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