What this is about
Here is the passage, in the version most people heard it in:
“Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
1 Corinthians 11:27–29, Authorised Version
And here is what is usually said next, written out by this page rather than quoted from anyone:
Read the first sentence next to the last one. Eating this wrongly is dangerous — damnation is the word. And it is just bread. One of those has to give.
The short answer
- Paul tells you what the problem in Corinth was, and it was not unconverted people at the table. The church ate the Supper as part of a real meal, and the better-off were eating first and eating well while the poor arrived to find nothing left: “one is hungry, and another is drunken … shame them that have not?” (verses 21–22). His fix is “wait for one another” (verse 33). Everyone in the paragraph is already at the table. The people in danger are the confident ones at the head of it.
- “Unworthily” describes how you eat, not who you are. It is an adverb. Paul never says the unworthy must not eat; he says nobody must eat in an unworthy way — and he has just said what that way was.
- “Damnation” is an old English word for judgement. The Greek is judgement. The same Bible translates the same word “condemnation” five verses later. Paul says what the judgement was — sickness — and what it was for: “that we should not be condemned with the world” (verse 32). The opposite of damnation.
- “Not discerning the body” only makes sense if there is a body there to discern. Either the Lord’s body given in the bread, which is how the church read it for fifteen centuries, or the Lord’s body gathered at the table — the congregation the rich were shaming. On both readings something real is present that the careless eater fails to recognise. On neither is it a question about whether you have had a conversion experience.
- For fifteen hundred years the church believed something was given — and told the frightened to come. Justin Martyr, about the year 155: “not as common bread and common drink do we receive these.” Luther: the worthy communicant is “whoever has faith in these words, ‘Given and shed for you’”; the unworthy are “those alone … who neither feel their infirmities nor wish to be considered sinners”. Calvin: the feast is “medicine to the sick, comfort to the sinner, bounty to the poor”. Even the Baptists of 1689 wrote that worthy receivers “really and indeed … feed upon Christ crucified”.
- They did keep people from the table — for reasons everyone could see. Not baptised. Living in open sin. At open enmity with another member. Not professing the faith. Never, in any source before 1648, for lacking confidence that one had been converted — and when that test was introduced, in New England, the same document warned that “severity of examination is to be avoided”.
- So the modern warning is upside down. It keeps the terror of an older doctrine while teaching that the doctrine is false, and it aims that terror at the anxious — exactly the people the older church, believing far more about the bread, told to come.
What Paul was actually correcting
Take verses 27 to 29 out of the paragraph and they sound like a general warning about the state of your soul. Put them back and they are the middle of a rebuke about a badly run church supper.
“For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?”
1 Corinthians 11:21–22
“Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home.”
1 Corinthians 11:33–34
That is the offence: a thing people did to other people, in public. Notice also that verse 28 — “let a man examine himself” — ends with and so let him eat. The examination is what you do on the way to the table, not the reason for turning back from it.
One more thing that few people are told. The earliest manuscripts of verse 29 do not have the word “unworthily” in it at all, and do not have “of the Lord”. They read: “he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgement to himself, not discerning the body.” A copyist added the extra words from verse 27. Every modern translation prints the shorter reading. Paul wrote unworthily once, in verse 27, with its meaning already fixed by verse 21.
What the church believed
The claim that the Supper was a sacrament and not a bare symbol “for most of Christian history” gets made a lot and shown rarely. Here it is shown, briefly.
“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
Ignatius of Antioch, about the year 107, describing heretics
“Consider therefore the Bread and the Wine not as bare elements, for they are, according to the Lord’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ.”
Cyril of Jerusalem, about 350, instructing the newly baptised
The Reformation split the Western church over how Christ is present in the Supper. It did not split it over whether more than bread is received. Lutherans, Anglicans, the Reformed and, in 1689, the English Baptists all confessed that worthy receivers really receive Christ. The first confession in the Baptist line to describe the Supper without saying anything is received is 1833. The phrase “a symbolic act of obedience” enters the Baptist Faith and Message in 1963. As an official position, the view that the bread is only bread is younger than the steam engine.
And here is the part that matters for the person in the pew. The churches that believed most about the bread said this about who should come:
“Those who are truly displeased with themselves because of their sins and yet trust that these are forgiven them and that their remaining weakness is covered by the suffering and death of Christ.”
The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 81 (1563)
“If, therefore, you are heavy-laden and feel your weakness, then go joyfully to this Sacrament and obtain refreshment, consolation, and strength.”
Luther, Large Catechism (1529)
The first exercise: who said it?
Four statements about the Supper. For each, say where it comes from. One of the four catches almost everybody.
0 of 4 answered.
Who was kept from the table
The old church did not admit everybody. From the first century it kept back the unbaptised. It kept back people living in open sin, people at open enmity with a fellow member, people who did not profess the faith. Every one of those is something a congregation can see.
