Posted on 11/05/2009 8:59:31 AM PST by Mr Rogers
I've noticed this repeatedly. Protestants who insist they can go to the Bible and read it for themselves, without any bishop or pope telling them what it means, seem equally convinced that they cannot understand the Fathers except after they've been post-processed by a Protestant theologian or patristic exegete.
Augustine had a "symbolical" view of the Eucharist, hmmm? He says in one place that we sin if we don't adore the Host. You think he's teaching that we ought to adore a symbol? Hardly.
There isn’t one Catholic in a hundred - and probably a thousand - who has actually READ the Church Fathers deeply. It is the project of a lifetime...thousands and thousands of pages, involving controversies most of us have never thought about.
Mad Dawg made a point on another thread about devotional language vs logical language. That is another challenge in reading the Church Fathers. They were Fathers, not writers of Systematic Theology.
Please don’t tell me Catholics immerse themselves in the Church Fathers and read them in unbiased fashion. Neither do Protestants. No one who cares enough to spend years in research does it ‘just because’, or in a dispassionate curiosity.
Schaff gives lots of examples on both sides, and sometimes on 3 or 4 sides. That is about as good as it gets.
Are they here trying to tell me what the Church Fathers said? No, and I wouldn't listen to them if they did.
Schaff gives lots of examples on both sides, and sometimes on 3 or 4 sides.
And he definitely picks and chooses, and definitely has an axe to grind, and definitely has a point of view, and definitely wants to justify his own Protestant POV.
I have to say that it is just baffling that many honest Christians - avowed, self-proclaimed fundamentalists - simply will not believe what it says, right there, in the Bible.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed (John 6:48-51; 52-55, RSV)
What can this mean? There is only one explanation. It is incredible - as incredible and as stunning as the Incarnation. But it is true. The Eucharist is God Himself, who gives Himself to us as food.
We adore you oh Christ and we praise You; because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.
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Relying on Schaff is not helpful. He does some special pleading when he deals with Tertullian or the Alexandrian Fathers, for instance. He uses words in English (figure, spiritual, allegory, symbol) that may or may not carry the same meaning as their Greek or Latin originals. “Spiritual” for instance has a whole range of meaning from merely symbolic to totally sacramentally real. Even “figura” was used in the 800s controversy between two monks, both of whom believed that Christ was really truly present to describe a “real” presence. “Figure” in English by itself would be misleading if it were used to translate the Latin “figura” when used by one of the debaters in that controversy but it would be accurate when used to translate the position of the other debater.
Schaff also does a sleight-of-hand trick by pointing out the absence of any detailed treatment of real presence in the first centuries, as if that means they didn’t believe in it. It could just as reasonably be used to infer that they did believe in it, that no one had even thought to challenge it.
Finally, another trick he uses is to quote Irenaeus or someone and then say, “Now, lookie here, Irenaeus’s position can’t be described as consubstantiation or transsubstantiation.”
Of course not. Consubstantiation and Transsubstantiation both presume real presence. If all one wants to do is affirm real presence, then one doesn’t use these words. They are used only when trying to explain in more detail HOW the real presence comes to be. So Irenaeus (or whomever it was) can and does assert real presence but does not assert transsubstantiation. And that he does not assert Transsub is exactly what one would expect because the HOW was not yet at issue. Yet Schaff implies that the absence of a transsub assertion means a lack of believe in real presence.
Schaff was too well trained not to know the difference. He’s speaking as a Reformed partisan-notice that he gets in a dig equally at LUtherans as at Catholics. If he only want to savage the Catholic position, he would only have mentioned the absence of transsub but he tosses in consub as well. That’s a way of a saying, “Take that, you dirty Lutherans, you’re just as damnably wrong as those Catholics.”
Sorry, but no cigar. This is Reformed propaganda.
If you want a really decent, fair Reformed disquisition on the topic, look at Alasdair I. Heron, _Table and Tradition_. Heron taught at Erlangen University’s German-Protestant theological faculty but was Scots and Presbyterian in background.
But he’s fair. Although he does not endorse a Catholic position, he does recognize that believe in the undeniable real sacramental presence is common throughout the early Fathers. He makes too much of the “symbolist” reading of Augustine, but he’s at least an honest broker with whom one can, as a Catholic debate.
But this 150-year-old stuff from Schaff, stuff it.
.
Augustine is the most-interpreted of all the Church fathers. Any genius (including Luther), precisely because of his nuanced mind, lends himself to varied interpretation.
