January 21, 2006
The Eucharist in the Age of the Fathers
The following is from a book that I stumbled upon called The Holy Eucharist: From the New Testament to Pope John Paul II, by Aidan Nichols, OP. The book is now out of print but used copies can be found on Amazon. There has been a lot of discussion on this site about the Fathers and their understanding of the Eucharist. Some attempt to use the Fathers to downplay or make insignificant this fundamental pillar of the Church. Nichols provides a good reflection on the matter. In a few days I will be posting on St. Augustine and the Real Presence, but I thought this would be a good beginning since it deals with some of the linguistic issues we've discussed. Warning! This is a lengthy piece, so grab a comfortable chair and a cup of coffee before diving in....Enjoy!
The Eucharist in the Age of the Fathers
In dealing with the patristic theology of the Eucharist, I propose to divide the material which has come down to us into three blocks: the words of the Fathers about the real presence, about the real sacrifice and about the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church.
The Eucharist as presence
First of all, the real presence. In the period before the First Council of Nicaea, assembled in 325, we encounter three kinds of language for what is given to us in the Eucharist. In the first place, we can overhear the Fathers using a relatively vague language, which speaks in rather general terms of a spiritual gift. Thus the Alexandrian writer Origen (c. 185-254) refers to the ‘flesh and blood of the Word’ as ‘drink and refreshment’ give by God to ‘the whole human race’. (1) The (third century?) Egyptian Church Order describes the purpose of the eucharistic consecration as
the holiness (of the communicants), and filling them with the Holy Spirit, and for strengthening faith in truth, that they may glorify and praise you. (2)
In the second place, we come across statements to the effect that the eucharistic bread and wine are the sumbolon, ‘symbol’, or figura, ‘figure’, of Christ’s body and blood. Thus Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) remarks that ‘Scripture called wine the mystic sumbolon of the sacred blood’, (3) while the North African Tertullian (c. 160-225) explains the words ‘This is my body’ as ‘This is the figura of my body’. (4) How can such language be reconciled, if at all, with the exegesis of the Institution Narrative offered in the last chapter, where it was maintained that, at the Last Supper, Jesus identified his body and blood with the Passover bread and wine, rather than declaring them to be mere tokens of his sacrificial death? The word sumbolon in ancient times had very different connotations from those it bears today. The (Lutheran) historian of doctrine Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) put the matter clearly. In his history of dogma he writes:
What we nowadays understand by ‘symbol’ is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time, ‘symbol’ denoted a thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies. What we now call ‘symbol’ is something wholly different from what was so called by the ancient Church. (5)
Evidence for the truth of this statement will be forthcoming if we look briefly at how the Latin Church in Tertullian’s time used his favorite phrase for the eucharistic gifts: figura. Where Paul says of the Lord, in the Letter to the Philippians, that he was “in the form, morphe, of God’, (6) the old Latin Bible, picking up the quasi-aesthetic connotations of that word, has it that the Son was in God’s figura. (7) Again, the Latin version of the Creed used in Gaul translates sarkothenta, ‘and was made flesh’, with the words, ‘and took the figura of man’. (8) Tertullian himself, when stressing that the Word truly took flesh in Mary’s womb, speaks of him as taking caro figuratus: not ‘figurative flesh’, evidently, but the distinctively formed flesh of a human being. So, just as sumbolon means the manifestation of a reality in a fresh medium, figura signifies the distinctive of a reality. And similarly, when Tertullian calls the Eucharist a representation of Christ’s body and blood, we must bear in mind that, in general, repraesentare means to make present (re-present) that which is now unseen. (9)
But the symbolist language used for the eucharistic presence in ante-Nicene authors might be capable of another, more reductionist, interpretation were it not for the fact that in the same period people are also using frankly realist language at the same time. Ignatius of Antioch criticizes his Docetist opponents who
held aloof from the Eucharist and prayer because they do not believe that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. (10)
Justin Martyr (c.100-c.165) in his Apologia explains for the benefit of pagan readers:
This is called among us the Eucharist, and of it no one is allowed to partake unless he believes that our teaching is true and has been bathed in the waters for the forgiveness of sins and for regeneration, and is living as Christ commanded. For we do not receive it as common bread or common drink, but just as Jesus Christ our Saviour, made flesh by the Word of God, has both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food over which thanksgiving has been made, by the prayer of the Word that is from him, that food – from which our blood and flesh are by assimilation nourished – is both the flesh and the blood of the Jesus who was made flesh. (11)
Again, Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130-c.200) takes for granted the reality of Christ’s presence in the consecrated elements, the better to argue against the Gnostics that the bodily humanity assumed by the Word at the Incarnation was real, just as will be, one day, our own bodily resurrection.
As the bread of the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so also our bodies, partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. (12)
More evidence for patristic attachment to a real presence come from an almost exactly contemporary inscription also found, like Irenaeus’ pastorate, in Roman Gaul, at Autun in Burgundy. Speaking of Christ under the well-known acronym of the fish – taken from the initial letters of the Greek words for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour (Ichthus: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter, the Auton inscription refers to him as placed in communicants’ hands:
Nourish, beloved, your soul with the ever-flowing waters of everlasting Wisdom. Receive the honey-sweet Food of the Saviour of the holy; Eat, drink, having the Fish in your hands. (13)
Or again, Tertullian speaks of the consecrated Eucharist as sanctum, ‘that holy thing’. (14) He advises great care that no drop of the wine or fragment of the bread should fall to the ground. (15) It is, he says, the Lord’s own body which the communicant receives in church or reserves for his communion at home, (16) and even in unworthy communions it is this body of the Lord which wicked hands approach and wicked men outrage and offend. (17)
Still in North Africa, but a generation later, Cyprian of Carthage, exhorting the faithful to stand firm under persecution, says:
Let us arm our right hand with the sword of the Spirit, so that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices of the pagans, and that the hand which, mindful of the Eucharist, receives the body of the Lord, may embrace the Lord himself, obtaining in the life to come the reward of his heavenly crowns. (18)
Moving on to the post-Nicene period, the age of the great Councils, we find an increasing predominance of realist language over either the indefinite or the symbolist accounts of the Gifts, as well as the beginnings of a theological attempt to explore the relationship between the material elements and Jesus Christ in the divine-human reality. As to the first of these developments, we find Athanasius of Alexandria (c.296-c.373) in his Commentary on Matthew, stimulated by the saying of Jesus (to the Syro-Phoenician woman) on not giving what is holy to the dogs. Addressing rhetorically the Church’s deacons, the great confessor admonishes them:
You also, deacon, take care that you do not give to the unworthy the purple of the sinless body. (19)
And Pope Saint Leo the Great (d. 461), in a sermon, advises his people:
You ought so to partake at the Holy Table as to have no doubt at all concerning the reality of the body and blood of Christ. For what is taken in the mouth is that which is believed by faith, and it is vain for them to respond ‘Amen’ [to the formula of distribution or administration] who dispute against that which is taken.(20)
We know from Cyril of Jerusalem’s (c.315-386) Catechetical Lectures that explicit teaching on the real presence formed part of the normal instructions given to converts awaiting their initiation in the mysteries.
The bread and wine of the Eucharist [says St. Cyril] were simple bread and wine before the invocation of the holy and adorable Trinity, but when the invocation has taken place the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ…(21)The seeming bread is not bread even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and the seeming wine is not wine, even though the taste will have it so, but the blood of Christ. (22)
The practica of the patristic Church is also important in this connection. Cyril’s instructions on how one should actually receive holy communion are often cited:
Make your left hand a throne for your right, as for that which is to receive a king. And, hollowing your palm, receive the body of Christ, saying over it the ‘Amen’. With due attention, sanctify your eyes by the sight of the holy body, and partake of it, taking care not to lose any part of it; for whatever you would lose would evidently be a loss to you from one of your own members.
And Cyril continues, by asking:
Tell me, if any one gave you grains of gold, would you not hold them with all care taking heed lest you should lose any of them and suffer loss? Will you not much more carefully be on your guard lest a crumb fall from you of what is more valuable than gold and precious stones?
And, a propos of the chalice, he has this to say:
After you have made your communion in the body of Christ, draw near also to the cup of his blood, not stretching out your hands but bowing, and in an attitude of reverence and worship saying the ‘Amen’, hallow yourself by partaking also of the blood of Christ. (23)
At the end of the fifth century special devotion comes to be paid to the blessed Sacrament – that is, to Christ in the sacrament – within the Church’s liturgy, a liturgy which, in itself, is not, of course, directed to Christ, but to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Agnus Dei of the Roman rite is such a devotional prayer addressed to Christ really present in the Eucharist. As the Anglican liturgical historian Gregory Dix pointed out, the crucial moment in the development of eucharistic piety comes not with the emergence of extra-liturgical devotions in the later Middle Ages but with the flowering of intra-liturgical devotion in the patristic period itself. (24) Archeological evidence suggests that the practice of reserving the Blessed Sacrament, and even of keeping a lamp lighted before it begins at that time, as does custom whereby bishops and missionary monks carried the sacrament in some kind of receptacle, usually a pyx around the neck. (25) In the early twentieth century, such theologians as Anscar Vonier and Maurice de la Taille will stress that eucharistic devotion is the extension of that moment of the eucharistic celebration which lies between the consecration and the communion. (26)We owe this feature of developed Catholic practice to the sense, then, of the real presence manifested by the patristic Church.
Yet, despite the settled convictions of East and West on this score, symbolist terminology for the presence continued. We have already observed the operation of the terms sumbolon and figura but new ones were entering into use at their side. In the West, the term signum, ‘sign’, became popular, and in the East eikon, ‘image’, and antitupos, ‘antitype’. Thus Augustine (354-430), in one of the anti-Manichaean writings, remarks
The Lord did not hesitate to say, ‘This is my body’ when he gave the sign of his body. (27)
Another writer against the Manichees, Adamantios (fl. c.330), asks in the course of his defence of the reality of Jesus’ body:
If, as these men say, he was fleshless and bloodless, of what flesh or of what blood was it that he gave the images, in the bread and the cup, when he commanded these disciples to commemorate him by means of these? (28)
Such facons de parler troubled other theologians. Macarius of Magnesia, writing around 400, mentions those who spoke of the Eucharist in a way he himself repudiated:
It is not a type of the body and type of the blood, as some whose minds are blinded foolishly said, but really the body and blood of Christ. (29)
If, as Harnack suggested, the ancient idea of a symbol was that of the manifestation of a reality in a fresh medium, that idea was patent, clearly, of development in either of two directions. Either one could stress the continuity and self-identity of the reality concerned in its own being and in its manifestation in the new medium, or, alternatively, one might emphasize the novelty of the medium, and so come to lay the greater weight on difference and discontinuity. (30)
In the East, the use of such terms as eikon, tupos and antitupos for the consecrated elements was cut short during the Iconoclast controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries. The opponents of the images argued, among other things, that the Church has no need of paintings of Jesus Christ since she already possesses his image in the Eucharist. The acts of the Iconoclast synod held in Constantinople in 754 declare:
When he was about to give himself up of his own free choice to his glorious and life-giving death, he took the bread and blessed it, and gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Take, eat, for the remission of sins; this is my body’. In like manner also he gave them the cup and said, ‘This is my blood: do this for my memorial’. Thus no other form under heaven was chosen by him, and no other figure can be an image of his incarnation. (31)
But the seventh ecumenical council, Nicaea II, meeting in 787 to restore the icons, rejected this argument in no uncertain terms. The Iconophile bishops heard gladly a speech by a deacon, Epiphanius, who declared to the Iconoclast leaders:
These fine fellows, in their desire to do away with regard for the venerable images, have brought in another image, which is not an image but body and blood. (32)
And the speaker maintained, with some exaggeration:
Never did the Lord or the apostles or the Fathers call the bloodless sacrifice which is offered by the priest an image but the body itself and the blood itself. (33)
What the seventh ecumenical Council did consider legitimate, however, was calling the elements ‘antitypes’ – in effect, images - prior to their consecration, a usage which St. John Damascene (c.675-c.749) had allowed some years previously. (34)
This Eastern controversy had the effect of promoting veneration of the bread and wine before consecration as images of Christ, something which can still be witnessed at the Byzantine liturgy today. When the prepared, but still unconsecrated, elements are brought to the sanctuary at the ‘Great Entrance’, the people bow, sign themselves and sometimes make a prostration, the self-same ritual gestures employed before the icons. (35) The Western Church, on the other hand, was comparatively untouched by the Iconoclast crisis, so that Augustine’s description of the Eucharist as a sign was not called into question this side of Ravenna.
How did the patristic Church understand the relation between the physical elements and the real presence of Jesus Christ? Many writers spoke in very general terms of the heightened significance or efficacy of the elements after consecration – comparing this to what happens to water in baptism, the chrism at its blessing for sacramental use, to a man in ordination, or even to an altar at its liturgical installation: thus, for instance, the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa’s (c.330-c.395) sermon ‘On the Baptism of Christ’. (38) The natural sense of such a comparison would be that the consecrated elements are simply an instrument divinely used for the realizing of some spiritual purpose. Placed side by side with other passages, even in the same authors, the texts speak somewhat differently. Comparison of the gifts with other sacraments or sacramentals was not intended, it seems, to be an exhaustive account of the eucharistic truth. For the eucharistic elements must be more than an instrument if they are identified with that which they are the means of bestowing.
Following the Anglican historian of eucharistic doctrine, Darwell Stone, the Fathers, in throwing light on the relation of the presence of the elements, fall naturally into two groups. There are those who stress the abiding reality of the bread and wine; and those who affirm a change in the elements themselves. Broadly, and in terms not only of geography but of the christological schools of thought which developed in the emerging patriarchal churches, the first group are Antiochenes, and at an extreme, Nestorians. The group are Alexandrians, and at an extreme, Monophysites. (37) (As so often, the Roman popes were somewhere in the middle.)
Typical of the Antiochenes is the notion that the bread of the Eucharist remains bread after the consecration, just as the embodied humanity taken by the Word remains a human body throughout his incarnate life and is so still, after the Ascension. Thus in the fifth century dialogue Eranistes, ‘The Beggarman’, by Theodoret of Cyr (c.393-c.446), the extreme Cyrillian (Eutychian) heretic agrees with the ‘Catholic’ (the Antiochene) that after the consecration the elements are Christ’s body and blood, but he also disagrees with him in a vital respect. The Eutychain maintains that, after the Ascension, Christ’s body is changed into the divine nature so as to be no longer a human body and that, similarly, after the consecration, the elements are changed into the body and blood of Christ in such a way that no longer are they bread and wine. The ‘Catholic’ maintains that, after the Ascension, Christ’s body remains a human body, though now incorruptible and glorious, and that, similarly, after the consecration, the eucharistic elements continue to be bread and wine in ‘substance, figure, and form’, though they are also the body and blood of Christ. (38) Much the same argumentation is found in Pope Gelasius’ (d. 496) treatise On the Two Natures in Christ, written to defend the Chalcedonian settlement in Christology. (39) Removed from its context of gradually developing doctrine, this sounds like the (Lutheran) theological doctrine of the presence know as ‘consubstantiation’.
