The one question that still remains to be answered is, whether the covenant-blood a\ ■pears in the words of Jesus, 'This is my blood of tile covenant,' primarily as the blood which through exjiiatioii inaugurates the covenant, or primarily as the blood which by being sacramentally received will make those who receive it partakers of the covenant. Both mean- ings are equally well suited to the words them- selves. In order to choose definitely between them, we should have to enter upon the extremely com- plicated discussion that has of recent years been carried on, and is still being carried on, concerning the origin of the Lord's Supper and the significance of the act performed and the words spoken by our Lord on the last evening of His earthly life. A few remarks must suffice to indicate the bearings of this problem on the question before us. The two views above distinguished coincide with the so-called parabolic or purely symbolic and the so- called institutional or sacramental interpretation of tlie transaction. According to the former, Jesus did not mean to institute a rite, did not intend the act to be repeated, Init simply enacted before the eyes of His disciples, in a visible parable, the drama of His death, indicating by the parabolic form He gave it that His death would be for their good through the inauguration of a covenant. Accord- ing to the latter, Jesus instituted, and for the first time caused His disciples to celebrate, a rite in which He made the partaking of bread and wine, as sacramental symbols of His body and blood, to stand for the ajipropriation of flis expiatory sacrifice and of the covenant founded on it.
It ought to be observed that these views are not in themselves mutually exclusive Tlie parabolic significance of the body ami 11. i.,,!. a- symboliz- ing death, must on the .■-eruihl \ i, w lie assumed to form the background, exiie-^ed ui presupposed, of the sacramental tran.saction— expressed, if the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine be made significant ; presupposed, if the broken bread and the poured wine be made the starting- point of the observance. That the so-called para-
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that of the dissol propriation for nourishi "- 1 of the meal,
bolic view is frequently advocated in a form which excludes tlie sacramental complexion of the act, is due not so muili to the view itself, Vjut largely to a general tlieory on the nature of the parables of Jesus.
Julioher, the foremost representative of the parabolic interpre- tation of the Supper (cf. Theologieche Abhandlwiigen C. v. Weiz- siicher gewidmet, p. 207 ff.), is also the strenuous advocate of the theory that in every genuine parable of Jesus there can be but one point of comparison. Consequently it is insisted upon that, if the broken bread and the wiue stand as figures for the death of Jesus, figures which involve the destruction of these elements, they cannot at the same time stand as figures for tlie appropriation of the benefits of His death, because this would involve the usefulness of the elements, the very opposite of tlieir destruction. Julicher was not at first disposed to carry this to an extreme, but admitted that as a secondary point of comparison the usefulness of the bread and wine as food and drink might have stood before tlie mind of Jesus. Others, how- ever, demand that on the parabolic view every figurative sig- nificance of the eating and drinking must be rigorously e.\cluded, and make this a ground of criticism of said view, because in the records the eatingand drinking are undoubtedly n.ade prominent (cf. Johannes Hoffmann, Das Abendmahl !m Urchristentlmm, pp. 61-65, and Jiilicher's review of Hoffmann's book in Theol. JAteratuneitung, 1904, col. 282 fl.).
Julicher's canon of interpretation, while on the whole repre- senting a sound principle of exegesis, leads in single instances to the rejection of undoubtedly genuine material. It makes Jesus construct His parables with conscious regard to the unity and purity of their form, rather than with the practical end of their efficacy in view (cf. Bugge, Die. Hanpt-Pambelii Jem). Where, as in the present case, the two points of comparison, ution of the elements and that of their ap- re so naturally combined into foolish to require the exclusion of either on the ground of a puristic insistence on the rules of formal rhetoric.
In all probability the combination of these two aspects of the symbolism was not first made by our Lord, but was antecedently given in the union of the OT sacrifice and the sacrificial meal. Schultzen [Das Abendmahl im Neuen Ti-f:iamcnt, p. 53 ft".) has shown, to our mind convincingly, that the eating of tlie bread and the drinking of the cuii are placed by our Lord under the aspect of a sacrificial meal, for which His own deatli furnishes the sacrifice. As in the sacrificial meal the ott'erer appropriates the benefits of the expiation and the resulting benefits of covenant - fellowship with God (Ex 24"-", Ps 50^), so the disciples are invited to appropriate by eating and drinking all the benefits of expiation and covenant - fellowsliip that are secured by the sacrifice of the Saviour's death.
We may assume, therefore, that botli the sym- bolism of sacrifice and the symbolism of the sacri- ficial meal are present in the transaction performed by Jesus. But the question still reinains un- answered, whether the former is present in explicit form or merely as the unexpressed background of the latter. Those who empliasize the symbolical significance of the breaking of the bread, a feature named in all the records, hold that the death is not merely presupposed but formally enacted. On the whole, however, the trend of the discussion has of late been in the direction of the other \iew, which attributes no special significance to the breaking of the bread or the pouring fortli of the wine, but makes the broken bread and the wine, as symbols of the death as an accomplished fact, tlie starting- point for the enacted symbolism of the sacrificial meal. It has been pointed out with a degree of force that the formula, ' This is my body,' ' This is my blood,' in the sense of 'This symbolizes what will happen to My body and to My blood,' is out of all analogy witli Jesus' usual iiavaliolic mode of statement, because elsewhere not tin' symlpol, but the thing symbolized, always f(.inis llic siilpjcet of the sentence (so Zahn, '/>"s' l-'.r.niqrlnnii den Mattfuius, p. 687, note .53). It iii.'vy .'iNo I"' urged that till- ii:iluiul si-(|uence, in case a parabolic enactmrnl of iIh- ili>nth of Jesus were intended,