The Reformed View: Calvin represents what is often called, "dynamic presence" or "Spiritual presence." Calvin taught that the Bible clearly shows us that Christ's physical body is in heaven, and therefore the bread and the Cup cannot become that. Yet, His Spirit is here and can be throughout the world at once, and the force of the Scriptures drew Calvin to surmise that the Sacrament is a memorial, but much more. He wrote:
It is a mystery of Christ's secret union with the devout which is by nature incomprehensible. If anybody should ask me how this communion takes place, I am not ashamed to confess that that is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it (Robert Godfrey in his Calvin on the Eucharist, www.modernreformation.org, quoting John Calvin in Institutes, IV, 17, 32).
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We often think of Calvin as the cold logician, but here in the Sacraments, one may even think of him as mystical.
Rather than entering the debate, let us take a fresh, if not brief, look at the matter first-hand. I want us to go to the Scriptures and consider the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as it is named or practiced in the Word of God.
The question is often put: Is it Communion, or the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist? I want to go ahead and show my cards from this study and say that the Biblical answer is simply, "yes!"
Indeed Paul refers to it as Communion in 1 Corinthians 10. Again, with the backdrop being idolatry and regrettable practices in the Corinthian church, Paul shows us that to take part in pagan rituals is to become part of them, just like Communion. The Sacrament of Communion means that we are communing with Christ and that we are communing with each other.
Is the bread that we bless not a communion (koinonea) in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1Corinthians 10.16-17)
In Ephesians 5, Paul describes marriage according to the relationship of Christ and His Bride, the Church. There we also see that we are "members of His body." Paul uses a favorite phrase of Calvin's for the Communion, the word "mystery." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
What we do tonight is a Communion with Jesus Christ. By faith, we are feeding on His body and blood. We are nourished, mysteriously yes, but nourished by faith on Christ. He is the Bread of life, and to commune on this bread and this cup is, with a heart of faith that perceives it, to enter into one of the most mystical and rewarding moments in life.