On the other hand, other Fathers tend to minimize any continuance of the elements of bread and wine after the consecration, and to approximate to some form of the doctrine later known as ‘transubstantiation’. In the Catechetical Lectures, Cyril of Jerusalem declares:
Once at Cana in Galilee he changed water into wine by his own will; is it incredible that he should change, Metaballein, wine into blood? (40)
More definitely, Gregory of Nyssa proposes that, by the consecration, the elements are ‘trans-made’, metapoieisthai, and ‘trans-elemented’, metastoicheiousthai, into the body and blood of the Lord. Just as, in ordinary biological life, bread and wine are progressively taken up and transformed into our flesh and blood through being consumed, digested and assimilated, so it is, Gregory explains, with the eucharistic elements. They become Christ’s body and blood, but in a single moment of time. (41) Their constituent elements, stoicheia are re-arranged under a new form, eidos. John Chrysostom (c.347-407) speaks in a similar way of the divine Word reordering, metarrythmizein, (42) the gifts and transforming metaskeuazein, them.(43)
Here in Chrysostom the agent of the eucharistic transformation is God the Word. Actually, however, Chrysostom, like many of the Fathers, speaks somewhat ambivalently about the source of the eucharistic transformation: is it the Son, or the Spirit? (Clearly, the ultimate source, as with all divine action, must be the Father.) Symptomatically, he refers the consecration of the elements sometimes to the epiklesis, the prayer of the descent of the Spirit, sometimes to the words of the institution narrative, stemming from the Son. This ambivalence is entirely characteristic of the patristic tradition in general, though there is a tendency for the Eastern fathers, whether Greek or Syriac, to treat the epiklesis as in the fullest sense consecratory, and to mention the institution narrative only by way of complement, while the Western Fathers – whose liturgies did not, in any case, always include a sharply defined epiklesis, or one concerned explicitly with the coming of the Spirit – privilege the institution narrative, the words of the great High Priest, and treat the epiklesis as, by and large, ‘post-consecratory’ in significance. For the Fathers at large, or so it seems, the anaphora (the eucharistic prayer) was consecratory in its entirety, though with its sanctifying force concentrated at two high points. Accordingly, for them, both Son and Spirit are involved, with and from the Father, the Fount of the Godhead, in the eucharistic transformation. (44)
Finally, on the real presence, we should note the valiant effort of the Fathers to set their eucharistic doctrine in a wider soteriological context. Clearly, the real presence is not theologically intelligible as a bare metaphysical fact. It must be given us for some end, some purpose. Gregory of Nyssa’s Catechetical Oration illustrates the concern of the Fathers for the rationale of the eucharistic presence, as of the sacraments in general. In the latter, for Gregory, what was once accomplished for humankind in general by the Incarnation is now accomplished continuously and for individual persons. Since the human being is composed of body and soul those who wish to place themselves in the way of salvation must lay hold of Christ by both soul and body. Because human nature has been poisoned through the body, the gate by which all experience reaches us, the antidote to the poison must also be received in a bodily way. This antidote is that one only body which conquered death and now flourishes as the first-fruits of new life. (45)
But of course the eucharistic event should not be thought of as parallel to the saving Incarnation (and its climax in the Death and Resurrection) in the sense of an independent channel of access to the graciousness of God. On the contrary, the eucharistic gifts are radically dependent upon those mysteries of Christ for their effect. This explains why, in the succeeding fifth century, Cyril of Alexandria (d.444) connected his teaching on the Eucharist with the main theme of his life – the single hypostasis of the Word Incarnate, and the deeds done in and by that personhood for our salvation. As St. Cyril insists, the value of the Eucharist derives from, and depends on, the hypostatic or personal union which bonds together the divine and human natures of the Word. The flesh received by communicants in the Eucharist has its life-giving properties not because it is the flesh of a human being, however holy, but because it is the flesh assumed by the person of the Word. (46) Church historians have suggested that popular support of Cyril’s theology, over against that of Nestorius, was forthcoming mainly because Cyril could show that the eucharistic gifts were life-giving, and Nestorius could not. (47)
The Eucharist as sacrifice
Let us turn now to the patristic fate of the theme of eucharistic sacrifice. The ante-Nicene age was marked by the repudiation of what contemporaries called ‘carnal sacrifices’. In some cases, early Christian writers held that, by offering such sacrifices, the Jews old the Old Testament had quite misunderstood the commands or wishes of God: this was the view of the pseudonymous Epistle of Barnabas. (48) Somewhat more reasonably, Justin and Tertullian saw animal sacrifice as genuinely willed by God for the people of the ancient Covenant, but only as a concession to Jewish ‘hardness of heart’; they concluded that it belonged to a dispensation now superseded in Christ. (49) The general consensus of the early patristic period (which owes much, of course, to criticism of popular attitudes to the Israelite cultus by some of the prophets, as well as to the ‘fulfillment theology’ of the Letter to the Hebrews) is well summed up in the apologist Athenagoras who wrote:
He who is Maker and Father of this universe needs not blood nor fact nor the sweet smell of flowers and incense, since he himself is the perfect Odour who needs nothing from within nor from without… What are whole burnt-offerings to me, since God needs them not? (50)
But what, then, had taken place of the sacrifices of the Jewish past? The most obvious answer is, the totality of Christian faith, life and worship. This is what we find in Clement of Alexandria’s portrait of the Christian:
All his life is a holy festival. His sacrifices consist of prayers and praises and the reading of the Scriptures before dining, and psalms and hymns during dinner and before going to bed, and also of prayers again during the night. By these things he unites himself with the heavenly choir, being enlisted in it for ever-mindful contemplation…
And Clement adds that the perfect Christian is also
acquainted with that other sacrifice which consists in the free gift both of instruction and of money among those who are in need. (51)
But since the entire pattern of Christian life and worship, with its constituent elements of prayer, mission and almsgiving, could thus be spoken of in sacrificial terms, so too might the Eucharist. Insofar as the Eucharist was the central act of the Church’s life, it was also her central sacrifice – in this generalized and diffuse sense of that word. Justin and the author of the Didache refer to the Eucharist as thusia, a sacrifice, and even as ‘the sacrifice’, the ‘new oblation of the new Covenant’. He was consciously concerned to defend the use of sacrificial language for the Eucharist against (apparently) critics:
Oblation as such, genus oblationum, is not condemned, for there are oblations among us, as well as among the Jews, sacrifices in the Church as well as among the ancient people of God; it is only the way, species, of sacrifice which is changed, since the offering is now made not by slaves but by free men. (52)
The notion that, if the whole of the Christian life is a sacrifice in God’s honour, then the Eucharist, as the center of that life, must be the sacrifice par excellence, was encouraged by early Christian interpretation of Malachi 1:11:
From the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.
Patristic writers commonly saw in this text a prophecy of the Eucharist. (53)
But did the ante-Nicene fathers regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice in any sense specific to itself? Was it simply a matter of the Eucharist focusing the sacrificial quality of Christian existence at large, or was there something more? The texts open two perspectives on how the Eucharist may be sacrificially distinctive. In the first place, they link the Eucharist in a special way with the sacrifice of the Cross. Justin remarks of the eucharistic bread that our Lord commanded us to offer it for an anamnesis of the Passion. (54) Cyprian makes explicit what may be involved when he writes:
If our Lord and God Christ Jesus is himself the high priest of God the Father, and offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, commanding this to be done for a memorial of himself – then certainly the sacerdos [literally, the priest, but more probably the bishop here] truly performs his office in the place of Christ, imitating that which Christ did, and offering in the Church to God the Father a real and complete sacrifice. (55)
But if these texts link the Eucharist with Christ’s Passion, others associate the eucharistic sacrifice with the intercession of the risen and glorified Christ. Irenaeus, in close connection with his assertion of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, explains that there is an altar, temple and tabernacle ‘in the heavens’, whither our prayers and offerings are directed: a heavenly sacrifice, then, in which the earthly, sacramental act of the Eucharist participates. (56) This heavenly sacrifice is Christ’s permanent offering of the sacred humanity which he took at the Incarnation and sacrificed in his dying. To it the Church joins herself by means of the Eucharist. Origen describes Christ as presenting in the heavenly sanctuary all the sacrificial oblations which Christians on earth bring to God’s altar. Christians ‘come to Christ, true high priest’ who reconciled us to the Father, and hear him saying ‘This is my blood’. (57)
In the post-Nicene age, sacrificial language for the Eucharist becomes more insistent. At the same time, in Augustine, a reflective theology of the Eucharist as sacrifice makes its first bow. First of all, then, sacrificial language is used more frequently and with greater emphasis. The Eucholgion (missal) of Serapion prays at the Liturgy:
O Lord of Hosts, fill this sacrifice with your power and participation; for to you have we offered this living sacrifice, this bloodless offering. (58)
Cyril of Jerusalem calls the Eucharist ‘that sacrifice of propitiation’, ‘the holy and most awful sacrifice’. (59) In the West, Ambrose counts it among the duties of the ordained ‘to offer sacrifice for the people’, and declares that Christ ‘is himself offered on earth when the body of Christ is offered’. (60) Augustine calls the Eucharist at different times ‘the sacrifice of our redemption’, ‘the sacrifice of the Mediator’, ‘the sacrifice of peace’, ‘the sacrifice of the body and blood of the Lord’, ‘the sacrifice of the Church’. (61)
As earlier, the Eucharist is seen as a sharing in both the sacrifice of Calvary and in Jesus’ post-Resurrection offering of his humanity to the Father. John Chrysostom exhorts his people to attend the Liturgy with reverence and devotion since
He who was nailed to the Cross, we are to see slaughtered and sacrificed as a Lamb…He was slain for you, and you neglect to see him sacrificed… Think what that is which has been shed. It is blood, blood which blotted our the handwriting of our sins, blood which cleansed your soul, which washed away the stain, which triumphed over the principalities and powers…Reverence, then, this Table, of which we all have communion, Christ slain on our behalf, the sacrifice that is laid upon it. (62)
In other words, our communion is with Christ as sacrificial Victim, sacramentally present upon the altar. But since the Eucharist is a sacramental sacrifice, pertaining to the order of signs, it should be possible to say by what aspect of the liturgical action the sacrifice is signified. Gregory Nazianzen seems to anticipate Thomas Aquinas’ idea that the crucial ritual moment is the separate consecration of the bread and wine, for the Cappadocian doctor speaks of the ‘bloodless cutting’ whereby the Lord’s body and blood are ‘severed’ by the ‘sword’ of the priest’s voice. (63) However, it would be wrong to imagine that the sacramental sacrifice thus reduces the heavenly sacrifice to the dimensions of our worship. Rather does it extend, or raise up, our worship to become a participation in the heavenly sacrifice: the motif of union with the exalted High Priest already announced in the ante-Nicene period. Let us hear John Chrysostom again:
We have our victim in heaven, our priest in heaven, our sacrifice in heaven…When you see the Lord sacrificed and lying as an oblation, and the priest standing by the sacrifice and praying, and all things reddened with that precious blood, do you think that you are still among men and standing on earth? (64)
But, apart from the continuation and intensification of themes from the age before Nicaea, the later Fathers also show the beginnings of an explicit theology of sacrifice, and here is where we turn to Augustine. First of all, Augustine offers us a reflective general concept of sacrifice. In Book X of The City of God, the North African doctor enquires whether there is a kind of worship which can be offered to God alone, as distinct from worship that might be offered, legitimately, to angels, or even to human beings. He thinks there is, and taking up a word from the Greek Bible, the Septuagint, he calls it latreia. The whole Christian life should manifest such latreia, and Augustine expresses this desideratum in sacrificial language.
We offer to him on the altar of the heart the sacrifice of humility and praise. (65)
He justifies calling purely internal acts – movements of the heart and mind – ‘sacrifices’ by defining sacrifice as
every act by which it comes about that we cleave to God in holy fellowship – directed, that is, to the First Good by which we are truly made happy. (66)
However, this does not entail that the only true sacrifices are such sheerly interior actions. As Augustine points out, we can offer God latreia either in ourselves or in a public act of worship, for the excellent reason that we are both individually God’s temples (since we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us through grace) and corporately the temple which is the body of his Son. Normally, normatively, indeed, a sacrifice will be part and parcel of the public world of shared symbolic activity to which we belong through ritual. Augustine wants to preserve, however, the all-important connection with an interior cleaving to God as our final end, so he describes the public sacrificial act as visible invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, ‘the visible sacrament of an invisible sacrifice’. (67)
And this now identifies with that:
sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar,…where it is shown to the Church that she herself is offered in the offering which she presents to God. (68)
In the offering of praise in the bread and wine placed on the liturgical altar, the Church understands herself not only as making an offering to God but, more deeply, as being an offering – a spiritual sacrifice, a corporate human existence made over to God, ordered and directed to him. But if, we may ask, in the eucharistic sacrifice it is the Church which is offered to God, what has happened to the Saviour Jesus Christ and his self-offering on the Cross? How does this liturgical sacrifice, which the Church both offers and is, relate to Christ?
Augustine considers this in two steps. Both concern Christ as mediator between God and us, but one touches the divine aspect of his mediatory activity, the other the human. In the form of God: Christ receives the Church’s sacrifice and integrates it with his own self-offering to the Father, a self-offering which is at once his own very existence as the Logos, the Word, the Son, and the act accomplished on the Cross, the historical expression of Christ’s being as ‘God from God’ in space and time.
The whole of the redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered to God as universal sacrifice through the great priest who offered himself in his suffering for us – so that we might be the body of so great a Head.
But then, secondly, in the form of a servant: Christ does not receive the Church’s sacrifice; he is it. On the Cross, he was not only the offerer of a sacrifice; he was also what was offered. As Augustine explains, though Christ, ‘the true mediator’, receives the sacrifice in the form of God in union with the Father, with whom he is one God, yet as man, in the form of a servant, he
preferred to be himself the sacrifice, rather than to receive it. (69)
Thus he became on the Cross both priest and oblation, the one who offers and the offering.
With these preliminaries of a christological doctrine of salvation established, Augustine is able to explain how the primary sacrifice of Calvary is related to the secondary sacrifice of the Church. In the first place, the Church’s sacrifice is the sacramental symbolization of the sacrifice of Christ. Christ founded the Eucharist as a sacramental sign of his own sacrifice, so that the Church, in offering bread and wine, offers not only herself but Christ as well. And in the second place, by celebrating this sacramental symbol, the Church learns how to insert her self-offering into that of the only Mediator. In a masterly fashion, Augustine brings together the idea that the Church offers herself in the Eucharist with the notion that she offers Christ there by proposing that, in the eucharistic liturgy, the Church learns how to integrate her self-offering was integrated into the divine self-offering of the Word. As the De Civitate Dei continues:
He [Christ] intended the daily sacrifice of the Church to be the sacramental symbol of this [his own sacrifice]; for the Church, being the body of which he is the Head, learns to offer herself through him. (70)
And Augustine concludes, referring both to Calvary and the Eucharist at once:
This is the true sacrifice; and the sacrifice of holy men in earlier times were many different symbols of it. This one sacrifice was prefigured by many rites, just as many words are used to refer to one thing, to emphasize a point without inducing boredom. This was the supreme sacrifice, and the true sacrifice, and all the false sacrifices yielded to it. (71)
Because the sacramental sacrifice incorporates the self-offering of the ‘whole redeemed city’ into Christ’s self-offering, Augustine believes that it benefits both the living and the dead. On her death-bed, his mother had asked to be remembered at God’s altar, and Book X of the Confessions Augustine recalls how sacrificium pretii nostril, the ‘sacrifice of our redemption’, was offered for her at the grave-side before her body was placed in its tomb. And generalizing this act of piety to the many, he remarks in the Enchiridion, or ‘Handbook of Christian Doctrine’, that the Mediator’s sacrifice is offered for the souls of the dead through the good offices of the living.
The Eucharist as foundation of the Church
So far as the patristic testimony is concerned, it remains to consider the third main motif which the New Testament origins put forth: after the real presence and the real sacrifice comes the Eucharist’s consequent relation to the Church. Various Fathers comment at some length on Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians that
we who are many are all one body since we all partake of the one bread. (72)
Here the homilies of John Chrysostom are Theodoret are, it may be, outstanding. But the idea that the Church’s unity takes its foundation from the Eucharist is, above all, Augustine’s. For Augustine, the virtus, the special ‘virtue’ or ‘power’ of the Eucharist is unity. After all, the eucharistic presence has the aim of uniting believers to each other through their union with Christ; the eucharistic sacrifice unites the whole redeemed city to the Father by introducing our self-offering into that of the mediator. By feeding on the eucharistic body of Christ, we become, then, his ecclesial body – what would later be termed his ‘mystical body’, Mystici Corporis, is by no means simply a metaphor. Augustine’s fullest account is found in Sermon 272:
If you wish to understand the body of Christ, hear the apostle speaking to the faithful, ‘You are the body and members of Christ’. If then you are Christ’s body and members, it is your mystery which is laid upon the Lord’s Table. You receive your own mystery. When [to the formula of administration] you answer ‘Amen’, you answer to that which you are, and, in answering, you assent. For you hear the words, ‘The body of Christ’ and you answer ‘Amen’. Be a member of the body of Christ that the Amen may be true… Remember that the bread is not made from one grain but from many. When you were exorcised [during the catechumenate] you were, so to speak, ground. When you were baptized, you were, so to speak, sprinkled. When you received the fire of the Holy Spirit [in Confirmation] you were, so to speak, baked. Be what you see, and receive what you are.
