Transubstantiation and church fathers

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what is the best way to approach these sorts of arguments below?

i realize some of the strongest points are argued to be 1. folks like augustian could be argued to also be a literalist 2. figure and sign are uses that even literalists would use to describe the underlying situation 3. the statistical majority of people were overwhelmingly slash significantly literalists 4. it wasn’t until later when the dissensions arose that the literal interpretation was much contested, which indicates it was not open to ideas earlier.

in response to these points.though.
  1. isn’t it more like augustian is showing that his literal sounding talk is figurative more than his figurative is literal? that is, particularly referencing the bondage points, and the ‘this is symbolism’ point.
  2. this is a pretty good point for Catholics, the figure and sign thing. but what makes one so sure, when the other points here cast as much doubt as they do on the situation?
    3 and 4 , how can it be better demonstrated empirically statistically and preferably geographically that it was “overwhelmingly” or at least “significantly” the predominant view in the early church? this would address both the consensus issue then, and over time if it later arose to be open to ideas.
i would hate for a writer to find a few bad apples, and some taken out of context figure and sign quotes slash apples, and act as if a consensus wasn’t then, when it really was.
 
Church Fathers on Transubstantiation
Question: The early church fathers believed in the real presence in the Eucharist…

Answer: Some church fathers believed in the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist; others considered the elements as signs of the body and blood of Christ, and that His presence is spiritual. Paschasius Radbertus was the first to formulate the doctrine of transubstantiation in the ninth century. He was opposed by Ratranmus, a contemporary monk at the monastery of Corbie. Ratranmus wrote: “The bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ in a figurative sense” (De corpore et sanguine Christi). This controversy between two Catholic monks shows that both views were present in the Catholic church at least up to the eleventh century. The debate continued until the thirteenth century when the final decision was taken by the Lateran Council in 1215. Eventually Radbertus was canonized while Ratranmus’ work was placed on the index of forbidden books. The Doctor of the Church, Duns Scotus, admits that transubstantiation was not an article of faith before that the thirteenth century.
It is misleading to speak about “real presence” as if the term is equivalent to “transubstantiation.” Christians, who consider the bread and wine as strictly symbolical, also believe in the real presence of the Lord among them. Jesus said: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Surely Christ is present in the congregation of His people, as He promises, especially during the celebration of the Supper. His presence is real even though it is spiritual and not carnal.
The Roman Catholic doctrine is defined in the second canon of the thirteenth session of the Council of Trent:
If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.
In other words, the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, and in the process the bread and wine cease to exist, except in appearance. The ‘substance’ of the bread and wine do not remain.
Catholic websites list quotations from the Fathers which supposedly prove the Catholic doctrine. When read superficially and out of context they seem to give clear evidence in favour of transubstantiation. In fact, they do not! I suggest we take as second look at the three quotations above (which are representative of many similar quotations), while keeping in mind Augustine’s advice “to guard us against taking a metaphorical form of speech as if it were literal.” Augustine refers to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist to illustrate this important principle:
“…our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many (Old Testament rites), and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage” (On Christian Doctrine, Book 3).
It is wrong to interpret literal speech figuratively; it is equally wrong to interpret metaphorical speech literally. So, let’s see, did the early Fathers believe in transubstantiation, namely the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ?
Ignatius
Ignatius argued against the Gnostic Docetists. They denied the true physical existence of our Lord; thus they also denied his death and resurrection. Ignatius wrote:
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, Flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His goodness, raised up again.
The problem with the Gnostics concerned the person of Christ and not the nature of the Eucharist. The heretics did not participate in the Eucharist because they did not believe in what the Eucharist represents, namely the true, physical flesh of Jesus, who actually and really suffered on the cross, and who was really resurrected from the dead.
We do not have to take the phrase “the Eucharist is the flesh” in a literalistic manner. As in everyday speech, as well as in the Bible, it could simply mean that the Eucharist represents the flesh of Christ. To illustrate, take a similar argument by Tertullian. He is also using the Eucharist to combat Docetism:
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 (Against Marcion, Bk 4).
Tertullian is even more emphatic than Ignatius. He says that Jesus made the bread his own body. But unlike Ignatius, Tertullian goes on to clarify what he meant. Rather than saying that the bread ceases to exist, he calls it the “the figure” of the body of Christ and maintains a clear distinction between the figure and what it represents, namely the “veritable body” of our Lord.
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr (A.D. 151) writes:
 
