When I was growing up, I remember there being a number of debates about whether we should continue to use wine for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, or switch over to grape juice. All kinds of different reasons abounded for why some thought we should go to grape juice—"Wine tempts those who are recovering alcoholics," "It really doesn't matter what you use since it's just symbolic of Jesus' blood"—and eventually one of the churches I was a part of settled on half-wine and half-grape juice in the tray that was passed around. Most evangelical churches these days, it seems, don't even consider wine an option anymore.

Some understand the practice of substituting wine with grape juice as a much more serious matter. Among these are Robert Letham, who in his recent book, The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context, notes this in a discussion on the view of the Lord's Supper in the Westminster Standards:

The elements appointed by the Lord Jesus are 'bread and wine' and that the right to determine these rests with him alone, and not with the temperance movement of the nineteenth century. While Jesus changed the water into wine, the temperance movement changed wine into grape juice concentrate [or Ribena]. No one has any right to change the elements of the Lord's Supper, any more than water may be replaced in baptism by orange juice. To do this is to usurp the authority of Christ.

Many would brand this as legalism, of course, but I think that is an unfair accusation. Letham's point is that these are not pragmatic concerns we are dealing with, but a question of the authority of Christ over our worship.

What do you think?

(HT: Guy Davies)