Presbyteries will be voting on whether to amend BCO 58-5 by adding this sentence: “As Christ has instituted the Lord’s Supper in two sacramental actions, the communicants are to eat the bread and drink the cup in separate actions.”

Summer is winding down and soon our Presbyterian Church in America Presbyteries will consider a proposed change to Book of Church Order 58-5 prohibiting ‘intinction’ in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

(Editor’s note: The 40^th PCA General Assembly approved wording to amend BCO 58-5 by adding a final sentence after the words: “While the minister is repeating these words, let him give the cup.” For this BCO amendment to be adopted, 2/3 of the Presbyteries must approve adding this sentence: “As Christ has instituted the Lord’s Supper in two sacramental actions, the communicants are to eat the bread and drink the cup in separate actions.”)

I appreciate this ‘decent and orderly’ process.  When all presbyteries consider changes to our Constitution, it is bound to bring more biblical wisdom to bear than when the GA alone with its limited time issues an opinion.  And as we consider to what extent GA ‘in thesi’ pronouncements are binding upon us, it can help to just avoid that issue and instead point to our Constitution, as amended.

What should your Presbytery decide?  Should it adopt this new restriction?  We need to hear from our churches which now practice intinction, i.e., the placing of the bread in the common cup and then in our mouth.  I doubt that we want to send them the message that there is no longer room for them in our church.  How hard would it be for them to discontinue?  Would they be comfortable continuing to use the common cup, but with people drinking directly from it, then wiping it off for the next?  (This was done for centuries; how important is our modern hygiene for our practice?  If we used wine, does the alcohol help sanitize?)

What are the issues? For some it’s the sequence, first bread then wine.  For me and the people I know it’s the commonality that’s important, that we partake Together. Together can work when all drink at the same time from those little cups, but for many of us Together suggests very strongly the same cup, the Common Cup.

We’re used to so much diversity.  How many of us use wine, I wonder?  For me grape juice is way too sweet to suggest ‘the bitter cup,’ but I come from the last dry county in Iowa so I understand.  The Scots once had groups come forward to sit at tables; the Table of the Lord was very big for them.  But did they recline?

We agree that Commonality, Together with our Lord at his Table, is important. But we don’t agree how to do that.  Can we live with it that way, or do we need uniformity?  How much?

I hear ‘PCA original vision’ is in the air.  I don’t know much about that; I’ve been in the church only since 1988.  But before that I was 24 years in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.  When they turned down union with the PCA in 1986, my church and its daughters wondered what we should do.  We knew that our worship and our church-planting styles were not that welcome in the OPC, and with mixed sadness and joy we moved on.  Our identity and that of the PCA fit so well together: ‘the Reformed Faith and the Great Commission.’  A common identity is a wonderful thing, a true gift of the Holy Spirit.  It seems to me that supplementing PCA identity with a ban on intinction is disproportionate, divisive, and radically unwise.  I hope all our Presbyteries agree.

D. Clair Davis, a PCA Teaching Elder, is a former professor of church history at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and is now a Professor and Chaplain at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, Texas.