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.)
Actually, I need to show nothing of the sort. Remember - I’m a Protestant. Scripture takes precedence.
However, having taken part in many threads over the last 6 months, I can state that Catholics DO read transubstantiation into the Church Fathers. I’ve been told more times than I could count that it is explicitly taught, just not named.
Denial is simple: The scripture quite explicitly states that the sacrifice of Jesus is PAST. Not present, not perpetual, not always before God, but PAST.
It also states “once for all”.
It has no Priests, except in the sense of a universal priesthood of believers who offer a sacrifice of praise and good deeds.
The Church Fathers were NOT united in teaching the Eucharist was / is a sacrifice for atonement, nor did they consistently teach ‘real presence’ in the later sense.
This article points out some of the places they do not. It also points out the difference between devotional language and logical language, and cautions one to look for context before assuming a sentence means anything.
Your developing theology first forced out the Orthodox and later the Reformers. Far from keeping unity, the Bishop of Rome has shattered it.
Eucharist is a thanksgiving, not an atonement. As kosta50 pointed out on another thread, the type is the Passover. The first Passover put blood on the lintels so the Angel of Death would pass over. Subsequent Passovers were remembrances, not recreations. They were proclamations. As is the Eucharist, IAW scripture and many passages in the Church Fathers.