabaptist “thick memorial” tends to say: Communion is a covenantal act that makes the church visible as a disciplined, reconciled, cruciform community.
• Modern evangelical “thin memorial” often functions as: Communion is an occasion for individual gratitude and introspection about the cross.

The difference is not whether the cross matters, but whether “remembrance” is ecclesial participation or private recollection.

IV. Where evangelicals can learn from the best Anabaptists

Without adopting Anabaptist distinctives wholesale, evangelical practice can be strengthened by retrieving four Anabaptist emphases:

1. Communion as church-making (not just church-expressing)
2. Reconciliation as a liturgical requirement (not a therapeutic suggestion)
3. Catechesis that binds Supper to discipleship
4. Recovering the Supper’s corporate identity: “one bread / one body” (1 Cor 10:17)

V. Where Anabaptists can learn from evangelicals (and from patristic density)

A fair contrast also notes a risk within some Anabaptist trajectories: the Supper can become so ethically conditioned that its gift-character is muted. Evangelical insistence on divine initiative can help keep clear that:

• the meal is fundamentally received, not achieved;
• Christ gives himself to the church before the church gives itself back to him.

The best synthesis holds both: gift that creates obedience, and obedience that protects the gift from hypocrisy.

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What follows is a monograph-style chapter that treats the Anabaptist tradition not as a footnote, but as a coherent theological witness. It is written to correct the caricature of Anabaptism as “mere memorialism,” showing instead a covenantal, participatory, ethically demanding Eucharistic theology that stands in deep continuity with Hebrew memorial logic.

1. Introduction: Recovering a Marginalised Sacramental Theology

The Anabaptist tradition is frequently invoked in Eucharistic debates only to be dismissed. “Memorialism” has become shorthand for theological thinness, ethical reductionism, and denial of Real Presence. Such portrayals not only misrepresent the diversity of Anabaptist theology but obscure one of its most important  contributions: a rigorous covenantal account of memorial and participation grounded in discipleship, communal fidelity, and embodied obedience.

This chapter argues that responsible Anabaptist theologians did not reject sacramentalism per se, but rather rejected sacramentalism detached from covenant obedience. Their Eucharistic theology emerges from a consistentreading of Scripture in which memorial is not cognitive recall but public covenant enactment. When read through the biblical framework of zikkaron, Anabaptist theology appears not as a denial of participation, but as a moral–ecclesial construal of participation.

2. Historical and Theological Context

Anabaptist theology arises amid three pressures:
1. Medieval sacramental automatism, where grace was seen to operate ex opere operato
2. Magisterial reform, which often retained sacramental objectivity while recalibrating authority

3. State-church entanglement, which collapsed ecclesial membership into civic belonging
Anabaptists responded by insisting that:
• the church is a voluntary covenant community,
• discipleship is essential to salvation’s shape,
• sacramental acts cannot contradict lived obedience.
Their sacramental theology cannot be understood apart from this ecclesiology.

3. Memorial as Covenant Act, Not Mental Recall

Anabaptist writers consistently employ the language of memorial (Gedächtnis, Erinnerung),1 but not in the modern psychological sense. Memorial refers to a public, enacted remembrance that binds the community to Christ and to one another.

This aligns closely with Hebrew zikkaron:
• the act remembers the saving event,
• the community reaffirms covenant loyalty,
• the memorial carries ethical consequences.

Thus, when Anabaptists speak of “remembrance,” they mean responsible participation, not symbolic minimalism.

4. Memorial and Confession

Hubmaier is often misrepresented as dismissing sacramental efficacy. In fact, his
opposition was not to presence but to unrepentant participation.
For Hubmaier:
• the Lord’s Supper is a confession of faith,
• it publicly aligns the believer with Christ’s suffering,
• it seals communal bonds of obedience.

