Philosophy has its heroes. In the West, the big three are Socrates (470-399BC), Plato (428-348BC), and Aristotle (384-322BC). The East has its philosophical heroes in Buddha (563-483BC), Confucius (551-479BC), and Lao-Tzu (601-531BC). Both triads of philosophers had one thing in common: they believed in the power of the human mind to think, explain, predict, and understand life. Through logic and reason, enlightenment and harmony, these six men gave us their remarkable minds.

Christ went further by giving us His own eternal body and blood.

This course recognizes the preservation and practice of Communion as a Christian celebration of the body and blood of Christ. The course demonstrates through the lens of church history the current need to communicate the redemptive story through Communion to individuals and communities with a postmodern/post-Christian worldview.

In this course you will:

- Learn how participants and observers in Communion experienced Christ described in church history.

- Trace the historical background from the upstairs room where Christ introduced Communion through the present day.

-Discover how significant church developments granted or denied access to the Communion bread and wine

- Comprehend how biblical passages were used to describe Communion

- Understand how liturgy was used to retell the redemptive story of God.

- Appreciate that a lived experience during Communion today has a rich history shedding a bright light and long shadow on how participants came to celebrate Communion in the way they currently do.

The material will:

- Introduce you to the arguments of priests, bishops, professors, academics, lecturers, pastors, revivalists, and other leaders across church history

- Enable you to see that Communion functions best when retelling the redemptive story in a way that informs a lived experience through biblical truth without detaching from its historical context.

- Appreciate different ideas about the orientation of spirituality and religious beliefs and behaviors are seen throughout history

- Lay a historical foundation for a theological course

The course includes:

- 18 lectures first one free

- Over 14 hours

- Four historical periods

- Key questions at the end of each lecture

The benefits of this course include:

- Study at your own page

- A certificate of completion for those who complete the course

- A graduating gift for those who answer 70% of the questions correctly

- Opportunity for you to ask me questions

Course Overview:

The course involves how participants in Communion have experienced Christ as described in church history. But whose church history? If you are Roman Catholic, I assume you would comb through historical documents guided by Vatican II (1962-65) or the Medellin Conference (1968).

However, if you are Anglican, I equally assume you would look for precursors to the Thirty Nine Articles (1571), or the Book of Common Prayer (1549-1662). If Lutheran, I assume you may look for Lutheranism before Luther (1483-1546). What if you are Methodist? Do you rummage through church history using the lens of John Wesley’s expulsion from the Anglicanism (1766)?

Perhaps you are Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Evangelical, or non-denominational? Perhaps you have faith in God, or something, but reject the church? Through what lens do you read church history like wearing a particular pair of glasses?

If we are to understand an experience of Christ through Communion in church history, we must acknowledge there is more than one Christian tradition, therefore, more than one history. So, throughout this course, I compare the arguments of priests, bishops, professors, academics, lecturers, pastors, revivalists, and other church leaders that surround Communion.

I like the statement that theologian Gary Macy makes, “Before the reformation, Christians were simply Christians, eastern and western Christians sometimes, but mostly simply Christians.” I like it because Macy is Catholic and, yet, he does not impose his Catholicism into church history.

Undoubtedly for non-Catholics, it is easy to use the Protestant Reformation (1517) as a gigantic lens for church history. I try and adopt Macy’s approach in this course by not imposing my own church tradition.

In order to prevent any ambiguity, I define an experience of Christ during Communion in two ways:

1. As the empowerment of Christ to actively participate in receiving the bread and wine,

repeating what He did in obedience to His command, “do this [bread and wine] in remembrance of me” (Lk. 22:19).

2. In hearing Christ’s promissory words of hope and anticipation that He would “not drink

from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29).

Therefore, an experience of Christ in church history concerns the empowering actions and promissory words of Communion. In short, empowerment and hope. The historical context provides the parameters and background to a postmodern understanding, not a particular church denomination. What today’s participants experience has a rich history that sheds light and a long shadow on how we have come to celebrate Communion. My course examines what happened after the first Communion and extends to the present day.

I divide the phases of Western church history into four eras:

1. Classical Age (100-600)

2. Middle Ages (601-1500)

3. Modernity (1501-1965)

4. Postmodernity (1966-2017)

I used three lenses in each era to examine the following:

1. Church developments that granted or denied access to Communion

2. Differences in how biblical passages were used to explain Communion

3. How liturgy was used to retell the redemptive story during Communion.

I chose the lenses because they explain the context for how participants historically came to celebrate Communion in the way that we do today. This is important towards understanding how Communion functions to communicate biblical truth by retelling the redemptive story because it shows how participants viewed the celebration as an expression of spirituality throughout church history.