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.
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.
bookmark
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.
.
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?
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!
Ping to read later