This, Augustine says, the apostle had in mind when speaking of the bread. Turning then to the chalice:
Though he does not say in so many words how we are to understand the cup, nevertheless, he shows with sufficient clearness. Brethren, recall whence the wine is made. Many grapes hang on the cluster, but the juice of the grapes is gathered together in unity.
And Augustine concludes this symbolic theology of eucharistic initiation into the common life of the Church:
So also the Lord Christ signified us, willed that we belong to him and consecrated on his Table the mystery of our peace and unity. (73)
But if the celebration of the Eucharist lies at the foundation of the Church, herself the ‘sacrament of the Kingdom’ (as the Second Vatican Council will put it, in recovering the insights of this eucharistic ecclesiology), then the eucharistic liturgy must surely be – as the preface to this book has intimated – the icon and foretaste of the feast of the Kingdom. In the Synoptic gospels, as we have noted, an eschatological dimension to the Eucharist is revealed in the comment of the Lord at the Supper that he will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until he drinks it anew in the Kingdom of his Father. The Church Fathers came to no true consensus about his meaning. For Irenaeus (74) and (especially) Augustine, that saying is fulfilled only in the future, beyond the time of the Church’s sacramental existence. For Jerome of Bethlehem, in sharp contrast, its meaning was achieved in the Eucharist itself. (76) But a wide variety of authors, both Eastern and Western, trod a via media, which is that of the liturgies themselves. (77) They represent the Eucharist as in the words of the English Methodist student of this theme, Geoffrey Wainright:
an effective promise, to those who receive it rightly, of participation in the full and final reality of which it is a taste. (78)
For the sacramentaries of the Western rite in the patristic age, the Eucharist is the image of what will be made manifest; the celebration under appearances of what we shall receive in reality; the prefiguration of the full, unending enjoyment of our Lord’s Godhead; the possession in hope of what we shall truly enjoy in heaven; a tasting of the joy that heaven will fulfill. (79) Nor do the Eastern liturgies speak in different tones:
Even, or rather precisely, in those liturgies which are freest in calling the eucharistic meal already a heavenly reality, there is a strong awareness that future blessings still remain in store. (80)
The ultimate explanation for this lies in the Church’s conviction about the real presence of Christ. In the Eucharist we are given an anticipation of the final coming of the Lord, in both judgment and blessing. Hence the importance, for liturgical life in the patristic age, of the celebration of Sunday, the ‘weekly Easter’, looking forward as this does to the Parousia and the general Resurrection; as also of celebrating the Eucharist in the eastward position, for he who is to return is, as Luke 1:78 declares in a Canticle used in the Church’s Morning Prayer, the ‘Day-Star’ [literally, the East, Anatole], ‘from on high’.
These implications of the Holy Eucharist were not lost on the mediaeval divines of Western Catholicism to whose eucharistic doctrine we must now turn.
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1. Commentary on Leviticus 7,5.
2. Egyptian Church Order (Ethiopic 'Statutes of the Apostles', cited D. Stone, History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London 1909), I. p. 28. The historical materials in this book are much indebted to this immensely learned Anglo-Catholic scholar.)
3. The Pedagogue II, 2, 29.
4. Against Marcion III, 19; IV, 40; On Prayer, 6.
5. A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (Freiburg 1886-1889; Tubingen 1903; ET, of the third German edition, London 1894-1899), II, p. 144; IV, p. 289.
6. Philippians 2:6.
7. See Cyprian, Testimonies, 2, 13; 3, 39.
8. C.H. Turner, Ecclesiae Occidentalis Monumenta Iuris Antiquissima (Oxford 1899-1930), I, p. 174.
9. Tertullian, Apology 21. For the many instances of repraesentare/repraesentatio, see D. Stone, History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, op. cit., I, pp. 31-33.
10. To the Smyrnaeans 7, 1.
11. Apology I, 66.
12. Against the Heretics IV, 18, 5.
13. For the Autun inscription, see H. Leclerq, 'Autun (archeologie)', in F. Cabrol (ed.), Dictionnaire de Archeologie chretienne et de Liturgie I, 1 (Paris, 1907), cols. 3195-3198.
14. On the Shows 25.
15. The Chaplet (De corona) 3.
16. On Prayer 19.
17. Concerning Idolatry 7.
18. Letter 58, 9.
19. Fragmets On Matthew 7, 6 (P.G. 27, col. 1380).
20. Sermon 91, 3.
21. Catechetical Letters 19.
22. Ibid. 22.
23. Ibid. 23.
24. Cf. E.L. Mascall, Corpus Christi (London 1953; 1965), p. 259.
25. C. Comment, 'Adoration eucharistique et renouveau liturgique', Parole et pain 13 (1966), p. 92.
26. A. Vonier, OSB, "The Relationship between the Mass and Benediction, and Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament Exposed', in idem, Sketches and Studies in Theology (London 1940), pp. 107-145; M. de la Taille, SJ. 'The Real Presence and its Sacramental Function', in idem., The Mystery of Faith and Human Opinion (London 1930), pp. 207-217.
27. To Adimantus, Against the Manichees 12,3. For a conplementary explanation of Augustine's usage, see. F. van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop (ET London 1961), who explains, p. 312:
[Augustine] wrote at an epoch when the worship of the body and blood of Christ consisted simply in reverent reception, handling and consumption; at such a time men had not yet adverted to the idea of looking for the factual presence, which can be continually worshipped, behind the signs which they grasped and the means of grace of which they availed themselves. And in consequence the words figura and signum corporis Christi sound otherwise in their ears than they do now.
See also on this T. Camelot "Realisme et symbolisme dans la doctrine eucharistique de saint Augustin', Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques 31 (1947), pp. 394-410.
28. De recta in Deum fide 5, 6. Nothing is known of this author whose work, extant only in Latin, its translator Rufinus ascribed to Origen who had 'Adamantios' as a further name. But its date is c. 450: E. Prinzivalli, 'Adamanzio', in A. di Berardino (ed.), Dizionario Patristico e di antichita cristiane (Casale Monferrato 1983), p. 41.
29. The Answer-book (Apocriticus) 3, 23.
30. Cf. R.L.P. Milburn, 'Symbolism and Realism in Post-Nicene Representation of the Eucharist', Journal of Ecclesiastical History 8 (1957), pp. 1-16.
31. Acta of the Iconoclast Synod of Hiereia (754), translated in D.J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth Century Iconoclasm (Toronto 1986). For a helpful account of this theme and its background, see S. Gero, "The Eucharistic Doctrine of the Byzantine Iconoclasts and its Sources', Byzantinische Zeitschrift 68 (1975). Father Christopher Walter, of the Augustinians of the Assumption, has pointed out that, whereas the Last Supper and the Communion of the Apostles are frequently represented in early Christian art, they subsequently disappear in the Byzantine world until the eleventh century. He suggests that, missing an opportunity to relate the cult of icons to eucharistic worship, Iconophiles may have been reluctant to portray these two moments in the sacred narrative through hostility to the Iconoclast thesis that the consecrated elements were the only possible image of Christ:
A representation of the Last Supper or the Communion of the Apostles in a public place, particularly as the theological capstone of a decorative programme, might have been interpreted as an endorsement of the Iconoclast thesis.
'The Official Imagery of the Byzantine Church', in idem, Art and Ritual of the Byzantine Church (London 1982), pp. 188-189.
32. For the full texts of conciliar speeches and decisions, in English translation, see J. Mendham (ed.), The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicaea, in which the Worship of Images was Established (London 1849).
33. Ibid.
34. On the Orthodox Faith 4, 13.
35. See on this R. Taft, SJ, The Great Entrance. A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Pre-Anaphora Rites (Rome 1975). Modern Eastern Orthodox presentations of the Holy Eucharist are much indebted to the 'shape' of the Byzantine liturgy. See, for instance, P. Evdokimov, La Priere de l'Eglise d'Orient (Mulhouse 1966); A. Schmemann, The Eucharist (Crestwood, New York 1990). In this, they take inspiration from such Byzantine writers as the seventh-century Maximus Confessor and the fourteenth-century Nicholas Cabasilas. On the eucharistic theology of the separated Eastern churches, see. T. Spacil, 'Doctrina theologicae Orientis separati de Sanctissima Eucharistia', in Orientalia Christiania Periodica 13 (1928), pp. 189-279; 14 (1929), pp.5-173. For a modern Catholic survey of the eucharistic doctrine implied in the ancient liturgies, see. J. Betz, 'Das Zeugnis der Liturgie', in Eucharistie in der Schrift und Patristik (Freiburg 1979), pp. 54-67.
36. 'On the Baptism of Christ', P.G. 46, cols. 581-584.
37. D. Stone, History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, op. cit., pp. 98-109.
38. Eranistes,, dialogue II. P.G. 83, cols. 165-168.
39. On the Two Natures in Christ [the ascription of which to Pope Gelasius is disputed], cited D. Stone History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, I, p. 102.
40. Catechetical Lectures 22.
41. Catechetical Oration.
42. On the Betrayal of Judas, and the Pasch I. 6.
43. Homilies on Matthew 82, 5.
44. J.H. McKenna, Eucharist and Holy Spirit: The Epiclesis in Twentieth Century Theology, 1900-1966 (London 1975), pp. 48-71
45. Catechetical Oration.
46. See especially: Letter 17; Against Nestorius 4; Commentary on John, on 6, 64; Explanation of the Twelve Chapters 11, and, more generally, E. Gebremedhin, Life-giving Blessing. An Inquiry into the Eucharistic Doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria (Uppsala 1977).
47. H. Chadwick, 'Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy', Journal of Theological Studies N.S. 2 (1951). Compare the profession of eucharistic faith made by the celebrant in the Coptic liturgy:
Amen, amen, amen, I believe, I believe and I confess till the last breath that this is the Life-giving flesh which thine only-begotten Son, our Lord and our God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, took from our Our Lady and Mistress of us all, the Mother of God, the holy Mary, he made it one with his divinity without mingling and without confession and without alteration... I believe that his divinity was not separated from his humanity for a single moment, nor for the twinkling of an eye.
Cited W. A. Girgis, The Christological Teaching of the No-Chalcedonian Churches (Cairo 1962), p. 7.
48. Letter of Barnabas, 2.
49. Dialogue 22; Against Marcion 2, 18, 22.
50. Supplication 13.
51. The Miscellanies 7, 49.
52. Against the Heresies IV. 18, 1.
53. E.g. Didache 14; Irenaeus, Against the Heresies IV. 17, 5; Tertullian, Against Marcion 3, 22. Malachi's test is incorporated into the opening of the Egyptian anaphora of St. Mark (evidenced as early as the fourth century):
We give thanks and offer thee this spiritual sacrifice, this unbloody worship, offered to thee by men from the rising of the sun until its setting, from the north to the south, for thy Name is great among all the nations and everywhere is offered to thy Name a pure sacrifice, a sacrifice and oblation.
Cited from A.G. Martimort (ed.), The Eucharist (ET Shannon 1973), p. 144.
54. Dialogue 70.
55. Letter 83.
56. Against the Heresies IV. 18.
57. Homilies on Leviticus 6, 2; 7, 2; 9: Homilies on Judges 7, 2; On Martyrdom 30; 39.
58. Euchologion 1.
59. Catechetical Lectures 23.
60. On Psalm 38: Enarration 25.
61. The relevant texts are gathered and interpreted in M. Blein, Le sacrifice de l'Eucharistie d'apres Saint Augustin (Lyons 1906).
62. On the Burial Ground and the Cross, 3; and Homilies on Romans 8, 8.
63. Letter 171.
64. Homilies on Hebrews 11, 2-3; On the Priesthood 3,4.
65. City of God, X. 3.
66. Ibid. X. 6.
67. Ibid. X. 5.
68. Ibid. X. 6.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid. X. 20.
71. Ibid.
72. 1 Corinthians 10: 17.
73. Sermon 272. See on this theme, G. Bonner, 'The Church and the Eucharist in the Theology of Saint Augustine', Sobornost 7, 6 (Winter 1978), pp. 448-461.
74. Against the Heretics V. 33, 1.
75. Quaestiones Evangelorum I. 43.
76. Letter 120, 2.
77. E.g. Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom 40; Cyprian, Letter 63, 9.
78. G. Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology (London 1971) p. 45.
79. See ibid., pp. 51-56, for a variety of fine texts to this effect.
80. Ibid. p. 52. Posted by Joe at January 21, 2006 12:21 AM | TrackBack
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Wow. What a read. Joe, I'm especially glad to see so much honesty in relating the differing understandings of early Christians on the theological underpinnings of the Eucharist. Leaves one question in my mind though. You acknowledged that "removed from its context," certain early writers seemed to endorse consubstantiation. For example you quoted Irenaeus,
As the bread of the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, […]
And you mentioned that even Gelasius argued that the bread and wine continues in "substance, figure and form". More specifically as cited by Schaff:
The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine-nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease.
I fail to see how context could make either statement less consubstantiationist. If you have a sainted early Bishop explicitly affirming the continuation of the substance and you have a bona fide sainted Bishop of Rome explicitly affirming the continuation of the substance then I don't see how "context" is going to change anything.
Much later, the Council of Trent condemned consubstantiation in no uncertain terms:
If any one shall say that […] there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ […] let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon II)
Shall we not consider Gelasius and Irenaeus to be anathematized saints?
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 23, 2006 02:09 PMKaff,
To answer your question...no we should not consider Irenaeus or Gelasius anathematized. In order to be anathematized one would have to insist on a teaching after the Church had definitively declared something to be otherwise. Neither of these men did that, nor would they have for both understood the authority given to the Church by Christ.
The doctrine of the Eucharist is a mystery, first and foremost, no different than the Incarnation itself. Doctrine develops over time. As Newman rightfully explained, the Church is able to build upon the wisdom she has received in order to maintain and defend the truth of the Gospel.
The more important question that needs to be asked is how can any Christian church teach that the Eucharist is merely symbolic in light of what Sacred Scripture has to say and in regard to what has been taught by those who came immediately after the Apostles? To teach that the Eucharist is just a symbol directly contradicts even the thoughts of Iranaeus and Gelasius. The Real Presence, however, was taught by most of the early Fathers. Transubstantiation manifests the development of doctrine and clarifies what had been handed on. More importantly, in the Church's declaring it so, it also revealed that this teaching was in accord with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Something both Irenaeus and Gelasius would have said "Amen" to.
In Christ,
Joe
Kaff,
Remember that Gelasius and Irenaeus and the Church Fathers are not considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be infallible. In speaking on a matter, they too may misunderstand the meanings of words, may accidentally say things in a misleading way, or simply shoot from the hip and make tangential statements without fully realizing that it leads to error. Cardinal Newman notes that the Church Fathers often "retracted" statements made in haste and provides some examples in his meditations. In confronting one heresy, they may accidentally and unintentionally suggest another heresy. Aquinas also said many things (particularly about women) that might rightly embarrass today's Catholics.
As for the Council of Trent, the classical formula "if anyone sayeth .... let him be anathema" does not actually mean pronouncing the words in a sentence automatically condemns one to hell. For example, when a Catholic reads a canon of Trent aloud, they are technically saying the anathematized statement. Or if a Catholic accidentally or mistakenly says that Christ was begotten at the Incarnation rather than born at the Incarnation they do not automatically incur anathema.
The anathemas apply to Roman Catholics who cling to their errors even when their mistake is pointed out - not to Roman Catholics who are gradually becoming aware of and learning theological truths. It's not as if scoring less than 100% on one's catechesis exams incurs an anathema - it just means further study and learning is needed.