He writes that the Supper is a “remembrance of the suffering of Christ” that binds believers to live cruciformly. Participation without discipleship is not harmless—it is a lie.
Hubmaier does not deny that Christ is present; he denies that Christ can be
invoked against his own commandments.2

1 Early Anabaptist writers consistently describe the Lord’s Supper using the language of remembrance
(Gedächtnis, Erinnerung), identifying it as a memorial of Christ’s suffering (Hubmaier, On the Lord’s
Supper, p. 439), while integrating this remembrance with communal participation and discipleship
(Marpeck, Writings, pp. 176–179; Estep, Anabaptist Story, pp. 187–190).
2 Source: H. Wayne Pipkin & John H. Yoder (eds.), Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism
(Scottdale: Herald Press, 1989). Balthasar Hubmaier does not dismiss the significance of the Lord’s
Supper but insists that it is inseparable from faith and obedience, since “where there is no faith, there
is no sacrament” (p. 129). He describes the Supper as a public confession of faith before the church (p.
437), in which believers remember the suffering of Christ (p. 439) and declare their intention to live

5. Covenant, Incarnation, and Eucharistic Reality

Pilgram Marpeck offers the most theologically developed Anabaptist Eucharistic vision. Drawing deeply from covenant theology and incarnation, Marpeck rejects both:
• sacramental coercion (grace without obedience), and
• interiorised spirituality (faith without embodiment).

For Marpeck:
• Christ is truly present to the faithful,
• the Supper is a covenantal meeting place,
• presence is mediated through obedient faith and communal practice.

Marpeck insists that outward signs and inward faith belong together. The Eucharist is neither empty sign nor automatic conduit, but a relational event in which Christ encounters a faithful people.

This mirrors the Passover logic: the sign is effective because it is received in covenant
loyalty.3

6. Eucharist, Ethics, and Ecclesial Discipline

One of the most neglected aspects of Anabaptist sacramental theology is its insistence
that Eucharistic participation requires moral accountability. Church discipline
was not punitive but sacramental: it preserved the integrity of the community’s
covenant life.
The Supper:
• confirms communal reconciliation,
• presupposes restored relationships,
• enacts visible unity. 

according to him (p. 440). Participation binds the community in brotherly love and shared obedience
(pp. 441–442). For this reason, unrepentant participation is not neutral but false: those who partake
without amendment of life “lie before God and the church” (p. 444). Hubmaier’s concern is not to
deny Christ’s reality, but to insist that Christ cannot be claimed apart from obedience to his
commandments (p. 445).
3 Source: William Klassen & Walter Klaassen (eds.), The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck (Scottdale:
Herald Press, 1978). Pilgram Marpeck develops a Eucharistic theology grounded in the Incarnation,
through which God works inwardly by means of outward, visible practices (pp. 172, 199–200). He
rejects both sacramental automatism—since “it is not the bread or wine… that accomplishes anything”
apart from faith (pp. 176–177)—and purely inward spirituality, insisting that God does not give the
Spirit “without means” and that inner reality must be outwardly expressed (pp. 201, 204). The Supper
is therefore a communal participation in Christ, in which believers become “one body” and receive
Christ in fellowship (pp. 178–179). Christ’s presence is not located in the elements themselves, but is
given where faith and obedience are present (pp. 180–181). Outward sign and inward faith belong
together—“neither may be separated without destroying both” (pp. 205–206). The Eucharist is thus
not an object but an event: “not in the element, but in the use,” a participatory encounter between
Christ and his gathered people (pp. 176–178).

 This places Anabaptist theology in continuity with Rabbinic emphases on repentance and reconciliation before atonement, and with Pauline warnings about unworthy participation (1 Cor 11).

7. Presence without Metaphysics

Unlike later debates focused on substance, location, or mechanism, Anabaptists ask a different question:

What kind of people does this meal make us?
Christ’s presence is affirmed not through metaphysical precision but
through transformative encounter. Presence is discerned in:
• obedience,
• love,
• shared life,
• perseverance under suffering.

