Argument

Communion Is Witchcraft Objection Defeater

Intro

Some critics say that Christian communion is a magic ritual. Christians eat bread they call Jesus' body and drink wine they call his blood. To the critic that sounds like the kind of thing witches do: blood, flesh, special words, a secret meal. Some go further and call it cannibalism.

The charge is old. In the second century, pagans accused Christians of eating human flesh at secret feasts, and Christian writers answered it then. The answer still works.

Witchcraft, as the Bible describes it, is people trying to grab hidden power for themselves, using spells and spirits to get what they want. Communion runs the other way. Jesus commanded it the night before he died, told his followers to do it "in remembrance of me", and Paul says that each time they do it they "proclaim the Lord's death". Nothing is summoned and nothing is controlled. The believer receives what God gives. And the same Bible that commands communion condemns sorcery, and Paul sets the two side by side as opposites: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons."

Christians disagree among themselves about what exactly happens in communion. Some believe Christ is really present in the bread and wine; others see it as a memorial meal. None of those traditions treat it as magic, and none of them do what witchcraft does.

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In full

Defeater for the objection: "Communion is occult ritual. Eating a god's flesh and drinking his blood is sympathetic magic and blood ritual, the same thing witches and pagan mystery cults do; calling it a sacrament does not change what it is. At best it is symbolic cannibalism, at worst witchcraft."

The defeat has five parts.

1. Who commanded it. The Supper was instituted by Jesus himself, on the night he was betrayed, and handed on as received tradition (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 22:19-20; Matthew 26:26-28). Witchcraft is human technique; communion is obedience to a command.
2. What it is for. Its stated purpose is remembrance and proclamation: "this do in remembrance of me", "ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26). It is directed at a person and an event, not at producing an effect in the world.
3. Which way it moves. Sorcery seeks to grasp and control unseen power. Communion receives grace given by God, a "communion of the blood of Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:16), a sharing in what he has done.
4. Which spirits are involved. Scripture itself draws the line: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21). The same Bible that commands the Supper forbids sorcery outright (Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Galatians 5:20).
5. The charge has a history, and it lost. Second-century pagans alleged "Thyestean feasts", cannibal banquets. Athenagoras and Justin Martyr answered that Christians would not even watch a man put to death, and explained what the meal actually was. Justin adds that it is the pagan mystery rite that imitates the Christian meal, not the reverse.

Argument structure

Contrast table

Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply:

Witchcraft is people trying to grab hidden power with spells and spirits. Communion is the opposite. Jesus commanded it the night before he died, told us to do it "in remembrance of me", and Paul says it proclaims his death. Nobody is summoned, nobody is harmed, nothing is controlled. And the Bible that commands it also bans sorcery and says you "cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons". The cannibal charge is eighteen centuries old; Christians answered it then by pointing out they wouldn't even watch a man be executed.

The 5 fast facts:

1. Commanded by Jesus in all three Synoptic accounts and in Paul (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
2. "Remembrance" (G364) appears four times in the Strong's-tagged New Testament, three of them in the Supper texts.
3. "Sorcery" in Galatians 5:20 is G5331, which occurs three times in the New Testament (Galatians 5:20; Revelation 9:21; 18:23), none of them about the Supper.
4. Paul's own contrast: the cup of the Lord versus the cup of demons (1 Corinthians 10:21).
5. Second-century answer: Athenagoras lists "Thyestean feasts" as one of three charges against Christians and rebuts it; Justin explains the Eucharist publicly to the emperor.

The 3 strongest counter-moves:

• "Define witchcraft." Once defined (seeking power through spells, spirits or divination), communion does not fit the definition.
• "Which spirit is invoked at communion?" There is none. The prayer is thanksgiving to God.
• "Who is harmed?" Blood magic needs a victim. At communion the only blood in view is Christ's, given once, by his own will, years before any table was set.

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, collect a larger one):

• Grant: the words "eat my flesh" and "drink my blood" are startling. Now collect: they startled Jesus' own hearers too, who called it "a hard saying" (John 6:60), and Jesus answered that "the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). The shock is in the text, and so is the explanation.
• Grant: pagan cults had sacred meals. Now collect: Justin Martyr says the cult of Mithras copied the Christian bread and cup with "certain incantations". The incantation is the pagan addition, and the early Christians named it as the difference.
• Grant: Christians disagree about what happens in communion. Now collect: every one of those traditions, from real presence to memorial, rejects magic and forbids sorcery. The disagreement is about how Christ is present, not about whether Christians are casting spells.
• Grant: Christians were accused of cannibalism in Rome. Now collect: the accusation was investigated and refuted in writing at the time, and it rested on misunderstanding words overheard out of context, which is the same mistake the modern charge makes.