The anathemas of Trent are aimed at defining what is authentically Catholic teaching so that the people can make an informed choice about whether they wish to follow Catholic teaching - not to trip up any soul which is still learning the subtle distinctions between phrases such as ex opere operato and ex opere operantis or trying to work their way through the unfortunate but necessary double negatives in things like the Syllabus of Errors.
Posted by: Broken Record at January 24, 2006 02:05 PMHi Joe, thanks for the response.
I think there's a difference between "building on a doctrine" and "contradicting a formerly taught doctrine". Where Iraneus and Gelasius argue that the substance of the bread and wine remain, later teachings indicate the exact opposite, that the substance of the bread and wine do not remain. It's not one doctrine developing out of another, but one doctrine contradicting another. It's "A" versus "not-A". So I don't see how you have any grounds to say that Irenaeus would have agreed with current church teachings. All we have of him today are his writings. To simply assume he would happily assent to the exact opposite of what he wrote is, in my opinion, disrespectful of Irenaeus' memory, and of course it begs the question under discussion.
In response to your important question (how can a church assert the Eucharist is symbolic and remain Christian), I believe the answer lies within your own article:
What we nowadays understand by ‘symbol’ is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time, ‘symbol’ denoted a thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies. What we now call ‘symbol’ is something wholly different from what was so called by the ancient Church. (Harnack)
So here is my answer: a church can assert the Eucharist is "symbol" so long as it recaptures the full breadth of what is meant by "symbol" within the true, unchanging, apostolic faith. And if, say, Irenaeus is to accepted as a faithful representative, it was not a magic trick that transforms the physical elements into something else entirely, but rather an "invocation of God" which adds to the simplest of physical elements the real spiritual meaning and truth and being of Christ.
Now here's a question for you. Is it charitable to assume that other bodies of believers have necessarily cheapened the notion of "symbol" so as to deserve your suggestion that their body is not "Christian"? Is this the sort of accusation that you believe edifies and uplifts the universal body of Christ?
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 24, 2006 04:41 PMKaff,
Just to make sure I'm being charitable...please list the various denominations that teach, at least, consubstantiation.
Secondly, I would have to disagree with you about the exact opposite in this doctrine. Even if Irenaeus and Gelasius (two out of the many Early Church Fathers) taught consubstantiation how is this the exact opposite, since both acknowledged that Christ's Body and Blood was fully present in this Sacrament? Equally, if not more so, the opposite would be that Christ's Body and Blood isn't present at all, as most Christian churches teach....again declaring that the "Lord's Supper" is merely "symbolic" in a modern sense, since most Protestant churches are modern (i.e. under 100 years old).
In Christ,
Joe
Hi Joe,
I don't pretend speak for every denomination out there. I can only say, my church body celebrates communion by recalling scripture, blessing the elements, and partaking as a group. It is a reverent time of contemplation, reflection, self-evaluation, and shared humility and gratitude before the Lord. We waste little time debating about whether there are molecular changes in the DNA of the bread or not. Hmmmm. Perhaps I should follow my church's lead in this but yet here I am.
Anyway, if you read my post carefully you will see that I did not claim that consubstantiation and transubstantiation are opposites. They are contradictory in a limited sense. And it is only in the sense in which they contradict that I ask whether you are bound to anathematize the heretical consubstantiationist teachings of St. Gelasius or St. Irenaeus. But you seem not to understand why I think they conflict so I will state it more plainly, if I can.
Formally, a logical statement's opposite is the "not" form of the same statement. So if statement A is "the substance of the elements remain" then its opposite, ~A, would read "the substance of the elements do not remain". So if Pope #1 asserts A and Pope #2 asserts ~A, they formally contradict one another. Follow?
You assume that just because a church body was incorporated during the last hundred hears means it is somehow forced to use the cheapest possible meaning of a word. What rubbish. Would you assume the same of a Roman Catholic parish that happened to open its doors in the last 100 years?
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 24, 2006 08:07 PMI have a proposition.
I recently heard an interesting anecdote from a Catholic priest. He was discussing the doctrine of the real presence with a protestant pastor, who made the observation "I don't believe it is true, but I wish it were." The pastor truly appreciated the marvel of the notion that Christians could receive Christ physically, substantially, sacramentally.
So, my protestant brothers and sister, this is my proposition: that Christians who do not believe in the real presence should at least wish it were true.
Discuss :)
Posted by: fidens at January 25, 2006 07:35 AMKaff, what do you think of my suggestion above that Irenaeus and Gelasius made a mistake / spoke inconsistently but the Anathemas of Trent apply to beliefs which people hold rather than to people who score less than 100% on their catechism tests? Surely you must admit there is a difference between someone not getting it right (we all make unintentional mistakes) and someone insisting on a wrong answer.
Fidens, along the same lines I would like to offer another insight from a Protestant related to me by a priest during a sermon.
Protestant: Catholics do not really believe that the Eucharist is really the body and blood of Christ.
Priest: We certainly do.
Protestant: If Catholics believed in Transubstantiation, the Churches would be packed and overflowing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and no one would even think of skipping Daily Mass.
Posted by: Broken Record at January 25, 2006 11:16 AMKaff
In regards to Irenaeus and Gelasuis believing in consubstantiation needing to be exiled by the Church, I think we need to expand on Joe's comment some more.
As you are familiar with Nicea 1, many of the bishops had rudimentary understandings of the debate at hand...I think fidens quoted some sources saying that most sided initially with the concept of Arianism. After the Church council however, the final understanding came to be. In Acts 15 at the council of Jerusalem many of the bishops sided with gentile circumcision, but after the Church debated this issue it came to rest on a final understanding. As we are shown to do, the argument of a symbolic eucharist wasn't raised until the 12th century and it was answered by council then.
Indeed, I agree it seems to me to be a consubstantive view presented by these fathers, but as we have seen in the Augustine posts there is more than meets the eye in a few clips. I have not read all of Ireneus but I suspect there is more out there.
To me the take home message IS the reality of a Real Prescence uniformly in the fathers...as agreed upon by Protestant Oxford Univerisity and Baptist Rod Bennett...
PS. I prefer funnel cake because it reminds me that to fulfill John 17:20-22 and Eph 4:5 we must funnel into one.
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at January 25, 2006 11:30 AMHi Kaff,
I just had a couple questions.
1. Con vs. transubstantiation aside, do you believe that Irenaeus believed in the real (physical) presence?
2. Do you believe in any sort of real (physical) presence?
yes or no is fine.
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Broken Record,
When Irenaeus or Gelasius wrote what they wrote, were they merely speculating or making hasty unreflective statements? Or were they explicitly teaching and affirming what they believed to be true (and what the RCC now holds to be false)? I do not see anything tentative about the statements (although I admittedly lack context on the Gelasius quote). So we should not prevaricate what he wrote in order to make it fit our hopes for what he really meant.
If you grant this, the question remains, if the Roman Bishop Gelasius having advocated an erroneous teaching concerning the Eucharist, how can a Papist accommodate him as a legitimate Pope? Personally, I'm more than inclined to grant him the same latitude and capacity for error that I would grant any Christian leader who is true to the essentials, but differs somewhat on the non-essentials (with the particular type of "–substantiationist" you are being decidedly one of those non-essentials). But then, I do not belong to a body that anathematizes people when they come at a mystery like the Lord's Supper from a different angle than we do.
Hi Steve,
For what it's worth, I am still working through this issue on a personal level. To me that means understanding what scripture affirms, what it merely touches on, and what it says nothing about. From there, I try to understand what I'm willing to die on a hill for and what I should be willing to accommodate. In other words is it a "gospel truth" issue, or a "type-of-meat" issue.
I suppose this will frustrate you but I cannot answer either of your questions directly until you clarify something for me. Does something have to be "physical" in order to be "real"? God is immaterial, yet real is He not? So why couldn't I believe in a "real" but "non-physical" presence?
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 25, 2006 06:50 PMJoe,
That is a truly long post. It took me a couple of days to read. Now, I am curious to know, how you apply that information to the following to make this quote by Augustine to mean what it would mean in Bizarro's universe(Bizarro was a crooked Superman from another universe which was opposite of ours:))
""If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man," says Christ, "and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; IT IS THEREFORE A FIGURE, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us."-Augustine (Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 16.)"
We can start here.
God Bless
SandT,
I'm still anxiously waiting for you response on our other thread [Secrets of the Bible] in regards to St. Augustine.
In Truth,
Matthew
Kaff,
I would think that latitude needs to be extended to people who blurt out statements without sufficient reflection especially when speaking on a separate topic. For example, Saint Jerome makes some disparaging comments with poorly chosen terminology about the married life in trying to affirm the celibate life. The point of his writing is to affirm the celibate life.
Similarly, I could easily see myself accidentally referring to "bread and wine" instead of being distributed at communion. I hardly think that would incur an anathema. Now if I were to actually believe it was bread and wine after someone pointed out what I was saying, that would count as anathema.
I'm sure you could give me a multiple choice test on Catholic doctrine and I know darn well I would score under 100%. I don't think that counts as anathema. Now if I were to cling to my mistakes after they were pointed out that's a different matter.
Another thing to consider is that the meaning of word in a commonly used language change drastically and very quickly. That's why the Church likes to use Latin now because the meanings of words do not change quickly. Back in the days of Gelasius, Latin was a common and therefore dynamic language. Trying to nail down a meaning when translating then becomes an exercise in historical exegesis. Not an easy task.
Posted by: Broken Record at January 26, 2006 11:33 AMTo all,
Here is an iteresting quote from the "Father" of Protestantism on the Church Fathers' view of the Eucharist. Enjoy:)
""Who, but the devil, hath granted such a license of wresting the words of holy Scripture? Who ever read in the Scriptures, that my body is the same as the sign of my body? or, that is is the same as it signifies? What language in the world ever spoke so? It is only then the devil, that imposeth upon us by these fanatical men… Not one of the Fathers, though so numerous, ever spoke as the Sacramentarians: not one of them ever said, It is only bread and wine; or, the body and blood of Christ is not there present. Surely, it is not credible, nor possible, since they often speak, and repeat their sentiments, that they should never (if they thought so) not so much as once, say, or let slip there words: It is bread only or the body of Christ is not there, especially it being of great importance, that men should not be deceived. Certainly in so many Fathers, and in so many writings, the negative might at least be found in one of them, had they thought the body and blood of Christ were not really present: but they are all of them unanimous." (LUTHER'S COLLECTED WORKS, Whittenburg Edition, no. 7, p. 391).
In Truth,
Matthew
Hi BR, I don't expect anyone to have perfect knowledge, or to be 100% free from human passions. But do you have any real reason to believe Gelasius or Irenaeus blurted out their statements in a fit of passion? Do you have any real reason to believe we have mistranslated their words? ("Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease.")
Or perhaps you are trying to avoid the uncomfortable conclusion that they actually taught something substantively different than what the Roman church now affirms? I'm interested to know, how would it affect you if this were true?
Fidens earlier suggested that Christians ought to "believe it was true" that in a genuine celebration of the Lord's Supper that Christ is truly present. But I honestly see no reason to think He is not. It seems to me we are simply debating the proper theological terms to describe the nature of His presence.
Here's a thought. The Protestant vs Catholic stories above presume that Christ is not present, and perhaps worse, not even believed to be present in any real way by the non-Roman Catholic communicants. Can you imagine how this position would seem arrogant to a non-Romanist? Can you imagine how someone might associate that arrogance with your position on the Lord's Supper? Can you see how then by association, someone might be driven away from a thirst for Christ's presence, mistakenly believing that it results in arrogance? Voila; you have damaged the very cause you argue for by insisting on an interpretation so overspecific it contradicts your own saints; adding division to the church where there was none before; and turning what was intended by God as a gift to become a stumbling block to many.
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 26, 2006 03:33 PMHi Kaff,
I added the physical in there so that we could skip pass discussing the spiritual presence. I believe the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of the second person of the trinity, the God-man, Jesus Christ. So by physical I mean in the sense that you or I are physical.
peace
Posted by: Steve at January 26, 2006 06:34 PMSo, Steve, do you agree with me that Christ is at least present in the Eucharist in an immaterial, non-physical, yet real way?
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 26, 2006 09:03 PMY'all
God loves matter. What he has created is "good" (Gn). As the great philosophers have noted it is what man chooses to do with that matter that can give it a bad purpose. But the original purpose of creation is good.
So good that God (holy Spirit) has appeared as a bush or a cloud. The Son as a Man and that Man said he would be the bread and wine.
Kaff I'm glad to see that you agree that there is at least some spiritual if not material prescence there...but why we protect the Eucharist from those that don't perceive it's reality is found in Paul's writings as well as in the writings of the above fathers. I mean I have manichean protestant friends and family that don't come as far as you have with spiritual symbolism...they just wave their hands and say fully matter no symbolism there. They must never have the Eucharist or they may be injured as Paul warns.
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at January 27, 2006 09:56 AMYes, but you are not answering my question.
Posted by: Steve at January 27, 2006 10:43 AMJust wanted to ask: does everybody in this discussion agrees that the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist is merely symbolic/spiritual for all Protestant services?
Posted by: Broken Record at January 27, 2006 11:15 AMBroken,
That is how my church and many other Protestant churches teach it.
God Bless
Posted by: SandT@cctv.org at January 28, 2006 12:39 PMHi Steve,
Sorry to seem evasive, I just wanted clarity before I answered. Do I think that the bread and wine become physically different? Like Theodoret, I don't see any reason given in scripture to conclude this. The bread, after being blessed, still looks like bread and smells like bread and tastes like bread. So I find it odd to insist that there is a material difference when no material difference is discernable.
But just because I'm not comfortable with the insistence on a material difference does not mean I think Christ is not literally present. After all He also said, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20) and "where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst" (Matthew 18:20). I am not so bold to suggest his presence is any less real just because it he does not appear to be physically present.
Hello WWWO, I think you are referencing 1 Cor 12:29, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself” and suggesting that those who do not believe in a material manifestation (transubstantiation) would be putting themselves at risk of God’s wrath by their participation. But I do not think that is what is meant by “discerning the body”. Rather, we are participating in the Lord’s Supper “in remembrance of me” (v25) as quoted by the Apostle Paul. To incorrectly discern the body would be to incorrectly understand the nature and meaning of Christ’s original sacrifice. Would you agree or disagree with this reading of 1 Cor 12:29? (Actually this question is open to anyone here, I would love to hear your wisdom on it.)
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 29, 2006 02:03 AMRe: St Gelasius and consubstantiation
There seem to be some genuine misunderstandings regarding the concept of "the development of doctrine".
The doctrine of transubstantiation was developed following the introduction of Aristotle's notion of 'substance' into the philosophical language of the west, which happened under St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Before this time, the whole vocabularly of 'being' and 'essence' was different. In 'De Esse et Essentia', St Thomas Aquinas proposed a complex vocabulary which made it possible to say things that were not previously explicable.
St Gelasius did not *necessarily* use the word "substantia" to mean what St Thomas and the later scholastic philosophers meant. The fact that St Gelasius wrote "substance or nature" (equating the two) suggests that he was using 'substance' in a sense different from that in which the Church has used it since Aquinas. It would be unjust to retrospectively attribute contemporary levels of theological precision to St Gelasius.
Notwithstanding this, Gelasius may have been "mistaken". In his tract he was concerned with defending the Christological Mystery of the two natures in the One Person of the Lord against the attacks of the Nestorians and the Monophysites, using the Eucharistic Mystery as an analogy for this truth. As O'Connor notes, this analogy only "...works from the implicit assumption, accepted by all parties, that the Eucharist is Christ."
At the time, the Church had not defined the doctrine of transubstantiation and there were several theories as to *how* Christ was present in the Eucharist. One, which was cast in terms of a "hypostatic union" between the bread and wine and the Body and Blood of Our Lord, was popular with those who had to defend the Catholic doctrine against Monophysitism. It was rejected upon further reflection as it did not capture the totality of the transformation.