This does not deny Real Presence; it refuses to abstract it from covenant faithfulness.

8. Comparison with Magisterial Reformers

When placed alongside Luther and Calvin, the Anabaptist position appears less extreme than commonly assumed:
• Like Luther, Anabaptists insist that God’s action cannot be controlled by
ritual.
• Like Calvin, they insist on participation rather than repetition.
• Unlike both, they locate sacramental integrity explicitly within discipleship and ecclesial holiness.

Their divergence lies not in a denial of grace, but in resisting any account of
grace that bypasses obedience.

9. Anabaptists, Memorial, and the Cross

The Anabaptist insistence on memorial does not weaken the cross; it protects its moral and covenantal force. The Supper does not dispense forgiveness mechanically; it summons the community to live out the cruciform life the cross inaugurates.

In this sense, Anabaptist theology implicitly resists Penal Substitutionary reductions that isolate atonement from transformation. Atonement reconciles, and reconciliation reconfigures life.

10. Conclusion: A Necessary Corrective

The Anabaptist witness offers modern theology a crucial reminder: sacraments belong to the church as a community of obedient faith, not to abstract systems of grace.

Their theology:
• recovers memorial as covenant action,
• preserves the once-for-all nature of Christ’s sacrifice,
• insists on real participation without metaphysical coercion,
• integrates Eucharist, ethics, and ecclesiology.

Far from being a theological dead end, responsible Anabaptist Eucharistic theology
represents one of the most biblically consistent and morally serious sacramental
visions within the Christian tradition.

Suggested Sources for Further Development

• Hubmaier, On the Christian Baptism of Believers
• Hubmaier, selected writings
• C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology
• John Rempel, The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism
• Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Presence

Copyright © 2026 Colin Dye 

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission of the author, except for:
(1) brief quotations in reviews, and
(2) reproduction for personal use, private study, or non-commercial academic research, provided the work is not altered and proper attribution is given.

Permission is required for commercial use, republication, translation, distribution in course packs, or posting on other websites.

Scripture Translation

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®).

Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Occasional emphasis has been added for clarity.

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Prescence

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This study includes the contribution of the more responsible Anabaptist voices. It is the view of the author that the caricatured, “mere memorialism”, often attributed to the Radical Reformation does real injustice to its best theologians.

It is written in direct theological dialogue with the Reformation traditions, while keeping the Hebrew–memorial framework as the evaluative lens.

1. Framing the Question Properly

Reformation debates over the Eucharist are often narrated as disputes over presence:

• Is Christ “really” present?
• If so, how?
• If not, what remains?

This framing, however, already assumes a post-patristic problem-setting shaped by medieval metaphysics. When the Eucharist is instead examined through the biblical logic of memorial (zikkaron / anamnesis), a different picture emerges: many Reformation positions are less divided over whether Christ is present than over how covenantal presence should be spoken of responsibly.

2. Presence Guarded by Promise

Luther’s Eucharistic theology is best understood as a fierce defence of Christ’s promise against both scholastic speculation and reductionist symbolism.

For Luther:

• Christ’s words “This is my body” are performative promises,
• presence rests on divine speech, not on priestly action or metaphysical explanation,
• the sacrament gives what it promises because Christ binds himself to it.

In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther insists that the sacrament is:

“A testament and promise of God… sealed with a sign.”

Although Luther affirms a strong Real Presence, his concern is not to explain how Christ is present, but to ensure that faith receives what Christ has promised. In this sense, Luther stands closer to a covenantal–memorial theology than is often acknowledged.

Where Luther diverges from a memorial framework is in his reluctance to emphasise anamnesis as covenantal participation, fearing it might weaken the objectivity of Christ’s gift. Yet structurally, his theology still rests on:

• sign,
• promise,
• divine fidelity.

