To Dip or Not to Dip?
From The Gospel Coalition:
The Case for Intinction, by Doug Ponder:
My church practices intinction, which means we take the Lord’s Supper every week by dipping the bread into the cup instead of ingesting each element separately… because we believe the mode of ingesting the elements is not essential to the proper administration of the Lord’s Supper and, as such, is permissible as adiaphora (a matter of indifference).
I take the absence of detailed instructions for the administration of the Lord’s Supper to suggest that its true significance lies not in its mode of ingestion, but in its connection to the gospel (1 Cor. 11:23–25), in the frequency of its reception (1 Cor. 11:26), and in the worthiness of those who receive it (1 Cor. 11:27–32).
Under ideal circumstances, the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper is best preserved by its weekly observance with a common loaf and a common cup (with real wine). But when circumstances of various kinds don’t permit this, let the Lord’s people take the Supper with the best means available to them—so long as they feast with faith, with self-reflection, and with great joy.
The case against, by Guy Waters:
Intinction, by combining the ingestion of bread and wine into a single action, strikes at the symbolic integrity of both. That is to say, the bread and wine lose the unique meaning that Christ has assigned to each. Thus intinction deprives us of the Supper’s full portrayal of what Christ has accomplished. Indeed, as Scott Swain recently pointed out, “intinction, whereby the bread absorbs the wine, reverses the *sign*ificance of a body broken with its blood poured out.”
…What Jesus appoints as two actions and commands separated in time, intinction collapses into one. But…the specific way in which Jesus has instituted the Lord’s Supper simply does not accommodate the practice of intinction. By Christ’s command, the minister breaks and gives the bread, and then presents and gives the cup. Believers, likewise, are to take and eat the bread, and then take and drink the cup. The church has no right to modify commands relating to the worship of God.
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