Augustine
Catholic authors often misuse Augustine’s figurative writings to support the doctrine of transubstantiation. The following example is a case in point:
That bread, which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive. You see, the apostle says, We, being many, are one loaf, one body (1 Cor. 10.17). That’s how he explained the sacrament of the Lord’s Table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be (Augustine, Sermons, 227).
Augustine believed that in a sense the elements are the body and blood of Jesus. “The bread…is the body of Christ…that cup…is the blood of Christ.” In what sense is he speaking? Is the substance of the bread changed into the body of Christ? Or is bread the body of Christ in a symbolic sense? We can readily discover the answer to this all important question.
First, looking at the context, it is clear that Augustine is using figurative language. Just as he asserts that the bread is the body of Christ, he is equally emphatic that Christians are one loaf, one body.Clearly, he means that the one Eucharistic loaf represents the unity among believers. Similarly, “by means of these things” - the bread and the cup - the Lord presents his people with his body and blood. The Eucharistic elements are the figure or sign of Christ, as Augustine asserts explicitly elsewhere in his writings:
The Lord did not hesitate to say: “This is My Body”, when He wanted to give a sign of His body” (Augustine, Against Adimant).
He [Christ] committed and delivered to His disciples the figure of His Body and Blood” (Augustine, on Psalm 3).
[The sacraments] 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” (Augustine, Letter 98, From Augustine to Boniface).
The Eucharist is the figure of the body and blood of Jesus. Since the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ, it is acceptable to call them His body and His blood. The bread resembles the body; therefore it is called the body even though it is not the reality it represents. That is perfectly normal in figurative language.
Augustine believed that the bread and cup were signs, which he defines in this manner: “a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself” (On Christian Doctrine, 2, 1). Therefore, when we see the bread, something else comes to mind, namely, the body of Christ. The mistake of the modern Catholic Church is to confuse the sign with the reality it represents.
Augustine rightly warns that “to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage” (On Christian Doctrine 3,9). Augustine is here referring to the sacrament of baptism and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. Thus, to confuse the bread (the sign) for the body of Christ (the signified) is, according to Augustine a mark of weakness and bondage.

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Church Fathers on the Eucharistic Elements
Question: If God can become man, would it be so impossible that he could make himself present in bread and wine. His Church has believed it since the time of Christ. Why did somebody come along centuries later and try to tell people that He only meant it symbolically, and on what authority did they change what the Church has always believed?
Answer: From the Catholic point of view, it is incorrect to say that Christ is “present in bread and wine.” That’s more like the concept of consubstantiation (the substance of the body and blood of Jesus coexists with the substance of the bread and wine in the Eucharist) rather that the Catholictransubstantiation (the whole substance of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ).
It is simply not true that the church “always believed” the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Please study the following quotations; they prove that some Church Fathers considered the Eucharist as the figure, sign, symbol and likeness of the body and blood of Christ.
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. (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4.)
Bread and wine are offered, being the figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who participate in this visible bread eat, spiritually, the flesh of the Lord. (Macarius, Homily xxvii.)
For He, we know, who spoke of his natural body as corn and bread, and, again, called Himself a vine, dignified the visible symbols by the appellation of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace. (Theodoret, Diologue I, Eranistes and Orthodoxus.)
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. (Theodoret, Dialogue II, Eranistes and Orthodoxus.)
For the Lord did not hesitate to say: “This is My Body”, when He wanted to give a sign of His body. (Augustine, Against Adimant.)
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. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us. (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, III.)
He admitted him to the Supper in which He committed and delivered to His disciples thefigure of His Body and Blood. (Augustine, on Psalm 3.)
We have received a memorial of this offering which we celebrate on a table by means ofsymbols of His Body and saving Blood according to the laws of the new covenant. (Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica.)
To You we offer this bread, the likeness of the Body of the Only-begotten. This bread is the likeness of His holy Body because the Lord Jesus Christ, on the night on which He was betrayed, took bread and broke and gave to His disciples, saying, “Take and eat, this is My Body, which is broken for you, unto the remission of sins.” (Anaphora, quoted in Jurgens W, The Faith of the Early Fathers, II, p 132.)
Offer the acceptable Eucharist, the representation of the royal body of Christ. (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles.)
Certainly the sacraments of the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive are a divine reality, because of which and through which we are made sharers of the divine nature. Nevertheless the substance or nature of bread and wine does not cease to exist. And certainly the image and likeness of the Body and Blood of Christ are celebrated in the carrying out the Mysteries. (Pope Gelasius, de Duabus Naturis).
Thus some influential Church Fathers considered the bread and wine as sacred symbols of the body and blood of Jesus. Others did not. The view of other Fathers (Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, etc) were similar to, and later developed into, the doctrine of transubstantiation. There wasn’t a unanimous understanding among the Fathers on the nature of the eucharistic elements.
It is tragic that the Supper which Christ instituted as a memorial for His people became the occasion for bitter controversy, persecution and schisms. The focus is all wrong. Our concern should not be the bread and wine as such, but what they signify, namely Christ, whose body was crucified for us and whose blood was shed for the forgiveness of sin.
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for a catholic point, i wouldnt be surprised if the ‘figurative’ sounding quotes are close to the extent of what was found, or could be found, for figurativeness. if that was the case, that would underscore a very weak argument indeed. both cause the findings are weak, and because surely some of those quotes are just coming from a catholic point of view, namely there’s literal underlying eucharist with symbols involved.
 