The claim that Augustine had a “spiritualizing” view of Eucharistic presence goes back to Erasmus. It spawned the “sacramentarian” movement in the Low Countries which, many scholars believe, made its way down the Rhine and influence Zwingli to his extreme “merely symbolic” view (Calvin was not so extreme).
I think Augustine taught a genuine real presence, not a merely spiritual presence. Erasmus was wrong. But Dugmore and others popularized it and it’s now taken for granted by a lot of scholars.
You can interpret Augustine to support completely opposite viewpoints (e.g., on free will). I think it’s pretty clear that he had a full corporeal presence doctrine.
It all turns on what the meaning of spiritual is. Spiritual can mean “merely symbolic” or something between corporeal and merely symbolic (Calvin) or “sacramentally corporeal.”
The Catholic teaching is that the presence is corporeal but a unique kind of corporeality that is not sense perceptible, because obviously Christ’s presence is not visible or tangible in the Eucharist. “Sacramental” (special kind of corporeal) and “spiritual” are synonyms for those who believe in real but sacramental corporeal presence. But for those who believe in real absence (Zwingli) or spiritual but not corporeal (Calvin), “spiritual” is pitted against real and it means “sacramental” but sacramental understood as uncorporeal.
The history I just outline helps explained why Schaff and others claim that Augustine taught a spiritual presence. Isn’t that convenient, Augustine used the same word Calvin did. But did he mean the same thing as Calvin? I say no, Schaff says yes.
Alasdair Heron (mentioned in my preceding comment) also says no. He says Augustine did believe in real presence, not merely spiritual presence. Heron prefers to use “sacramental” to describe this real presence because “spiritual” can mean so many different things. We Catholics can also call the real corporal presence Sacramental presence because it’s not the same as everyday corporeal presence. We don’t mean quite the same thing as Heron means by “sacramental” but at least Heron doesn’t try to fit Augustine to a procrustean Calvinist bed. He remains a Reformed but he’s aware that Augustine didn’t exactly teach what Calvin taught and that Catholics are probably closer to Augustine’s real meaning. Heron does give more credence to Dugmore’s line of reasoning than I would, but still, he’s at least a Reformed thinker one can reason with.
That is an important thing to keep in the back of our minds. The reason why it is not sufficient to just read the Bible and believe is precisely because of 2,000 years of man-added meanings and traditions to all versions of Christianity. Today, we have volumes and volumes of books and documents which are almost impossible to digest by a single individuals, too voluminous for a human being to process.
Understanding early Church is not only dependent on the available evidence (archeology, manuscripts), but on the veracity of extant copies, on historical developments, on the political and social realities of the times, on social norms of the ancients as opposed to ours, etc. In short, in order to believe and to "know" that what you believe is true is no longer a matter of simply hearing the word. This is a very good post, very apropos. I will try to read all of it, piecemeal. However, I just wanted to call everyone's attention to the following statement of Justin Martyr:
Is this what the Church teaches today?
Maybe in the West. In the East, he is a minor saint, quite obscure.
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION ONE
“I BELIEVE” - “WE BELIEVE”
CHAPTER TWO
GOD COMES TO MEET MAN
50 By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation.1 Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
ARTICLE 1
THE REVELATION OF GOD
I. GOD REVEALS HIS “PLAN OF LOVING GOODNESS”
51 “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature.”2
Yes.
It was unheard of in Judaism to eat flesh and drink human blood. It is nowhere to be found in Jewish religious tradition as acceptable sacrifice.
And Jesus being a Jew who obeyed the Law perfectly would not have done something the Law explicitly fobids! So, something is not kosher here, no pun intended.
Therefore, the idea is either spiritually symbolic or it is cultist cannibalism. It cannot be both. God offeirng himself as real food and real drink...so that by consuming him we are consumed by him. Good Lord!
“”Schaff was too well trained not to know the difference””
You’re right! Philip Schaff is a fraud . Much of what he writes has been exposed already.
Here is an example
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num29.htm
Philip Schaff Says Cyprian “Symbolic”
What does historian Philip Schaff say about Cyprian on the Eucharist?
