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International journal for the Study of

the Christian Church
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Do This in Remembrance of Me: The

Eucharist from the Early Church to the
Present Day
Keith F. Pecklers SJ
Published online: 09 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Keith F. Pecklers SJ (2014): Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from
the Early Church to the Present Day, International journal for the Study of the Christian Church,
DOI: 10.1080/1474225X.2014.926198

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474225X.2014.926198

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 International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474225X.2014.926198

BOOK REVIEW

Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the
Present Day
B RYAN D. S PINKS
SCM Press, London, 2013

Bryan Spinks is Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral
Theology at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, New Haven,
Connecticut, USA, and a priest of the Church of England. I first came across his name back
in 1991 with his important publication The Sanctus in the Eucharistic Prayer (Cambridge
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University Press), in which he explored the origin and evolution of the Sanctus in Christian
Eucharistic Prayers, and then traced and analysed its subsequent history. Today, he is one
of the world’s foremost liturgical scholars, and his research and writing has made a huge
contribution to the academy, having published more than 20 books and over 100 articles
on various aspects of Christian worship. In particular, he has done significant work on the
Syriac traditions of liturgy.
Do This in Remembrance of Me is the fifth volume in the SCM ‘Studies in Worship and
Liturgy’ series, and Professor Spinks’ many years of research have borne fruit in this
extraordinarily comprehensive work on the history and theology of the Christian
Eucharist. This text is particularly impressive in its breadth – from the Eucharist in ancient
Christianity to current liturgical practice in East and West, concluding with an
examination of the Eucharist in the twenty-first-century context of postmodernity. The
book is further aided by a 55-page bibliography, along with an extensive index, and a chart
of the Classical Anaphoral Families.
A text of such magnitude and breadth runs the risk either of being too general or
‘missing the forest for the trees’, and indeed, the author mentions in the Preface (xi) the
great difficulty of undertaking such a task. But Spinks follows a clear methodology
throughout, and is masterful in his ability to chart a course to which he remains faithful
from start to finish. Such methodology requires a clear discernment in what to include and
what to omit. Thus, Spinks states from the outset: ‘Southern Baptists, Disciples of Christ
and American Presbyterians may all feel that they have been passed over, and equally the
Old Catholics, many of the Swiss Reformed cities and many Anglican provinces will
experience a real absence in this work’ (xii). He admits that the material which he chose
not to include ‘comes as much by ignorance of the material as by deliberate choice’ (xii).
As his Yale colleague Professor Teresa Berger notes in her Foreword, Spinks directs
his attention to the major challenge for any historian of Christian worship: ‘how to map the
development of eucharistic celebrations from the threshold of the Upper Room all the way
to cyberspace’. Thus, this volume is unique in offering a survey of the history of
eucharistic celebrations ‘with an amazingly wide lens’, incorporating a diachronic and
synchronic approach to his analysis of eucharistic texts and interpretations (vii – viii).
Spinks begins his exploration with a 29-page Introduction, ‘In Search of the Meals
behind the Last Supper: Cultural Background and Eucharistic Origins’, which sets the
stage for what will be presented in the subsequent 15 chapters. In addition to treating
 2 Book Review

predictable texts in Chapter One, such as Justin Martyr’s First Apology and the North
Syrian Didascalia, the author also analyses the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and Gospel of
Philip. He then proceeds to study the ‘Paleoanaphoras’ in Chapter Two, with special
attention to the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the
Apostolic Tradition. Chapter Three examines eucharistic theologies as seen through the
lens of fourth- and fifth-century homilies, and the emergence of the classical anaphora.
Chapter Four offers an extensive treatment on the Divine Liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox
Church and the Egyptian anaphoral traditions, while the fifth chapter treats the Byzantine
Rite. The Syrian liturgical traditions are analysed in Chapter Six, followed by the
Ethiopian – Eritrean and Armenian traditions in Chapter Seven.
Chapter Eight marks a turning point in the text, when the author shifts his attention to
the classical Western Rites, beginning with the Hispano-Mozarabic rite, followed by the
Gallican, Roman, Ambrosian, and Celtic rites. Liturgical historians tend to begin such
treatment of Western liturgical traditions with an extensive analysis of the Roman Rite,
and then offer a secondary treatment of the non-Roman Western liturgical rites, as if to
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suggest that they were less significant. Here, Spinks’ approach is particularly refreshing in
that his treatment of each Western liturgical rite receives equal attention.
The ninth chapter treats the medieval debates on the Eucharist and the evolution of
Eucharistic theology in that period with an analysis of the contributions of such figures as
Hugh of St Victor, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. Of particular
interest here is a brief section entitled ‘Women’s voices’ (226 – 7), in which the author
explores the contribution of women mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen. Also of interest
is Spinks’ treatment of ‘Dissident theologies and liturgies’, in which he makes reference to
the work of William Ockham and John Wyclife among others (239 – 42).
Chapter Ten offers an extensive treatment of Martin Luther and his liturgical reforms,
and how those reforms evolved in Scandinavia and elsewhere, while Chapter Eleven treats
the reforms of Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, John Knox and others. This 40-
page chapter runs from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, and treats subsequent
liturgical developments in the Churches of the Reformation, including the contribution of
the Anglo-Swiss Eugène Bersier (þ 1889) who served as Pastor of a French Reformed
Church in Paris and developed his own liturgical reform in 1874 (311). The Anglican
Tradition is examined in Chapter Twelve, and, in Chapter Thirteen, the Anabaptist
tradition and as well as the Moravians, the Methodists, the Swedenborg Church, and the
Catholic Apostolic Church.
The twentieth-century liturgical and ecumenical movements are treated by way of
introduction to Chapter Fourteen, but the primary subject here is the liturgical reform of
the Second Vatican Council and its ecumenical implications, through to the World
Council of Churches’ ground-breaking text of 1982, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry.
The final chapter is entitled ‘Some Trends in a Postmodern Era’, and here the author
breaks new ground in discussing everything from internet liturgies to the contribution of
contemporary Pentecostals (423 – 9). Of particular interest is the issue of inclusive
language in the liturgy and doctrinal implications. The author provides a synthesis in his
Afterword ‘Some Crumbs from Beneath the Table’, in which he also offers interesting
observations on the history of bread-baking and wine-making, reflecting on the link
between meal and Eucharist within the wider context of eschatology.
In these past 50 years since the Second Vatican Council, Christians of different
denominations have grown in their understanding of our common eucharistic heritage,
even as, sadly, we remain divided at the Lord’s table – the sacrament of unity. Do This in
Remembrance of Me offers an extremely valuable contribution to the ongoing task of
 International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 3

ecumenical liturgical collaboration, as it moves forward in the twenty-first century. Bryan

Spinks is to be commended for offering this comprehensive volume which will be of
service to pastoral ministers and academicians alike.

K EITH F. P ECKLERS , SJ
q 2014, Keith F. Pecklers, SJ
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474225X.2014.926198

Keith F. Pecklers, SJ is Professor of Liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Professor of
Liturgical History at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, Rome. His most recent book Liturgy: The
Illustrated History (Libreria Editrice Vaticana and Paulist Press, 2012) won the Catholic Press
Association’s 2013 ‘First Place’ Award in ‘Liturgy’.
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