Wow you wrote a lot.

One mistake you make is saying the fathers such as Ignatius wrote to the Gnostics and so it should be read through a gnostic lens. This is not true. He wrote to the churches and explained Christian teaching to non Gnostics.

therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/a5.html

Here is what. Believe to be the clearest quotes from the Fathers on this issue.

“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”

Ignatius of Antioch “Letter to the Smyrnaeans”, paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D.

“Take care, then who belong to God and to Jesus Christ - they are with the bishop. And those who repent and come to the unity of the Church - they too shall be of God, and will be living according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons.”

Ignatius of Antioch -Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1, 110 A.D.

“This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”

Justin Martyr “First Apology”, Ch. 66, inter A.D. 148-155.

“So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ’s Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, ‘For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones’ (Eph. 5:30). He is not talking about some kind of ‘spiritual’ and ‘invisible’ man, ‘for a spirit does not have flesh an bones’ (Lk. 24:39). No, he is talking of the organism possessed by a real human being, composed of flesh and nerves and bones. It is this which is nourished by the cup which is His Blood, and is fortified by the bread which is His Body. The stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and ‘the grain of wheat falls into the earth’ (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ.”

St Ireneaus -"Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely
 
Why can it not be both symbol and real presence?

Why was this not a divisive issue until the 1500’s when non priests wanted to give communion?

Not one quote you gave refutes the real presence. Some of them talk about the symbolism but that does not mean that Christ is not truly present there. It can be both.

Why do all apostolic churches teach this, even those out of communion with Rome like Orthodox and ones that were always somewhat separated such as the Coptic and Ethiopian Church.
 
Misuse of Augustine quote.
linate said:
…
Catholic websites list quotations from the Fathers which supposedly prove the Catholic doctrine. When read superficially and out of context they seem to give clear evidence in favour of transubstantiation. In fact, they do not! I suggest we take as second look at the three quotations above (which are representative of many similar quotations), while keeping in mind Augustine’s advice “to guard us against taking a metaphorical form of speech as if it were literal.” Augustine refers to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist to illustrate this important principle:
“…our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many (Old Testament rites), and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage” (On Christian Doctrine, Book 3).
Click to expand...
From the same source:

(On Christian Doctrine, Book 3).
  1. Now he is in bondage to a sign who uses, or pays homage to, any significant object without knowing what it signifies: he, on the other hand, who either uses or honors a useful sign divinely appointed, whose force and significance he understands, does not honor the sign which is seen and temporal, but that to which all such signs refer.
'Nuff said. Augustine clearly saw “figure” as meaning “outward appearance” and the outward appearance is obviously bread and wine.

This also has a connection to Augustine’s statement in that same work that “if a command of the Lord seems to enjoin a crime e.g, eat My Body and drink my Blood) then it is a figure”.

The figure in that case is then the act, and not the elements of the act. It is the eating externally,physically, that is the figure of the spiritual eating. But what is eaten is actually eaten (our Lord’s Body and Blood). Augustine never denies this. It is just that the eating enjoined is an eating spiritually.

This is clarified at the end of one of Augustine’s Tractates on John 6 (verse 53?), where he says that we are to “not eat merely the Body and Blood of the Lord in the Sacrament…, but to eat to the participation of the Spirit”.

peace
steve
 
St Ambrose, who played a significant role in the conversion of st augustine, pretty clearly described an early but clear form of transubstation. St Ambrose was taught by the older St simplicianus who also later taught st augustine.
 
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