What NOT to defend:

• Do not claim communion is "only symbolic" to win the argument. Many Christian traditions hold to a real presence, and the case does not need to settle that question.
• Do not deny that body and blood language is used. Explain what it refers to.
• Do not mock the questioner. The early church took this charge seriously enough to answer it carefully.

The closing line:

Witchcraft takes power. Communion receives a gift. The two are not the same act with different labels; Scripture puts them at opposite tables.

Grammar and hermeneutics

• The governing verb is "remember". "This do in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24; Luke 22:19) uses the noun G364, which the Strong's-tagged KJV shows four times in the New Testament: Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24 and 25, and Hebrews 10:3. The command directs the act toward a person, "of me", not toward producing an effect.
• The result clause is proclamation. "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26). The meal says something about a past event and looks forward to a return. Spells are performative technique aimed at outcomes; this verse defines the meal as announcement.
• "Communion" is a fellowship word. In 1 Corinthians 10:16 the word translated "communion" is G2842, which the KJV renders "fellowship" twelve times and "communion" four times across its eighteen New Testament verses. It describes participation and shared life, not control.
• Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 10 is a contrast, not a parallel. He grants that pagan sacrifices involve demons ("they sacrifice to demons, and not to God", 1 Corinthians 10:20) and concludes: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21). The apostle who teaches the Supper is the one who forbids the occult meal, in the same paragraph.
• The sorcery word never touches the Supper. "Sorcery" in Galatians 5:20 is G5331, occurring three times in the New Testament (Galatians 5:20; Revelation 9:21; 18:23), each time in a list of sins. It is never used of the Lord's Supper.
• John 6 explains itself. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves" (John 6:53). When disciples call it "a hard saying", Jesus answers: "It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63). Whatever view of communion a reader takes from John 6, the passage itself rules out a crudely physical, magical reading.
• Covenant language, not spell language. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20) and "my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28) echo Moses at Sinai: "Behold the blood of the covenant, which Jehovah hath made with you" (Exodus 24:8). The genre is covenant ratification, a binding relationship with God, read against Israel's own history.

On the governing verb, the proclamation clause, the fellowship noun, Paul's explicit contrast, and John 6's own gloss, the texts define communion as remembrance, proclamation and participation, the opposite of what Scripture calls sorcery.

P1, Commanded by Jesus and handed on

Affirmative case

1. "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread" (1 Corinthians 11:23).
2. "This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19).
3. "Take, eat; this is my body ... for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins" (Matthew 26:26-28; compare Mark 14:22-24).

Anticipated objections

1. "Jesus could have been a magician. Some ancient critics said he was."

Rebuttals

1. Then the objection has changed subject. Whether Jesus was a magician is a separate question about his miracles. On the Supper itself, the content of the command is remembrance, thanks and covenant, which are not the elements of a spell. A magician's rite would teach a technique; this one teaches people to remember a death.

P2, Remembrance and proclamation

Affirmative case

1. "This do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:25-26).
2. The meal looks back (the death) and forward (the return). Neither is something the participant causes.

Anticipated objections

1. "Catholic and Orthodox Christians believe the bread becomes Christ's body. That is transformation by ritual words, which is magic."

Rebuttals

1. Those traditions attribute the change to God's action and Christ's promise, not to the power of the words or the priest. Magic, by definition, works by the practitioner's technique and for the practitioner's purposes. A sacrament, on any Christian view of it, is God keeping a promise. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, already says the food is blessed "by the prayer of His word" (First Apology ch. 66, ANF 1, PDF p. 132). Prayer asks; a spell commands.

P3, What Scripture calls witchcraft

Affirmative case

1. "There shall not be found with thee any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
2. "Idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife" are listed among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:20).
3. The common thread: getting hidden knowledge or power, by technique, often through spirits or the dead, for one's own ends. See Spirit of Witchcraft and Occult Influence and Occult contact.

Anticipated objections

1. "Witchcraft is just a word for religion you disapprove of."

Rebuttals

1. Then the charge says nothing. If "witchcraft" means only "religion I dislike", calling communion witchcraft is name-calling, not an argument. If it means what Deuteronomy describes (divination, spells, consulting spirits), communion has none of those features.

P4, Two tables

Affirmative case

1. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16).
2. "But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion with demons" (1 Corinthians 10:20).
3. "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21).

Anticipated objections

1. "Paul just says his ritual is the good one and the others are bad. Every cult says that."

Rebuttals

1. The contrast is not only in the label but in the act. The pagan meal was a sacrifice offered to a deity to secure favour. The Lord's table offers nothing to God that he needs; it receives what Christ has already given. The structure differs, not only the name. And the objection now concedes the point at issue: Christianity itself classifies occult ritual as the opposite of communion.

