Eucharistic society

In a 2007 article in the Scottish Journal of Theology , Piotr Malysz challenges William Cavanaugh’s reading of Luther’s eucharistic theology. According to Cavanaugh, Luther’s theology created a dualism between “exchange” and “gift,” and turned the latter into a supernatural “intrusion” into the transactionist patterns of normal social life.

Malysz defends Luther in part by pointing out that the “works” he rejects are not human actions in general but the self-justifying works of a sinner incurvatus in se ipsum . Luther doesn’t reject human participation or mediation, but merit. Luther is not the creator of individualism, Malysz says; rather, “the sinner is the arch-individualist.” Malysz also points to passages where Luther challenges the “commercialization” of the Mass. Again, he is not rejecting exchanges and reciprocity, but an idolatry that would assume the Mass can manipulate God by putting Him in debt to humans.

Along the way, Malysz draws an important distinction between the Eucharist as a “social paradigm” (Cavanaugh’s view) and what he thinks of as Luther’s more radical claim that the Eucharist creates a new structure of relationships. The underlying issue is the standard Reformation debate about whether the Supper is a gift in which all the church participates and receives or a sacred ritual performed on behalf of the church by a priest. But Malysz helpfully shows the social import of this difference: On the one hand, you have a “model” to be observed and replicated; on the other, you have an act of God in which we participate.