“Cyprian likewise appears to favor a symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, yet not so clearly. The idea of the real presence would have much better suited his sacerdotal conception of the ministry. In the customary mixing of the wine with water he sees a type of the union of Christ with his church, and, on the authority of John 6:53, holds the communion of the Supper indispensable to salvation. The idea of a sacrifice comes out very boldly in Cyprian.” (Schaff, volume 2, page 243-244)
That’s it from Schaff on Cyprian. First, I ask — WHERE does Cyprian “appear to favor a symbolical interpretation” of “This is My Body... This is My Blood.” He then adds “yet not so clearly.” You better believe not so clearly! Schaff gives no evidence whatsoever for this “symbolical” view. The direct quotes from St. Cyprian above speak for themselves. Schaff is simply wrong characterizing this as “symbolical.” WHAT is symbolical? The Eucharist is in fact “the body and blood” of Christ and is offered in sacrifice says Cyprian! That is not symbolical! That is as Catholic and Orthodox as you can get!
Schaff is fudging here. While he admits that the idea of sacrifice in the Eucharist “comes out very boldly” in Cyprian, he later repeats —
“The African fathers, in the third century, who elsewhere incline to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this point the later Roman Catholic idea of a sin-offering; especially Cyprian, the steadfast advocate of priesthood and of episcopal authority.” (Schaff, vol 2, pg 246-7)
Again “...the symbolical view of Tertullian and Cyprian” (vol 3, pg 492).
NOWHERE does Cyprian incline to a symbolical interpretation of the words of institution. Give me the evidence from Cyprian, not Schaff! I’ve already dealt with “This is the figure (Latin figura) of My body” from Tertullian and showed that should not be understood in modern terms of “symbolic.” Much more from J.N.D. Kelly and Darwell Stone later.
Cyprian on Real Presence and Sacrifice
In a footnote Schaff gives the Latin for Cyprian Letters 63:14 above —
“Epist. 63 ad Coecil. c. 14: ‘Si Jesus Christus, Dominus et Deus noster, ipse est summus sacerdos Dei Patris et sacrificium Patri seipsum primus obtulit et hoc fieri in sui commemorationem proecepit: utique ille sacerdos vice Christi vere fungitur, gui id, quod Christus fecit, imitatur et sacrificium verum et plenum tunc offert’” (Schaff, footnote #1, page 247).
See translation of Letters 63:14 above. Nothing “symbolic” about that! Schaff ends his section on the Eucharist as sacrifice with this line —
“The ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar, are intimately connected, and a Judaizing or paganizing conception of one must extend to all.” (Schaff, volume 2, page 247)
St. Cyprian was not a Jew nor a pagan. He was a Christian bishop and a Saint who took Jesus at His word (Luke 22:19f). This is CHRIST’S body and blood we are receiving in the Holy Eucharist to unite us to Himself and to His Body the Church (1 Cor 10:16-17). That is neither a Judaizing nor paganizing conception. That is the BIBLE conception and the unanimous testimony of the early Christians!
“The belief that the Eucharist is a SACRIFICE is found EVERYWHERE. This belief is coupled with strong repudiations of carnal sacrifices; and is SAVED from being JUDAIC by the recognition of the elements AS CHRIST’S BODY AND BLOOD, of the union of the action of the Church on earth with that of Christ in heaven, and of the spiritual character of that whole priestly life and service and action of the community as the body of Christ which is a distinguishing mark of the Christian system.” (Darwell Stone, conclusion of Ante-Nicene period, volume 1, page 54)
“...the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian SACRIFICE from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier.” “The eucharist was also, of course, the great act of worship of Christians, their SACRIFICE. The writers and liturgies of the period are UNANIMOUS in recognizing it as such.” (Kelly, page 196, 214)
Here’s more from Protestant church history scholar J.N.D. Kelly —
“Clearly his [Tertullian cited before] assumption is that the Savior’s BODY and BLOOD are as REAL as the baptismal WATER. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares [De laps 16; cf. Ep 15:1], ‘DO VIOLENCE TO HIS BODY AND BLOOD, and sin more heinously AGAINST THE LORD with their hands and mouths [from which they received Communion] than when they denied Him’” (Kelly, page 211-212).
This passage from Jurgens FAITH OF THE EARLY FATHERS reads in context —
“The Apostle likewise bears witness and says; ‘You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. You cannot be a communicant of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils’ [1 Cor 10:21]. And again he threatens the stubborn and perverse and denounces them, saying: ‘Whoever eats the bread or drinks the Cup of the Lord unworthily, will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor 11:27]. But they spurn and despise all these warnings; and before their sins are expiated, before they have made a confession of their crime, before their conscience has been purged in the ceremony and at the hand of the priest [sacrificio et manu sacerdotis], before the offense against an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, they do VIOLENCE TO HIS BODY AND BLOOD; and with their hands and mouth they SIN AGAINST THE LORD more than when they denied Him.” (Cyprian, The Lapsed 15,16)
Again, how in the world does Schaff get “symbolical” out of that!
