Bread first? Overthrowing the nature of a Sacrament

I have previously mentioned how much I enjoyed recently reading Brett Salkeld's Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019).  The exposition of Thomas's teaching in the context of the eucharistic debates of previous centuries in Latin West was particularly useful, as was the engagement with Calvin's teaching.  

The final sentence, however, ensured that I finished the book with a renewed gratitude for Article 28's robust rejection of Transubstantiation:

Transubstantiation, properly understood, highlights and reinforces our agreements about God, creation, Christ, the Church, and the destiny of the world - a world Christ is drawing to himself, bread first.

'Bread first'? 

The Apostle Paul declares that the Risen Christ is the firstfruits of the redeemed creation (I Corinthians 15:22). Being 'in Christ', the Church therefore, in some way, shares in this: bearing "the fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22) and "the fruits of ... righteousness" (II Corinthians 9:10), being like "the husbandman that laboureth [and is] first partaker of the fruits" (II Timothy 2:6).  Thus Saint James (1:18) rightly declares, "Of his own will he begot us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures".  Christ first, then, and the Church in Him: not "bread first".

God does not draw the world unto Himself "bread first" but through Christ into whom we are incorporated by Baptism and sustained by the Supper.  Water, bread, and wine (and notice how wine was not mentioned in the above extract) are signs and means of this grace which makes us "a kind of first-fruits". In the words of Hooker:

We receive Christ Jesus in baptism once as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often as being by continual degrees the finisher of our life (LEP 57.6).

By Baptism, therefore, we "be incorporated into Christ" (V.60.2), and "the grace which we have by the holy Eucharist doth ... continue life" (V.67.1). And thus, quite correctly, "the real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament" (V.67.6), because "there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us" (V.67.11). 

To suggest "bread first", as Article 28 states, "overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament", the purpose of which is to draw us, not the elements, into Christ.

This also raises the issue of why bread first, rather than water.  If our life in Christ begins with the water of Baptism, why is God not drawing the world unto Himself, water first? Both Jewel and Hooker emphasise the significance of the truth that it is we, not water, who are changed through Baptism:

Such a change is made in the Sacrament of Baptism.  Through the power of God’s working the water is turned into blood.  They that be washed in it receive the remission of sins: their robes are made clean in the blood of the Lamb.  The water itself is nothing: but by the working of God’s spirit, the death and merits of our Lord and Saviour Christ are thereby assured unto us - Jewel;

If on all sides it be confessed that the grace of baptism is poured into the soul of man, that by water we receive it although it be neither seated in the water nor the water changed into it, what should induce men to think that the grace of the Eucharist must needs be in the Eucharist before it can be in us that receive it? - Hooker (V.67.6).

To suggest 'water first' would, however, undermine the very notion of transubstantiation in the Eucharist for there is no such change claimed for the element of water in the Sacrament of Baptism, the Sacrament which changes us: "Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this Child is regenerate".  In the same way, the grace given in the Eucharist sustains this change: "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son".  

The closing words of Salkeld's book emphasise the continued significance and meaning of the Reformed rejection of transubstantiation embraced by the Articles, Jewel, and Hooker (and, we might add, continued by the Laudian and Old High traditions).  Transubstantiation misdirects the Church's gaze and gratitude, settling upon the bread of the Eucharist rather than upon God's grace and presence in Christ changing us into "a kind of first-fruits" of the redemption.  This is hardly an innovation in Christian sacramental understanding.  Despite Salkeld's suggestion that there are no differences between transubstantiation and the Eucharistic teaching of the Orthodox, the "bread first" notion sits very uneasily indeed alongside the East's teaching and practice.  It is appropriate, then, to close with words from Alexander Schmemann:

The Purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in the partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is why the gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation, and adoration.