Unleavened Bread in the Eucharist
A defense of the Latin custom, feat. a harmonization of John and the Synoptics on the dating of the Last Supper.
Although I have absolutely no problem with the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist (as this is an ancient and venerable custom), I take great issue with those non-Catholic Christians who insist that the Latin West’s use of unleavened bread constitutes a grave departure from the apostolic tradition. This is because, regardless of how early the Church began using leavened bread in the Eucharist, and regardless of when or why the West went back to using unleavened bread, there’s absolutely no doubt that Jesus and the Apostles originally celebrated the Lord’s Supper with unleavened bread. As such, if anyone can truly be accused of “departing” from apostolic tradition on this matter (an accusation that I’m not making), it would be those churches that altered the apostolic form of the Eucharist in the years following the first century. Once again, I have no problem with the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, as I believe it’s a liturgical custom the Church has the authority to accept or reject, but there’s two major pieces of evidence that lead me to conclude it’s not a custom that (provably) originates with Jesus and the Apostles.
The First Eucharistic Host was Unleavened.
To begin, on the night before His Passion, when our Lord was quite literally showing His Apostles how to celebrate the Eucharist at the Last Supper, He undoubtedly used unleavened bread. We know this because, as Brant Pitre thoroughly demonstrates in his book, Jesus and the Last Supper, the Last Supper was, in fact, a Passover meal. This is explicitly taught by St. Mark, who places the Supper after the slaying of the Passover lambs (Mk 14:12), and likewise by St. Matthew who not only says that the Supper happened, “on the first day of Unleavened Bread” (Matt 26:17), but also records the very words Jesus Himself used to describe the Last Supper: “I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples” (Matt 26:18). According to Exodus 12:15, all leaven was to be removed from the house during the entire week of Passover, which is why we know with certainty that when our Lord, on Passover, “took bread, blessed it, and gave it to His disciples,” He must have been using unleavened bread.
For those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, this should be enough to prove that our Lord used unleavened bread when instituting the Eucharist. However, for those who reject the divine inspiration of the Bible, there is one way to challenge this thesis. There’s a view, not unpopular among secular biblical critics, that John’s Gospel intentionally contradicts the Synoptics on the dating of the Last Supper. These critics will argue that, whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke clearly present the Supper as starting in the afternoon and going until the evening after the Passover lambs were slain, which would be 14-15 Nisan on the Jewish calendar,1 John says that the Supper happened 24-hours “before the Feast of the Passover” (Jn 13:1), i.e. 13-14 Nisan. Indeed, John even says that it was on the day after the Last Supper (in this scheme, 15 Nisan), that the Jews were going “to eat the Passover” (Jn 18:28) because that afternoon was “the day of Preparation of the Passover” (Jn 19:14).
At first glance, this does seem like a serious problem for faithful Christians. Mark 14:12 and Luke 22:7-11 clearly teach that the Last Supper was held on the day the Passover lambs were slain, 14-15 Nisan (afternoon-evening), and so if John 13:1 is really saying that the Supper was held the day before, on 13-14 Nisan (afternoon-evening), this is a blatant contradiction. However, Brant Pitre points out that there’s a problem with this “contradiction hypothesis.” Namely, it fails to take into account the different senses in which the word “Passover” was used in first century Judea. If you want a more detailed defense of this thesis, see Pitre’s book, but in short, here’s how we reconcile John and the Synoptics on this matter.
In the first century, the word “Passover” could mean one of four things:
The Passover Lamb — sacrificed in the afternoon, on 14 Nisan.
The Passover Meal — eaten in the evening, on 15 Nisan.
The Passover Peace Offering — offered and eaten during 15-21 Nisan.
The Passover Week — 15-21 Nisan, the seven-day feast.
