The Eucharist in the Reformation

The first major study of the understandings of the Eucharist and its liturgy that divided sixteenth century western Christendom. It follows the words of institution - 'this is my body', 'this do', and 'remembrance of me' - as theologians took them up and, from their divergent understandings, set forth distinctive forms of worship.

The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy takes up the words, ''this is my body'', ''this do'', and ''remembrance of me'' that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. It traces the different understandings of these simple words and the consequences of those divergent understandings in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions: the different formulations of liturgy with their different conceptualizations of the cognitive and collective function of ritual; the different conceptualizations of the relationship between Christ and the living body of the faithful; the different articulations of the relationship between the world of matter and divinity; and the different epistemologies. It argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.