Steve Atkerson writes: "The word behind “supper” (1Co 11:20), deipnon, fundamentally means “dinner, the main meal toward evening, a banquet.” "Arguably, it never refers to anything less than a full meal, such as an appetizer, snack or hors d’oeuvres. What is the possibility that the authors of the New Testament would use deipnon to refer to the Lord’s “Supper” if it were not supposed to be a full meal?" "The Lord’s Supper has numerous forward looking aspects to it. As a full meal, it prefigures the feast of the coming kingdom, the marriage supper of the Lamb." "The opinion of most Bible scholars is clearly weighted toward the conclusion that the Lord’s Supper was originally eaten as a full meal." "For example, British New Testament scholar Donald Guthrie stated that the apostle Paul “sets the Lord’s supper in the context of the fellowship meal.” "Gordon Fee, Professor Emeritus of Regent College, pointed out “the nearly universal phenomenon of cultic meals as a part of worship in antiquity” and “the fact that in the early church the Lord’s Supper was most likely eaten as, or in conjunction with, such a meal.” "Fee further noted that, “from the beginning the Last Supper was for Christians not an annual Christian Passover, but a regularly repeated meal in ‘honor of the Lord,’ hence the Lord’s Supper.” "G. W. Grogan, principle of the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow, writing for the New Bible Dictionary, observed that “St. Paul ’s account (in 1 Cor. 11:17-37) of the administration of the Eucharist shows it set in the context of a fellowship supper . . . The separation of the meal or Agape from the Eucharist lies outside the times of the NT.” "In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, C. K. Barrett made the observation that “the Lord’s Supper was still at Corinth an ordinary meal to which acts of symbolical significance were attached, rather than a purely symbolical meal.” "Williston Walker, professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale, noted that “Services were held on Sunday, and probably on other days. These had consisted from the Apostles’ time of two kinds: meetings for reading the Scriptures, preaching [dialogue, sp], song and prayer; and a common evening meal with which the Lord’s Supper was conjoined.” "Dr. John Gooch, editor at the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote, “In the first century, the Lord’s Supper included not only the bread and the cup but an entire meal.” "J.J. Pelikan, Sterling Professor of Religious Studies at Yale, concluded, “often, if not always, it was celebrated in the setting of a common meal.” Sources: Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1981), 758. Gordon Fee, New International Commentary on the New Testament, The First Epistle to The Corinthians ( Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 532, 555. G. W. Grogan, “Love Feast,” The New Bible Dictionary, ed. J. D. Douglas (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1982), 712. Williston Walker, A History of The Christian Church, 3rd Ed. (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 38. John Gooch, Christian History & Biography, Issue 37 (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today) 3. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, “Eucharist,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. Warren Preece, Vol. 8 (Chicago: William Benton, Publisher, 1973), 808.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 11:26:10 +0000