Name one issue the ECF's were unanimous on!

[Jerry-Jet]

If you don’t “Discern the Body” you eat and drink judgement on yourself!

That’s what the Bible says!

No body in the Eucharist = you don’t discern the body!

What part of that do people Not understand?

 

[DCD]

Augustine, Tertullian and Cyprian, held a symbolical theory of the Supper…

Which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith similar to the Calvinist or Reformed doctrine.

Tertullian is not a Church Father.

Peace,
David

 

[Jerry-Jet]

All of them together do not constitute the magisterium in union with the pope.

There you will find real truth!

Why?

Because they’re the sucessors to the ones that Jesus gave authority to–who likewise trnsferred that authority to them and who he promised that the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth!

If you’ve got a problem with that you’ve got a problem with Jesus!

 

[savedsinner]

Augustine, Tertullian and Cyprian, held a symbolical theory of the Supper…

Which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith similar to the Calvinist or Reformed doctrine.

I think if you research this a little bit more, you will find that they all believed in the real presence, just as the Catholics teach and believe.

The doctrine of Transubstantiation had not yet been fully defined, so some of the early fathers in trying to define it, would use terms like “symbol”. They were trying to explain how the physical appearance looked the same, but the substance changed.
That should not be taken the same way Protestants today think of the eucharist as being a symbol. Again the early fathers believed in the real presence, but used words to define it which we really wouldn’t use today.

 

[bpbasilphx]

ANYONE?
Anything?

That our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, and the only savior.

Will that do for starters?

 

[myfavoritmartin]

from Tertullian

“[T]here is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed [in baptism], in order that the soul may be cleansed . . . the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands [in confirmation], that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds [in the Eucharist] on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may be filled with God” (The Resurrection of the Dead 8 [A.D. 210]).

.

Tertullian rejected transubstantiation:

“Will not your [unbelieving] husband know what it is which you secretly taste before taking any food? and if he knows it to be bread, does he not believe it to be that bread which it is said to be?” (To His Wife, 2:5)

“Now, because they thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh, He, with the view of ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth;’ and then added, ‘The flesh profiteth nothing,’–meaning, of course, to the giving of life.” (On the Ressurection of the Flesh, 37)

“Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the ‘beggarly elements’ of the Creator.” (Against Marcion, 1:14)

“Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure…In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?’ The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, saying, ‘He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes’ -in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.” (Against Marcion, 4:40)

 

[myfavoritmartin]

from Augustine

“Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands” (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).

“I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ” (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).

…

“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” (ibid., 272).

Augustines view of the presence contradicts transubstantiation.
LOOK…
“You know that in ordinary parlance we often say, when Easter is approaching, ‘Tomorrow or the day after is the Lord’s Passion,’ although He suffered so many years ago, and His passion was endured once for all time. In like manner, on Easter Sunday, we say, ‘This day the Lord rose from the dead,’ although so many years have passed since His resurrection. But no one is so foolish as to accuse us of falsehood when we use these phrases, for this reason, that we give such names to these days on the ground of a likeness between them and the days on which the events referred to actually transpired, the day being called the day of that event, although it is not the very day on which the event took place, but one corresponding to it by the revolution of the same time of the year, and the event itself being said to take place on that day, because, although it really took place long before, it is on that day sacramentally celebrated. Was not Christ once for all offered up in His own person as a sacrifice? and yet, is He not likewise offered up in the sacrament as a sacrifice, not only in the special solemnities of Easter, but also daily among our congregations; so that the man who, being questioned, answers that He is offered as a sacrifice in that ordinance, declares what is strictly true? For if sacraments had notsome points of real resemblance to the things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. In most cases, moreover, they do in virtue of this likeness bear the names of the realities which they resemble. As, therefore, in a certain manner the sacrament of Christ’s body is Christ’s body, and the sacrament of Christ’s blood is Christ’s blood,’ in the same manner the sacrament of faith is faith.” (Letter 98:9)

Augustine compares the eucharist to a holiday in that it has some similarities to what it symbolizes, but it isn’t the same thing.

He says elsewhere:

“But He instructed them, and saith unto them, ‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.’ Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth.” (Expositions on the Psalms, 99:8)

 

[myfavoritmartin]

continued…

Elsewhere, Augustine denies that there is any bodily presence of Christ in the church today:

“It may be also understood in this way: ‘The poor ye will have always with you, but me ye will not have always.’ The good may take it also as addressed to themselves, but not so as to be any source of anxiety; for He was speaking of His bodily presence. For in respect of His majesty, His providence, His ineffable and invisible grace, His own words are fulfilled, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.’ But in respect of the flesh He assumed as the Word, in respect of that which He was as the son of the Virgin, of that wherein He was seized by the Jews, nailed to the tree, let down from the cross, enveloped in a shroud, laid in the sepulchre, and manifested in His resurrection, ‘ye will not have Him always.’ And why? Because in respect of His bodily presence He associated for forty days with His disciples, and then, having brought them forth for the purpose of beholding and not of following Him, He ascended into heaven and is no longer here. He is there, indeed, sitting at the right hand of the Father; and He is here also, having never withdrawn the presence of His glory. In other words, in respect of His divine presence we always have Christ; in respect of His presence in the flesh it was rightly said to the disciples, ‘Me ye will not have always.’ In this respect the Church enjoyed His presence only for a few days: now it possesses Him by faith, without seeing Him with the eyes.” (Lectures on the Gospel of John, 50:13)

 

[myfavoritmartin]

from Cyprian of Carthage

“He [Paul] threatens, moreover, the stubborn and forward, and denounces them, saying, ‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. All these warnings being scorned and contemned—[lapsed Christians will often take Communion] before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, [and so] violence is done to his body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord” (The Lapsed 15–16 [A.D. 251]).

**
And lastly Jane more on Cyprian…**
"For when Christ says, ‘I am the true vine.’ the blood of Christ is assuredly not water, but wine; neither can His blood by which we are redeemed and quickened appear to be in the cup, when in the cup there is no wine whereby the blood of Christ is shown forth, which is declared by the sacrament and testimony of all the Scriptures. For we find in Genesis also, in respect of the sacrament in Noe, this same thing was to them a precursor and figure of the Lord’s passion; that he drank wine; that he was drunken; that he was made naked in his household; that he was lying down with his thighs naked and exposed; that the nakedness of the father was observed by his second son, and was told abroad, but was covered by two, the eldest and the youngest; and other matters which it is not necessary to follow out, since this is enough for us to embrace alone, that Noe, setting forth a type of the future truth, did not drink water, but wine, and thus expressed the figure of the passion of the Lord…

For who is more a priest of the most high God than our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and offered that very same thing which Melchizedek had offered, that is, bread and wine, to wit, His body and blood?..

Moreover the Holy Spirit by Solomon shows before the type of the Lord’s sacrifice, making mention of the immolated victim, and of the bread and wine, and, moreover, of the altar and of the apostles, and says, ‘Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath underlaid her seven pillars; she hath killed her victims; she hath mingled her wine in the chalice; she hath also furnished her table: and she hath sent forth her servants, calling together with a lofty announcement to her cup, saying, Whoso is simple, let him turn to me; and to those that want understanding she hath said, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled for you.’ He declares the wine mingled, that is, he foretells with prophetic voice the cup of the Lord mingled with water and wine, that it may appear that that was done in our Lord’s passion which had been before predicted…

To which things divine Scripture adds, and says, ‘He shall wash His garment in wine, and His clothing in the blood of the grape.’ But when the blood of the grape is mentioned, what else is set forth than the wine of the cup of the blood of the Lord?..

The treading also, and pressure of the wine-press, is repeatedly dwelt on; because just as the drinking of wine cannot be attained to unless the bunch of grapes be first trodden and pressed, so neither could we drink the blood of Christ unless Christ had first been trampled upon and pressed, and had first drunk the cup of which He should also give believers to drink…

In which portion we find that the cup which the Lord offered was mixed, and that that was wine which He called His blood. Whence it appears that the blood of Christ is not offered if there be no wine in the cup…

the divine Scripture in the Apocalypse declares that the waters signify the people, saying, ‘The waters which thou sawest, upon which the whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes, and nations of the Gentiles, and tongues,’ which we evidently see to be contained also in the sacrament of the cup. For because Christ bore us all, in that He also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ. But when the water is mingled in the cup with wine, the people is made one with Christ, and the assembly of believers is associated and conjoined with Him on whom it believes; which association and conjunction of water and wine is so mingled in the Lord’s cup, that that mixture cannot any more be separated…

But the discipline of all religion and truth is overturned, unless what is spiritually prescribed be faithfully observed; unless indeed any one should fear in the morning sacrifices, lest by the taste of wine he should be redolent of the blood of Christ." (Letter 62:2-7, 62:9, 62:12-13, 62:15)

 

[Janet_S]

This is from the CCC:

III. THE EUCHARIST IN THE ECONOMY OF SALVATION

1333 At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ’s Body and Blood. Faithful to the Lord’s command the Church continues to do, in his memory and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his Passion: “He took bread. . . .” “He took the cup filled with wine. . . .” The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus in the Offertory we give thanks to the Creator for bread and wine,152 fruit of the “work of human hands,” but above all as “fruit of the earth” and “of the vine” - gifts of the Creator. The Church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek, who “brought out bread and wine,” a prefiguring of her own offering.153
152 Cf. Ps 104:13-15.
153 Gen 14:18; cf. Roman Missal, EP I (Roman Canon) 95.

1355 In the communion, preceded by the Lord’s prayer and the breaking of the bread, the faithful receive “the bread of heaven” and “the cup of salvation,” the body and blood of Christ who offered himself “for the life of the world”:179

Because this bread and wine have been made Eucharist (“eucharisted,” according to an ancient expression), "we call this food Eucharist, and no one may take part in it unless he believes that what we teach is true, has received baptism for the forgiveness of sins and new birth, and lives in keeping with what Christ taught."180
179 Jn 6:51.
180 St. Justin, Apol. 1, 66,1-2: PG 6, 428.

1374 The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend."199 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained."200 "This presence is called ‘real’ - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."201
199 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, 73, 3c.
200 Council of Trent (1551): DS 1651.
201 Paul VI, MF 39.

I don’t see anything in the ECF quotes you cite that contradict Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. You’re seeing something we do not.

Surely you don’t think the ECF’s sound like fundamentalists, do you? Would any fundamentalist write so much about the Eucharist or the Lord’s supper as Cyprian, Augustine, or Tertullian did?

 

[mikeledes]

The Eucharist has a literal and a figurative dimension. The visible signs of bread and wine are figures of the invisible reality. The Church Fathers often discussed this symbolic dimension. Therefore, when we find Saint Augustine at one point asserting the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and at another point discussing the symbolic dimension of the Eucharist, he is not contradicting himself and he is not contradicting Catholic theology.

God Bless,
Michael

 

[Janet_S]

MFM,

In the above post, I cited the CCC to show the Church’s official teaching about the Eucharist.

Can you point us to the particular lines from your quotes that support what you claim here in reference to Catholic teaching:

–Tertullian rejected transubstantiation.

–Augustines view of the presence contradicts transubstantiation.

–Augustine compares the eucharist to a holiday in that it has some similarities to what it symbolizes, but it isn’t the same thing.

–Elsewhere, Augustine denies that there is any bodily presence of Christ in the church today.

You gave us some lengthy quotes, and I read them carefully, but, honestly, I just don’t see it.

 

[JaneFrances]

Augustines view of the presence contradicts transubstantiation.
LOOK…

As I am much more familar with the scope of St. Augustine’s work, I decided to start a new thread analyzing the quotations of Augustine you cited in support of your claims above.

