#24 Anamnesis: Reconsidering Eucharistic Language

The New Testament describes the Lord’s Supper with two distinct concepts: Thanksgiving and Remembrance. Christ first gives thanks, and then he commands the church to perform a memorial. Yet over the course of patristic and medieval theology these categories were gradually reversed — and with them, the very vocabulary used to describe the rite was transformed in ways that have shaped every subsequent controversy over the Supper down to the present day.

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In Scripture:

∙ Eucharist (εὐχαριστέω) refers to the act of giving thanks before the Supper.

∙ Anamnesis (ἀνάμνησις) refers to the memorial observance of the Supper itself.

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Etymology

Eucharist:

Eucharist comes from the Greek εὐχαριστία (eucharistia) meaning thanksgiving.

Breakdown:

• εὖ (eu) — good, well

• χάρις (charis) — grace, favor, gift, gratitude

• -ία (-ia) — noun-forming suffix

The Greek charis is equivalent to the Latin gratia (or the adjective gratus), from which the English word “gratitude” is derived.

The verb form is εὐχαριστέω (eucharisteō) — to give thanks.

This is the word used when Jesus gives thanks at the institution of the Lord’s Supper (e.g., Luke 22:19).

Thus, Eucharist literally means “thanksgiving.”

When the Lord’s Supper came to be commonly called “the Eucharist,” the focus subtly moved from what is given to God (thanksgiving) to what the rite itself supposedly conveys (grace to participants).

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Anamnesis:

Anamnesis comes from the Greek ἀνάμνησις (anamnesis) meaning remembrance or memorial.

Breakdown:

• ἀνά (ana) — again

• μνήσις (mnēsis) — remembrance, memory

The root μνή- (mnē) is related to:

• μνήμη (mnēmē) — memory

• μνημονικός (mnēmonikos) — mnemonic

Meaning:

“a calling to mind again,” “remembrance,” or “memorial recollection.”

This is the word used in Luke 22:19:

“Do this in remembrance (anamnesis) of me”

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The Biblical Pattern: Thanksgiving Before the Supper

“And when he had given thanks (Eucharist), he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body… this do in remembrance (Anamnesis) of me.”

— 1 Corinthians 11:24

Luke records the same sequence:

“And he took bread, and gave thanks (Eucharist), and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance (Anamnesis) of me.

— Luke 22:19

The order is unmistakable: Christ gives thanks, breaks the bread, then commands the memorial. The act of thanksgiving precedes the Supper itself. Thus the New Testament referent of the term later abbreviated as the Eucharist is the prayer of thanksgiving, not the ordinance as a whole.

Paul explains the meaning immediately:

“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.”

— 1 Corinthians 11:26

The ordinance is therefore a proclamation through remembrance. Its telos is not the conveyance of grace through the elements but the public declaration of a completed work.

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The Transition

In Roman Catholic sacramental theology, however:

∙ Eucharist becomes the name of the sacrament (or ordinance) itself.

∙ Anamnesis becomes a portion of the Eucharistic prayer — one that concludes not with proclamation but with an offering of sacrifice.

This reversal had profound theological consequences. It laid the conceptual groundwork for medieval doctrines such as transubstantiation, and it shaped the later Protestant debates over consubstantiation and spiritual presence. When the biblical terminology is examined carefully, the Supper appears exactly as historic Baptist-minded churches have always held it: a thanksgiving prayer followed by a memorial ordinance — not a repeated sacrifice, and not a vehicle of sacramental favor.

Many people claim to hold a “high view of the sacraments”. This rhetoric elevates the view of sacramental efficacy as the “higher” position, which implies that viewing baptism and the Lord’s Supper as symbolic memorials is somehow inadequate. The language suggests that the ordinances must do more than signify or commemorate; they must convey grace or produce spiritual effects in themselves.

A major linguistic factor in the medieval development was the gradual loss of metonymy. Scripture routinely uses “is”-language in clearly figurative ways—Jesus says, “I am the door,” “I am the vine,” “I am the light of the world,” and Paul says, “that rock was Christ”—and no one imagines these statements assert literal identity; the sign or image stands for the reality it represents. The same pattern appears in the sacramental sayings: “this is my body,” “this cup is the new testament,” “For we being many are one bread”. Early Christian writers treated these as metonymic expressions, naming the sign for the thing signified. But as theological vocabulary shifted, these figures were increasingly pressed into ontological assertions, collapsing representation into identity. This hermeneutical shift did not by itself create transubstantiation, but it made such a doctrine conceptually possible by treating sacramental metonyms as literal statements of substance.