3. Spiritual Participation without Reduction

Calvin is often read as occupying a “middle position,” but this risks understating the sacramental density of his view.

In Institutes IV.17, Calvin argues:

• Christ is really present,
• believers truly feed on Christ,
• the mode of presence is spiritual, not local, mediated by the Holy Spirit.

Crucially, Calvin explicitly rejects:

• bare symbolism,
• re-sacrifice,
• metaphysical localisation.

Instead, he writes:

“The sacraments are testimonies of divine grace toward us, confirmed by an outward sign.”

Calvin’s Eucharistic theology aligns remarkably well with biblical memorial logic:

• the sacrament does not repeat the cross,
• it makes believers participants in its benefits,
• presence is covenantal and relational.

Where Calvin differs from some later Protestant developments is precisely here: he refuses to reduce memorial to recollection. For Calvin, remembrance is participation, enacted through the Spirit.

In this respect, Calvin stands closer to the patristic and Hebrew zikk?rôn framework than many of his heirs.

4. The Responsible Anabaptist Tradition: Memorial as Covenant Fidelity

The Radical Reformation is frequently—and unfairly—collapsed into “Zwinglian memorialism.” This obscures the theological seriousness of several Anabaptist thinkers who understood the Lord’s Supper as a communal, covenantal, and transformative memorial, even while rejecting metaphysical Real Presence.

4.1  Hubmaier strongly rejects transubstantiation and re-sacrifice, yet he does not treat Communion as empty symbol. For him, the Supper is:

• a confession of faith,
• a binding communal act,
• a participation in Christ’s covenant through obedience and discipleship.

He writes that the Supper is a “memorial of the suffering of Christ” that forms believers into a faithful people. Presence is not denied, but understood ethically and communally rather than ontologically.

4.2  Marpeck offers perhaps the most theologically rich Anabaptist account. 

Drawing heavily on covenant and incarnation theology, he insists that:

• external signs without inward faith are empty,
• inward faith without embodied obedience is false.

The Supper, for Marpeck, is a covenantal enactment that binds believers to Christ and to one another. This resonates strongly with the emphasis on:

• participation,
• community,
• loyalty rather than mere cognition.

Marpeck’s theology avoids both sacramental automatism and subjective reduction by locating efficacy in obedient faith responding to divine promise.

5.  Revisited: Beyond the Caricature

Zwingli is often treated as the archetype of “mere memorialism.” Yet even Zwingli emphasises that the Supper:

• proclaims Christ’s saving work,
• strengthens faith,
• binds the community publicly to Christ’s lordship.

Where Zwingli falls short—measured against biblical memorial theology—is in restricting remembrance to human cognition rather than covenantal action. Yet even here, he resists the idea that the Supper is trivial or optional; it is a public act of allegiance.

Zwingli’s weakness is not ethical or ecclesial seriousness, but his reduced account of how God acts through signs.

6. Memorial as the Evaluative Key

When a memorial theology—rooted in Exodus 12 and covenantal remembrance—is applied as a critical lens, the Reformation landscape looks different:

• Luther preserves objective divine promise, but underplays anamnesis.
• Calvin articulates participatory memorial through the Spirit.
• Responsible Anabaptists preserve communal covenant fidelity and ethical seriousness.
• Zwingli safeguards divine freedom but narrows sacramental action too far.

What unites the best of these traditions is a shared refusal to:

• repeat sacrifice,
• treat the Eucharist as magical,
• sever faith from obedience.

Our framework draws their strengths together by insisting that:

God acts covenantally through memorial signs he has appointed, and faithful participation is real participation.

7. Concluding Synthesis

Seen through a Hebrew–biblical theology of memorial, the Reformation debates are not primarily about whether Christ is present, but how divine presence should be named without violating the once-for-all nature of redemption or the freedom of God.

This Eucharistic theology stands in constructive continuity with:

• the patristic tradition,
• Calvin’s participatory sacramentalism,
• and the most theologically responsible Anabaptist teaching.

