Haha ok man, so we are going to keep going around in circles regarding "'eat' Christ 'already' even before readying teeth and stomach"? No thanks.
Again, YES we receive Christ in the Eucharist through faith, which is also why Augustine says that those who DON'T believe eat their own judgment in the Eucharist! (another Catholic teaching!) Here's something to chew on (no pun intended): how can someone who has no faith "eat judgment upon themselves", as Augustine says, if the Eucharist itself is of no effect?
Well, if you avoid it, you leave me with my chiefest weapon. Because if you demand that Augustine believes that the eating of the eucharist and the eating of Christ spiritually are one in the same thing, or one is the result of the other, "through" another, then you must somehow explain why Augustine asks "Why ready teeth and stomach? Believe and you have eaten already." This proves that Augustine's teachings on the Lord's Supper, and his teachings on salvation, are not to be conflated, and are as I have defined them.
Again, YES we receive Christ in the Eucharist through faith, which is also why Augustine says that those who DON'T believe eat their own judgment in the Eucharist! (another Catholic teaching!) Here's something to chew on (no pun intended): how can someone who has no faith "eat judgment upon themselves", as Augustine says, if the Eucharist itself is of no effect?
It is also a Reformed teaching, and therefore does not contradict our position:
VII. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament,[13] 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.[14] VIII. 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 and blood 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,[15] or be admitted thereunto.[16]
From "Of the Lord's Supper", Chapter XXIX of the Westminster Confession: http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
This mirrors very closely what Augustine says himself, who also denies that they are eating Christ, though they press the Eucharist to their lips:
"'He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.' This it is, therefore, for a man to eat that meat and to drink that drink, to dwell in Christ, and to have Christ dwelling in him. Consequently, he that dwells not in Christ, and in whom Christ dwells not, doubtless neither eats His flesh [spiritually] nor drinks His blood [although he may press the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ carnally and visibly with his teeth], but rather does he eat and drink the sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment, because he, being unclean, has presumed to come to the sacraments of Christ, which no man takes worthily except he that is pure: of such it is said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8" (Augustine, Tractate 26)
And I just now thought of this: How do you say that the eucharist is eaten through faith, if you believe in transubstantiation, which makes the elements really and truly the body of Christ under the form of other things, physically and not spiritually? If you say you eat Christ "through faith," then it follows that those who eat without faith do not eat Christ. But if the bread and wine is Christ's body, transubstantiated after being prayed over, then those who do not have faith must also eat Christ whether they believe it or not.