The meaning of any particular use of the word “Passover” therefore depended on its context. With this in mind, let’s look at John 13:1, “before the Feast of the Passover.” According to most modern scholars, “the Feast of Passover” here refers to 14 Nisan, the day the Passover lambs were slain. However, Pitre points out that this blatantly contradicts the way the Old Testament speaks about “the feast” of Passover. Consider Numbers 28:16-17, “On the fourteenth day of the first month is the Lord’s Passover, and on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast. Seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.” The Lord’s Passover was indeed on 14 Nisan, however, “the feast” of Passover took place afterwards, on 15 Nisan. That this was still believed by Jews of the Second Temple period is further shown by Jubilees 49:1-2, “Remember the commandment which the Lord commanded you concerning Passover, that you observe it in its time, on the fourteenth of the first month… so that you might eat it during the night on the evening of the fifteenth from the time of sunset. For on this night there was the beginning of the feast.” Once again, we see that Passover (the slaying of the lambs) takes place on 14 Nisan, however, the actual “feast” of Passover happens that evening, on 15 Nisan.
Thus, when St. John says that the Last Supper began just “before the Feast of the Passover,” we see that he’s placing it at the exact same time as the Synoptics: in the late afternoon on 14 Nisan, i.e. after the Passover lambs were slain, and “just before” the evening of 15 Nisan. If this is the case, then one can see how John is actually highlighting the Last Supper as a Passover meal, just like the Synoptics. John begins his Last Supper narrative by placing it right before “the feast,” showing “the supper” that happens immediately afterwards to be the Passover feast itself (Jn 13:2-4). Indeed, there are several details in John’s account of the Supper that would only make sense if it was a Passover meal. The reclining posture of Jesus and the disciples (Jn 13:23-25); the dipping of the morsel by Jesus (Jn 13:26-27); giving alms during the festal meal (Jn 13:29); the last minute purchase of something for the feast (Jn 13:29-30). These are all highly unusual behaviors for an ordinary dinner, but they’re exactly what we would expect during a religious festival like Passover.
Now, once we understand this context, we can easily see how John 18:28 and 19:14 don’t contradict the Synoptics either. John has already informed us that the Passover meal took place at the Last Supper, on Thursday evening, and so when he speaks of “the Passover” being eaten after our Lord’s Passion on Friday (Jn 18:28), he must be referring to the Passover peace offerings that were eaten every day of the celebration. Likewise, when John says that our Lord’s trial took place during “the day of Preparation for the Passover” (Jn 19:14), he’s clearly not contradicting his own chronology. Rather, there’s a bit of a translation problem going on here. Pitre points out that, in Greek, John actually says that our Lord stood before Pilate on, “the preparation of the Passover,” not the “day” of preparation “for” the Passover. This is significant for the following reason: the Greek word “preparation” simply was the first century Jewish word for the day before the Sabbath, Friday. This can be seen explicitly in Mark 15:42, “it was Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,” Luke 23:54, “It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning,” and even Josephus’ Antiquities, 16.163, “[Jews] need not give bond on the Sabbath or the Preparation for it.” Far from being proof that John’s chronology contradicts the Synoptics,’ John 19:14 actually demonstrates that they are identical: the Crucifixion took place on “the Preparation of the Passover,” that is, the Friday of Passover week, meaning the Last Supper took place the day before on “the Feast of the Passover.”
Circling back to the main thesis of this article, hopefully my point is clear. According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Last Supper truly was a Passover meal. But that isn’t all it was. On the night He gave Himself up for the life of the world, our Lord did more than just celebrate an ordinary Passover. On that glorious night, Jesus showed His Apostles how they were to open His Sacrifice to all generations of Christians through the Most Holy Eucharist, and He taught them to do this using unleavened bread. The first Eucharistic host ever consecrated in Church history was unleavened, in accordance with the Passover Law that our Lord Himself gave to Moses. Since we don’t see any indication that, after His Resurrection, Jesus taught the Apostles to celebrate the Supper in a different way from how He showed them just days before, our natural assumption should be that they continued using unleavened bread in their own celebrations of the Eucharist.
Remember that, according to Exodus 12:15, God’s people couldn’t consume leaven during the entire week of Passover. This means that, even after the Resurrection, when Jesus broke Eucharistic bread with His disciples on the road to Emmaus, He must have been using unleavened bread (Lk 24:30-34). As I’ve argued before,2 the Resurrection appearances in general, and the road to Emmaus appearance in particular, heavily shaped the development of the apostolic liturgy, lending further support to my belief that the Apostles continued celebrating the Lord’s Supper in the manner they were shown on Holy Thursday, with unleavened bread.
