Some evangelical traditions more or less ignore church history. They are perhaps the most vulnerable to anachronistic stories about the ancient church. Chan’s rhetoric about who held to a “literal” view of the supper and when suggests that he belongs to that group of evangelicals who have not seriously engaged with the past but who have a platform by which to spread their new, not well informed, enthusiasm.

“Again, I’m not making like any grand statements. I’m just saying that some of this stuff I didn’t know. I didn’t know that for the first 1500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ. And it wasn’t til 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s just a symbol and nothing more. I didn’t know that.

…It was at that same time that, for the first time, someone put a pulpit in the front of the gathering. Because before that there was always the body and blood of Christ that was central to their gatherings.”

What Chan Does Not Know

I did not know that either and after teaching church history since 1995, I still do not know it. That is because what Chan thinks that he has learned is not true.

We have a reasonably good idea of what the early second-century church did during worship but we do not know anything about the furnishings of their gatherings. Chan’s statement about the pulpit is simply historical nonsense. Church architecture developed during the Middle Ages and the cruciform buildings with a central altar, which Chan is invoking here, were medieval developments.

When Chan says “literal body and blood” he seems to be implying that the ancient and medieval church taught transubstantiation until the Reformation. This is not true. Transubstantiation is a ninth century doctrine and it was hotly contested then. It did not become Roman dogma until the late 13th century.

The Reformation marked a recovery of the centrality of preaching in Christian worship but it was a recovery. For that we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Paul did not even baptize everywhere he went but he did preach everywhere he went.

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power (1 Cor 1:14–17; ESV).

It is reasonable to think (as I do) that the early church observed holy communion every week but we do not know exactly how it was administered. We do not even know that there was a table involved. Church buildings did not become widespread until after the legalization of Christianity in the 4th century. We know with certainty that there was a vital preaching ministry in the ancient church that was gradually marginalized in favor of the drama of the eucharistic sacrifice of Christ.

Exactly where the pulpit is situated is adiaphora (morally indifferent) but, when we could, the Reformed churches placed the pulpit at the center of the church because the Word of God is central to public worship.

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