Finally, please remember that the citation comes from an ordinary letter atributed to St Gelasius, not an ex cathedra statement. In this capacity, Popes are only human ;)
Posted by: fidens at January 29, 2006 03:19 AMBR
I disagree. I think that Lutherans believe in the Real Prescence...in fact I recently called a Wisconsin Synod, to check their position. They were clear regarding their belief in the Real Prescence...I've had Lutheran pastors tell me they couldn't even accept the Eucharist at the Wisconsin Synod churches who are staunchly against the ecumenical movement per him. Certain Episcopalians also believe the Real Prescence.
Catholics however recognize only the unbroken chain of clergy all the way to Christ as those ordained to confect the true Eucharist (hence not recognizing that of the "exiled").
Kaff
In my imprimater texts, the view is indeed to defend the Eucharist and the recepients.
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at January 30, 2006 10:40 AMKaff,
Excellent postings as always. I commend you on your willingness to ask and answer questions charitably. To address your post above, St. Paul in 1 Corinthians emphasizes the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord . . . Whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself" (1 Cor. 11:27-29). Kaff, consider this. If the Eucharist is merely a symbol of the Lord's body and blood, then St. Paul's words here make no sense. For how can one be "guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord" if it's merely a symbol? The Greek phrase for being "guilty of someone's body and blood" (enokos estai tou somatos kai tou haimatos tou kuriou) is a technical way of saying "guilty of murder." If the Eucharist is merely a symbol of Christ, not Christ Himself, this warning would be drastically, absurdly overblown...don't you think? Besides, in the following verses Paul says that there are many of who are sick because of a lack of discernment of the Body. How could a mere symbol have such physical consequences? Symbols don't possess such power.
In Truth,
Matthew
Hi Fidens,
Gelasius used the phrase "substance or nature". The first question to be resolved is, what did he mean by this? In the context it seems clear enough that he was referring to the material essence of the thing which in his words "does not cease". You suggest that he wasn't necessarily referring to a 13th century version of the term "substance". Fine, but can you suggest a workable alternative for what Gelasius might actually have meant? Otherwise we're just obfuscating.
The second layer of your argument is that even if Gelasius did intend something that contradicts today's Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, that he could have been "mistaken". Very well, but other reasonable possibilities are that he in fact spoke wisely and correctly; or even that he spoke of a mystery concerning which no language will ever be fully acceptable.
Your third layer is that the relatively unformed doctrine of the Eucharist was mistakenly co-opted in order to defend against more serious heresies regarding the nature of Christ. Yet, from this position it does not follow that we should lessen the value of the early Christian's understanding of the Eucharist. If they were willing to utilize it as a point of discussion against other heresies, it suggests that they felt their understanding was sufficient, and that they truly believed the sense in which they explained it. You must remember that the Roman church did not merely refine the Eucharist to new levels of "theological precision"; they pronounced other understandings and those who hold them anathema. If Jesus Christ is immutable I fail to see why his Good News should change…simply because we have interacted with Aristotle?
Finally your fourth layer of defense is that it merely an "ordinary letter", not "ex cathedra". Of course, Gelasius could hardly have written an ex cathedra statement since this designation did not formally exist until 1870. It seems to me that De duabus naturis in Christo was a theological treatise written by the Bishop of Rome himself to combat a heresy. A Roman Christian at the time would therefore have had every reason to have read that letter with the utmost seriousness. On what grounds do you demote it to an "ordinary letter"?
It probably seems clear to you, Kaff, because of your agenda regarding the authority of the Catholic Church. He *may* have been referring to what we now know to be 'accidents', which are now considered an element of a thing's 'nature' but not its 'substance' and which remain after the Consecration (once God has transformed the substance). The fact is that, because of the contradictory terms and for the want of further information, we can't be sure what the author meant. For what it's worth, I suspect he leant towards what we now refer to as consubstantiation for the reasons outlined above.
Because the doctrine of transubstantiation had not been defined at the time, St Gelasius can not be regarded as being mistaken in the same sense that, say, you are ;)
The authorship of the letter in question is actually uncertain, but scholars commonly attribute it to St Gelasius. If anyone wants to learn more about the development of Eucharistic doctrine, and Gelasius, I highly recommend "The Hidden Manna" by James O'Connor.
Yes, Jesus Christ is immutable, but human beings are not. All Christians are called to know God - why is it so unreasonable to suggest that our understanding of the infinite perfection grows, even if it can never be fully comprehended? God made Aristotle too. The statement "I fail to see why his Good News should change" suggests you believe that the early Church was protestant in nature. The only way you can support this is by cherry picking the patristic evidence in search of statements which 'contradict' contemporary Church doctrine, and ignoring the vast amount of information which supports it. Well, if it helps you sleep, go nuts.
Once again, as with all these discussions, we come back to the question of authority of the Church. Protestants seem happy to sift through Church doctrine, rejecting that which they believe is not explicated in Scripture... which, ironically, they also got from the Church (and which, double irony with a half-twist, emphasises the importance of Tradition and unity). Hence, the Church was right in its condemnation of Arianism... but was slightly wrong about the Canon of Scripture, and completely dropped the ball on transubstantiation. And Christ abandoned His Church on about day forty one. Sigh.
Hi Matthew, I’m glad my efforts to communicate faithfully have paid off to some degree. I’m also glad we’re getting into the scripture itself on this matter. But before we do I would like to try to explain the depth of what can be meant by a “mere symbol”. Let’s consider two popular symbols.
One is the American flag. Those who are serious about honoring and protecting the United States seem to be equally serious about honoring and protecting the flag, such that quite a large number of rules must be followed or the flag—and the nation it represents—is considered dishonored. Some have even debated a constitutional amendment prohibiting the public burning of this "mere symbol", because they think it literally injurious to the nation.
For another example, perhaps closer to home, take a look inside your wallet. You may find there a few strips of cloth which we invest with enormous meaning, although they are merely symbols (once they corresponded to a guaranteed weight of precious metal but those days are gone). I can hold up one of these strips and say “this is a dollar”, but what is really meant is, “this is a symbol representing what we commonly agree to be worth one dollar of value”. The mystery is great, but I challenge you to take one of these strips of cloth and tear it in half. If you’re like most people I know, you will find yourself unable, without sheer force of will. The symbol is that deep and that powerful.
I submit that the Lord’s Supper is (or ought to be) the greatest of all such “symbols”. Mere human governments institute flags and money but the Lord’s Supper is instituted by the Ancient of Days. By this far greater authority, the bread becomes to us, in faith, His flesh; and the cup, in faith, the blood of His covenant. Like the cloth dollar, the mere matter of the symbol is essentially without real value. But in faith its value becomes priceless as we consume it “in remembrance”, calling to mind His life, His sacrifice, and His promise.
So, can a symbol “possess such power”? Yes, I believe it can.
The self-testing required for proper eating involves discerning the body, which, from the context, must mean understanding the sense of Jesus' death, perceiving the imperative to unity that follows from the fact that Jesus gives himself to all and requires us to repeat his sacrifice in the same spirit. USCCB’s commentary on 1 Cor 11:28, NAB
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at January 31, 2006 02:01 AMAh, Fidens, if only I had the agenda that you suggest! Life would be so much more clear; I could simply lash out at my Roman Catholic brethren in Christ for their wholly evil papist nonsense! But my Lord gives me a much more complex and subtle charge: to learn to live harmoniously with my brethren on earth, encouraging and strengthening them as we prepare for a glorious and eternal afterlife.
I will attempt to resist the strong temptation to respond to your arguments since you and I appear to be at the point where further discussion will not clarify anything further. But you are in my prayers. I pray that your participation in the Lord’s Supper brings you every possible blessing of Christ’s presence.
Hi Kaff,
In the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6) Jesus changes the way He speaks when He tells us that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Up until this point the Greek verb used in the Sacred Scripture for eating was "phagein", which simply means "to eat" and could perhaps be used as symbolic language. In verses 53-58 the verb changes to "trogein". This verb has only one specific meaning. It is used only to mean the physical chewing, or gnawing of food. I believe that if Christ meant for us to merely be consuming His spirit, the verb "phagein" would have sufficed, as one cannot literally chew on spirit.
Peace
Posted by: Steve at January 31, 2006 05:46 PMThanks Kaff, I appreciate that.
I, for my part, pray that you come to closest possible communion with Christ.
God bless.
Posted by: fidens at January 31, 2006 08:17 PMKaff,
Consider this, as far as symbols go, even if they raise the deepest of convictions or the strongest allegience, they are still OF MAN. We as humans give the power to symbols, we attribute meaning to them, and we determine what they represent. A dollar is just a piece of paper/cloth UNTIL the government says that this item REPRESENTS purchasing power. Granted that this symbol is powerful and those who have lots of those dollars feel powerful because of what all those dollar represent...but it is still a man-made symbol representative of power. So yes, a symbol can carry much weight, and yes most of us would have to overcome our wills to rip one in half, but if I do so am I guilty of murder as Paul says of the Eucharist? At most it makes me a fool and at least it makes me a poor steward of my money, but it does not jeopardize my health nor will I be divinely judged.
To extend this to the American flag the premise is the same. The flag is just a banner flapping in the wind until we attribute stars to states, etc. Again this is a man-made symbol. Burning the flag or degrading it in any way is insulting to many no doubt. However, if I choose to have a "flag roast" in my back yard I don't cause physical harm to the United States nor to myself. Again at worst it makes me un-American and at a minimum disrespectful of what the flag REPRESENTS (i.e., freedom, liberty, etc.)
The Eucharist on the other hand possesses true power in BOTH what it represents and what it is--the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. Christ is the power in the Eucharist which makes it far different than any other symbol we might make as humans. This is divine power which casts out sin and strengthens the human condition. No man made symbol can do either.
Kaff, I truly appreciate your reverence for the Lord's Supper. I know many non-Catholics who treat it with the utmost importance...however still symbolically. We should all be reverent and acknowledge what Christ has done, is doing, and will do for us and through us. Catholics don't miss the point of all of that. However, the Scriptures attest to it's [Eucharist] nature, the language and context supports it, and the Church Fathers taught of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the beginning. I'm curious as to what basis have you determined that Christ's Church went so wrong so soon after Christ's death when he promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). If the Church that Jesus had just formed, even if it were an "invisible" church, wouldn't evil have already seeped in if they had gone wrong or misunderstood Christ's doctrines? In essence, the devil is the author of confusion and your apparent assumption puts the devil's power over Christ's. This is illogical and makes Christ not true his word...which is impossible.
Truly my prayer for you Kaff is that your purpose for being here is to seek truth and not just to be contrary for the sake of argument. I think that you are articulate and reflective, but I pray that at the depths of your heart you are a seeker in earnest. The Eucharist is a mystery, but sometimes, like St. Peter, when the Lord asked if the twelve wished to also go away (John 6:67,69) said ""Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." Peter realized that he didn't understand everything, but he let go and had faith in the Christ who does have all the answers. I pray that you would do likewise, open yourself to the mystery of the Eucharist, and join us here at Home.
In Truth,
Matthew
I've included some Protestant resources on the Eucharist ponder:
Otto W. Heick, A History of Christian Thought, v.1, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, pp.221-2: The Post-Apostolic Fathers and...almost all the Fathers of the ancient Church...impress one with their natural and unconcerned realism. To them the Eucharist was in some sense the body and blood of Christ.
F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd ed., 1983, pp.475-6, 1221: That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood of Christ was universally accepted from the first...Even where the elements were spoken of as 'symbols' or 'antitypes' there was no intention of denying the reality of the Presence in the gifts...In the Patristic period there was remarkably little in the way of controversy on the subject...
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, pp.146-7, 166-8, 170, 236-7: Liturgical evidence suggests an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old testament was one of archetype to type, and whose relation to the sacrifice of Calvary was one of 're-presentation,' just as the bread of the Eucharist 're-presented' the body of Christ..THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST HAD TO BE CLARIFED BEFORE THERE COULD BE CONCEPTS THAT COULD BEAR THE WEIGHT OF EUCHARISTIC TEACHING...By the date of the Didache [anywhere from about 60 to 160, depending on the scholar]. . . the application of the term 'sacrifice' to the Eucharist seems to have been quite natural, together with the identification of the Christian Eucharist as the 'pure offering' commanded in Malachi 1:1
Posted by: Matthew at February 1, 2006 10:33 AMHi Matthew,
Thanks for posting on the topic. My purpose here is primarily to learn. I find that what the early fathers taught and what the Roman church now teaches can be extremely valuable and insightful even if I find I don’t agree (and even when they don’t agree). Also, as a help to all of you, I hope to clarify what I sometimes see as misconceptions that Catholics make about what Bible-based Christians actually believe or don’t believe. In rarer cases, I hope to point out places where the witness of history seems obscured by fideism.
Going back to symbol, I presented the examples of flags and (representative) money simply to illustrate that we do perceive a sort of power in human symbols, a power which would be ever so much stronger when the symbol is instituted by men but God. I pointed this out to put down the argument that the Lord’s Supper must actually embody Christ in order to have any real value.
To say “the Church Fathers taught of the Real Presence of Christ from the beginning” does not address the core of this discussion. The earliest church leaders did not affirm transubstantiation, in fact they appear to have contradicted it. I do not rule out an effective spiritual presence in the Eucharist but I do not see the scriptural necessity of accepting a complete transfiguration of the elements, nor do I see it this transfiguration affirmed by the earliest interpreters of Holy Scripture. Therefore to see this notion promoted to an essential of the faith is, in my view, dangerous for reasons I noted above (i.e. causing undue division in the body of Christ).
Furthermore since it took many centuries for the doctrine of transubstantiation to be laid out, it is not my argument that “Christ’s Church went so wrong”. It has always suffered from errors in thought and practice, from within and without And it always will, as long as Satan is permitted to fight the church. My challenge and yours is to discern true doctrine and put it into practice. You have decided based on extra-scriptural evidence that the Roman Church is the only faithful repository for accurate doctrine, but my studies have not led me to that conclusion.
Hi Steve,
About John 6, I don’t think we can say that one Greek word or another is or is not metaphor by itself. Whether a statement is literal or metaphoric is determined by its context. If Jesus’ hearers had interpreted Jesus literally, he would have been asking them to grab a knife and start carving Him up for a feast that second. Clearly he did not mean his statement to be heard literally but metaphorically, as he later explained to His disciples in that same chapter.
In Him, Kaff
Posted by: Kaffinator at February 2, 2006 12:54 AMKudos Matthew - great post.
Thank you Fidens.
Kaff,
I am glad to hear that your purpose here is in earnest and not merely to be argumentative. Not to mention your openness to the truth, wherever that may lead. I will continue to pray that you will find the truth that you seek...the truth of Christ. However, your efforts to explain to us what Bible only Christians really believe is a bit misleading. Surely you cannot speak for the thousands of denominations within Protestantism. In reality, you are speaking for yourself and those with whom you share Christian fellowship. There are only two things that Protestantism share universally--sola scriptura and sola fide. Even within these "doctrines" there are MANY shades of gray. We welcome your comments as it aids us in understanding you and to a degree other non-Catholic Christians, but I don't think our dialogue completely covers the entire Protestant spectrum of "Bible-only" believers. I admire you for your convictions though and the manner in which you present your arguments. There are many who come to sites such as these and can do no better than to rail against what they don't understand instead of trying to understand in the first place.
Kaff, to be frank here, your arguments are based on your opinion of Scripture alone. I have not come to any conclusions based on extra-Scriptural means. However, even if I did that would only buttress my faith. The Church is the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim 3:15) NOT the Bible. Scripture alone DOES attest to this and not the other way around. To find truth, the truth that will set us free, Christ says that it is to be found in the one Church that He established. So for Catholics we take Christ at his word that the Church is where truth will be found and that even in the face of corruption, deceit, and shameful behavior His Church will not be overcome by evil (Matt 16:18). Since this is the case then Christ cannot and will not allow His Church to teach incorrect or false doctrine. This is not an argument to take up with me. This is Christ’s clear teaching and promise. As Catholics we take solace in that. If the Catholic Church were merely a human organization it would not have stood the test of time. It is a divine institution that only by the grace of God does it stand firm after 2000 years.