This point is significant because a popular argument in favor of the apostolic origin of leavened bread in the Eucharist is that the New Testament almost exclusively uses the word ἄρτον, “common bread,” in reference to the Lord’s Supper, instead of ἀζύμους, “unleavened bread.” However, given what’s been shown above, we know that the usage of this word in the Last Supper narratives, and even in Luke 24:30-34, was not intended to mean that leavened bread was being used in the Supper. Since all leaven had to be removed from the house in preparation for Passover week (Ex 12:15), ἄρτον could only have referred to unleavened bread in those contexts.
Indeed, as Brant Pitre demonstrates, the New Testament connects the bread used in the Last Supper to the “bread of the presence” spoken of in Leviticus 24:5-7,3 and this could shed light on why the Evangelists referred to the Eucharist as ἄρτον rather than ἀζύμους. Despite the Septuagint (Ex 25:30, 39:17 LXX), and even the New Testament itself (Matt 12:4; Mk 2:26; Lk 6:4), using the word αρτος, “common bread,” to describe the old covenant “bread of presence,” we know from Leviticus 2:11 that it had to be unleavened since no leaven could be offered in the presence of God. This is something that all ancient Jewish commentators noticed and agreed on.4 Thus, if the bread of presence could be called “common bread” in the first century, even while everyone knew that it was unleavened, there’s no reason why the Gospels couldn’t also refer to the Eucharistic bread as ἄρτον, without thereby denying that it was unleavened. The fact of the matter is, using the word ἄρτον to exclude unleavened bread isn’t something that originates from the first century. Instead, as Edward Siecienski points out in his book, Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory: The Other Issues That Divided East and West, it likely wasn’t until “after the second and third centuries, [that] Christians became more scrupulous about differentiating ἄρτον (bread) from unleavened bread in order to distinguish their rites from those of the Jews.”5
The Apostles Used Unleavened Bread in the Eucharist.
Let’s now turn to my second piece of evidence in favor of the apostolic origin of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Consider St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians:
When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:4-8
To be sure, it’s clear from the context that the Apostle’s teaching here does not directly concern the matter with which the Eucharist is celebrated. The Eucharistic celebration is, in fact, secondary to the main point St. Paul is making, which is about casting unrepentant sinners out of the Church. However, let’s pause and think about this context a little more deeply. St. Paul is speaking about casting an unrepentant sinner out of the Church during the Eucharistic assembly. “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus,” i.e. when you’re eucharistically gathered together as the Body of Christ, you are to “deliver this man [the unrepentant sinner] to Satan,” which will “purge the evil from your midst.” This is how the Corinthians are to “celebrate the festival,” that is, the Eucharist, “not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Clearly, Paul stating that, once the Corinthians cast out “the old leaven,” the unrepentant sinner, they will celebrate “the festival,” the Eucharistic Liturgy, with “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” is meant to symbolically highlight that the Corinthians’ Eucharistic celebration will be more pure without evildoers in their midst. This imagery isn’t at all surprising given Jesus Himself had warned of “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mk 8:15), solidifying the connection between leaven and evil in the minds of first century Christians. However, what would be surprising is if Paul was using this language in an historical context where it was well known that the Eucharist was celebrated with leavened bread.
Just think about it. If Paul and the other Apostles really did start using leavened bread in the Eucharist, maybe sometime after Pentecost, wouldn’t we expect them to move away from Jesus’ negative comments on leaven (Matt 16:5-6; Mk 8:15; Lk 12:1), and towards His more positive ones (Matt 13:33; Lk 13:20-21)? Indeed, if the Apostles intentionally chose to separate the Lord’s Supper from the Feast of Passover by using leavened bread, wouldn’t we expect the association between the bread of the Eucharist and the unleavened bread of Passover to be downplayed in the apostolic witness? I certainly would. Thus, the fact that it’s in the very context of a discussion about the Eucharistic Liturgy that St. Paul chooses to highlight both Jesus’ association between leaven and evil, and the association between the Eucharist and the unleavened bread of Passover, serves as powerful evidence that the Apostles were still using unleavened bread in the Eucharist well after Pentecost. To speak of “Christ our Passover,” the “assembly,” and a new Christian “festival” all in the same breath, and then invoke the imagery of “unleavened bread,” is simply too telling to ignore.
