Travis Fentiman
Puritan Board Sophomore
Using a Common Cup for the Lord's Supper was common in the reformation age. Many derived this teaching in part from 1 Cor. 10:16-17.
1 Cor. 10:16 speaks of the cup in the Lord’s Supper as singular. Is there a spiritual principle that this passage is prescribing? Yes.
The following verse (v. 17) can be translated as: “Because [it is] one loaf, we many are one body: for we are all partakers of that one loaf.” This teaches that the numerical one-ness of the common loaf (and hence common cup as the loaf denotes the whole supper), symbolizes our unity together as the one body of Christ as we partake of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross.
This sense of the verses is that of Martin Luther’s 1545 German Bible, the 1602 Spanish Bible, the 1637 Dutch Bible, the 1707 French Bible. Today it is translation of the 1995 NASB and 2011 ESV Bibles.
Commentators that have interpreted 1 Cor. 10:17 as speaking of a common loaf, and by implication a common cup, include: John Calvin, The Genevan Bible Notes (1560), Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, John Gill and others.
For a fuller exposition of this passage see Bobby Phillip's paper here:
The Common Cup | Reformed Books Online
1 Cor. 10:16 speaks of the cup in the Lord’s Supper as singular. Is there a spiritual principle that this passage is prescribing? Yes.
The following verse (v. 17) can be translated as: “Because [it is] one loaf, we many are one body: for we are all partakers of that one loaf.” This teaches that the numerical one-ness of the common loaf (and hence common cup as the loaf denotes the whole supper), symbolizes our unity together as the one body of Christ as we partake of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross.
This sense of the verses is that of Martin Luther’s 1545 German Bible, the 1602 Spanish Bible, the 1637 Dutch Bible, the 1707 French Bible. Today it is translation of the 1995 NASB and 2011 ESV Bibles.
Commentators that have interpreted 1 Cor. 10:17 as speaking of a common loaf, and by implication a common cup, include: John Calvin, The Genevan Bible Notes (1560), Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, John Gill and others.
For a fuller exposition of this passage see Bobby Phillip's paper here:
The Common Cup | Reformed Books Online