BOOK REVIEW:
What Happens in Holy Communion? By Michael Welker. Translated by John F. Hoffmeyer. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000, 192 pp. ISBN: 0802846025. 

Michael Welker’s What Happens in Holy Communion? is a helpful contribution not only for ecumenical discussion but also for the working pastor. Welker, who is professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, blends his scholarly knowledge of the worldwide (and especially European) discussion on the nature, meaning, and practice of eucharistic celebration with his personal experience of the Lord’s Supper as it is practiced in churches around the world.

The book is well organized. It begins with an extended introduction which relates Welker’s experience of the Supper “seen from the outside,” and a review of the Biblical texts regarding Christ’s resurrection and the Supper. He then discusses “twelve perspectives” on the Supper evident in the ecumenical discussion, critiquing each perspective biblically and theologically. His examination of each perspective concludes with a summary he entitles “Results.” This careful organization helps the reader to negotiate Welker’s Germanic prose, no doubt made less formidable by John F. Hoffmeyer’s English translation.

Welker reports that in too many churches around the world holy communion is a dismal affair. Even in otherwise lively services of worship, the Supper turns out to be a depressing experience. In contrast to this “sad colloquy,” Welker also reports that he has experienced the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins through celebrations of the Supper. He is convinced that “something happens in holy communion which is difficult to grasp, but which is of elementary importance! But what it is it?” (p. 8). His book is an attempt to answer that question.

Welker asserts that “The offensive reality of the risen Jesus Christ” is the key to understanding the Supper. Christ is present in the Supper not as the revivified pre-Easter Jesus, but as the risen and exalted Lord. He discuses the biblical texts regarding Christ’s resurrection especially as they relate to the celebration of the Supper. In the Supper the whole fullness of Jesus’ life is present with its creative power. The “divine miracle” of Easter, Welker writes, “is not the revivification of an earthly life, but the presence of the fullness of the life of Jesus Christ in the resurrection” (p. 17).

The strengths of Welker’s book are his careful attention to the biblical tradition and the reformed perspective he brings to the ecumenical discussion of the eucharist. He cites no less than 40 ecumenical documents ranging from the Bonn Agreement of 1931, a discussion between Anglicans and Old Catholics, to the Reformed and Roman Catholic “Towards a Common Understanding of the Church,” of 1990. He does not hesitate to critique current ecumenical statements, especially “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” for taking sin too lightly. Welker sees the Supper as an expression of the Triune God’s gracious response to the totality and utter hopelessness of humanity’s sinful condition. He complains that B.E.M. “passes sin by” when it speaks of the eucharist as “the great thanksgiving to the Father . . . for everything accomplished by God now in the Church and in the world in spite of the sins of human beings.” B.E.M. sees the Supper as God’s gift “in spite of” sin. The Reformed churches, according to Welker, see the Supper as the action of God “centrally engaging and struggling with sin in church and world” (p.152). He laments the failure of the churches of the Reformation to influence the discussion of B.E.M. in the “right direction” (p.153).

Both Welker’s theological acumen and his passion for what the Reformers called the “right celebration” of the Supper are evident in this important work. It is a book which will require careful reading and re-reading, but it is a book well worth the effort. His stirring expression of confidence that the Supper will one day be shared by all Christians is a good note on which to end: 

With irresistible power, the knowledge of truth will free the way to ecumenical communion. If in the Supper all human beings are continually liberated anew from the power of sin, from closure against God, and from closure against each other – if this is true, then no power of this world can or will be able to block all churches of Christ from growing together into full eucharistic, anamnetic, and sacramental communion (p. 159).           

Brant S. Copeland
Pastor, First Presbyterian Church
Tallahassee, Florida

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2003, VOL. 3, #1.