It avoids:

• sacramental coercion,
• metaphysical reduction,
• ethical hollowing.

What it recovers is something older and deeper:
memorial as covenantal participation in a saving act that God remembers, honours, and makes effective.

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Presence

Copyright © 2026 Colin Dye 

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission of the author, except for:
(1) brief quotations in reviews, and
(2) reproduction for personal use, private study, or non-commercial academic research, provided the work is not altered and proper attribution is given.

Permission is required for commercial use, republication, translation, distribution in course packs, or posting on other websites.

Scripture Translation

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®).

Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Occasional emphasis has been added for clarity.

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Prescence

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Memorial, Presence, and Covenant: A Biblical and Patristic Theology of the Eucharist

Abstract

This essay argues that the Christian Eucharist is best understood as a covenantal memorial (zikkaron)/ anamnesis) that makes present the once-for-all saving act of Christ without repeating or re-performing it. Drawing upon the Passover theology of Exodus 12, the Hebrew conception of memorial as divine action, and early patristic Eucharistic language, the study contends that Real Presence is neither metaphysical abstraction nor symbolic reduction, but relational, participatory, and covenantally enacted. This framework aligns closely with early Christian theology and avoids later distortions that separate presence from memorial or sacrifice from covenant.

1. Memorial in the Hebrew Bible: More Than Human Memory

In the Hebrew Scriptures, memorial ( zikkaron) denotes not subjective recall but ritualised remembrance that elicits divine action. When God “remembers,” covenantal commitments are enacted in the present (Gen 9:16; Exod 2:24).

The Passover account in  12:13–14 establishes the controlling pattern:

“When I see the blood, I will pass over you… This day shall be for you a memorial.”

The blood does not inform God nor persuade him emotionally; it functions as a covenantal sign. God’s seeing triggers his saving action. The memorial feast does not reenact deliverance but places each generation within its continuing efficacy.

Crucially, this saving event:

• precedes the giving of the Law,
• is grounded entirely in divine promise,
• demands loyalty and trust rather than legal obedience.

The structure is grace-first, obedience-following—a point foundational to later Eucharistic theology.

2. Memorial as Participation Rather Than Repetition

The annual Passover feast functions simultaneously as:

• remembrance of what God did,

• participation in what God continues to give, and
• communal incorporation into covenant identity.

This logic explains how Israel can say, liturgically, “we were brought out of Egypt” without historical confusion. The event is once-for-all; the participation is ongoing.

Thus, memorial in Scripture is:

• effective without being repetitive,
• real without being metaphysically speculative,
• communal rather than merely individual.

This provides the grammatical framework for understanding the Eucharist.

3. The Eucharist Instituted as Memorial

Jesus institutes the Eucharist explicitly within a Passover setting, commanding:

“Do this in remembrance (anamnesis) of me.”

Within a Jewish context, anamnesis naturally evokes ( zikkaron). It signals not mental recall but liturgical actualisation. Jesus does not command the repetition of sacrifice; he commands the perpetual memorialisation of a redemptive event yet to be completed.

What is new is not memorial logic, but the identity of the event being memorialised: the self-giving of Christ as the climactic covenantal act.

Thus:

• the Cross is once-for-all,
• the Eucharist is ongoing participation,
• presence is covenantal, not mechanical.

4. Real Presence as Covenantal Presence

Within this framework, Real Presence is not the localisation of Christ’s body as an object, but his faithful presence as covenant Lord.

The bread and wine function as:

• visible words of divine promise,
• appointed signs God has bound himself to honour,
• sacramental means through which believers “feed on Christ by faith.”

As in Exodus 12:

• the worshipper sees and receives the sign in faith,
• God sees the sign and acts according to his promise.

Presence, therefore, is relational and promissory, not metaphysically self-justifying.