Kaff you stated:
"The earliest church leaders did not affirm transubstantiation, in fact they appear to have contradicted it. I do not rule out an effective spiritual presence in the Eucharist but I do not see the scriptural necessity of accepting a complete transfiguration of the elements, nor do I see it this transfiguration affirmed by the earliest interpreters of Holy Scripture."
If your statement is true then tell us how YOU interpret the Church Father's statements below--especially St. Ignatius who was a contemporary of St. John. For Ignatius, who could have been better to learn the doctrines of Christ from than a man who WAS given the power to "bind and loose" from Christ himself and did have a CORRECT understanding/interpretation?
Ignatius of Antioch (NOTE: A disciple of St. John and Bishop of Antioch), Epistle to Smyrnaeans, 7,1 (A.D. 110) "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist TO BE THE FLESH OF OUR SAVIOUR Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again."
Justin Martyr, First Apology,66 (A.D. 110-165) "For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise HAVE WE BEEN TAUGHT that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word,and from which our blood and flesh by TRANSMUTATION are nourished,IS THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF THAT JESUS WHO WAS MADE FLESH."
Irenaeus, Against Heresies,IV:18,4(A.D. 200) "The bread over which thanks have been given IS the body of their Lord, and the cup His blood..."
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures,XXII:8(A.D. 350) "Having learned these things, and BEEN FULLY ASSURED that the seeming bread is NOT bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is NOT wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ…”
Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity,8:14(A.D. 356-359) “For now both from the declaration of the Lord Himself and our own faith, IT IS VERILY FLESH AND VERILY BLOOD. And these when eaten and drunk, bring it to pass that both we are in Christ and Christ in us.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Matthew 26:26, (A.D. 428) “He DID NOT SAY, 'This is the symbol of My Body, and this, of My Blood,' but, what is set before us, but that it is TRANSFORMED by means of the Eucharistic action into FLESH AND BLOOD."
John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,4:13(A.D. 743) “The bread and the wine are NOT merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but THE DEIFIED BODY OF THE LORD ITSELF: for the Lord has said, 'This is My body,' NOT, this is a figure of My body: and 'My blood,' NOT, a figure of My blood. And on a previous occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eateth Me, shall live."
In Truth,
Matthew
Kaff
Steve and I seem to run into your contemplativeness in not getting direct answers from you some times. We aren't trying to get your soc number or something.
Like Matt I am happy to see that you have at least some Manichean symbolism in your view of the Eucharist; but do you think it remotely possible that God could trans or consubstantiate the matter of bread with some of His physical matter? Do you think it possible that since in scripture (that we claim to cling to) He would have used any of the 32 words in Aramaic for symbolic (Keating) but instead only uses literal terms in John 6? Further aren't you disturbed that John's disciples clearly speak out against those who view it symbolically? Was John mislead? Indeed as you note "it sadly divides us" but it was not until the Middle ages according to Oxford that the Symbolic Eucharist was raised in the christian church...it is you that should be concerned with your division from us...we say what Ignatius and John say we never divided (Acts 15). In the 1st century...I again refer y'all to Baptist Rod Bennett's book (Four Witnessess) he shows clearly the Symbolic eucharist was taught in the 1st 3 centuries by the Gnostics (their catechisms) ONLY...along with their non infant baptism and Christ as divine only or part of a pantheon of gods. All the churches from Corinth to Rome show the Catholic view...the letters are there read them through your Baptist brother's eyes.
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at February 2, 2006 10:47 AMHi Matthew,
I appreciate that you are coming from sola ecclesia viewpoint, because it gives me comfort that you will be doing your best to correctly represent the teachings of the Roman Catholic church. But for various reasons that are not germane to this thread, I do not share this viewpoint.
Your argument appears to be that when Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, etc. say something like “the bread IS His body” or the “cup IS His blood” that the author is referring specifically to transubstantiation. But when someone says something “IS” something else, they can imply a very broad range of meanings that do not necessarily imply transubstantiation. For example I say, “Christ IS within me” that does not mean that Christ has physically and materially replaced my inner organs.
Ignatius in particular was writing against Gnostics on a number of counts, not the least of which was that they denied that Christ had taken a real body, had truly died, and was bodily resurrected. He did not write about exactly how Jesus was in the Eucharist, whether Christ’s presence was physical, spiritual, or something else. There is simply not sufficient detail in this brief passage for you to assume that it stands in favor of transubstantiation specifically.
Hi WWWO,
I don’t know how to respond to you except to answer each question you raised.
*** but do you think it remotely possible that God could trans or consubstantiate the matter of bread with some of His physical matter?
This is not a discussion about what God can or cannot do, but what He actually says or does not say, and how Christians over the ages have interacted with that.
*** Do you think it possible that since in scripture (that we claim to cling to) He would have used any of the 32 words in Aramaic for symbolic (Keating) but instead only uses literal terms in John 6?
I have some bad news for you. The gospel of John was written in Greek, not Aramaic. I am unfamiliar with Keating’s argument, so unless you would like to present it…?
*** Further aren't you disturbed that John's disciples clearly speak out against those who view it symbolically?
Citation please?
*** Was John mislead?
Nobody has suggested he was.
*** Indeed as you note "it sadly divides us" but it was not until the Middle ages according to Oxford that the Symbolic Eucharist was raised in the christian church...
I thought you just said John’s disciples spoke out against it. Now it didn’t come up until the Middle ages? Which way do you want to have it?
*** it is you that should be concerned with your division from us... we say what Ignatius and John say we never divided (Acts 15). In the 1st century...
Takes two to tango I guess. The reformers felt they were dividing from a body that was not staying true to apostolic faith. If your parish started preaching something other than the gospel, would you stay?
*** I again refer y'all to Baptist Rod Bennett's book (Four Witnessess) he shows clearly the Symbolic eucharist was taught in the 1st 3 centuries by the Gnostics (their catechisms) ONLY...
Haven’t read that book. Maybe I’ll run across it someday.
*** along with their non infant baptism and Christ as divine only or part of a pantheon of gods.
Guess I don’t see the relationship here. Are you saying non-infant baptizers are pantheists? This will be quite a shock to my Baptist brothers.
*** All the churches from Corinth to Rome show the Catholic view...the letters are there read them through your Baptist brother's eyes.
It may comfort you to believe that there was never any difference of opinion amongst early Christians (even sainted ones) on theological topics. But facts can be uncomfortable things.
Posted by: Kaffinator at February 2, 2006 06:43 PMKaff,
I don't know how you can simply disregard this change in verbage, but I guess that is your perogative. However, I would challenge you to show me one instance in Greek literature where the verb "trogein" is used metaphorically (I suppose that's not really a fair challenge).
I guess no one knows the context of this discourse better than the people who were standing there listening to it. If they understood it metaphorically why would they make the comment v.52 "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" v60 "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" Is this really a hard saying if he speaking metaphorically? I personally don't think so.
v.61 "Do you take offense at this?" v62 Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? Is Christ speaking metaphorically, or literally here?
v66 After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
The problem here is that Jesus always explained to the disciples what He meant. Since Christ let them leave, He obviously felt that they had understood the meaning of what He had said. So I guess the question is, what was it that bothered these guys so much that they decided to leave?
(Sorry Kaff, it seems like your getting bombarded on this thread)
peace
Posted by: Steve at February 2, 2006 06:48 PM
Kaff,
Like Steve said, sorry for the bombardment, but you asked for it:)
As for your last post I feel it was a bit of a dodge. If you read the Church fathers' quotes I included in my last post they connoted MUCH more than what you reflected back to me. In essence, your play on words is a straw man argument at best. Again Kaff, I ask you and all non-Catholics to take the Fathers’ writings as a whole and not as it fits what you have already come to believe. Besides I also included some reputable Protestant resources on the subject of the Eucharist that weigh in favor of my argument…but alas…no comment. A comment in particular that is very pertinent was Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) “…the doctrine of the person of Christ had to be clarified before there could be concepts that could bear the weight of eucharistic teaching . . .
Please focus on the terms used by the Fathers. They DO allude to the primitive understanding of transubstantiation.
Justin Martyr:
HAVE WE BEEN TAUGHT…our blood and flesh by TRANSMUTATION are nourished, IS THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF THAT JESUS WHO WAS MADE FLESH."
(Transmutation???!!! Please look this up…and hey, it was TAUGHT to him/them in the early 2nd century)
Cyril of Jerusalem:
BEEN FULLY ASSURED (again by apostolic teaching)… bread is NOT bread, though sensible to taste, but the BODY OF CHRIST; and that the seeming wine is NOT wine, though the taste will have it so, but the BLOOD OF CHRIST…”
Theodore of Mopsuestia
He DID NOT SAY, 'This is the symbol of My Body, and this, of My Blood,' ….but that it is TRANSFORMED by means of the Eucharistic action into FLESH AND BLOOD."
(Again we are seeing a CHANGE in the elements by transformation)
John of Damascus:
The bread and the wine are NOT MERELY FIGURES of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but THE DEIFIED BODY OF THE LORD ITSELF
On the other hand, maybe Scripture will be more convincing to you. In Matt. 26:26-28; Mark. 14:22,24; Luke 22;19-20; and 1 Cor. 11:24-25 Jesus says, “this IS my body and blood” Jesus does not say, “this is a symbol of my body and blood.” Specifically in Matt. 26:26; Mark. 14:22; Luke 22:19-20 the Greek phrase is “touto estin to soma mou," which means “this is actually" or "this is really" my body and blood. In addition, Paul in 1 Cor. 11:24 uses the same translation "touto mou estin to soma." Again the statement is "this is REALLY" my body and blood. Besides, Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, had over 30 words for "represent," but Jesus did not use any of them. He used the Aramaic word for "estin" which means "is." Nowhere in Scripture does God EVER declare something without making it so. Please show us otherwise.
In Truth,
Matthew
Kaff
Again you have ducked the question of trans/consubstantiation...as painful as you may find it Oxford is correct in saying some form of Real Prescence was uniform in the early church, Kelley a Prostestant Oxford scholar goes as far as to note that today's (Catholic) view of the Real Presence is that of the 1st century church.
Indeed I and Keating do understand that scripture was written in Greek...perhaps it is you who thinks too highly of himself in these discussions...is that why you duck so many times? It is you that have chosen to dump the Greek in the OT to better mold to your own skewed interpretations. see http://www.cuf.org/faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=28 Keatings obvious point is that; in the translation into gk... aramaic has 32 specific terms to mean "symbolic" representation...none of which are translated into greek...the forms in greek are literal. Or perhaps you no longer subscribe to the inerrancy of Scripture.
Citation please?...re: Ignatius of Antioch...the prime disciple of John who replaced a dead apostle (made bishop)...ordained by Peter trained by John and bishop of the Jerusalem community that fled to Antioch after the slaying of Stephen notes of those with heterodox (Manichean/Gnostic) beliefs: "Observe those who hold erroneous opinions concerning the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us and see how they run counter to the mind of God! They concern themselves neither with the work of charity, nor widows, nor orphans, nor the distressed, nor those in prisons or out of it, nor the hungry or thirsty.
From the Eucharist and prayer they hold aloof, because they do not confess the the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in his loving kindness raised from the dead." (Letter to the Smyrneans about 100 AD)
To the Philadelphians he writes, "Take care, then to partake of one Eucharist; for, one is the Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup to unite us with His Blood.
To the Ephesians on discussing the Eucharist; "the Bread of God...the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death."
"You said it wasn't raised until middle ages then you say it was raised in the 1st century...are you calling my baptist friends manicheans?" No your deeds define yourself...a tree is told by the fruits it bears...you may call yourself a cherry tree but if all I see is lemons what are you...really? What I and Oxford do say... please read carefully and try not to twist as hard as that may be for you... is that within the early Christian church it was not raised period... until the early middle ages. Gnostics are not Christians by my account. Now as you find that your brother Rod Bennett has pointed out quite nicely that your doctrines align not only with the original Christians but also with the heretics (Manicheans)...that is your cross to bear brother. We (CC) never left the original beliefs you are the one with the mish mash of beliefs/traditions.
In Love
when we were one
Hi Steve,
No worries about the dogpile. Here I am questioning transubstantiation on an RC board, what should I expect? :-) Even though it is admitted that transubstantiation was only established as dogma a thousand years later, suggesting that early Christian leaders simply didn’t have that perspective is sure to provoke discussion.
What bothered people so much they left? An excellent question. Perhaps some got hung up of the difficult image of Jesus asking them to violate the Law by eating human flesh and drinking blood. (Even Catholics today insist they are not engaging in actual cannibalism.) But my best guess would be that people did understand what Jesus was truly communicating and it offended them. Other prophets had come to Israel, saying, “thus saith the Lord” but here was a man saying that He Himself was the message, that he personally was manna descended from heaven that would later ascend. Obviously He was identifying Himself with God much more closely than anyone else ever had, even blasphemously so. Someone who did get the message was Peter. His takeaway from the episode was, “You have the words of eternal life […] You are the Holy One of God” (v69-70). In short this teaching was about Christ’s identity as Son of God and this just plain disturbed people (still does, actually).
Now, here are my questions for those who insist that John 6 is about the Eucharist. If in John’s explanation, Jesus was teaching about Eucharistic presence, why didn’t Jesus explain this to his disciples instead of providing the explanation in v63? If this point was so important to John why didn’t he mention the Eucharist in his version of the last supper? If Jesus knew that nobody, including His closest disciples, had any idea about the Eucharist yet what could he possibly have been trying to teach them by making reference to it?
I think those are tough questions and that is why I believe that understanding John 6 as Christ preaching primarily about his identity, and how belief in him brings eternal life, makes more sense out of the entire chapter.
Posted by: Kaffinator at February 3, 2006 12:01 PMIf I may throw out a cat-call from the bleachers about the Early Fathers contradicting transubstantiation: I think that, even from the standpoint of the Council of Trent, certain layers of reality within the Eucharist have to be kept in mind, and these layers have curious parallels to certain "layers," if you will, within the wholeness of Christ, God’s very nature, and even within the Virgin. When you look at the subtleties of transubstantiation, you see how Irenaeus and Gelasius—-and those who agree with them—-are guilty, if anything, of a “pious excess.”
First, as regards the “no uncertain terms” of the Council of Trent: unfortunately, I think that that anathema is being read at face value, and that’s a problem with regard to any anathema. The overwhelming majority of anathemas handed out by the Church were against excesses that sought to abuse what were perfectly acceptable ways of thinking about Church matters, that is, until they were abused. We all know about the Arian heresy and how it made the Church define its understanding of Christ more accurately. This was because the Arians sought to abuse a way of understanding that should have been sufficient but for those who could manipulate it to mean something heretical. The way the Church handled this excess more or less set the standard for all the following anathemas through the ages. At first, saying that the Son was “homoousios” or “like” the Father was fine, because everybody knew that by saying so you were actually saying that the Son was “perfectly like” the Father. However, when the Arians, in a typically intellectually manipulative way, said, “Oh, fine. We’re perfectly okay with the Son being ‘like,’ the Father,” the Church Fathers knew they had to stress the unity between Son and Father. So they went from “homoousious” to “homoiousios,” which means “of the same substance as/with.” Now, when the Church, in condemning Arianism and all the phraseology that went with it, announced its anathemas, it had no intention of condemning the faithful who lived prior to the Council of Nicea and who had used the term “like” in a perfectly understanding and faithful way. Nobody prior to the use of “homoiousios” was post facto anathematized. The overwhelming majority of anathemas are not to be read like absolutes, as I understand them, but rather in the context of the excesses they were trying to fight against.
To give you yet another example at the opposite end of the spectrum: believe it or not, but there is actually a canon in the church that says something like, “You must send all ‘boyish wigwams’ to the Patriarch/Pope.” Now, if you were to box up and send all your kazoos and yo-yos to Pope Benedict, with a note citing the canon in question, if they ever made it to him, I’d be willing to bet that he’d send you back a kindly note, saying, “You’re missing the point: the canon means, simply, don’t spend your life goofing off.”
