From: ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe)
Newsgroups: aus.religion
Subject: Re: Transubstantiation again
Date: 4 Oct 92 04:21:39 GMT
Distribution: aus
Organization: University of Technology, Sydney
NNTP-Posting-Host: schutz.ee.uts.edu.au

[New Readers: this thread has been about Catholic understanding of
the Eucharist. In trying to understand what certain Bible passages
(which some non-Catholics say teach merely symbolic view of communion, 
and Catholics say teaches that Jesus is in some mysterious way 
really present under the appearance of bread and wine) I quoted
some well-know examples of the understanding of the early church: 
merely symbolic was not taught until the year 1088, before then 
everyone held some notion of the Real Presence. 
John Brownie responded with some differing 
interpretations of the , and I am responding to that response!]

I have done some more research, in particular about what early
writers meant by "figure" or "type" or "symbol". 

Here's a good quote, from Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386):

"With full assurance, let us partake...for in the figure of bread
is given His body and in the figure of wine is given His blood.

Therefore you must think of the bread and wine not as bare and 
common elements; for they are the Body and Blood of Christ,
according to the Lord's own assertion... What seems to be bread is
not bread, although it is sensible to the taste; what seems to
be wine is not wine, though it seems to be such to the taste.
Rather they are the Body and Blood of Christ."

This is a clear example where "figure" is used to attempt to
express transsubstantiation! The words "symbol" or "type" could
also be used. And even "element" and "nature" appear in the translations
of the Fathers. 

Like most doctrines, there was no need to rigourously define it
until disputes arose. St Irenaues (b 130AD), who listened as a boy
to Polycarp a disciple of the Apostle John, wrote: "...the bread from
the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer commmon bread 
but rather the Eucharist consisting of two things, the earthly
and the heavenly,...". This remains the common understanding of the
church: it is not merely symbolic in the sense some non-Catholics say.

The other thing I've checked up in is the claim that St Ambrose
introduced much of the language of transubstantiation, but St Augustine
believed in mere symbolism.

In The Hidden Manna by James O'Connor, Ignatius Press, this is explored. 
This passage comes after a quote from St Augustine (c.408) "...Therefore it
is a figure, commanding us to communicate in the Passion of the Lord
and to remember pleasantly and usefully that his flesh was crucified and
wounded for us."

>(Some say) this would indicate Augustine's Eucharistic teaching was at
>variance with that of St Ambrose, from whom Augustine himself had
>received his catechesis on the Eucharist prior to his Baptism. 
>There is nothing, however, in his own writings or those of his contempraries
>or in the age immediately following his death that indicates that anyone 
>perceived any differences in the teachings of these two men.

O'Connor goes on (p.52) to show that what Augustine means by figure 
there is the visible element of a sacrament. 

> In his commentary on John 6, Augustine held that both Jews and Christians
> had "sacraments". These sacraments (e.g., the manna and the Eucharist), 
> although they were different in visible appearance or sign value,
> nonetheless signified the same Reality, viz. Christ. "But the
> Christian received the Reality in truth, the Jews only in figure."...
> We would say in our later teminology: the Christian sacraments contain what
> they signify.

This is an explicit affirmation of the divine Presence in the Eucharist
by Augustine, counter what the Moore College and common anti-catholic 
history claims. And in another place Augustine even says "For Christ was 
carried in his own hands when, entrusting to us his own body, he said:
"This is my Body." Indeed he was carrying that body in his own hands."

And in another place he says the Eucharist is to be adored (he says it is a
sin not to adore it!): "... he took Flesh of the flesh of Mary. He walked on
earth in that same Flesh, and gave that same Flesh to us to be eaten 
for our salvation. Moreover, no-one eats that Flesh unless he has first 
adored it...and we sin by not adoring."

So perhaps it wasn't Ambrose who expressed the "novel ideas" out of
sync with what the Church had been taught by the Apostles. Perhaps it
was Berengar, Wyclif, Luther & Zwingli. So I'd repeat my original
challenge: if the early church, who spoke the same languages and 
were direct recipients of the teaching of the Apostles, who had been
granted the Holy Spirit to grow the Church and had been themselves taught
by Christ, if the early church so constantly affirm that the Scriptures
say that Christ is really present under the consecrated bread and wine, 
then surely they have more weight than the interpretations that sit
more naturally with us, who have been brought up and educated and live 
in a materialist, unphilosophical and anti-spiritual age. This doctrine
is difficult for us, and shocking. But it is Scriptural, is the clear
understanding of the early church, and has been held by all Christians
throughout the church throughout its history (except for some minorities
in the last 500 years). 

-ricko