Eating the Gospel

Sacramental Mediation and the Failure of Eucharistic Unity at Marburg

Bibliographic Data

ID23311777
AuthorsJeongho Yang (0000-0002-9071-5071, Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume17
Issue8
Pages893
Publication date2026-07-27
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel17080893
OpenAlexW7171419490
LanguageEN
References cited8

This article reinterprets the Eucharistic controversy at the Marburg Colloquy as a conflict over sacramental mediation and the communication of the benefits of the gospel, rather than merely a disagreement over the mode of Christ’s presence. Focusing on Luther and Zwingli, it argues that their failure to achieve Eucharistic unity emerged from competing understandings of how the benefits of the gospel are communicated, remembered, and embodied through ritual eating. Luther construed the Supper through the logic of gratia extra nos, in which Christ gives himself through the external promise attached to bread and wine. Zwingli, by contrast, understood the Supper through communal remembrance, confession, and Spirit-enabled participation directed toward the exalted Christ. By reading the controversy through the categories of embodied grammar, sacred temporality, and ecclesial boundary, the article shows why shared eating became the visible limit of Protestant unity. The Marburg dispute thus reveals that the Eucharist functioned not only as a doctrinal question but also as an embodied practice of worship through which Protestant communities imagined communion, authority, and participation in Christ.

Ecclesiology · Embodied cognition · Eucharist · Gospel · Mediation · Protestantism · Supper · Worship · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Historical Legal Studies and Society · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity