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Vico
Guest
No. It supports that “there are Christians who questioned all this in the early and ensuing centuries”, showing that it was even with Jesus Christ himself.
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Wannano
Guest
Yes, an interesting passage. Question for you, the disciples that left Jesus, did they understand him to be speaking literally or metaphorically?
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Reuben_J
Guest
Real Presence in the Eucharist is a belief practiced from the beginning by the Church. There were bit and pieces writings by the Early Church Fathers which mentioned it as a matter of fact rather than the needs for a long technical explanation.
The fact there were heretics, if indeed they existed, who did not believed and resorted to go underground for fear of being caught as heretics, was proof the existence of such belief of the Church, albeit as strict as their enforcement was.
When heretics were no longer being rein in for heresy and later they began to have the freedom to start their own churches with their heretical belief, the Catholic Church had to define officially what is Real Presence to make clear this belief to the faithful and to distinguish it from the other churches that did not believe in it.
Defining doctrines was often done in this manner, not because it was a new belief, but because of the necessity to have it defined. The Church operated without interruption in a continuous apostolic succession that defining every single doctrine was not always done but often taken for granted as they were being practiced.
The fact there were heretics, if indeed they existed, who did not believed and resorted to go underground for fear of being caught as heretics, was proof the existence of such belief of the Church, albeit as strict as their enforcement was.
When heretics were no longer being rein in for heresy and later they began to have the freedom to start their own churches with their heretical belief, the Catholic Church had to define officially what is Real Presence to make clear this belief to the faithful and to distinguish it from the other churches that did not believe in it.
Defining doctrines was often done in this manner, not because it was a new belief, but because of the necessity to have it defined. The Church operated without interruption in a continuous apostolic succession that defining every single doctrine was not always done but often taken for granted as they were being practiced.
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Wannano
Guest
Using this logic and assuming it is factual, the Church then should be grateful for the heretics that gave them reason to make the beliefs of the Church clear to the faithful. A thousand years of unclear belief in a core doctrine is a long time.
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Vico
Guest
In the first discourse, we see from verse 40-41 that the Jews did not believe the Jesus Christ was divine when he likens himself to the mana from heaven that gives everlasting life. And then we see from verse 53 the Jews do not believe him again, in his second discourse, about eating his flesh:
35 And Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life: *he that cometh to me, shall not hunger: and he that believeth in me, shall never thirst.
…
38 Because I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.
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40 And this is the will of my Father that sent me: that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day.
41 The Jews therefore murmured at him, because he had said: I am the living bread which came down from heaven.
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47 Amen, amen, I say unto you: He that believeth in me, hath everlasting life.
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52 If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give, is my flesh for the life of the world.
53 The Jews, therefore, disputed among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
So the Jews thought he was speaking literally, and so did the Apostles for they were also taken aback. Now, in the Catholic teaching, the body and blood are not bread and wine, but the glorified whole Christ, which can bring everlasting life. They did not understand.
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Duane1966
Guest
I’m not saying truth is based on sola writing. How do I know these people you claim to have hidden themselves underground, actually existed? Why should I believe you, and not the people who say they have an oral tradition where Jesus was married? Or the ones that spread a rumor about Jesus and John, basing it on an oral tradition they have received? If your claims are true, there should be evidence of their existence, or did they hide their light, instead of spreading the good news? The early martyrs spread the good news, knowing they would most likely be killed? The ones that you say hid, how could their plight have been worse than the early martyrs, who everyone agrees existed?
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Wannano
Guest
Thanks for replying. Verse 48 I am that bread of life…also verse 63 it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profited nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
I think you may have meant disciples instead of Apostles?
yes, it says many of his disciples deserted him because they took him literally. When Jesus asked the 12 if they were going too, Peter replies …you have the words of eternal life.
How do we know that the 12 did not understand Him as talking metaphorically? Doesn’t Peters response seem to indicate knowledge of what Jesus was meaning?
I hope I am not seeming arguementive, I have long wondered on this .
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Wannano
Guest
I see your point. The early martyrs were not wanted, hunted and killed as heretics by the Church were they?
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Contarini
Guest
I know of no heresy condemnations primarily about the Real Presence until the eleventh century. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Certainly people who were heretical on other grounds, like the Gnostics and in a more nuanced way the Nestorians, were accused of denying or having an incorrect understanding of the Real Presence.
But I don’t know of any Christians with an orthodox Christology/Trinitarian theology who were condemned for denying the Real Presence.
This is actually a potential argument for the Protestant position, since Ratramnus, for instance, was never condemned until Berengar drew on his work several centuries later, and various Fathers, most notably Augustine, said things that sound like a “Calvinist” theology of the Eucharist at times (though Augustine also said things about Eucharistic sacrifice and worshiping Christ in the Host that are radically different from Protestant Eucharistic theology).
But the idea of “secret believers” who held to proto-Protestant views underground is generally a fantasy invented by people who can’t support their views from early evidence.
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Vico
Guest
Yes, is should have been disciples, except of course, Apostle Judas. Since Jesus said twelve times that he was the bread that from heaven and four times that they would have “to eat my flesh and drink my blood.”, and did not correct the Jews and fleeing disciples that took it literally, we can say it was not figurative. They were unable to judge correctly because, as Jesus explains in John 8:15-16:
You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me.
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Duane1966
Guest
So, your view seems to be the Church destroyed all the writings from the early Christians that held your view of the Real Presence, and hunted and tried to kill those aforementioned Christians, so they went into hiding.
But my friend’s view is that the Church destroyed writings and hunted those early Christians, not because they didn’t believe in the Real Presence, for he believes they did, but because they were teaching that Jesus was married. He also believes all the reformers would have tried to hunt these true Christians down, so they stayed hidden until the 20th century.
And then another acquaintance believes the early Christians were hunted by the Church, and their writings destroyed, because they were teaching that Jesus had no problem with homosexuality. They have also remained hidden until the 20th century.
I know one thing. If I believed the Church was destroying all these writings, and hunting early Christians, leaving no traces of these people, I would worry about writings they let survive. Like the Bible.
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Wannano
Guest
You know what, there is a whole bunch of words being put in my mouth that I never said so let’s just forget the whole thing.
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Lenten_ashes
Guest
I think this is where examining Church history becomes helpful. The Didache and Justin Martyr’s first apology are good starters.
Wannano, what is your belief on Communion? Obviously it differs from us but do you believe in the real presence?
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susanlo
Guest
I don’t know of anybody being accused of being a heretic because of their belief in the substance of the Eucharist until around 1000AD when the belief in transubstantiation was formalized. Before that many different beliefs were acceptable. Certainly starting with Cyril of Jerusalem and Ambrose in the 4th Century, there were those stating that the Eucharistic elements changed in substance. Augustine came after them and taught differently.
In Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine Book III he clearly states:
“24. 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. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” John 6:53 This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share [communicandem] in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory [in memoria] of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.”
newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm
I have seen quotes taken from Augustine to support his belief in transubstantiation such as:
“What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction”
But when you read further in this sermon (earlychurchtexts.com/public/augustine_sermon_272_eucharist.htm) he states:
“My friends, these realities are called sacraments because in them one thing is seen, while another is grasped. What is seen is a mere physical likeness; what is grasped bears spiritual fruit.”
I wonder if your quote on worshipping the host is from Augustine’s Exposition of the Psalm 98?
“He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord’s may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping.”
At the end of this paragraph he clarifies that it is spiritually and not carnally understood:
“Understand spiritually what I have said; you are not to eat this body which you see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.”
newadvent.org/fathers/1801099.htm
Actually Theodoret (393-457), wrote a dialogue in order to combat a heresy denying the 2 natures of Christ. In his diaglogue ‘Orthodoxos’ represents the orthodox belief while ‘Eranistes’ represents the heretic. The Eucharist is used as an example in Dialogue 2:
"Eran.— As, then, the symbols of the Lord’s body and blood are one thing before the priestly invocation, and after the invocation are changed and become another thing; so the Lord’s body after the assumption is changed into the divine substance.