To give you yet another example, Origen was excommunicated by one of the Councils, some six centuries after his death. In point of fact, the Cappadocian Fathers, including both directly and indirectly St. Macrina and St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, all claimed that without Origen, they would have been nothing. It is widely assumed that the Church was not, in fact, condemning Origen (though that is how the anathema against his reads), who was recommended by many of the Saints; it was condemning so-called “Origenism,” which is to say, making absolutes of purely speculative and experimental theology that contradict while at the same time giving insight into established church dogma.
All of this is to say that however clear-cut a contradiction between an anathema and a statement of a saint may appear, unless both are judged in context both of the historical circumstances of the anathema and of accepted theology as a whole, you’re almost bound to oversimplify one or other or both into absurdity. The Cappadocian Fathers aren’t liars; saying that the Son is “like” the Father depends entirely on intention so far as its meaning goes; and while playing with a yo-yo “directly contradicts” the Canons, it doesn’t necessarily violate their spirit at all. I don’t think the writers of the anathemas would have any problems with these concessions at all. I suppose I could have said all this more simply by saying that you are emphasizing the letter of the anathema over and against its spirit, which the Church’s own understanding of the law wouldn’t actually allow you to do.
What follows is my too-quick reconciliation of Irenaeus and Gelasius with the Council of Trent.
First off, within Christ we see a seeming-contradiction of the same sort that we see between transubstantiation and consubstantiation. (Because I don't want to keep typing those two out, I will simply call them "trans" and "cons.") On the one hand, Christ had two natures that were simultaneously real, perfectly unified--and yet, not at all confused. This corresponds to cons. On the other hand, his humanity was fully divine. This corresponds to trans. Now, if one *had* to think in terms of hierarchy within his two natures (and there are times in the Church's history when she is obliged to), one would *have* to think of the divine as being prior to or superior to the human. It would be absurd, in the hierarchy of principles, to assume that the divine came forth from the human, rather than the other way around. To put it somewhat glibly, he was Word “before” he was Incarnate Word. And the virtues of his Incarnation hang first on his “Word-ness,” and second on his “Incarnation-ness.” This corresponds to trans, in which the lesser is "overwhelmed" or overshadowed by the greater. The latter understanding of Christ is, again to speak haltingly, the more true, since it is only by virtue of the right ordering of the principles involved in the latter that the former, cons-like understanding can be true.
One also sees this sort of thing in the very nature of God. On the one hand, God being who he is, there can’t actually be anything other than him. If there were, he wouldn’t be infinite. On the other hand, God’s very infinitude necessitates (oh glorious wonder) him manifesting Himself as seeming-Other, as creation and being and you and me. The first, of course, is a kind of trans, while the latter is a kind of cons. But from a metaphysical or principled standpoint, we must of necessity say that the former is more true than the latter. It is only by virtue of God being All That There Truly Is (trans) that there can be anything other than him (cons). It doesn’t work the other way around, at least as far as metaphysical principles go. God is both immanent and transcendent; he is in all things and he is infinitely beyond all things. But again, by virtue of transcendence anything that stands before God and says “I” and understands “I” to be completely other than God, must be obliterated. That is the nature of sin. On the other hand, there will be “I’s” that will be fully themselves by virtue of having insisted that God is All. This is the nature of beatitude: letting God be All, even at one's own sacrifice, and thereby finding that by that sacrifice one is included in the All. It would be better to work at seeing God everywhere than in constantly having to correct such a vision of things with an insistence that you are, by golly, still you.
So: at the risk of spin-doctoring, I think that the Council of Trent A) was rightly fighting against an excess which it thought to be more or less absolute, as all anathemas do and B) it was trying to metaphysically affirm the first, or prior way to seeing what happens when the divine meets the created. As crazy as it sounds, if Irenaeus says that bread and wine “persist,” so to speak, it is only by virtue of the fact that they are completely subsumed by the Spirit. If the spirit of the Church’s teaching says anything on the issue, it seems to me, it MUST say at least this, and unfortunately it has to be in the expression of a paradox: for me to change by grace, and for bread and wine to change by the Spirit, we cannot keep insisting on being ourselves. “He who keeps his life shall lose it.” One might adapt this to read, “He who keeps bread and wine does so at the risk of losing not just bread and wine, but Eucharist also.” On the other hand, grace gives me back to myself when I accept it and surrender myself totally to it; just as bread and wine are borne out of the Body and Blood of He out of Whom the world was made. As St. John the Forerunner said, “He must increase while I must decrease.” Of course, this does not mean that St. John was going to be annihilated by the increase of Christ. And remember, Christ “emptied” himself as the Gospel said, again speaking directly to this paradoxical path of sanctification and increase by way of decrease. He died utterly, who Lives utterly and cannot die.
To sum up: when the Council of Trent said that bread and wine cannot persist, I would have to bet that they meant that it cannot stay unchanged or just stay itself. There is enough “looseness” even in the doctrine of transubstantiation for this to be possible. On the other hand, it is in the very nature of God and in Christ’s salvific power to give us back to ourselves, that they first require a total sacrifice that is all, that we and the world hold nothing back from Them, including what we are. As St. Justin Martyr (I think) said, “Nothing that is not subsumed [by the Spirit] is redeemed.” The New Jerusalem will come; but not before the Old Jerusalem is burned down and then redeemed into the New. In short, Irenaeus can speak of bread and wine being in the Eucharist because, quite frankly, everything that is good is in the Eucharist. But especially, the existence of bread and wine in the Eucharist is possibly, as it were, the inevitable result of bread and wine being totally subsumed by the Body and Blood. Consubstantiation may be an inevitable result of the primary truth of transubstantiation. If ever cons threatens to overwhelm trans, trans must be reinserted as primary.
Allow me to preempt two possible counter-arguments. First, one might say that most of what I have said is pure speculation. And that might be the case. My primary argument is that you can see how easy it is to point at massive subtleties even in relatively simple anathemas and apparent heresies. If nothing else, it is not so simple a matter as just putting the two statements side by side, by themselves, with no reference to any points outside of those statements.
Second, regarding what I said above about the nature of God: most people respond to the principle that God is all that there is by arguing, "But I am not God." Again, God being All doesn't make God each thing that is in that All. Everything that is is a manifestation of God Himself; it necessarily follows that "I" am a manifestation of God. It does *not* necessarily follow that God is a manifestation of me.
Sorry for the excess verbiage; as Pascal once wrote, I haven’t time to write something shorter.
Tobias
"Now, here are my questions for those who insist that John 6 is about the Eucharist. If in John’s explanation, Jesus was teaching about Eucharistic presence, why didn’t Jesus explain this to his disciples instead of providing the explanation in v63?"
That's assuming that v63 is an explanation of the preceding verses. It seems to me that if you're right, Christ is contradicting himself in all those previous versus. He spends a few dozen versus telling them to distinguish between good flesh (His body) and "bad flesh" (manna from heaven), so to speak. If v63 is an "explanation," that's just another way of saying that there is no such thing as "good flesh." The question also turns back on you: if by "flesh" Christ meant simply "spirit," why did he not say "spirit" in all those verses leading up to 63? He could have saved his disciples some precious time.
"If this point was so important to John why didn’t he mention the Eucharist in his version of the last supper?"
I'm not sure why John's version of the last supper, or even his Gospel, should be considered the test case against which the institution of the "This is my Body" as Eucharist has to be proved. There are plenty of other hugely important doctrinal rules that we would all agree on, that are not in all the Gospels. Your insistence that the Eucharist be mentioned at supper in the John is inadvertently to question all those other truths that are not shared throughout each Gospel. Could you elaborate as to why the Eucharist needs to be mentioned at the last supper in John, specifically, for it to be true?
"If Jesus knew that nobody, including His closest disciples, had any idea about the Eucharist yet what could he possibly have been trying to teach them by making reference to it?"
If I understand you right, you're asking why he taught about the Eucharist so early before the last supper actually took place, so that at the time of the teaching on it the disciples couldn't have possibly known that he was actually going to make them eat bread with this teaching in mind? And, presumably, the lapse in time would possibly have been enough that the disciples would not have seen the connection?
First, it is pretty clear that the Gospel writers were time and again making connections between things they heard early on and those same things acted out later on. The Gospels are rife with a bunch of "Oh yeah, so that's what he meant..." Secondly, again, he talked time and time again about his own betrayal long before it happened, and about various other matters about what he was going to do long before the disciples could possibly understand them or see them in action. If you want to put it this way, that just seems to be Christ's "style." Did he ever say anything that was not to some degree elliptical at the time that it was said? It seems to me that Christ never said a single thing that could be understood even on the surface without somehow putting it or seeing it put into action. It seems to me safe to say that we can collect every single one of the mentions of bread and Body in all four Gospels, and simply assume that Christ was talking about the same thing in each instance. I seriously doubt that the connection between the two would have been lost on the disciples. As mentioned above, to speak of John's telling of the last supper as somehow more important than the other Gospel's mentionings of it seems to me somewhat arbitrary.
For whatever it's worth, I have heard and read many Biblical scholars say that John's was the last Gospel to be written, and as such it was capable of relying on what had already been said. His is a more speculative telling. Many theologians agree that John's Gospel acts as a kind of interpretative key to the rest of the Gospels. They provide the facts, or most of them; John provides the way you are supposed to see those facts. He doesn't have to include what all the others do; it only has to include those things necessary to understanding what the others include. That's how a lot of people speak of it; I'm not enough of an expert to know whether they are right.
We sometimes forget how much Acts and the latter events of the Gospels help inform our interpretations (or ought to, anyway) of what happened in all that preaching that Christ did. There are only a couple of things that he does without explanation of why they're being done, and even when he is explaining I think that only a truly adventurous soul would say at the time, with any sort of confidence, "Wow. I understand perfectly." In fact, there is only one such instance that I know of where the disciples themselves seem to think they've finally got it, and even then Christ tells them they haven't...yet: John 16:29-33.
Tobias
Hi Matthew,
You say we must take the “Fathers writings as a whole”. I take exception to this method of interpreting the church fathers. We cannot simply take an average of selected pull quotes over hundreds of years and then smear the results back into their respective theologies. I think if you do this, you will find exactly what you had hoped for (or rather, what the original assembler of the pull quotes wanted you to find), and learn: nothing. If we are going to interact with them, let us take them one at a time, examine what they said and what they did not.
So, perhaps you accuse me of dodging because I did not interact with each and every one of the seven early Christian writers you quoted, and on top of that interact with your references to Heick, Pelikan, Cross, Livingstone whom I have not read. I wish time allowed for this but I am not a professional historian with unlimited time to devote to an internet comment board. Even so I did my best to interact with author you gave primary importance to, Ignatius. (I pointed out that he didn’t say anything specific to transubstantiation at all.) But now you chose not to respond to anything I said, and launched instead into Justin Martyr and Pelikan. I don’t see why I should go there, since anything I say about them can just as quickly be smothered by your next bullet of choice, and so forth. I apologize, I just don't have the stomach for this.
Hi WWWO,
My wish is to continue the discussion with you, but what you post at me is chiefly ad hom attack. I “duck”, I “think too highly of myself”, I abandon texts at will to mold to “my own skewed viewpoints”, I give up the inerrancy of Scripture, I call myself a cherry tree (?) but you see “lemons”, I can hardly avoid “twisting” my arguments, I have a “mish mash of beliefs/traditions” etc. I confess that it is difficult for me to receive such words “In Love” (as you sign your posts), let alone find the substantive argument, let alone respond with the trust that you might be open to a genuine interaction that could edify either of us.
Guys, I honestly appreciate the opportunity to interact but at this stage it looks like the wisest course of action is for me to sign off from this discussion.
May each of you be well, and go with God,
Kaff
Kaff
You accuse me of ad hom? Was it I who implied the ignorance of the other in greek vs aramaic? My acrimony on this blog is more than matched by your sarcastic ink, "would your Baptist brothers be shocked?" To act as if you are some virgin to satire won't fly here with regular posters or readers. Even Steve who rarely posts notes within a couple replies that you are actually avoiding his questions. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, thinking you contemplative but I'm not sure about that. Your actions are beginning to reveal someone who wishes to deride the CC and then runs when confronted with other opinions.
The other posters here on the Catholic side have bent over backwards in attempting to answer even your most trite and archane arguments.
By the way I suppose I didn't answer 1 of your questions because I thought you may have realized that your own arguments have finally come full round. "If I found myself in a church not teaching the truth wouldn't I also leave?"
As you stand firmly on Sola Scriptura...this question means you again need to address Acts 15 and 1 Tim 3:15. Which speak against this proposition. But even further we recently had discussions on the beauty of St. Athanasius and his scholarship...indeed we agree he is one of the greatest scriptural scholars of all time...we couldn't buckle his sandals could we? Then you note an antipope ascends to the seat of Peter while the true pope is in exile... you imply we are following a bad leader now...but as I noted...Athanasius does what? You would have started your own church by now...run off to size your own papal tiara perhaps. Athanasius who you on one hand admire for scriptural purity...on the other hand remains in the One Holy Catholic Church awaiting the return of the pope...and so I who is humble to know when he is bettered would do as Athanasius did and await the true pope while contemplating Acts 15.
In Love (tough Love)
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at February 4, 2006 03:15 PMTobias
Your brain must be the size of a watermelon. Have you ever read "The Dumb Ox" about St. Thomas Aquinas by Chesterton? If not you should.
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at February 4, 2006 03:22 PMDear All
I have a couple of observations to share with the group.
1. The arguments on the Real Presence get repeated, over and over. And it's the same each time. The unbelievers vs the believers. Seemingly, if you're an unbeliever, the Gospels are not clear enough to change your unbelief into belief. Whereas, if you are a believer, it's difficult to understand why the unbelievers can't seem to simply read what's there and become believers.
2. In John 6, we read of those unbelievers who stopped following Jesus. Whether they later became believers we don't know, but, what are the consequences of not believing in the Real Presence? Will the same fate befall these people for not recognizing Jesus in the Eucharist as that of the people who fail to recognize Jesus in the "least of those" we read about in Matthew 25? Let's take this a step further. Let's be very clear here that we are not simply talking about different interpretations of passages in the Bible. We are talking about accepting or rejecting the facts. The facts in this case are that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus. This is what Peter and the other Apostles understood, believed, taught and gave their lives for in a number of cases. Of course, many unbelievers simply "know no better". But, what about those who are aware of the Catholic teaching on the Real Presence, particularly those who pour scorn on us for what we believe?
3. I have used the terms "believers" and "unbelievers" here, but what constitutes a "believer"? One of the posters mentioned that, if Catholics truly believed in the Real Presence, then Catholic churches would be full of people 24 hours a day (or words to that effect). I mean, let's be quite clear on this, we can argue this way and that about the Real Presence, but, at the end of the day, how does our belief affect our daily lives? I like to think of myself as a "believer". In fact, I like to see myself as a follower of Jesus (not just a Christian, which seems to cover such a wide spectrum these days. In fact, I think many "Christians" do not regard Catholics as "Christian" anyway). I'm not so sure Jesus would recognize me as a "believer" or a "follower" most of the time. But, that's something I have to continue working on.
4. Perhaps the swing towards "adult" baptism has had something to do with this unbelief. I mean, a person really needs a childlike faith to believe in the Real Presence, which is why it's much easier to be brought up believing than to become a believer as an adult. Maybe this is why Jesus was so strong on "bringing the little ones" to him? Mary seems to make the same point in her apparitions.
In Christ
Brian R
Kaff,
This is a real shame Kaff, you say that we cannot, according to your guidelines, look at the Fathers as a whole and come to any conclusions as to what was taught in the early Church. I would have to disagree. I think that there is much benefit to a macro approach as well as a micro approach as you suggested. Why do you feel it has to be an either/or proposition? Besides there is no need to examine “individual theologies” per se since the Church Fathers appealed to the Chair of Peter as their leader in matters of faith. Besides, the fact is your use of the micro approach works against a protestant argument. Even if any of the Fathers would hint at a doctrine that seemingly fortified the protestant position then how do you reconcile their other obvious Catholic beliefs?