Please join me here: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=175485

I am not opposed to discussing Tertullian and Cyprian as well, but rather than shotgunning in vain, I thought a purposeful and thorough discussion on one particular Father would serve this purpose better. And a new thread will not derail the purpose of this thread’s OP.

As surely you know, you can cite a quotation out of context and have it say almost anything you choose. Let’s not be so capricious with these texts.

I invite myfavoritmartin and, of course, anyone else interested to join in what could prove to be a very profitable and lively discussion!

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Why do people that hate the Catholic faith of the Early Church Fathers appeal to them to support attacks against Jesus’ Catholic Church?

They don’t believe them on a million things but will take any snippet out of context and say "See they should be BELIEVED on this one little part?

And who cares what the Early Church Fathers said about anything that is not in total agreement with the magisterium of the Catholic Church of the bishops united with the successor of Peter.

That’s all that has ever mattered when it comes to truth.

And if hearing that same truth from over 99% of the Early Church fathers who ascribed to the catholic Faith doesn’t convince you–why do you insult the intelligence of Catholics and think that out of context snippets of the non-magisterium would persuade a Catholic who believes in the magisterium to follow the path of heretics and separated bretheren who Do Know better on the pathway to Hell?

 

[captaincoog]

I copied a post I made from another thread and thought I’d chuck it in here too…

Why do Protestants spend so much time and energy trying, without success, to find fault with anything and everything to do with the Catholic Church.

I don’t go around trying to disprove the boogey-man - it doesn’t matter to me at all.

I don’t go around trying to prove the Mormons wrong, and they are far more into error than most mainline protestant groups. So why is it so with Protestants??

Is it because all Protestant groups have their origins in a split with the Catholic Church some time in the past 500 or so years.

It is because this is the only way they can justify their relatively new religion?

If it wasn’t for the Church, they would not have anything else to protest against. Is it a subconcious insecurity that the Church may be right, even if it’s a one in a milion shot?

I see a lot of them here asking questions like the OP, all of which have been done to death over and over again, and soundly proven wrong by the Catholic position.

Just wondering…

 

[Rbt_Southwell]

MFM,

In the above post, I cited the CCC to show the Church’s official teaching about the Eucharist.

Can you point us to the particular lines from your quotes that support what you claim here in reference to Catholic teaching:

–Tertullian rejected transubstantiation.

–Augustines view of the presence contradicts transubstantiation.

–Augustine compares the eucharist to a holiday in that it has some similarities to what it symbolizes, but it isn’t the same thing.

–Elsewhere, Augustine denies that there is any bodily presence of Christ in the church today.

You gave us some lengthy quotes, and I read them carefully, but, honestly, I just don’t see it.

myfavoritemartin;

Are you still there? Any answers to these points?

Robert

 

[bpbasilphx]

<<–Tertullian rejected transubstantiation.

–Augustines view of the presence contradicts transubstantiation.

–Augustine compares the eucharist to a holiday in that it has some similarities to what it symbolizes, but it isn’t the same thing.>>

1. Tertullian is to be approached with caution. He is NOT considered a saint and did NOT die at peace with the church, but had first went off into Montanism, and then founded his own sect. (Origen, for that matter, is not a saint either. He’s like the girl with the curl: when he’s good, he’s very good, and when he’s bad he’s horrid.)
2. When St. Augustine and others used “symbol” or other such words for the Eucharist, it did not imply the same thing as “symbol” does today. In Patristic diction, the “symbol” (a bringing together of two realities, “syn” + “bolos”) was actually the thing symbolized. It was NOT a mere empty sign.

I might also add that St. Augustine doesn’t have the same influence in the East that he has in the west.

Nobody ever said that the Fathers were absolutely 100% unanimous in all things, and it’s puerile to act like this is so. As one person put it, “If the river of patristic teaching is 100 yards wide, wade out 50 yards and head downstream.”

Think of a Venn diagram illustrating an intersection of several sets. THIS intersection, where there is general agreement, is the “patristic consensus.”