I wanted also to quote this line from the NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA —
“St. Cyprian (d. 258) deplored the denial of Christ by those who apostatized in the persecution of Decius. But even worse was their reception of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ before their sins had been expiated. (This would not be so if Christ were only symbolically present.) ‘Greater is the crime they now commit by hand and mouth [the priest used to put the Host into the hand of the Christian, who in turn put it upon his own tongue] against the Lord than when they denied the Lord’ (De lapsis 15.16; CSEL 3.1:248).” (NCE [1967], volume 5, page 604)
BTW, the NCE and JND Kelly list Darwell Stone as a reference in their bibliography but Schaff is nowhere to be found! I wonder why?
“Later he [St. Cyprian] expatiates [De laps 25f] on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the REAL PRESENCE LITERALLY.” (Kelly, pg 212)
And it just so happens I have this extended passage from Jurgens as well!
“Hear what took place in my presence and with myself as witness. It happened that some parents were fleeing; and acting imprudently because of their fear, they left an infant daughter in the care of a nurse. The nurse turned the abandoned child over to the magistrates. In the presence of the idol where the people were gathering, and because she was not, on account of her age, able to eat meat, they gave her bread mixed with wine, which was itself left over after the sacrifice offered by those who are perishing [i.e. pagans]. Afterwards the mother recovered her daughter. But the girl was no more able to speak and point out the crime that had been committed than she had before been able to understand and prevent it.
“It came about through ignorance, therefore, that the mother brought the child into our presence when we were offering the Sacrifice. The girl mingled with the saints [Jurgens: the term -cum sanctis- applies to the Christian congregation]; and then, growing impatient of our prayers and petitions, was at one moment shaken with weeping and at another began to be tossed about by the violent excitement of her mind. As if by the compulsion of a torturer, the soul of that child of still tender years confessed the awareness of the deed by such signs as it could.
“When the solemnities were completed, however, and the deacon began to offer the chalice to those present, and when her turn came among the rest of those receiving, the little girl, with an instinct of the divine majesty, turned her face away, compressed her mouth with resisting lips, and refused the cup. The deacon persisted, however; and although she was resisting, he poured some into her mouth from the Sacrament in the cup. The result was that she began to choke and to vomit. The Eucharist was not able to remain in that violated body and mouth. The drink sanctified in the Blood of the Lord [santificatus in Domini sanguine potus] burst forth from her polluted stomach. So great is the power of the Lord, and so great his majesty!” (Cyprian, The Lapsed 25)
DG> Tertullian’s and Cyprian’s views were “symbolic”
Symbolic? Symbolic? Symbolic my left ear lobe as Joe Didde says!
More from J.N.D. Kelly on St. Cyprian and the Eucharist —
“So, when he comments on the Lord’s Prayer, he states [De orat dom 18] that Christ is our bread ‘because He is the bread of us who TOUCH HIS BODY’; and elsewhere he argues [Ep 57:2] that prospective martyrs should be fortified ‘with the protection of CHRIST’S BODY AND BLOOD....For how can we teach or incite them to shed their OWN blood in confessing the Name if, as they set out on their service, we refuse them THE BLOOD OF CHRIST?’.....
“....when Cyprian states [Ep 63:13; cf. ib 63:2] that ‘in the wine CHRIST’S BLOOD IS SHOWN’ (in vino vero ostendi sanguinem Christi), we should recall that in the context he is arguing against heretics who wilfully use water instead of wine at the eucharist. In choosing the term ‘is shown’, therefore, he is NOT hinting that the wine merely symbolizes the sacred blood. His point is simply that wine is an essential ingredient of the eucharist, since numerous Old Testament texts point to it as a type of the precious blood. It is significant that only a few lines above [Ep 63:11] he had spoken of ‘DRINKING THE LORD’S BLOOD’” (Kelly, page 212-213).
