question about the eucharist

[Contarini]

The key is “first fruits”.

Our Lord directs his disciples to offer the first fruits. If these refer to bread and wine, how can we be sure that the bread and wine are always first fruits? However, we can be sure that Christ’s Resurrected Body, if the intended offering, was the first fruit.

Clever, but strained. It’s much more likely that Irenaeus is using “first fruits” somewhat loosely for its OT resonances. The Catholic liturgists who inserted the “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation” prayers into the Eucharistic Prayer after Vatican II would appear to agree with this interpretation, speaking of our offering “the fruit of the earth, the work of human hands” to God. J. N. D. Kelly also agrees with my interpretation of Irenaeus (Early Christian Doctrines, p. 197), saying that Irenaeus thinks of the bread and wine “primarily as first-fruits of the earth” and does not identify the Eucharistic sacrifice as closely with Christ’s sacrifice as Justin Martyr does. Kelly also points out, quite rightly, that “the idea of the passion pervades this approach too.”

I’m not trying to separate sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving from the propitiatory aspect. I agree that they go together very well, and that the language of these Fathers is arguably implicitly propitiatory. But David’s blustery refusal to acknowledge that the OP is raising any legitimate point at all is disastrously wrongheaded.

Edwin

 

[DavidFilmer]

This doesn’t make sense. Angel1 claimed that until after Irenaeus the references to the Eucharist as a sacrifice appeared to refer to a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and not to a propitiatory sacrifice. Obviously the only to refute that is to show that these passages do refer to a propitiatory sacrifice.

WHAT passages? Angel1 did not cite ANY passages. There are NO passages from the Early Fathers before (or, really, after) Irenaeus that suggest that the Eucharist is not a propitiatory sacrifice.

C’mon! Angel1 claimed (without citing ANYTHING) that he had personally made a study of the Early Fathers and found a consensus that was not dispelled until after Irenaeus. Do you REALLY believe that???

There IS NO SUCH CONSENSUS. There is not even one single reference that he (or you) can cite. PROVE ME WRONG. Cite SOMETHING. ANYTHING.

He claims to have read something that does not exist, and that he obviously cannot cite. You might notice that he has abandoned this thread, while you continue to play the role of his understudy (or are you really angel1 posting under a different account?)

 

[Contarini]

WHAT passages? Angel1 did not cite ANY passages. There are NO passages from the Early Fathers before (or, really, after) Irenaeus that suggest that the Eucharist is not a propitiatory sacrifice.

She cited the passage from Irenaeus. And you’re setting up an absurd standard. She didn’t claim that the Fathers explicitly reject the view that the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice. If no one had yet thought of the idea, no one could reject it, could they? Therefore, you are asking for something absurd.

She simply pointed out what anyone can see from reading the early Fathers, which is that they do not explicitly speak of the Eucharist as propitiatory, but do sometimes speak of it as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Instead of helping her work through this, which isn’t even that hard to do (it’s a textbook case of “development of doctrine,” with considerably fewer issues than, say, the development of Trinitarian doctrine) you chose to rail at her and accuse her of having claimed something she never claimed, while completely ignoring the point she actually made.

Edwin