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Take your pick of the of the following, as I cannot keep track of which ancient folk ya’ll claim - seems to vary. But of course, the notion of transubstantiation has its origins in ancient pagan religions, as do many of the celebrations and rituals embraced by many churches, including the RCC.

Tatian (110-172 AD)

“...It is not we who eat human flesh - they among you who assert such a thing have been suborned as false witnesses; it is among you that Pelops is made a supper for the gods, although beloved by Poseidon, and Kronos devours his children, and Zeus swallows Metis.”17

Here, Tatian pointedly confutes the claims of pagans in his day who attacked Christianity by misconstruing its teachings (a phenomenon as old as the faith itself). In fact, many of the very early Christian writers pointedly refused the charge that Christians “banqueted on blood”, etc., a charge which very likely originated from pagan misunderstanding of the teaching of the Lord’s Supper18. At any rate, Tatian certainly seemed quite opposed to the idea of eating anybody’s flesh, Christ’s or otherwise.

Irenaeus (120 - 200 AD)

“Then, again, how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the things just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.”20

Irenaeus here argues for a dualism between the physical and spiritual natures both of the bread of the Eucharist and the body of the Christian who partakes of that Eucharist. While Irenaeus does seem to follow the error of sacramental efficacy in attaching salvatic power to the Eucharist, he clearly establishes that the bread of the Eucharist, when it receives the invocation of God, attains to a dual nature, both earthly and heavenly, which would seem to be much closer to the consubstantial view of Luther than the transubstantial view of Rome. He never once mentions it becoming the body of Christ, nor does his dualistic view of the consecrated Eucharist accord with the dogma of the “real presence”. The logical understanding of his view is that our bodies, upon taking the Eucharist, have an incorruptibility which is spiritual, obviously, for it is apparent to all that they remain physically corruptible even after taking the Lord’s Supper. Irenaeus’ position cannot in any reasonable way be construed to support the belief in transubstantiation.

Clement of Alexandria (153-217 AD)

“And the blood of the Lord is twofold. For there is the blood of His flesh, by which we are redeemed from corruption; and the spiritual, that by which we are anointed. And to drink the blood of Jesus, is to become partaker of the Lord’s immortality; the Spirit being the energetic principle of the Word, as blood is of flesh.”23

Clement draws a distinction between the physical and spiritual aspects of the Lord’s blood. While he seems to be advocating the obtaining of immortality by partaking of the Lord’s Supper, an error, he correctly distinguishes between the spiritual and physical aspects of the Lord’s existence and connects this partaking of the blood and immortality with the Spirit, not the flesh. His dual view of the blood of Christ, further, is at odds with the “real presence” dogma which states that the host and wine are fully the body and blood of Christ.

“And entertaining this view, we may regard the proclamation of the Gospel, which is universally diffused, as milk; and as meat, faith, which from instruction is compacted into a foundation, which, being more substantial than hearing, is likened to meat, and assimilates to the soul itself nourishment of this kind. Elsewhere the Lord, in the Gospel according to John, brought this out by symbols, when He said: “Eat ye my flesh, and drink my blood;” describing distinctly by metaphor the drinkable properties of faith and the promise, by means of which the Church, like a human being consisting of many members, is refreshed and grows, is welded together and compacted of both,—of faith, which is the body, and of hope, which is the soul; as also the Lord of flesh and blood. For in reality the blood of faith is hope, in which faith is held as by a vital principle.”24

Thus, Clement entertains a very symbolic, non-literal understanding of the Lord’s discourse in John 6. His interpretation has somewhat Protestant overtones to it, in its understanding that “eating the flesh and drinking the blood” are to be taken as exercising of faith in Christ and growing in the hope of the Lord.

Eusebius (260-341 AD)

“And there was one energy of the Divine Spirit pervading all the members, and one soul in all, and the same eagerness of faith, and one hymn from all in praise of the Deity. Yea, and perfect services were conducted by the prelates, the sacred rites being solemnized, and the majestic institutions of the Church observed, here with the singing of psalms and with the reading of the words committed to us by God, and there with the performance of divine and mystic services; and the mysterious symbols of the Saviour’s passion were dispensed. At the same time people of every age, both male and female, with all the power of the mind gave honor unto God, the author of their benefits, in prayers and thanksgiving, with a joyful mind and soul. And every one of the bishops present, each to the best of his ability, delivered panegyric orations, adding luster to the assembly.”25

In this passage, Eusebius is describing the establishment of open Christian worship after toleration was extended by Emperors Constantine and Licinius. In this chapter, he describes part of what can be taken as a typical Christian worship service. Included in this service was the dispensation of the elements of the Lord’s Supper, which Eusebius simply says were “symbols of the Saviour’s passion”, something with which Bible-believers today could generally agree.