As such, depending on how you date 1 Corinthians, this means that the Apostolic Churches were still celebrating the Eucharist with unleaveneand bread years, if not decades, after the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord. This also means that when we do see apostolic references to the Eucharistic ἄρτον (e.g. 1 Cor 11:23-28), that word, once again, doesn’t indicate that leavened bread was being used, as the strict linguistic separation of “common bread” from “unleavened bread” hadn’t yet developed. Now, it’s certainly possible that, as the decades went on, some of the Apostles did start using leavened bread in addition to unleavened bread in their Eucharistic celebrations, but that’s pure speculation for which there’s no direct evidence in either Scripture or the earliest Tradition. If we stick to the evidence at hand, we must simply admit that the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist was a post-apostolic innovation, albeit an early one that spread fast. Theological justifications for it were likely created after the fact, and don’t reflect anything that was (provably) taught by Jesus and the Apostles.
To make myself absolutely clear, I’m not saying that using leavened bread in the Eucharist is invalid or even illicit. Instead, I believe that this is an example of the divine authority and protection that the post-apostolic Church has when it comes to the administration of the sacraments. For, if you wish to maintain that the Church didn’t invalidly or illicitly celebrate the Eucharist during the millennia she used leavened bread, then you cannot fall back on Scripture, or even other writers or documents from the apostolic age. None of these sources can build a strong enough case to justify changing the Lord’s Supper from the way Jesus and the Apostles did it, with unleavened bread. Rather, the only possible justification for using leavened bread in the Eucharist is appealing to the Holy Spirit’s infallible protection of the Church from error. In modern Catholic theology, this is understood as the infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws and customs. St. Thomas Aquinas bears witness to this teaching in his defense of indulgences and communion under one kind:
The universal Church cannot err; since He Who “was heard for His reverence” said to Peter, on whose profession of faith the Church was founded: “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” Now the universal Church approves and grants indulgences. Therefore indulgences have some value. […]
It seems unlawful to receive the body of Christ without the blood… On the contrary, it is the custom of many churches for the body of Christ to be given to the communicant without His blood.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q. 25, A. 1; III, Q. 80, A. 12.
Those customs and disciplines that the Church writ large has adopted must be free from error, otherwise Jesus’ promise to protect His Bride until the end would be called into question (Matt 16:18, 28:20). If it were possible for large swaths of the Church to fall into pernicious error for long periods of time, especially errors that undermined her divine mission to preach the truth and rightly administer the sacraments, then the Church simply wouldn’t be what our Lord promised. She wouldn’t be the herald of truth to all nations (Is 2:2-3; Acts 1:8), the Light of the World, the City on a Hill that cannot be hid (Matt 5:14). The new covenant would be no better than the old covenant, even though our Lord promised that this one would “not [be] like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke” (Jer 31:32). Thus, whether it’s the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, the acceptance of baptism by sprinkling, single immersion baptism, indulgences, or communion under one kind, we all rely on the infallibility of the Church in some way to justify our Christian praxis, and that of our fathers. Blessed Eastertide!
Remember, in ancient time keeping, “one day” is not necessarily 24 hours, but rather any cycle of sunlight and darkness. Thus, the Passover lambs were slain in the afternoon on 14 Nisan, and the Passover meal was eaten that same evening, but because it was the evening it would be considered 15 Nisan.
See my article, “The Resurrection and the Sacraments.”
For a detailed defense of this, see Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper, pp. 202-272 [E-book ed.]
E.g. Philo, Special Laws 2.158-61; Josephus, Antiquities 3.255; Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 5a.
Edward Siecienski, Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory: The Other Issues That Divided East and West, p. 109.
This makes a lot of sense as a way of harmonizing the gospels, but I am still unsure about one point. How can 1 Cor 5 call Christ the Passover lamb if he is sacrificed on the 15th Nisan rather than the 14th?