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Do ut des — “I give that you may give.”

— Standard formula of Roman sacrificial religion

From the earliest records of pagan religion, man has sought to secure divine favor—whether through sacrifices intended to appease a deity or through rituals designed to obtain spiritual benefit.

“For what is the purpose of piety, or of worship, or of religion, except that we may obtain the favor of the gods?”

— Cicero, De Natura Deorum II.8

“Burn for the gods the rich thigh-bones… so that Apollo may be appeased.”

— Homer, Iliad I.457–458

This transactional framework, in which religious acts are performed to obtain divine benefit, has in various ways persisted beyond paganism, finding expression in medieval sacramental theology and continuing to echo within both Roman Catholicism and certain strands of Protestantism.

“Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, sicut accepta habere dignatus es… et offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuae… hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam…”

— Missale Romanum, Canon Romanus (Eucharistic Prayer I)

English rendering:

“Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance… and we offer to your glorious majesty… a pure victim, a holy victim, an immaculate victim.”

— Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer I (Roman Canon)

Also:

“The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice…”

— Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1367

The anamnesis — the memorial — does not conclude with proclamation, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 11:26. It concludes with oblation: we offer. The remembrance is no longer the substance or even the end of the rite; it has become the occasion and justification for a renewed sacrifice. What Christ commanded as anamnesis — memorial — has been folded into oblatio — offering.

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Sacrament or Ordinance: Why the Vocabulary Matters

The terminological question extends beyond the words Eucharist and anamnesis. The very question of whether to call the Supper a sacrament or an ordinance reflects the same underlying theological division.

The word sacrament (Latin: sacramentum) was used by Tertullian and later by Augustine, who defined a sacrament as “a visible sign of a sacred thing” — or, in his more developed formulation, a visible word. By this definition the term is theologically acceptable. But in the medieval system, sacraments came to operate ex opere operato — by the very performance of the act, grace is conferred upon the recipient.

The distinction matters for the argument of this article because the sacrament/ordinance divide is not merely terminological — it maps directly onto the anamnesis question. If the Supper is a sacrament as defined by Rome, then something happens in the eating: grace is conferred, or Christ’s body is received, or the sacrifice is re-presented. If the Supper is an ordinance, then the eating is itself the proclamation — the anamnesis — and nothing more is claimed than what Paul says: “ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” It’s important to stay biblically minded in whatever terms we use and not denominationally minded.

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Testimony

It should be said that the Lord has not left Himself without witness. Even amid the development of sacramental language, there have remained voices throughout church history that understood the Supper in a figurative, commemorative, and symbolic sense.

“This is my body, that is, the figure of my body.”

— Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.40

“The bread and wine… are figures of the body and blood of Christ.”

— Berengar, cited in Lanfranc, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini

“They deny that the body and blood of Christ are made in the altar… and say that this is only a memorial of Him.”

— Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos

“We consider the Sacraments as signs of holy things, or as the visible emblems of invisible blessings. We regard it as proper and even necessary that believers use these symbols or visible forms when it can be done. Notwithstanding which, we maintain that believers may be saved without these signs, when they have neither place nor opportunity of observing them.”

— A. D. 1120 Waldensian Confession of Faith, article 12

“The Eucharist is naturally bread and wine… and figuratively the body and blood of Christ.”

— John Wycliffe, De Eucharistia

“The sacrament is a sign… representing unto thee that Christ’s body was broken and his blood shed for thee.”

— William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man

And once more:

“It is a lamentable fact that some have fancied that this simple ordinance of the Lord’s Supper has a certain magical, or at least physical power about it, so that by the mere act of eating and drinking this bread and wine, men can be made partakers of the body and blood of Christ! It is marvelous that so plain a symbol should have been so complicated by genuflection, adornments and technical phrases! Can anyone see the slightest resemblance between the Master’s sitting down with the 12 and the “mass” of the Roman community? The original rite is lost in the superimposed ritual! Superstition has produced a sacrament where Jesus intended a fellowship. Too many who would not go the length of Rome, yet speak of this simple feast as if it were a dark and obscure mystery. They employ all manner of hard words to turn the children’s bread into a stone! It is not the Lord’s Supper, but the “Eucharist.” We see before us no plate, but a “paten.” The cup is a “chalice,” and the table is an “altar.” These are incrustations of superstition, whereby the blessed ordinance of Christ is likely to be again overgrown and perverted!”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Communion with Christ and His People, sermon no. 3295

Readers, let us keep this ordinance as it was intended—fixing our minds upon Him whom it signifies and the work He has accomplished for us.