Wine, Not Water Alone

Cyprian to Caecilius his brother: greetings.

I know, dearest brother, that a great many of the overseers who have been set over the Lord’s churches throughout the whole world by God’s own gracious appointment hold to the rule of the truth of the good news and of what the Lord handed down, and do not turn aside, by any human and newly invented arrangement, from what Christ our Teacher both laid down and did. Even so, there are some who, in setting apart the Lord’s cup and in serving the people, do not do what Jesus Christ our Lord and God — the one who began this sacrifice and taught it — himself did and taught. Whether that comes from ignorance or from plain simplicity, I have thought it both a religious duty and a necessary one to write you this letter, so that if anyone is still held fast in that mistake he may see the light of the truth and come back to the root and the origin of what the Lord handed down. And do not think, dearest brother, that I am writing my own thoughts, or any man’s, or that I am boldly claiming this for myself out of my own will. I always keep to my own small measure with humble and self-effacing restraint. But when something is laid down by God’s own prompting and command, then a faithful servant has to obey the Lord; and everyone must acquit him of taking anything upon himself out of arrogance, since he is under compulsion to fear offending the Lord if he does not do what he was commanded. [c] So you should know that I have been warned that in offering the cup what the Lord handed down must be kept, and that we are to do nothing except what the Lord first did for us: the cup that is offered in remembrance of him is to be offered mixed with wine. For when Christ says, “I am the true vine,” the blood of Christ is certainly not water but wine. His blood — the blood by which we were bought back and given life — cannot be thought to be in the cup when there is no wine in the cup by which the blood of Christ is shown; and that is what the sacred sign and the testimony of all the Scriptures declare. [f]

We find the same thing in Genesis as well, in the sacred sign given in Noah, which went before the Lord’s suffering and pictured it. Noah drank wine. He became drunk. He was left naked inside his household. He lay with his thighs bare and exposed. The nakedness of the father was seen by his second son and talked about outside, but it was covered by two of them, the eldest and the youngest. There are other details there that we need not follow out. It is enough for us to take hold of this one thing by itself: that Noah, setting out a picture of the truth that was still to come, did not drink water but wine, and so expressed the figure of the Lord’s suffering. [h] In the priest Melchizedek, too, we see the sacred sign of the Lord’s sacrifice pictured beforehand, just as the divine Scripture testifies when it says, “And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.” Now he was a priest of the Most High God, and he blessed Abraham. And that Melchizedek carried a picture of Christ, the Holy Spirit declares in the Psalms, speaking as the Father to the Son: “Before the morning star I begot you; you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” That order certainly comes from that sacrifice and descends from it: that Melchizedek was a priest of the Most High God; that he offered wine and bread; that he blessed Abraham. For who is more a priest of the Most High God than our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and offered the very same thing Melchizedek had offered — that is, bread and wine, which is to say his own body and blood? And as for Abraham, that blessing given long beforehand belonged to our people. For if Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, then certainly anyone who believes God and lives by faith is found righteous, and is already blessed in faithful Abraham, and is shown to be counted righteous — as the blessed apostle Paul proves when he says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. You know, then, that those who are of faith are the children of Abraham. But the Scripture, seeing beforehand that God would count the Gentiles righteous through faith, announced the good news to Abraham in advance, that all the nations would be blessed in him. So those who are of faith are blessed along with faithful Abraham.” That is why in the Gospel we find that “children of Abraham are raised up out of stones” — that is, they are gathered in from the Gentiles. And when the Lord praised Zacchaeus, he answered and said, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he too is a son of Abraham.” So in Genesis, in order that the blessing given to Abraham by Melchizedek the priest might be properly kept, the figure of Christ’s sacrifice goes first, set out in bread and wine. And the Lord, completing and fulfilling it, offered bread and the cup mixed with wine; and so he who is the fullness of truth fulfilled the truth of the picture that had gone before. [j]