What it never did — not in the Fathers, not in Luther or Calvin, not in the Prayer Book, not in any confession before 1648 — was keep back the person who was afraid he was unworthy. That person it went out of its way to reassure. Chrysostom scolded his congregation in the 390s for staying away out of reverence. The Prayer Book of 1662 rebukes those who “offend God so sore in refusing this holy Banquet”. The scruple was always known. It was never encouraged.
The requirement that you be able to give an account of your conversion before you take communion first appears in a church document in New England in 1648 — in a chapter that also says “the weakest Christian, if sincere, may not be excluded nor discouraged”. And the churches that wrote it believed the Supper was a real means of grace. The test was a fence around something. The modern church has kept the fence and removed the thing.
The second exercise: four people at the rail
Four people, made up for this exercise, approaching communion. For each one, say whether you would admit them, warn them and let them decide, or bar them. Then see what Paul, the old church, and the modern warning each do.
0 of 4 answered.
The bit that actually matters
It is easy to read this as a page about whether the bread is really Christ’s body, and to line up on your usual side. That is not the argument. A reader who believes the bread is only bread can keep believing it after reading this page.
What he cannot keep is the warning. Set the two side by side:
The old position
- Something is given at the table.
- So it matters who takes it, and the church keeps back the unbaptised, the openly wicked and the unreconciled.
- So the frightened, who know they are not worthy, are exactly who it is for. Come.
The modern combination
- Nothing is given at the table; the bread is bread.
- But eating it wrongly brings damnation.
- So the frightened, who cannot point to the moment they were saved, should let the plate pass.
The right-hand column keeps the fear of the left-hand column and throws away the reason for it. And it points the fear at the wrong people. Paul’s warning was aimed at the confident and comfortable — the ones who had already eaten. The modern warning is aimed at the teenager who is not sure her conversion counted, the lifelong churchgoer baptised as an infant who cannot produce a date, the man who has doubts. Those are the people the old church, believing far more about the bread, told to come.
The two best replies, and what they are worth
Two answers to all this are good, and the full dossier concedes both.
“The body in verse 29 means the church, not the bread.” Quite possibly. Paul has just said “we being many are one bread, and one body”. But notice what that does to the modern warning rather than to this page. If the body is the congregation, then not discerning it means treating your brethren as if they were not Christ’s members — a sin of the confident, committed at the table, against other people. It is still the last verse in the Bible from which to build a private test of whether a nervous individual has been converted.
“The Supper is for believers, so asking whether someone believes is legitimate.” Entirely right, and the oldest condition there is. But the modern warning does not ask whether you believe; it asks whether you have had an experience — whether you can say you know you are saved, whether you can point to the moment. The old church asked for a profession, which it could hear. The modern warning asks for an assurance, which only you can feel. And then it attaches damnation to the answer.
Four other replies are made and none survives the sources: that “examine yourself” in 2 Corinthians 13:5 is the same instruction (different context, and neither verse tells anybody to stay away); that “unworthily” means irreverence toward the symbol (fine — but that makes it about the manner of eating, which is what the text says and what the warning denies); that the old church fenced the table too (it did, on grounds everyone could see); and that Zwingli taught the memorial view (Zwingli’s own confession says “the true body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith”).
Where this page lands
Check it yourself
Five things. All five are free.
- 1. 1 Corinthians 11:17–34, in one go, and then 10:16–17. Ten minutes. Read the whole paragraph without stopping, then read verses 27 to 29 again. Most of this page is in that exercise.
- 2. Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapters 65–67. Ten minutes, free online in the standard old translation. The earliest description of a Christian Sunday service, written to a Roman emperor, with the words “not as common bread” in it.
- 3. Luther’s Small Catechism, Part VI, and the Large Catechism on the Sacrament of the Altar. Twenty minutes, free at bookofconcord.org. The answer to “who receives this sacrament worthily?” is four lines long.
- 4. The 1689 Baptist Confession, chapter 30, section 7, next to the Westminster Confession, chapter 29, section 7. Five minutes, both free. Then the Baptist Faith and Message, article 7, in its 1925, 1963 and 2000 forms, which the adopting body publishes side by side. That is the whole history of “symbolic act” in a quarter of an hour.
- 5. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Order for Holy Communion. Twenty minutes, free. Read the rubrics at the start, the exhortations, the invitation and the Prayer of Humble Access, in order. It fences the table and comforts the frightened in the same service.
The full version
Eight interactive sections: the whole Corinthian paragraph sorted verse by verse, twelve English translations of verse 29 with the number of “damnations” to guess, ten statements about the Supper to attribute, ten confessions from 1527 to 2000 to predict before you open them, ten grounds of exclusion to sort into the ones the old church used and the ones it never did, four people at the rail, a guess-the-year timeline of where the warning came from, and six objections you weigh before they are answered. Plus every source dated and cited, the textual question in verse 29 set out honestly, and the prompt that produced the whole thing.
Read the full dossier → Simple English →