According to a couple of things I've read, there really wasn't this monolithic agreement on the real presence in the early church. Hermann Sasse devotes a bit of time disussing this in a book of his essays called The Lonely Way. I would post excerpts, but copyright laws forbid it.
If the following quote is truly attributable to St. Augustine, then it would seem he probably would be more Calvinian in his understanding of the Eucharist that Aquinian:
"Why prepare teeth and gums? Believe and you have already eaten."
Certainly, the early church took the celebration of the Eucharist very seriously, and there must have been some definite understanding that Christians viewed it as partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, or they wouldn't have been accused of cannibalism. I don't think the usual and customary Scripture of John 6 is an effective exposition of the real presence because it does tie in with the thought attributed to Augustine. It is, when all is said and done about trusting the word of The Word, and that's what those that departed from him in John 6 were not capable of doing.
One of the best verses that illuminate and presage Jesus' words in John 6 can be found in 1 Samuel:21, with use of the term the Bread of the Presence. But before I go on, I want to say how disgraceful I think it is that the Eucharist became at the hands of men, a bludgeon. How fitting for a race decended from blessed Adam (sin and all) who just couldn't stand the fact that he wasn't God.
I'm going to post the entire piece on Calvinian Presence because it's worth the read, and I don't think it overly long-winded.
The gentleman who wrote it is Joel Garver, a Calvinist (I think anyway, based on his blog) and who appears to be a loving kind of guy. His site name is Sacra Doctrina. He holds the position of Assistant professor of Philosophy at La Salle University. And while you may disagree with him, he's no dilettante. Anyway, here's his piece:
Calvinian real presence? The topic of the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist has surfaced in several recent discussions, particularly whether one could speak of a Calvinian understanding of that presence. After all, it is assumed, the historic catholic teaching of the church is that of the Real Presence and so a Calvinian doctrine of the Real Presence might have important ecumenical implications.
It seems to me that this topic needs some careful thought, along with a significant degree of historical and philosophical awareness. Unfortunately, I lack much of the requisite expertise to address the topic adequately. Still, I have a few initial (and likely controversial) thoughts on the topic.
I think the first thing to note is terminological. Whatever the shape of Patristic and earlier medieval teaching, nobody believed in the "Real Presence" prior to the late middle ages (note the quotation marks). The terminology of "Real Presence" simply was not in use and when it did come into use--particularly the use of the term "real"--it did so in connection with various shifts in ecclesiology and ontology so that what came to be termed "Real Presence" was not in fact identical with the Patristic and earlier medieval understandings of the eucharist, even if there were points of continuity.
Thus, when Calvin avoids using the terminology of "Real Presence" he does so as a humanist theologian, attempting to retrieve what he understands to be more authentic ways of expressing catholic belief regarding the eucharist, with a greater focus on "true partaking" of Christ's flesh and blood in the contextof the eucharistic action, though inextricably tied up with partaking of the elements themselves. In this project Augustine and the Eastern Fathers are Calvin's primary sources of reflection.
A number of studies of Calvin's eucharistic doctrine have been published over the years, attempting to explicate his views. In particular J.W. Nevin's The Mystical Presence, B.A. Gerrish's Grace and Gratitude, and Keith Mathison's Given for You come to mind, each providing an important perspective on Calvin's doctrine. On the specific issue of Calvin's use of terminology and rejection of the language of "Real Presence," however, one should consult Joseph N. Tylenda, "Calvin and Christ's Presence in the Supper--True or Real" in Scottish Journal of Theology 27 (1974) 65-75. Tylenda examines all the revelant texts where Calvin uses the term "real" in relation to the partaking of Christ's body in the Supper and demonstrates that Calvin prefered the older terminology of "true" over the more recent introduction of "real" and the ontological baggage that he perceived as coming with it (though "true" has its own history of problems in connection with eucharist as de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum demonstrates).
Moreover, with regard to the notion of the "real" and the shifts in ontology that are behind it, there are a number important texts that need to be taken into account, several from within the perspective of Radical Orthodoxy.
First among these is Catherine Pickstock's After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Blackwell 1997), where she sets out how shifts in late medieval ontology from Scotus onward led to a "spatialization" of knowledge and reality (what she terms a "mathesis"). Her work on this builds in important ways upon Michel de Certeau's The Mystic Fable. The idea here is that the "real" requires placement upon a manipulable grid of absolute presence.