What is more, the Holy Spirit shows through Solomon a picture of the Lord’s sacrifice beforehand, mentioning the slaughtered animal, and the bread and wine, and the altar as well, and the apostles. He says: “Wisdom has built her house; she has set seven pillars under it. She has killed her sacrificial animals; she has mixed her wine in the bowl; she has also spread her table. And she has sent out her servants, calling people together with a loud announcement to her cup, and saying: Whoever is simple, let him turn to me. And to those who lack understanding she has said: Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mixed for you.” He says the wine is mixed. That is, with a prophet’s voice he foretells the Lord’s cup mixed with water and wine, so that it may be plain that what had been predicted beforehand was actually done in our Lord’s suffering. [n] The same thing is signified in the blessing of Judah, where a figure of Christ is set out as well: that he should have praise and worship from his brothers; that he should press down the back of his enemies as they give way and run, with the hands with which he carried the cross and conquered death; and that he himself is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and would lie down and sleep in his suffering, and would rise up, and would himself be the hope of the Gentiles. To this the divine Scripture adds: “He will wash his robe in wine, and his cloak in the blood of the grape.” But when the blood of the grape is mentioned, what else is being set out than the wine of the cup of the Lord’s blood? [o] In Isaiah too the Holy Spirit bears witness to the same thing about the Lord’s suffering, when he says, “Why are your garments red, and your clothing as if from the treading of a winepress, full and well trodden?” Can water make garments red? Or is it water in the winepress that is trodden underfoot and squeezed out by the press? So it is certainly wine that is mentioned, in order that the Lord’s blood may be understood, and that what was later shown openly in the Lord’s cup might be foretold by the prophets who announced it. The treading and the pressure of the winepress are dwelt on again and again, because just as you cannot get wine to drink unless the bunch of grapes is first trodden and pressed, so we could not drink the blood of Christ unless Christ had first been trampled and pressed, and had first drunk the cup that he would also give believers to drink. [p]

But whenever water is named by itself in the Holy Scriptures, baptism is what is meant, as we see hinted in Isaiah: “Do not remember the former things,” he says, “and do not think about the things of long ago. Look, I am doing a new thing, which will now spring up, and you will know it. I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the dry country, to give drink to my chosen people, the people I bought for myself, so that they may tell out my praise.” There God foretold through the prophet that among the nations, in places that had been dry before, rivers would afterward flow in plenty and supply water for God’s chosen people — that is, for those who were made sons of God by the birth that baptism gives. What is more, it is predicted and foretold again that the Jews, if they thirst and look for Christ, will drink along with us — that is, will reach the grace of baptism. “If they thirst,” he says, “he will lead them through the deserts; he will bring out water for them from the rock; the rock will be split, and the water will flow, and my people will drink.” That is fulfilled in the Gospel when Christ, who is the Rock, is split by the stroke of a spear in his suffering. And he himself, reminding us of what the prophet had announced beforehand, calls out and says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink. Whoever believes in me — as the Scripture says, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.” And to make it clearer still that the Lord is speaking there not about the cup but about baptism, the Scripture adds, “But he said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were going to receive.” For it is by baptism that the Holy Spirit is received; and so it is by those who have been baptized and have received the Holy Spirit that the drinking of the Lord’s cup is reached. And let it trouble no one that when the divine Scripture speaks of baptism it says that we thirst and drink. The Lord says in the Gospel as well, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” — because what is taken with a greedy and thirsty desire is drunk more fully and more freely. In another place, too, the Lord speaks to the Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never thirst again.” By this the very baptism of the water that saves is signified: it is received once and is not repeated. But the Lord’s cup is always both thirsted for and drunk in the church. [q]

