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To: Cronos
...and that's what all the early Christians believed - that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus

Nope. That is clearly not the case IF one reads all of the passages in the Bible dealing with this issue.

Do this in remembrance of Me.

85 posted on 02/07/2024 3:55:05 PM PST by ealgeone
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To: ealgeone
Actually, that is the case -- check your history and you will see that all the early Christians believed that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus.

John Norman Davidson Kelly a Protestant early church historian wrote

Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood

From the Church’s early days, the Fathers referred to Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Kelly writes: “Ignatius roundly declares that . . . [t]he bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood. Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. . . . Irenaeus teaches that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity” (ibid., 197–98).

“Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares, ‘do violence to his body and blood, a sin more heinous against the Lord with their hands and mouths than when they denied him.’ Later he expatiates on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the Real Presence literally” (ibid., 211–12).

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No Christian rejected the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist until Calvin came along - let me repeat that for you, eagleone - No Christian, early, medieval, whatever, rejected the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist until Calvin came along - so why do you persist with that modernist belief?

90 posted on 02/08/2024 3:26:48 AM PST by Cronos (I identify as an ambulance, my pronounces are wee/woo)
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