And now Darwell Stone A HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST —
“The writings of St. Cyprian contain very many incidental references to the Eucharist. It is always mentioned with profound reverence. The Eucharistic food is described as ‘sanctified’ [De laps 25] — a phrase applied also, it must be noticed, to a person who has been made holy by being baptised [E.g. Ep 69:2,8,10,11,15; 70:2; 73:18], and to the water and the oil made holy for use in the administration of Baptism [Ep 70:1,2].
“With obvious or expressed reference to our Lord’s words, ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine’ [Matt 7:6], it is spoken of as ‘the holy thing’ [De laps 26], or ‘the holy thing of the Lord’ [De unit 8; De laps 15,26; Ep 31:6], or ‘the pearls of the Lord’ [Ep 31:6]. ‘THE BLOOD OF CHRIST’ is said to be ‘shown’ or ‘set forth’ by the wine in the cup; the bread and wine which the Lord offered to the Father are called ‘HIS BODY AND BLOOD’; the ‘wine of the cup of the Lord’ is spoken of as ‘BLOOD’. (Stone, volume 1, page 40)
[in a footnote Stone has the following from Cyprian Epistle 63] :
2, ‘nor can His blood, by which we have been redeemed and quickened, be seen to be in the cup, when wine, which is shown (ostenditur) to be the blood of Christ, is absent from the cup’;
4, ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered sacrifice to God the Father, and offered the very same thing as Melchizedek, that is bread and wine, namely His body and blood’;
6, ‘when the blood of the grape is spoken of, what else is shown than the wine of the cup of the Lord which is blood?’;
7, ‘mention is made of wine that by wine may be understood the blood of the Lord, and that what was afterwards manifested in the Lord’s cup might be foretold in the predictions of the prophets.’ (Cyprian, from Stone, volume 1, page 40, footnote)
“Communicants are said to receive and to be sustained and protected by the BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST [De laps 2; De dom orat 18; Ep 11:5; 57:2; 58:1,9; 63:7]. When any communicate unworthily the BODY AND BLOOD OF THE LORD are taken and drunk with defiled hands and polluted mouth, and are outraged and profaned [De laps 16,22,25; Ep 15:1; 75:21].
“To complete what may be gathered as to St. Cyprian’s thought of the Eucharistic presence, there are two passages which need to be correlated to those already in view. In the first of these passages St. Cyprian says of one who took part in the Eucharistic rite after an act of apostacy —
‘He could not eat and handle the holy thing of the Lord, but found that he was carrying a cinder in his open hands. By this single instance it was shown that the Lord departs when he is denied, and that what is received does not benefit unto salvation one who is unworthy, since the saving grace is changed into a cinder on the departure of the holy thing’ [De laps 26 we shall cover this later].
“In the other passage St. Cyprian is speaking of an opposite instance, where the faith of Christ is victoriously maintained in time of persecution — ‘Let us arm,’ he says, ‘the right hand also with the sword of the Spirit, so that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices of the heathen, and that the hand which mindful of the Eucharist RECEIVES THE BODY OF THE LORD may embrace the Lord Himself, hereafter to obtain the reward of the heavenly crowns of the Lord’ [Ep 58:9].
“In the first of these passages, in distinction from those in which the body and blood of the Lord is said to be taken and drunk and outraged and profaned in unworthy Communions, the possibility is contemplated of a withdrawal of the sacred presence in such cases; in the second of them the embrace of the Lord Himself seems to be regarded as a special gift over and above what is in every good Communion.” (Stone, volume 1, page 40-41)
“Up the Rhine,” of course. What came down the Rhine was Swiss sectarianism.
Somebody needs to pick up a copy of the letters of St. Ignatius (95 AD). Not you, of course, but somebody who has written at length above.
FWIW - one of my ‘take ways’ from Schaff is that the Church Fathers wrote without the following controversies in mind. This makes it tough for us to read what they meant with confidence.
For example, I’ve heard many Baptists sermons talk about considering the bread to be the broken body of Christ. NONE of those pastors meant transubstantiation, yet a Catholic hearing them might interpret them that way.
Now, add in to that this question - is it a sacrifice for atonement, or thanksgiving? The name suggests the latter, as do the passages in the scripture abut remembrance and proclamation. I see no passage of scripture that indicates it is for forgiveness.
John 6 needs to be interpreted in context. “26Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you...32Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
Catholics read that as discussing Eucharist, which Jesus had never discussed before. It makes far more sense in context of the feeding of the 5000 in verses 1-15 of the same chapter.