There is no need of many arguments, dearest brother, to prove that baptism is always what is meant by the name of water, and that this is how we ought to understand it. When the Lord came he made plain the truth about both baptism and the cup: he commanded that the faithful water, the water of life without end, should be given to believers in baptism, while by the example of his own authority he taught that the cup should be mixed with wine and water joined together. For on the night before his suffering he took the cup, blessed it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: “Drink from this, all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which will be poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, from now on I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink new wine with you in my Father’s kingdom.” In that passage we find that the cup the Lord offered was mixed, and that what he called his blood was wine. From this it is clear that the blood of Christ is not offered if there is no wine in the cup, and that the Lord’s sacrifice is not celebrated with a lawful setting apart unless our offering and sacrifice answers to his suffering. But how are we to drink the new wine of the fruit of the vine with Christ in his Father’s kingdom, if in the sacrifice of God the Father and of Christ we do not offer wine, and do not mix the Lord’s cup the way the Lord himself handed it down? [t] What is more, the blessed apostle Paul, chosen and sent by the Lord and appointed a herald of the truth of the good news, sets down these very things in his letter. He says: “The Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was handed over, took bread; and when he had given thanks he broke it and said: This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” But if it is both commanded by the Lord and confirmed and handed on by his apostle that as often as we drink we should do, in remembrance of the Lord, the same thing the Lord himself did, then we find that what was commanded is not being kept by us unless we also do what the Lord did; and that by mixing the Lord’s cup in the same way we do not depart from God’s teaching; and that we must not depart at all from the commands of the good news, and that disciples ought to keep and do the same things their Teacher both taught and did. In another place the blessed apostle teaches this still more earnestly and forcefully, saying: “I am astonished that you are so quickly being moved away from him who called you into grace, to another good news — which is not another; but there are some who are troubling you and who want to turn the good news of Christ upside down. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you anything other than what we preached to you, let him be cursed. As we said before, so I say now again: if anyone preaches to you any other good news than the one you received, let him be cursed.” [v] Since, then, neither the apostle himself nor an angel from heaven can preach or teach anything other than what Christ once taught and his apostles announced, I am very much surprised where this practice came from — that against the discipline of the good news and of the apostles, water is offered in some places in the Lord’s cup, when water by itself cannot express the blood of Christ. The Holy Spirit is not silent about the sacred sign of this thing in the Psalms either. Mentioning the Lord’s cup, he says, “Your cup that makes drunk — how excellent it is!” Now a cup that makes people drunk is certainly mixed with wine, for water cannot make anybody drunk. And the Lord’s cup makes people drunk in the way that Noah too was made drunk drinking wine, in Genesis. But because the drunkenness that comes from the Lord’s cup and blood is not like the drunkenness that comes from the world’s wine, the Holy Spirit, having said in the Psalm “your cup that makes drunk,” added “how excellent it is” — because plainly the Lord’s cup makes those who drink it drunk in such a way that it makes them sober; that it brings their minds back to spiritual wisdom; that each one recovers from the taste of the world to the understanding of God. And just as ordinary wine loosens the mind and relaxes the soul and lays all sadness aside, so when the blood of the Lord and the cup of salvation have been drunk, the memory of the old self is laid aside, and a forgetting comes over the way of life a person used to lead in the world; and the sorrowful, sad heart that was weighed down before by tormenting sins is eased by the joy of God’s mercy. Only what is drunk in the church can gladden the one who drinks, because only that keeps the Lord’s truth in it. [x]

But how backward it is, and how contrary, that although the Lord at the wedding made wine out of water, we should make water out of wine — when the sacred sign of that very act ought to warn us and teach us to offer wine instead in the Lord’s sacrifices. For among the Jews there was a lack of spiritual grace, and wine was lacking too. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts was the house of Israel.” But Christ, teaching and showing that the people of the Gentiles would take their place, and that we would afterward come by the merit of faith to the position the Jews had lost, made wine out of water. That is, he showed that at the wedding of Christ and the church, as the Jews fell away, the people of the nations would instead stream together and gather. For the divine Scripture declares in the Revelation that the waters stand for peoples, saying, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues” — and we plainly see that this is held in the sacred sign of the cup as well. [z] For because Christ carried us all, in that he also carried our sins, we see that in the water the people are understood, while in the wine the blood of Christ is shown. But when the water is mixed with wine in the cup, the people are made one with Christ, and the company of believers is joined and bound to the one it believes in. This joining and binding of water and wine is mixed in the Lord’s cup so thoroughly that the mixture can never again be separated. And in the same way nothing can separate the church — that is, the people settled in the church, faithfully and firmly holding on to what they have believed — from Christ, in such a way as to stop their undivided love from always staying and clinging to him. So in setting apart the cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered, just as wine alone cannot be offered. For if someone offers wine only, the blood of Christ is cut off from us; and if the water is alone, the people are cut off from Christ. But when both are mixed and joined to each other in a close union, then a spiritual and heavenly sacred sign is completed. So the Lord’s cup is not water alone, nor wine alone, unless each is mixed with the other — just as, on the other side, the Lord’s body cannot be flour alone or water alone, unless both are united and joined and pressed together into the mass of one loaf. And in that very sacred sign our people are shown to be made one: as many grains, gathered and ground and mixed together, make one loaf, so in Christ, who is the bread from heaven, we may know that there is one body, and that our own number is joined and united with it. [ac]