A second text is John Milbank and C. Pickstock's Truth in Aquinas (Routledge 2001), particularly the fourth and last chapter, "Truth and Language," which treats eucharistic doctrine and issues of presence and absence in the context of both patristic/medieval theology and postmodern discussions (e.g., Derrida, though there are problems with their account ofDerrida, I think). They do a good job of suggesting the ways in which earlier eucharistic theology was grounded in an ecclesial and relational context of human action. This discussion is well-supplemented by Graham Ward's Cities of God (Routledge 2000), where he interacts with Calvin's view in connection with questions of ontology and, especially, the ascension of Christ, which Calvin so emphasizes, though Ward's attempt to build a theology of Christ's ascension is not without problems.
Finally, behind these various discussions still stands Henri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum (Aubier 1944), though it's still only available in French (Ward has an English translation coming out soon, hopefully). De Lubac traces the reversals and shifts in the relationship and meaning of the terms "true body" and "mystical body" in medieval theology, particular their reversal as the term "true body" migrates from referring to the gathered ecclesial Body of Christ to the presence of Christ in the eucharist.
The upshot of these writings is that for earlier medieval and Patristic theology, notions such as" substance" and "presence" and "body of Christ" were embedded within an ontology that granted them a certain kind of dynamism and relationality, connected with actions and events (so that "eucharist" was more a liturgical event than a fetishizable thing), and irreduceably attached to signs, without giving into spatialized notions of absolute presence and absence. In the late medieval period, however, and into the early modern, there were shifts in ontology that moved in the direction of defining "real" and "substance" in terms of a spatialized presence, definitively localized, thought of in terms of absolute arrival, more static, and in a different, more problematic relationship with signs.
While these shifts occurred in the west, it is arguable that the Christian East maintained something much closer to the overall shape of various Patristic approaches. Some Eastern Orthodox manuals and theologians, of course, in a polemical response to their western counterparts, did fall into some western patterns (e.g., identifying the epiclesis as the moment of Christ's absolute arrival, in response tothe high medieval western identification of specific words of the institution narrative as properly consecratory). Nevertheless, a number of Eastern theologians (e.g., Alexander Schmemman in recent years) still maintained and retrieved a eucharistic doctrine that has more in common with the Fathers than with the problematics of the medieval west.
Returning to the notion of the "Real Presence," one could suggest, of course, that it may be the case that in the past century or so, the terminology of "real" has shifted so as not to be quite so tied up withthese kinds of later medieval and early modern notions and, instead, meaning something more like "authentic"or "true" rather than "false" or "illusory." Calvin himself allowed that if by "real" one meant "true" (reali pro vero) in opposition to fallacious or imaginary (fallaci vel imaginario), then that language was permissible (see his first reply to Westphal). On this basis, we might speak of a Calvinian doctrine ofthe "Real Presence" and perhaps there are good ecumenical reasons for doing so in terms of western theology. But I hardly think the terminology of "Real Presence," given its historical contingency and late origins, is necessary for confessing a common catholic faith.
Calvin himself, however, isn't entirely without problems. Personally, my reading of Calvin is that he was attempting to retrieve a more Patristic understanding of the eucharistic partaking of Christ's flesh and blood, trying to do an end run around his Roman Catholic and Lutheran interlocutors. And I think that, to a large degree, Calvin was successful.
On the other hand, Calvin is a mixed bag. He recognizes the problems of the notion of "Real Presence" that had arisen in his day, but he himself, it seems to me, falls prey to just the kinds of problems that he is objecting to in his opponents. Thus, we find Calvin continually speaking of the ascended Christ, in his humanity, as "far off" or "at great distance from us in space" (and so on) as if the ascension were some kind of spiritual mode of space travel. While at his more reflective moments, Calvin seems to recognize that such language is inadequate, it is still pervasive in the way in which he frames his eucharistic doctrine and, in many regards, strikes me as the equal and opposite error from that which he was opposing (i.e., a notion of Real Presence that seemed to definitively and spatially localize Christ's body as enclosed within the eucharistic elements).
It is just this kind of spatialization within Calvin to which Graham Ward objects in his Cities of God, though, it seems to me, that Ward's own theorization of the ascension is at least as problematic as Calvin's (not to mention what seems to me an implicit gnosticism). To my mind, a helpful correction to bothWard and Calvin is Douglas Farrow's Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of Ascension (Eerdmans 1999), which looks at the ascension along more eschatological-temporal dimensions and rethinks how we might conceive of the "heaven" to which Christ has ascended in relation to us.