Augustine (354-430 AD)

“To be sure, we often speak in the following way: As Pascha approaches, we say that tomorrow, or the day after, is ‘the Passion of the Lord,’ although He suffered so many years before, and His Passion occurred only once. Indeed, on that particular Lord’s Day we say ‘Today the Lord has risen,’ although many, many years have passed since the time when he arose. Why is it that there is no one so foolish as to accuse us of being liars when we speak in this way? It is because we name these days according to a likeness to the days on which those events took place. Thus a day, which is not the actual day, but like to it in the circle of the year, takes its name from the actual day because of the celebration of the sacrament which occurred, not on the very day of the celebration, but long ago....For if sacraments did not have a certain likeness to the things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all....Therefore....in a certain way the sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ”26

Here, Augustine himself makes a relatively simple argument. Just as Christians may refer to the day of Pascha (what we call “Easter” today), the day of His resurrection, as “the day He has risen”, quite obviously the day which they speak of is not ACTUALLY that day, as the Lord’s rose many years ago, and His passion occurred only once (as Augustine points out). Likewise, the elements of the sacraments, by which here he means the bread and wine, are spoken of as having a certain likeness to what they represent in figure, these being the body and blood of Christ. This is the sense, Augustine says, in which the sacraments should be understood as “the body of Christ”.

“And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eateth that flesh, unless he hath first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord’s may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping. But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, ‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.’ ...But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, ‘Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him.’ Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, ‘This is an hard saying, who can hear it?’ And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto them hard that He said, ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you:’ they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, ‘This is a hard saying.’ It was they who were hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not meek, they would have said unto themselves, He saith not this without reason, but there must be some latent mystery herein. They would have remained with Him, softened, not hard: and would have learnt that from Him which they who remained, when the others departed, learnt. For when twelve disciples had remained with Him, on their departure, these remaining followers suggested to Him, as if in grief for the death of the former, that they were offended by His words, and turned back. But He instructed them, and saith unto them, ‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.’ Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood”27

And here, Augustine presents us with a very standard Protestant, anti-transubstantiational interpretation of the Lord’s words in John 6. Augustine even goes so far as to say that those who interpreted Christ’s words literally were receiving it “foolishly” and that their thoughts were “carnal”, as he employs a reductio ad absurdam to make the point that their thinking was wrong. He essentially turns the entire Catholic argument against Protestants, this being that Protestants are like those who left the Lord because they were offended at His teaching, on its head.

“`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.”28

Augustine seems to be recognising that to literally eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ would be to commit a “crime or a vice”. He likely recognised that such a teaching in reality violated the Law of God where it condemns the ingesting of blood, and thus argues, logically, that the meaning of the passage MUST be symbolic to remain in accord with the testimony of the rest of Scripture.

Gelasius I (d. 496 AD)

“The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine-nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the performance of the mysteries.”30

Perhaps most embarrassing of all for Catholic apologists is the revelation that even Gelasius, touted as one of the greatest early “popes”, quite openly refers to the bread and wine as a “similitude”, meaning a figure, a picture, of what they represent. He also pointedly rejects the transubstantiation of these elements into the literal body and blood of Christ. He says that the bread and wine remain just that: bread and wine.

The church historian, Kelly, has been much misused by the Catholic religion to try to substantiate its claim for the apostolic origin of the “real presence” view of the Eucharist. Oft-quoted by Catholic apologists on this point, he says,

“Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestionable realistic, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be....the Saviour’s body and blood.”31

This would seem to speak in Rome’s favour, would it not? Yet, let us look and see what Kelly then continues on to say right after this:

“Among theologians, however, this identity [i.e., the “real presence”] was interpreted in our period [fourth and fifth centuries] in at least two different ways, and these interpretations, mutually exclusive though they were in strict logic, were allowed to overlap. In the first place, the figurative or symbolic view, which stressed the distinction between the visible ELEMENTS and the reality they REPRESENTED, still claimed a measure of support...”32

Notes:
(17) - Tatian, Address to the Greeks, cap. xxv
(20) - Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Lib. IV, cap.xviii,5
(23) - Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, Lib. II, cap. ii
(24) - Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, Lib. I, cap. vi
(25) - Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Lib. X, cap. iii-iv
(26) - Augustine, Letters XCVIII, cap. ix
(27) - Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, Psalm XCIX
(28) - Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Lib. III, cap. xvi, 24
(30) - Gelasius, Bishop of Rome, in his writing against Eutyches and Nestorius
(31) - J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p.440
(32) - J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p.441