Understanding how different Christian traditions interpret the Eucharist (or Lord’s Supper) is a task that requires understanding the Biblical context, historical context, and the whole timeline of the Christian Church.

Below is a comparison chart outlining four major views of the Eucharist after the Great Schism —Memorialism, True Presence (Reformed), Sacramental Union (Lutheran), and Transubstantiation (Roman Catholic)—along with their origins, key beliefs, and implications for participation. They are brief summaries that cannot exhaust the full understandings of these historic positions. Nonetheless, they are helpful in answering the question: “What is the difference between the Reformed and Roman Catholic view of the Holy Eucharist?” Or similar questions. I tried to add a few common denominational identifiers, but these are not absolute and some groups may not fit so neatly into these simplified charted characteristics.

Theological Definition	Key Belief	Change in Elements?	Participation	Denominational
Memorialism (Restorationism, “No Creed , but Christ”, 19th century)	The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic remembrance of Christ’s death; no real presence.	No change; purely symbolic.	Act of remembrance; focus is on the believer’s faith.	Churches of Christ, Baptists, Evangelicals, Nondenominational, Calvary Chapel
True Presence (Reformed, Belgic, Westminster, & Heidelberg, 16th Cen. )	Christ is spiritually present and truly communicated to the believer through the Supper. The Holy Spirit unites the believer with the ascended Christ, who nourishes with His body and blood.	No change in substance; the bread and wine are means by which Christ truly communicates Himself spiritually. This is not a symbolic memorial but a real spiritual feeding.	Believers, through faith and by the Holy Spirit, are truly united to Christ and nourished spiritually; unbelievers receive only the outward elements.	Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Episcopal, Anglican, Methodists, Wesleyan, Nazarene
Sacramental Union (Lutheran, Augsburg Confession, 1513)	In the Sacrament of the Altar, Christ’s true body and blood are received with the bread and wine through sacramental union.	No change in substance; Christ is present alongside the elements. Christ is present in a supernatural manner with the bread and wine through sacramental union.	All communicants—believers and unbelievers—receive Christ’s body and blood with the bread and wine; believers receive it for grace, unbelievers to their judgment.	Lutherans (LCMS, WELS, ELCA), High-Church Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics, Old Catholics
Transubstantiation (Roman Catholic, Lateran Council IV, 1215)	The substance of bread and wine becomes the actual body and blood of Christ, only appearances remain.	Yes; substantial change of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.	Participants truly receive Christ Himself; grace is imparted unless hindered by mortal sin.	Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, Anglo-Catholics,

Essential Historical Background and Key Figures

The debate in Western Christianity over the Eucharistic presence can be traced as a series of historical developments lead to the definition commonly called, “Transubstantiation” at Fourth Lateran Council (1215). This is the view attacked by the Reformers in the Reformation appealing the earlier views held by pre-schism doctors of the church such as St. Augustine. The major Reformers—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Cranmer—drew deeply from Augustine’s theology, especially his doctrines of original sin, grace, and the necessity of faith for salvation. Luther himself was an Augustinian monk; Calvin embraced an Augustinian anthropology through his humanist education, influenced by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples in the French universities; and Cranmer inherited this tradition through Cambridge’s emphasis on patristic scholarship.

The Reformation doctrine of the Eucharist was not a break with the past, but a call to return—Ad Fontes, back to the sources of Scripture and the early Church Fathers.

1. St. Augustine (354–430)

• Bishop of Hippo who emphasized “sacramental signs”
• Defined sacraments as visible signs of invisible grace.

2. Ratramnus of Corbie (c. 800–c. 868)

• Carolingian monk and theologian who advocated a spiritual presence and denied physical/substantial transformation in the Eucharist.
• Wrote De corpore et sanguine Domini in opposition to Radbertus.

3. Berengar of Tours (c. 1000–1088)

• Early medieval theologian who opposed transubstantiation; emphasized faith over material change.
• Condemned but left a lasting impression on later Reformation thought.

4. Peter Lombard (c. 1100–1160)

• Author of Sentences, foundational medieval theological textbook.
• Taught real presence, but without defined metaphysical mechanics.

5. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)

• Dominican theologian and philosopher often credited with the doctrine of transubstantiation using Aristotelian categories of substance and accidents
• Defined the Eucharist as both sign and reality.

6. St. Bonaventure (1221–1274)

• Franciscan theologian and mystic who accepted transubstantiation but favored a mystical and pastoral tone.
• Emphasized union with Christ and the spiritual effect of the Eucharist

What Does Spiritual Mean in the Mystical Presence View?

“Another subject of controversy is the word spiritually; to which many are averse, because they think that it implies something imaginary or empty. On the contrary however, the body of Christ is said to be given to us spiritually in the Supper, because the secret energy of the Holy Spirit causes things that are separated by local distance to be notwithstanding joined together; so that life is made to reach into us from heaven out of the flesh of Christ; which power and faculty of vivification may be said not unsuitably to be something abstracted from his substance, provided only it be taken in a sound sense, namely that Christ’s body remains in heaven, while nevertheless life flows out from his substance and reaches to us who sojourn upon the earth.”

John Calvin, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Wilhelm Baum, Edward Cunitz, and Eduard Reuss (Brunsvigae [Brunswick]: C.A. Schwetschke, 1863), vol. 9, pp. 743–744.

How do Anglicans understand the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper?

“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.” (Book of Common Prayer, American 1928)

This formula is found in the Communion liturgy and reflects the Anglican emphasis on the Real Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It underscores that, through faith, communicants truly receive Christ, even though the elements of bread and wine remain unchanged in metaphysical substance.​

What is the Eastern Orthodox View?

From Alexander Schmemann’s The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988)

This is why the holy gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological “problematics”: how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished. The eucharist—and this means the changing of the holy gifts—is a mystery that cannot be revealed and explained in the categories of “this world”—time, essence, causality, etc. It is revealed only to faith: “I believe also that this is truly Thine own most pure Body, and that this is truly Thine own precious Blood.” Nothing is explained, nothing is defined, nothing has changed in “this world.” But then whence comes this light, this joy that overflows the heart, this feeling of fulness and of touching the “other world”?

We find the answer to these questions in the epiklesis. But the answer is not “rational,” built upon the laws of our “one-storied” logic; it is disclosed to us by the Holy Spirit. In almost every ordo of the eucharist that has reached us, the Church prays in the text of the epiklesis that the eucharist will be for those who partake “for the communion of the Holy Spirit”. “And unite all of us to one another who become partakers of the one Bread and Cup in the communion of the Holy Spirit” (εἰς κοινωνίαν τοῦ ἁγίου Σου Πνεύματος), and, further, “for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of Heaven” (εἰς βασιλείαν οὐρανῶν πλήρωμα). These two definitions of the purpose of the eucharist are in essence synonyms, for both manifest the eschatological essence of the sacrament, its orientation to the kingdom of God, which is to come but in the Church is already manifested and granted.