5. Alignment with Early Patristic Theology

What is striking is how closely this memorial-participatory account aligns with early Christian teaching—long before medieval sacramental metaphysics.

5.1 

In First Apology 66, Justin writes:

“We do not receive these as common bread and common drink; but… the food which has been eucharisted by the word of prayer from him… is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”

Justin insists on Real Presence, but he explains it through prayer, thanksgiving, and transformation of use, not substance analysis. The emphasis is covenantal and doxological.

5.2 

Irenaeus explicitly frames the Eucharist within covenant renewal:

“The bread, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly.”
(Against Heresies IV.18.5)

For Irenaeus, the Eucharist is an act of covenant renewal because, through the Church’s invocation of covenant promise, God faithfully joins earthly signs to heavenly realities, re-integrating the worshipping community into Christ’s reconciling work without repeating the sacrifice or explaining the mystery in speculative terms.

5.3 

Cyril emphasises participation rather than explanation:

“Under the form of bread, you receive the Body of Christ; under the form of wine, the Blood of Christ… so that you may become of one body and blood with him.”
(Mystagogical Catecheses 4)

Presence here is unitive and participatory, not mechanistic.

5.4 

Augustine famously resists crude realism:

“Believe, and you have eaten.”
(Sermon 272)

Yet he does not deny Real Presence; he interprets it within faith, sign, and participation:

“If you receive worthily, you are what you have received.”

This fits precisely with a memorial theology that is effective but covenantal.

6. Memorial, Sacrifice, and the Cross

The Fathers consistently hold together:

• the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ,
• the Eucharist as sacrificial memorial,
• participation without repetition.

The Eucharist shows forth the Lord’s death (1 Cor 11:26); it does not re-enact it. Sacrifice is present as representation and thanksgiving, not limited to penal categories.

This explains why patristic Eucharistic theology sits uneasily with some reductionist forms of Penal Substitutionary Atonement: the Fathers’ focus on the language of covenant, victory, participation, and healing.

7. Conclusion

When properly framed within biblical memorial theology, the Eucharist emerges as:

• a covenantal memorial,
• a real participation in Christ,
• a means of grace grounded in divine promise.

This theology:

• honouring the once-for-all nature of the Cross,
• affirming Real Presence without metaphysical coercion,
• stands squarely within early patristic teaching,
• remains intelligible within Jewish sacramental logic—even where Jewish theology ultimately demurs.

This is not a novel or compromise position. It is, quite simply, the deep sacramental grammar of Scripture and the early Church rediscovered.

Select References

• Justin Martyr, First Apology
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses
• Augustine, Sermons
• Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion
• Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist
• Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Presence

Copyright © 2026 Colin Dye 

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission of the author, except for:
(1) brief quotations in reviews, and
(2) reproduction for personal use, private study, or non-commercial academic research, provided the work is not altered and proper attribution is given.

Permission is required for commercial use, republication, translation, distribution in course packs, or posting on other websites.

Scripture Translation

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®).

Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Occasional emphasis has been added for clarity.

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Prescence

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A proposal that is biblical in grammar (Passover–memorial), patristically compatible (presence as participation), Reformationally intelligible (promise-centred), and Anabaptist-sensitive (discipleship/communal integrity).

Thesis

Covenantal Real Presence: In the Eucharist, the risen Christ is really present to his covenant people as covenant Lord—present to give what he promises (communion with himself and the benefits of his once-for-all self-offering), through the Spirit, by means of the appointed signs, as they are received in faith within a reconciled, obedient community.

This is “Real Presence” because Christ truly gives himself; it is “covenantal” because presence is promissory, relational, and enacted, not mechanically produced or metaphysically localised.