P5, The cannibalism charge has been answered before

Affirmative case

1. Athenagoras names the charges. "Three things are alleged against us: atheism, Thyestean feasts, OEdipodean intercourse" (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians ch. III, ANF 2, PDF p. 99). Thyestes, in Greek myth, was tricked into eating his own sons; the charge was cannibalism.
2. Athenagoras answers it from Christian conduct. "For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism?" (A Plea for the Christians ch. XXXV, ANF 2, PDF p. 116).
3. Tatian, in the same century: "It is not we who eat human flesh" (Tatian, Address to the Greeks ch. XXV, ANF 2, PDF p. 57).
4. Justin explains the meal openly to the emperor. "For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these" (Justin Martyr, First Apology ch. 66, ANF 1, PDF p. 132). He also names who imitates whom: "Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn" (ch. 66, ANF 1, PDF p. 132).
5. Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia around AD 112, reported to Trajan after interrogating Christians that they met to share food of an ordinary and harmless kind. That is the finding of a hostile official.

Anticipated objections

1. "The apologists were biased. Of course they denied it."

Rebuttals

1. The denial was public and checkable. Athenagoras and Justin addressed their defences to emperors, explaining Christian practice in detail and inviting inspection. A secret cannibal cult does not publish a description of its rite to the authorities who are hunting it. And Pliny, who had every reason to find crimes, found ordinary food.

Master objections to the whole argument

MO1: "Drinking blood is forbidden in the Old Testament, so Jesus was commanding something occult."

• The Law forbids eating blood because "the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls" (Leviticus 17:11), and the apostles kept a version of the prohibition for Gentile converts (Acts 15:20). The same apostles kept the Supper. They did not see a conflict, because the cup is wine received as "the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20), the fulfilment of the atonement Leviticus describes, not animal or human blood drained for consumption. Read with Leviticus, the cup announces that the atoning life has now been given once for all.

MO2: "Theophagy, eating a god, is a pagan idea. Christianity borrowed it."

• The texts root the Supper in Passover and in covenant ratification (Exodus 24:8; Matthew 26:28), both Jewish. The borrowing claim is examined at Copycat-Christ Hypothesis and Zeitgeist - Pagan Parallels. Justin's own testimony is that the Mithraic rite imitated the Christian meal and added incantations.

MO3: "Whatever Christians intend, from the outside it looks like a ritual meal with blood. That is witchcraft."

• Looking alike from the outside is not being the same thing. A wedding toast, a family meal on an anniversary and a memorial service all involve symbolic words over food and drink. None is magic. The question is what the act is for and to whom it is directed, and on every count (see the contrast table) communion is the opposite of sorcery.

MO4: "The Eucharist is a human sacrifice re-enacted."

• On no Christian tradition does anyone die at the table, and every tradition affirms that Christ's sacrifice was once for all. The wider claim that the cross itself is a pagan human sacrifice is answered at Jesus is Not a Human Sacrifice (Defeater).

Live-cite kit

• Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 22:19-20; Matthew 26:26-28; 1 Corinthians 10:16; 1 Corinthians 10:21; John 6:63; Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Galatians 5:20.
• Patristic: Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians ch. III (ANF 2, PDF p. 99) and ch. XXXV (ANF 2, PDF p. 116); Justin Martyr, First Apology ch. 66 (ANF 1, PDF p. 132); Tatian, Address to the Greeks ch. XXV (ANF 2, PDF p. 57).
• Aphorism: "Witchcraft takes power. Communion receives a gift."

Tactical notes

• Start with a definition. Ask the objector to define witchcraft. Every serious definition involves technique, spirits or control, and the Supper has none.
• Use Paul's contrast. The critic assumes Christianity has never noticed the resemblance. Paul noticed it, and drew the line himself in 1 Corinthians 10:21.
• Keep denominational differences out of the fight. Say plainly that Christians differ on what happens in communion, then show that none of those views is magic. The objector cannot use the disagreement to make the charge stick.
• Use the history. The Thyestean-feast charge is a good reminder that this objection is not new, and that its original form was rumour that dissolved under inspection.
• For a sincere questioner worried about occult involvement, point out that the Christian answer to the occult is renunciation and Christ, and that communion is part of that answer, not part of the problem. See Spirit of Witchcraft and Occult Influence.

See also

• Jesus is Not a Human Sacrifice (Defeater), the related charge against the cross itself
• Jesus Is an Egregore Objection Defeater, another occult reframing of Christian practice
• Copycat-Christ Hypothesis, the pagan-borrowing claim
• Zeitgeist - Pagan Parallels, the popular form of the borrowing claim
• New Covenant, the covenant the cup announces
• Atonement, what the body and blood refer to
• Spirit of Witchcraft and Occult Influence, what Scripture means by witchcraft
• Occult contact, how occult practice opens doors the Supper does not
• Justin Martyr, the earliest detailed description of Christian worship
• Luke 22.20, the new covenant in his blood
• Matthew 26.28, the blood of the covenant