Are United Methodists now Eucharistic Calvinists?

Jennifer of The Scandal of Particularity writes of my remarks concerning the upcoming intercommunion between the United Methodists and the ELCA:

The United Methodists are not Zwinglians. Our new official paper on Holy Communion explicitly states that eucharist is not just a symbolic memorial meal.

"United Methodists, along with other Christian traditions, have tried to provide clear and faithful interpretations of Christ's presence in the Holy Meal. Our tradition asserts the real, personal, living presence of Jesus Christ. For United Methodists, the Lord's Supper is anchored in the life of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, but is not primarily a remembrance of memorial. We do not embrace the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation, although we do believe that the elements are essential tangible means through which God works. We understand the divine presence in relational and temporal terms. In the Holy Meal of the church, the past, present and future of the living Christ come together by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may receive and embody Jesus Christ as God's saving gift for the whole world."

While this still falls far short of Scripture's straightforward, "This is my body...This is my blood," one wants to applaud. Does this statement at least make the United Methodists Eucharistic Calvinists? I'm not quite sure what that whole "temporal and relational" business actually means, but could this mean at least agreement with Calvin's non-bodily presence of Christ's body? It certainly is much to the credit of the UMC that they are willing to acknowledge the Sacrament as a means of grace. Few of our Platonic American Protestant groups can even get their minds around that concept!

This being the case with regard to the Sacrament as such (disregarding the other doctrinal anomalies in Methodism; Lutheranism and historic Christianity regard intercommunion as a mutual endorsement by two churches of each other's orthodoxy, as quaint as such a view might be in the shallow world of Protestant ecumanism), perhaps the ELCA is in fact drifting no further in its repudiation of the Lutheran understanding of the Sacrament than it did when it declared intercommunion with a number of Reformed denominations several years ago.

Who knows? It is even possible that the new United Methodist statement may be more widely believed in that church body than the Eucharistic teachings of their respective traditions are believed by the ELCA and the allegedly Calvinistic churches with which the ELCA is already in full communion.

But is it really even Calvinist? Come to think of it, as I re-read the United Methodist statement, I don't see anything about specifically Christ being present, much less His body and blood, in any sense. And even Zwingli would surely have admitted that God works through the Lord's Supper somehow. Perhaps even "temporally and relationally."

Dozens of questions beg to be asked. What role, for example, does Christ's human nature play in the Sacrament? In what sense, if any, is specifically the Second Person of the Trinity involved that the First (the statement does assign a role to the Holy Spirit) is not?

Or is this just one of those statements liberal churches are so fond of issuing in order to gloss over substantial differences so that they don't appear to be divisive, sacrificing substance at the altar of the mere appearance of agreement?

OK. The United Methodists are not Zwinglians. But are they even Eucharistic Calvinists? One thing is sure: no church that claims to be Lutheran has any business being in communion with them!