1. Biblical foundations: memorial as enacted covenant (zikkaron /
anamnesis)

1. Passover (Exod 12:13–14) shows memorial as an enacted sign that God “sees” and to which God binds saving action.
2. Covenant remembrance is divine action (Gen 9:16; Exod 2:24).
3. “Do this in remembrance of me” should be heard within that memorial world: not “think about me,” but “keep covenant with me through this appointed enactment.”
4. Paul’s realism: participation (koinonia) in body and blood (1 Cor 10:16–17) and the moral danger of eating “unworthily” (1 Cor 11) only make full sense if something more than mental recollection is occurring.

So, the Eucharist is memorial that participates in the once-for-all event without repeating it.

2. The nature of presence: personal, covenantal, pneumatic

Covenantal Real Presence specifies three things:

• personal: Christ is present as a living subject who acts, not as a static object to be analysed,
• covenantal: Christ is present in the mode of promise—“I am with you,” “given for you,” “for the forgiveness of sins”—a presence inseparable from his pledged self-giving
• pneumatic: the Spirit is the mode of communion; the Spirit does not replace Christ but unites believers to the risen Christ.

This resonates strongly with Calvin’s best instincts (real feeding, Spirit-mediated), while avoiding collapsing “spiritual” into “imaginary”.

3. The signs: neither empty symbols nor automatic mechanisms

In this proposal, bread and wine are:

• appointed covenant signs (visible words),
• effective means precisely because God has freely bound himself to act through them,
• not magical (no ex opere operato automatism),
• not merely illustrative (they truly mediate communion because Christ promises to meet his people there).

This is close to patristic “two realities” language (earthly and heavenly) without requiring later metaphysical definitions.

4. The sacrifice question: “memorial sacrifice” without repetition

Covenantal Real Presence speaks of “sacrifice” in a controlled way:

• the cross is once-for-all (no repetition, no re-immolation),
• the Eucharist is sacrificial memorial in the sense of covenantal representation: the church is brought into living contact with the benefits of the definitive sacrifice and responds with thanksgiving, self-offering, and proclamation,
• the Eucharist is therefore an access-meal and a covenant-renewal meal, not a second atonement.

This framing integrates naturally with Hebrews’ finality and with the biblical memorial pattern.

5. Ecclesial conditions: presence given to a people, not to isolated consumers

Here Anabaptist instincts become a strength rather than a liability:

• the Eucharist presupposes the one body (1 Cor 10:17),
• reconciliation is not optional decoration but part of the sacrament’s truth,
• the church must catechise and shepherd participation because the Supper is church-defining.

This does not make obedience the cause of presence, but it does treat obedience as the covenantal form of receiving presence truthfully.

6. Pastoral and liturgical implications

A church practicing Covenant Real Presence (or simply, Covenant Presence) will tend to:

• celebrate Communion more frequently (because it is constitutive, not occasional),
• teach it as promise + participation, not “moment of reflection”,
• include intentional space for reconciliation (silence, confession, peace, restitution where needed),
• explicitly connect the meal to mission and embodied discipleship,
• avoid language that implies repeated sacrifice or bare symbolism.

7. How this proposal negotiates the classic poles

• Against Zwinglian thin memorial: remembrance is enacted participation; Christ truly gives himself.
• Against crude localism / mechanistic presence: presence is covenantal and pneumatic, not spatialised.
• Against re-sacrifice: once-for-all finality is safeguarded; “sacrifice” language is memorial/representational.
• Against PSA reductionism: the Supper is not mere penalty-rehearsal but communion, proclamation, and covenant renewal—while affirming the gravity of sin and the necessity of the cross. It is the celebration of forensic standing in the context of renewed covenant participation in all that the cross has achieved.

Covenant Memorial

A Fresh Perspective on Real Presence

Copyright © 2026 Colin Dye 

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission of the author, except for:
(1) brief quotations in reviews, and
(2) reproduction for personal use, private study, or non-commercial academic research, provided the work is not altered and proper attribution is given.

Permission is required for commercial use, republication, translation, distribution in course packs, or posting on other websites.

Scripture Translation

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®).

Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Occasional emphasis has been added for clarity.