The Real Presence and the Presence of Reality

On October 16th, Davenant Institute President Brad Littlejohn was invited to give a lecture at Hillsdale College on the doctrine of the Eucharistic real presence in the Protestant Reformation. In the lecture, he argued that contrary to many popular narratives and misrepresentations, the Reformed did hold to a kind of real presence of the body and blood of Christ—only not in the elements outwardly considered, rather in the act of faithful reception. Moreover, he argued, they did this precisely to preserve the integrity of the bread and wine as creaturely means of God's gracious action. It was, they held, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, not the Reformed doctrine of the sacraments, that denied that created natures could become sites of God's presence.