In any case, there's considerable work to be done on this topic by those from within the Reformed tradition as a matter of renewing Calvin's own eucharistic doctrine, placing it in its proper historical context, developing it today, and bringing it into conversation with the wider faith of the church catholic. What I've done here is the merest gesture towards the issues at stake and resources necessary for such a Calvinistic renewal.
The great and stubborn push for ecumenical sameness tries to fit Calvin into either an Arminian mold, a Romanist mold or even, as we've seen today, a Platonic mold. From my reading, he is devoutly none of these.
The Lord's Supper became a "bludgeon in men's hands" because Rome turned it into something to be bartered, a commodity to dispense at the whim and will of men and magisteriums.
The error of the mass is also due to the fact that it asserts the body and blood of Christ are being sacrificed anew to God every time the mass is performed, which of course is a lie since this contradicts much of Hebrews, John and Romans.
Because the church of Rome needs to have its adherents believe it is the gatekeeper, the distributor of God's grace, it follows that Rome formulated a concept of the Lord's Supper that is outside the grasp of laymen and can only be experienced via the wizardly incantations of its clergy.
Now if it were true, as Scripture says, that Christ's sacrifice was made once for all the sins of the elect, then it would not be necesssary for Rome to insist that Christ's actual body and blood are again being sacrificed for the believer with each performance.
And Rome would be out of business.
Luther was 3/4 correct. It took the next generation of men like Calvin to fully return to the clear and simple Scriptural understanding of the Lord's Supper. Regardless of how men hope to muddy the waters with their own prejudices, it is just not that difficult to understand Calvin. He was not obtuse. From Scripture he recognized that nothing a priest does or says can change bread and wine into body and blood. From Scripture he knew the singular and perfect sacrifice of Christ had already been accomplished, once for all time. From Scripture he knew Christ Himself told us the Lord's Supper was a meal of remembrance among believers who would gather and receive true sustenance from the memory of Christ's one-time sacrifice on Calvary.
To say we need a tangible sign, as if the elements of the Last Supper could actually change materialistically, is to distrust God and commit the same error as the Jews who "required a sign."
The truth is not found in matter. The truth is in the spirit.
Grace is real in the Lord's Supper. Christ is real in the Lord's Supper. And neither of those statements requires alchemy or priviledged invocation. Grace and Christ are spiritually discerned.
The Westminster Confession is a clear and concise description of the Lord's Supper, according to Scripture...
1. Our Lord Jesus, in the night wherein He was betrayed, instituted the sacrament of His body and blood, called the Lord's Supper, to be observed in His Church, unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death; the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in Him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto Him; and, to be a bond and pledge of their communion with Him, and with each other, as members of His mystical body. 2. In this sacrament, Christ is not offered up to His Father; nor any real sacrifice made at all, for remission of sins of the quick or dead; but only a commemoration of that one offering up of Himself, by Himself, upon the cross, once for all: and a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto God, for the same: so that the popish sacrifice of the mass (as they call it) is most abominably injurious to Christ's one, only sacrifice, the only propitiation for all the sins of His elect. 3. The Lord Jesus hath, in this ordinance, appointed His ministers to declare His word of institution to the people; to pray, and bless the elements of bread and wine, and thereby to set them apart from a common to an holy use; and to take and break the bread, to take the cup, and (they communicating also themselves) to give both to the communicants; but to none who are not then present in the congregation. 4. Private masses, or receiving this sacrament by a priest, or any other alone; as likewise, the denial of the cup to the people, worshipping the elements, the lifting them up, or carrying them about, for adoration, and the reserving them for any pretended religious use; are all contrary to the nature of this sacrament, and to the institution of Christ. 5. The outward elements in this sacrament, duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ, have such relation to Him crucified, as that, truly, yet sacramentally only, they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent, to wit, the body and blood of Christ; albeit, in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine, as they were before. 6. That doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine, into the substance of Christ's body and blood (commonly called transubstantiation) by consecration of a priest, or by any other way, is repugnant, not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense, and reason; overthroweth the nature of the sacrament, and hath been, and is, the cause of manifold superstitions; yea, of gross idolatries. 7. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses. 8. Although ignorant and wicked men receive the outward elements in this sacrament; yet, they receive not the thing signified thereby; but, by their unworthy coming thereunto, are guilty of the body of the Lord, to their own damnation. Wherefore, all ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Him, so are they unworthy of the Lord's table; and cannot, without great sin against Christ, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto. "
Of the Lord's Supper.
And your posts are always welcome, AlbionGirl. I learn from every one of them. 8~)
I'm going to read this right after "The Office." 8~)