Verses 52-53 follow 35: “whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
I doubt I’ll convince a single Catholic. However, I don’t think it is fair to say the Catholic interpretation is the only one possible.
In the end, the question of whether it is a sacrifice of thanksgiving (eucharist) or atonement is settled for me by Hebrews 10: “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.” There are too many passages where the sacrifice of Jesus is spoken of in the past, and as “once for all”. It is not a perpetual sacrifice we can re-partake in weekly. Not according to the word of God.
You write:
“The African fathers, in the third century, who elsewhere incline to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this point the later Roman Catholic idea of a sin-offering; especially Cyprian, the steadfast advocate of priesthood and of episcopal authority.” (Schaff, vol 2, pg 246-7)
Again “...the symbolical view of Tertullian and Cyprian” (vol 3, pg 492).
NOWHERE does Cyprian incline to a symbolical interpretation of the words of institution. Give me the evidence from Cyprian, not Schaff!”
You miss Schaff’s point ENTIRELY!
He wrote: “The African fathers, in the third century, who elsewhere [yes, ELSEWHERE they incline to symbolic] incline to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this point [but HERE they do not!] the later Roman Catholic idea of a sin-offering; especially Cyprian [who is strongly against the symbolic].
Attack him for being wrong, if and where he is, but it makes no sense whatsoever to attack him for agreeing with you!
And Schaff’s point on sacrifice is that it starts out as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (the meaning of Eucharist) and NOT atonement. Atonement conflicts with Romans, and all those passages that litter the New Testament about how we HAVE BEEN forgiven, and HAVE BEEN saved.
Be pedantic if you must. The context is clear. And one could argue that a hell of a lot more ink was spilled theologically in the West over the centuries simply because the Christian West expanded so widely while Christian East struggled to survive under Islam.
Is it really necessary for Easterners not to let anything go past without getting in a dig at the West and at Augustine? It’s tiresome.
By that measure it's even harder to understand the protestant theory of understanding scripture(solo Scripture) especially because they have no historical writings to back up their beliefs.
Catholic teaching on Our Eucharistic Lord is very consistent through the ages,like it or not,dear brother!
Your reasoning is inverted. Of course the specific issues that Schaff is concerned with had not arisen in the time of Tertullian and the other fathers. Real Presence (the what) was not an issue until the time of Berengar of Tours in 1050. Transsubstantiation (the how) was not an issue until after Real Presence was settled and they turned to thining about the how.
No intelligent Catholic reads Justin or Irenaeus or Tertullian or Augustine and “hears” transsubstantiation, as you claim. You are using “transsubstantiation” when you mean “real presence” as distinct from “merely symbolic presence” (Berengar, perhaps Calvin) or “real absence” (Zwingli). The fact that you think “transsubstantiation” is the basic label for Catholic belief only shows that you don’t really understand the debates on these issues.
Catholics read the Fathers and find nothing, zero, nada that would either (1) deny a real, corporeal presence or (2) affirm real absence or mere symbol.
We read the Fathers and find things less clearly spelled out than they were later. And that’s not a problem because things got spelled out only after mere symbol or real absence positions got raised.
(Note to Kosta: yes, this spelling out never took place in the East. For good reasons. The mere symbol and real absence positions were not raised there. Please do not tell me that the Easterners are wiser because they didn’t stoop to spelling out these arcane differences. They didn’t have too. Zwingli and Berengar were Westerners. The West dealt with the problems raised in the West. We did a damn good job of it, if you ask me. Would to God that we could have stayed with less spelling out. But if you’d have had a Berengar or Zwingli in your midst, I hope to God that you also would have done some spelling out.)
Back to Mr.Rogers: we are perfectly correct to recognize in the Fathers a teaching on Christ’s real presence that is compatible with our later more spelled out teaching.
You, on the other hand, have a tough task. You need to show that their writings are compatible with either a merely spiritual/symbolic or real absence position. Schaff tried to show that a merely spiritual, not really corporal/substantial presence was actively taught by the Fathers.
But as we have pointed out, to do this you have to play fast and loose with the language.
It will not do for you, Mr. Rogers, to tell us Catholics that we are wrong to “read into” the Fathers our real presence (not transsubstantiation) belief. We don’t have to do that to maintain our beliefs. We merely have to show that the Fathers are not incompatible, that they are less fully developed by not contradictory.
You have to show they actually contradict real/substantial presence. (”Real” and “substantial” are the same thing, from res and substantia in Latin.)
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