As for my previous question, I may have initially phrased it in a way that you did not understand, but I DID want to hear your interpretation of the Fathers as a WHOLE, and pointed out Ignatius due to the way in which he EQUATED the Eucharist and the flesh of Christ regardless of his defense against the Gnostics, and in addition to his close association with St. John who as I said before would understand CORRECT doctrine. So in my estimate, the lack of response to the sentiments of the selected Fathers was a dodge because I think that the evidence is too overwhelming in favor of a primitive understanding of transubstantiation.
As to the protestant sources, they were included to further illustrate that some of your protestant brothers had/have an understanding of early Christian belief—which mirrors Catholicism. So I didn’t expect a response to each and every quote, but at the same time I did expect some sort of response other than “Ignatius was responding to the Gnostics” and glaze over the primary theme of my posts. In my second post all I did was repeat the previous quotes with words for emphasis, and even included Scripture to strengthen my argument. So yes, you did make a straw man statement that was out of context and not helpful in moving our discussion forward. Specifically:
But when someone says something “IS” something else, they can imply a very broad range of meanings that do not necessarily imply transubstantiation. For example I say, “Christ IS within me” that does not mean that Christ has physically and materially replaced my inner organs.
(You are better than this last statement/argument Kaff.)
Lastly, Kaff, to reply to your post to Steve:
“I think those are tough questions and that is why I believe that understanding John 6 as Christ preaching primarily about his identity, and how belief in him brings eternal life, makes more sense out of the entire chapter.”
(Again, as you readily admit, this is YOUR belief)
However, if you go back just one chapter in John 5:21-29 we see how Jesus has ALREADY made it perfectly clear what his identity is and how belief in him leads to eternal life. So what is the point of all the “figurative” language in John 6 and allowing his disciples to leave him if—if that is what John 6 REALLY says according to your interpretation? Read on:
21 “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the SON GIVES LIFE TO WHOMEVER HE WISHES. 22 Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to his Son, 23 so that ALL MAY HONOR THE SON just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears MY WORD and BELIEVES IN THE ONE WHO SENT ME HAS ETERNAL LIFE and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. 25 Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the SON OF GOD, and those who hear will live. 26 For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to his Son the possession of life in himself. 27 And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because HE IS THE SON OF MAN 28 Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and will come out, those who have done good deeds to THE RESURRECTION OF LIFE, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.”
So Kaff, we see here Jesus already proclaiming himself EQUAL to the Father. He proclaims that he had authority to execute judgment over all men. He proclaimed that those who believed in Him passed from death to life, and will attain eternal salvation provided that they have done good (vv. 24, 28-29). Here we see absolutely NO disciples leaving him in John 5. Thus, when Jesus gives us his discourse in John 6, if YOUR theory is that he was ONLY telling the disciples to believe him will not wash. The disciples had already heard him say this in John 5. Back then, they did not say, “oh, this is a hard saying.” In John 6 they took him literally, as did the Jews, and Jesus put them to the test even more. Here is when they said “oh, it is a hard saying” (6:61). Kaff the question is…if he saw that they misunderstood him he definitely would have explained it to them privately as Mark 4:34 proclaims—would he not?
So Kaff, if you have posted your last, then may God and the peace of Christ be with you always. Until next time…
In Truth,
Matthew
When we were one:
Actually, the watermelon is my ego. I yet have faith that my less-than-a-mustard-seed mind will one day be able to understand mountains. I've not read the Chesterton book. Was there a connection between the transubstantiation question and something that Chesterton points out?
Brian:
Regarding point one of your post, I think you may be suggesting an impasse that, while it may be operative in many discussions between opposing parties on this question, is not either a universal or necessary one in these discussions. You seem to be inadvertantly suggesting that believers are more or less born that way, which I'd have to argue with. I certainly didn't get Real Presence with my mother's milk, so to speak, and I was converted to the idea precisely because all of my own arguments seemed to me then, as they do now, to be trying to make Christ and St. Paul more "symbolical" than they are wont to be anywhere else in the Scriptures (see below). In the meantime, there are plenty of us who were converts from one side to the other, and perhaps from the other to the one--though, in all honesty, I don't know very many people who have gone from Real Presence to disbelief, while I know only too many who have gone the other way. Obviously, that doesn't make the Real Presence believers right, but it does suggest that the going-back-and-forth on the issue will not always be futile.
If those who oppose Real Presence are right and the Last Supper is a merely symbolical act, it should nonetheless be noted that nowhere else in the Scriptures (to the best of my knowledge) does Christ do something with the implication that the actual act should not also be imitated--physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, etc., praying and doing with everything that you've got, down to your very spit. I don't think he says anywhere, "Do what I do, but only in your heart." It seems to me that His every act has to be done both in the heart and in the same way he did it. He doesn't throw out the money changers and then say, "That's only symbolical. You don't have to be worried yourselves about financial (and therefore spiritual) corruption in your own temples. And please, don't by any means turn one of these things into a confrontation. Just pray within yourselves that it will go away." He doesn't heal the blind and the lame and turn around to his disciples and say, "You don't have to go to the sick and do this yourselves. Understand that this is merely a symbolic gesture. Heal the sick within yourselves." While there is no doubt that there must be the internal act, and even that the internal act is prior to the external act, in principle, it seems to me to be something of a stretch to say that the same Savior who uses spit and dirt to heal and is very much "grounded," as we say, and "concrete" should suddenly become so rarified and "merely symbolical" at this one point without any explanation as to why. Keeping in mind Joe's recent excellent post on the older meaning of "symbol," I don't see anywhere in the Bible where Christ does something that is supposed to only give you "insight." I say this with the full conviction that most of the Christians I know are what I'd call "insight junkies," that is, folks who use internal conviction as a means of denying the validity of external conviction--as though they could be separated.
Christ doesn't seem to know how to do a "merely symbolic" or purely internal act; only truly symbolic, and therefore "existential" or concrete acts that require, again, our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and even visceral involvement. In every single one of his acts, his body is intimately involved. This isn't just out of necessity (as though Christ, who regularly broke laws, was bound by matter as if by a chain, and was limited by it), but out of the very nature of who we are and He is. So much so that even St. Paul talks quite fondly of a "spiritual body." This is not at all to say that there's no spirit involved; I'd have to agree with those unbelievers in Real Presence who say that sometimes believers go too far in thinking that God is somehow "contained" in the here and now. Sometimes that's true. But let it be said that while Christ isn't "contained" by His body and His bodily acts, he is nonetheless fully present in them. It's not as if just a part of Christ walked through the streets of Galilee or got nailed up on the Cross. If you argue with this, then I think that we would have to admit that discussion henceforth *would* be fruitless.
In short, if the anti-Real Presence folk are right, the burden of proof is on them, it seems to me, to show why we should treat this one act, out of the dozens of other acts related in the Scriptures, as a merely symbolic act, something that "means" something but which itself doesn't actually have to be done in imitation of Christ at every level of our being, the "active" and bodily as well. Of course, this means that they are going to have to show that Christ had some reason for doing so, and they will have to show how that reason is conveyed in the Scriptures. I am assuming of course that we would all agree that, in reality, however incapable we are, the goal is not merely to achieve insights through simply watching Christ in action in the Gospels, but to actually achieve a level of sanctity and faith that would allow us to effectively imitate every action of Christ's and the Apostles. *Acts* suggest, if anything, that sitting around and reading about and talking about the Gospels wasn't at the top of the Apostles' to-do list. They did everything within their power to imitate Christ in every aspect of his ministry--and that includes things that, to the best of our knowledge, He only did once. In short, why should we believe that every act of Christ's was meant to be imitated both inwardly and outwardly, bodily and spiritually, internally and externally, but the Supper was the only thing that we are supposed to imitate only inwardly, "spiritually," and internally?
Tobias
Tobias
No the connection is between your replies and the portrayed thought processes of Aquinas.
You see since he was a child Aquinas was thought dumb by his classmates because he rarely spoke. As a child he would stare off into the distance then shout "what is God!"
Only later did his mentors note that he was perhaps the most brilliant mind in the history of Christendom. They found that he answered no one because he was mentally juggling complex theological tracts...to answer someone may mean dropping a line of thought that took months to resolve.
When I read your complex thoughts I think of "the dumb ox."
In Love
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at February 7, 2006 11:13 AMHigh compliments, indeed. Thanks, though if you actually knew me and saw my thought processes in action you'd have serious reservations as to that alignment.
I am reminded of a great story--which may have come from that book for all I know--of when Aquinas was a child, and was being tutored by a monk. Apparently, the monk, who thought that Aquinas was gullible, pointed out the window and said, "Look, Thomas: a flying bull." Thomas ran to the window to look out. The monk then started to laugh at him and said, "How could you have possibly believed me?" Thomas replied, "I'd rather believe in a bull that flies than in a monk that lies."
Tobias
Hi Tobias
Thanks for you comments. One point I was trying to make, and seemingly didn't do a very good job of, is this:
Whether or not we believe in the Real Presence doesn't change the facts. Which are that, at the Last Supper, the bread and wine became the Body and Blood of Jesus. But, equally important, the Apostles clearly understood and believed in what He had done.
But, what I should have also mentioned is that they also clearly understood that Jesus had not only conferred on them the power to do exactly what He had done, but that they had an obligation, to pass on to posterity, that same power.
Fortunately, the Apostles didn't have to rely on an intrepretation of the Gospels. They were there, with Jesus. Throughout His ministry. The Gospels came later. Seemingly not clear enough on the Real Presence for a lot of people, particularly since the 16th century. But that was not a problem the Apostles faced. They received their instruction and the power directly from Jesus. And that same instruction and power has been passed on from generation to generation. Down to the present time, and continuing. Just as Jesus intended it should.
The point I'm making here is that belief in the Real Presence alone will not change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus. The power conferred on the Apostles by Jesus, and passed on through Apostolic succession, is required to do this.
Which is why, people who believe in the Real Presence, should check whether their community is part of the Apostolic succession.
Oh, and that point about being born believing in the Real Presence, I didn't really mean that at all. I meant being born into a family of believers and growing up with that belief.
In Christ
Brian R
Bri
nice note
when we were one
Posted by: when we were one at February 13, 2006 10:00 AM"The point I'm making here is that belief in the Real Presence alone will not change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus. The power conferred on the Apostles by Jesus, and passed on through Apostolic succession, is required to do this."
Agreed on every point, especially this one. I think it was St. Paul who charged the Christians with the fact that they not only emulate the Apostles in what they wrote, but in what they did and said, too, implying that there must be a word-of-mouth succession, at the very least, to carry on teachings that were not written down.
Regarding the fact that the Eucharist has only been questioned since the 16th century, my first serious look at the Eucharist as a possibly real thing came after it struck me how odd it was that the Holy Spirit would have left the entire Christian world for fifteen centuries to believe in what is, for most Protestants, a heresy. God just doesn't seem to work that way, either with individuals or with groups.
Tobias
Dear When we were one & Tobias.
Thanks for your affirmations. But, of course, the "flip-side" so to speak, is that, because more has been given to Catholics, more will be expected. That's the scary bit.
I don't know what you guys think, but it seems to me that the world, as we know it, is passing. Mainly due to the major climatic changes that are taking place.
And, I believe I am correct in saying that Our Lady is reported to have said that, when she stops appearing at Medjugorje, that will be her last appearance......
Forgive me for getting side-tracked. I guess that's an entirely different topic, but, all the same, food for thought, particularly vis a vis my earlier "flip-side" comment.
In Christ
Brian R
Brian:
Re the "much expected" of Catholics: there's an old Catholic proverb that says "Only Catholics go to hell," meaning that only those who knew what they were doing can be judged for not doing the right thing. Scary, indeed.
Re the world "passing." You might already know that Chinese astonomers saw the original star of the Crab Nebula (I think it's that one) exploding in 1054--the year that the Eastern and Western Christians split. If you've never seen that movie, The Neverending Story, go get it. They present the idea fairly well, though not, unfortunately, in relation to God: the cosmos is maintained by our faith. St. Isaac the Syrian says that if there is not at least one man on the planet who never stops thinking about and adoring God, 24-7, then the cosmos will implode. God showed him that there were only three such men on the planet in his day, that the number was shrinking--and St. Isaac, I believe, lived in the sixth century. I estimating that we've only got one among us who always remembers God without ceasing. If I knew who he was I'd be sending him vitamins--if, that is, he weren't living fully off of God. Our faith sucks, therefore the planet sucks.
Tobias
Tobias, the phrase "only Catholics go to hell" reminds me of the belief that "only the baptized go to hell".
I wonder if the two ideas are linked especially since before Vatican II, the Catholic Church did not presume that baptisms done outside the Catholic Church were valid.
Posted by: Broken Record at February 16, 2006 11:23 AMI have always been suspicious, myself, of the way in which the Church's claims of magisterium have been interpreted. I mean, you've got St. Francis who believed that the sun, the moon, the rain, and the squirrels were members of the "Church," and then there's St. Paul's point there folks who have a "law unto themselves." Anyway, it seems to me that the borders of the Church have always been a little fluid, but I can't prove it exactly. The Orthodox also have claims of magisterium, but they define it thus: "We're not saying that we know where the Church is not; we *are* saying that we know where the Church is."
Tobias
Concerning the "law unto themselves", I was under the (Protestant) impression that St. Paul was talking about the Gentiles and that people who had their own law written in their hearts apart from the Law of Moses still merited damnation because they fell short of their own laws - and so, everyone needed Christ's saving grace but it might occur in ways that do not involve the visible Church.
When I read various SVCII documents and Dominus Iesus they seemed to say the same thing. I may be mistaken though. Though now I wonder how the teachings on "baptism by desire" fit in with the once common belief that only the baptized go to hell.
Posted by: Broken Record at February 17, 2006 02:17 PMI think that Paul was refering to the same thing as you do, but with a couple of caveats thrown in. There are plenty of examples in Church history and literature wherein a certain common ground is recognized between those inside and outside the Church. I can't remember his exact words, but the Pope who excommunicated the Second Crusaders (Antioch?) said that the Crusaders had committed their butcheries against a righteous or God-fearing people, meaning both the Eastern Orthodox and the Muslims. I, personally, have always thought that inter-religious and even inter-Christian dialogue has labored under the difficulty of wholesale condemnations. Very few people are ever converted by being told that they are completely wrong. Besides, it is very difficult for anybody to be completely wrong about God, no matter how misguided. There's an old saying in the Church that says "You don't turn people into Jews before you turn them into Christians." Meaning, their histories bear testimony to God's working for them already. When St. Innocent of Alaska converted the Aleuts (eskimos), he didn't tell them that it didn't matter what they believed; he asked them, in their own language, "Do you worship and know the Great Spirit?" "Oh, yes," they replied. He then went on to tell them of how the Great Spirit had sent his son into the world to save mankind. They converted in droves, apparently, producing several martyrs and devout Christians. One thinks of the Native American Ghost Dance, the Apache god, Yohsin, the Islamic insistence that God must be a perfect unity, and a host of other examples of folks doing the best they could with that "light which lighteneth every man who cometh into the world." One also thinks of St. Justin the Martyr, who said in one of his letters that many people who didn't know about Christ directly were nonetheless Christians, such as Plato, Heraclitus, etc. He even goes on to suggest that the Greek pagan myths were misappropriations of angels and demons--the encounters were real, but the Greeks mistook the angels and demons for gods. A lot of people don't know it, but the priest's robes are actually derived, through St. Justin, from the Platonic Academy. He was himself a hard-bitten Platonist until he became a Christian, but continued to wear the Platonic Robe because, as he said, "I have found the True Philosophy," meaning Christianity. This robe has evolved into the priest's cassock.
There is a pagan annal somewhere, perserved through the millenia and untouched by Christian hands, that tells the story of Celtic pagan priests who were performing their services when it suddenly became very cloudy and stormy on their island. These priests were living during Christ's lifetime. Anyway, one of the priests began to weep and was taken up into a vision. When the other priests asked him what was going on, he simply said, "God just died." It seems to me that, without letting go of the truth we know we hold, our job is much less to "bring" Christ to other people and places as it is to remind the people there that He is already present. I, at any rate, feel like I can see much more eye-to-eye with a faithful Muslim cleric than I can with a modern Christian dance-club hopper who sleeps around because Jesus is "all about love."
Tobias
