Eucharist

Books

Beginner

Ronald P. Byars – Lift Your Hearts on High:  Eucharistic Prayer in the Reformed Tradition (Although Byars claims too much in linking Calvin with Eastern Orthodoxy, this is a good place to begin a study of eucharistic prayer.)

Peter J. Leithart – Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord’s Supper

Leonard J. Vander Zee – Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper (Excellent irenic study.)

Intermediate

Thomas J. Davis – The Clearest Promises of God:  The Development of Calvin’s Eucharistic Teaching

Keith A. Mathison – Given For You: Reclaiming Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (Not just a historical work; also examines Biblical evidence and addresses practical issues).

Ronald S. Wallace – Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament

Advanced

B.A. Gerrish – Grace and Gratitude:  The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin

Alexander Schmemann – The Eucharist:  Sacrament of the Kingdom

Max Thurian – The Eucharistic Memorial (be sure to get both Parts I and II) (before there was Jordan and Leithart, there was Thurian.  Thurian was also concerned to derive liturgical principles from both the Old and New Testament.  Although we may question certains aspects of theology, we have much to learn from him.  The original Reformed catholic!)

Articles

Richard Bacon – The Westminster Standards and the Frequency of the Lord’s Supper.

Sinclair Ferguson – “Calvin on the Lord’s Supper and Communion with Christ” (chapter in Serving the Word of God: Celebrating the Life and Ministry of James Philip).  Brief defense of Calvin’s view, contra his Reformed detractors (e.g. Dabney and Cunningham).

D.G. Hart & John R. Muether – The Lord’s Supper: How Often? (argues that weekly communion should be the norm and blames our current “tradition” on the Scots).

Rev. Daniel R. Hyde – A Plea for Weekly Communion: Continuing the Reformation Today

Brian Nicholson – Calvin’s Doctrine of the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper

Quotes 

Excerpt from Bucer’s Eucharistic Exhoration: “The third [point]: that the Lord truly offers and gives His holy and sanctifying body and blood to us in the Holy Supper, with the visible things of bread and wine, through the ministry of the Church … But we must diligently consider why the Lord thus imparts to us His holy, sanctifying communion in the holy sacrament: namely, that He may ever more live in us, and that we may be one body in Him our Head, even as we all partake here of one bread. I Cor. X.” – The Strassburg Liturgy, Liturgies of the Western Church, 171-72.