Orth.— You are caught in the net you have woven yourself. For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be…"
I think of what these men are stating at their time and comparing that to statements made in the Council of Trent like:
“If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ;** but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema**.”
It seems clear that the understanding changed over the centuries. I wonder if Augustine and Theodoret taught in the 1500’s if they would be considered heretics.
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susanlo
Guest
I forgot to include the link: newadvent.org/fathers/27032.htm
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commenter
Guest
There was no effort until the last few decades to add to the US constitution the wording that marriage involved a man and a woman. That doesn’t mean the average American in prior 2 centuries was “unclear” about this core doctrine, or that it was “invented” in the 1980s.
Many Protestant denominations have in recent decades begun taking explicit positions in denominational statements, and in sermons, about same sex marriage, legal abortion, and other recent concerns. There is often detailed explanation provided of the Christian position, far more than would have been regarded as necessary in 1960. That does not mean they were “unclear” in 1960, nor that people benefit from the heretics that have run the media since then, making such explanations today necessary.
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Wannano
Guest
My apologies to the origin of this thread, it was not my intent to derail it. I responded to a comment in post #20 that the Real Presence had not been questioned for 1000 years. In retrospect I should have left it alone.
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Duane1966
Guest
Did he now? All one needs is one quote from St. Augustine, to realize he believed in transubstantiation. Before I give it, here are some quotes from leading Protestant historians on St. Augustine:
All one needs is this quote from St. Augustine, to realize he believed in transubstantiation:
Here is J.N.D. Kelly’s comment on what St. Augustine just said, again from the aforementioned book:
And here is what everyone should immediately realize, and is the reason one can confidently say St. Augustine believed in transubstantiation. If St. Augustine does not believe the bread and wine has fully transubstantiated. If he believes that even one minute particle remains bread, then saying the Eucharist demanded adoration, would be demanding idolatry on his part. One would be adoring Jesus, AND a small particle of bread. St. Augustine would never promote idolatry, ergo, he MUST have held to an early form of transubstantiation.
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commenter
Guest
You and me both.
Commenter
source of post #20 tangent, and hundreds of other tangents on CAF, and In Real Life.
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susanlo
Guest
You quoted JND Kelly: ““One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements WITH THE SACRED BODY AND BLOOD. There can be NO DOUBT that he shared the REALISM held by almost ALL his contemporaries and predecessors.”
(J.N.D.Kelly, EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES, pg. 446-447)
The difficulty with JND Kelly is that he uses ‘realism’ in a way that isn’t synonymous with ‘real presence.’ On page 440 of this book he states that:
“In examining the later doctrine of the Eucharist it will be convenient, as in Chapter VIII, to begin with the ideas currently entertained about the Lord’s presence in the sacrament. Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e. the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Saviour’s body and blood. Among theologians, however,** this identity was interpreted in our period in at least two different ways**, and those interpretations, mutually exclusive though they were in strict logic, were often allowed to overlap.** In the first place, the figurative or the symbolical view, which stressed the distinction between the visible elements and reality they represented**, still claimed a measure of support. It harked back, as we have seen, to Tertullian and Cyprian, and was given a renewed lease on life through the powerful influence of Augustine. **Secondly, however, a new and increasingly potent tendency becomes observable to explain the identity as being the result of an actual change or conversion in the bread and wine. **The connexion between these theories and the different ideas about consecration referred to in the first section of this chapter hardly needs to be pointed out.”
Pages 440-449 are of Kelly’s book are a good read and explain his understandings of what the early theologians understood about the elements of the Eucharist. archive.org/stream/pdfy-CY7YNVnvFwggDjnT/103911481-J-N-D-Kelly-Early-Christian-Doctrines#page/n451/mode/2up
Kelly gives a complex explanation of Augustine’s view of the Eucharistic elements.
To be continued…
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