Sola Scriptura:
Yes, Augustine believes in a real presence, but once again for Augustine a real presence does not equal a physical presence or transubstantiation. Schaff, just like Kelly knows this. The quote provided by Randy and his source leaves so out important information so as to distort Schaff’s point. Here is part of what they leave out that shows Schaff means the same thing as Kelly when he says Augustine believed in a real presence.
Something is clear about Sola Scriptura and OTHER protestants is that they like to take things out of context…
Who cares what Schaff or Kelly say… Rather, let us see what St. Augustine says:
“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” (Saint Augustine - Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).
Whoever says St. Augustine meant to be spiritual, must be blind!!!
“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, i
s 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” (St. Augustine - 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).
AGAIN, they must be blind to say that St. Augustine considered it to be only spiritual.
We see also how Sola Scriptura likes to take things out of context by the citation he uses in his signature which COMES from St. Irenaeus of Lyon:
The whole citation should read:
"We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation,
than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a
later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the
Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. But
when, the heretics refute Scriptures, as if they were wrong,
and unauthorative, and were variable, and the truth could
not be extracted from them by those who were ignorant of
tradition…
And when we challenge them in turn with that
Tradition, which is from the Apostles,
which is guarded by
the succession of elders in the churches, they oppose
themselves to Tradition, saying that they are wiser, not
only than those elders, but even than the Apostles.”
Against Heresies 3:1-2
Irenaeus was NOT in any way defending Sola Scriptura, he was only DEFENDING the Scriptures, this is WHY he appeals TO TRADITIONS!!!. If he maintained Sola Scriptura, he would not have appealed to Traditions. Irenaeus had to defend the Scriptures because the gnostics, to whom he mostly directs these writings, had their OWN scriptures and were saying that our scriptures were no authorative. The TRUTH that can be extracted from Scripture, to which Irenaeus is referring to are specific truths!, which were specific truths that OPPOSED the beliefs of the gnostics (e.g., that there were two gods, one good and one bad, that Christ did not die in the cross, but that he escaped the cross, etc). These beliefs, NO ONE who does consider Scripture authorative would believe them, because Scripture is very very clear that there is ONLY one GOD and that Christ DID die, thus you do not need Sacred Tradition to learn these specific truths from Scripture. Where Tradition is important is in things that are “difficult to understand that the ignorant (i.e., who is ignorant of Tradition) and unstable distort to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16)
Many blessings,
E.C.
