Wine at Communion by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 6, 1879

Wine at Communion.

By Editor

Not long since we heard an eminent minister of the Baptist denomination argue that unleavened, unfermented bread should be used at communion. We were quite well pleased with his argument. But we were much surprised to hear him follow this with an argument—at least, he considered it such—in favor of fermented wine at the communion table. He affirmed that the grape juice—the must—in an unfermented state is impure, and that fermentation is the purifying process by which it casts off its impurities, and comes out clear, pure wine!

This, from the brewer's or tippler's standpoint, is a good argument. But we assert that grape juice, fresh and unfermented, is not impure. When decomposition commences then it becomes impure; a certain class of impurities so formed are separated by the process, but alcohol is the result. We should be just as well convinced were we told that distillation is a purifying process, by which the impurities of corn meal are rejected and the product is pure whisky!

This reminds us that a wine dealer in California once told us that, in our plan, we had no wine at our communion: that grape juice is not wine until it has undergone the process of fermentation. Granted, and what then? In the market use of the term we do not want any wine at the communion: we insist that it has no right at the communion table.

The wines of market contain from 10 to 20 per cent. of alcohol; few of them fall any below 10 per cent. Chambers' Cyclopedia says that in bad seasons, or in any case where the juice lacks sweetness, "a cheap fermentable sugar is added to the sour juice, an adulteration which cannot subsequently be detected by chemistry." Also that "sugar is often added to good grape-juice, in order to obtain a stronger wine than the natural product." Which is to say, that the wine may be richer in alcohol.

Those who argue in favor of alcoholic wine at the communion do not seem to be aware that the Scriptures in no case speak of wine in connection with the Lord's supper. Frequently "the cup" is mentioned, but that is indeterminate, meaning the contents of the cup, without indicating what the contents were. There is only one expression from which we can gather anything to determine the truth on this point, and that is where our Saviour called the cup "the fruit of the vine." But we insist that alcohol is no more the fruit of the vine than whisky is the fruit of the cornfield. Alcohol is the fruit—the creature—of distillation or fermentation. This expression of the Lord of the supper absolutely shuts out fermented wine from the communion, because it is not that which he used, or to which he referred,—the fruit of the vine.

To some, who are reformed from drunkenness, there is danger in tasting of alcoholic wine in any quantity or under any circumstances. We have always been astonished at the course of some ministers and churches who insist on using fermented or alcoholic wine at communion, when they must know that they are liable to drive some souls away from the Lord's table, or drive them to ruin.