Scripture offers many examples of things which Christians are to accept as true even though they are spiritual realities which cannot be perceived by the senses. We are buried with Christ in baptism, raised as believers with him into the heavenly realms. We are citizens of heaven, eternal beings. We are to reckon ourselves as being dead to sin and alive to God.
None of these things can be subjected to scientific analysis, which is not to say Christianity is irrational. It is built on eyewitness accounts of miracles, an empty tomb and a risen Christ. But we cannot test these propositions about our own spiritual state scientifically. When we begin to try to rationally explain spiritual truths in natural terms, we come up short and cause far more problems than we solve.
In modern times, the effort to provide tidy explanations for spiritual things has led to outright denial of the supernatural in liberal theological camps and to wooden symbolism and denial of the sacramental in more conservative camps. But it is possible to live with the apparent contradiction.
And it is clear from the reading of the early church documents that the apparent contradiction was something that remained. It was not necessary, for them, to explain the unexplainable in modern, watertight terms. Hence, such a notable figure as Cyril can make two seemingly opposite statements in the span of a few sentences.
Referring to John 6, (which Catholic apologists insist must be taken literally), he argues: "Once when Christ was discoursing with the Jews, He said, 'If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in you'. Not hearing his words in a spiritual way, they were scandalized and went away to the hinterlands, believing that he had exhorted them to the eating of flesh. (Cyril, Catechetical Lectures - Mystagogic 4,4)"
Note that his point is that the Jews failed to see a spiritual truth behind the words. They were scandalized because they believed he literally meant the eating of human flesh. Cyril says, very simply, that if they thought he referred to literal flesh-eating, they misunderstood. This coincides well with Jesus' explanation of his words later in the chapter, where he says, "The spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing".
Yet Cyril, just slightly farther on in his Catechetical Lectures, says something definitive and seemingly contradictory: "Do not regard the Bread and Wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master's declaration, The Body and Blood of Christ." (Cyril, Catechetical Lectures - Mystagogic 4,6)
How are we to reconcile these two statements? On the one hand, we could take the Roman Catholic position of the 12th century to the present, and argue that the bread and wine are wholly transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. But to do so, would be to render Cyril's previous statement meaningless, and would require us to re-interpret numerous other statements of the church fathers as well. It would require us to force fit transubstantiation onto the whole of the post-apostolic record.
On the other hand, we could, as the latter Protestant traditions have done, insist that the bread and wine are only a symbol. But to do so would make Cyril's second statement meaningless and would require a complete rejection of many, many statements of the early fathers which equate the bread and cup with the body and blood of Christ.
The third option is to understand that scripture speaks of many things which we are to count as true by faith. Once again, Paul's reference to our being "buried with Christ" is not meant to be understood in a literal, physical sense. It is, for Paul, nonetheless, true. Our "paricipation" in the sacrifice of Christ does not have to be literally understood to be true.
Such a view of the bread and cup is implied in other statements of the Early fathers. Irenaeus indicates that the bread and wine are not merely bread and wine, in opposition to the "symbolic" view of the later Reformers, but are not "wholly transformed" in opposition to the Catholic view. They consist of two realities, earthly and heavenly:
"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." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4, Ch XVIII, 5)
It seems that he would insist that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, but not that we literally eat human flesh and blood. The eucharist consists of two realities, not a whole transformation into the body and blood of Christ, but perhaps bread and wine somehow indwelt with something deeper.
Origen, likewise, draws a distinction between that which is spiritually true and that which is merely a mechanical transformation. He argues that eating of the bread is not of benefit without faith: "In regard to this Bread of the Lord, therefore, there is advantage to him who avails himself of it, when, with undeflied mind and pure conscience, he partakes of the bread. Therefore, neither by not eating, that is, by not eating of the bread which has been sanctified by the word of God and prayer, do we suffer the loss of any good thing; nor by eating do we gain the advantage of any good thing" (Origen Commentary on Matthew 11,14 )
He continues by saying that the prayer of faith is what makes the bread truly of value. "But in accord with the prayer that comes upon it, and according to the proportion of the faith, it becomes a benefit, and is the source of clear vision in the mind, which looks to what is benficial. It is not the material of the bread but the word which is said over it which is of advantage to the one who eats it not unworthily of the Lord. ...For if it were possible for one who continues in wickednes to eat of him who became flesh, the Word and the living bread, it would not have been written that everyone who eats of this bread shall live forever." (Origen Commentary on Matthew 11,14)
It is very important to understand his last point. If the bread were miraculously and physically transformed wholly into the body of Christ, then faith is not required for obtaining its benefit. He clearly rejects such a viewpoint, as did the Reformers.
Eusebius as well states that the bread and wine "represent" the body and blood of Christ: "Inasmuch as Melchisedech, a priest of the pagans, never was known to offer flesh in his sacrifices, but only wine and bread; and inasmuch as he blessed Abraham, he is surely by this token our first Lord and Savior - he from whom all the priests sent out to all peoples offer a spiritual sacrifice in accord with ecclesiastical regulations, representing by wine and bread the mysteries of his Body and of his saving Blood." (Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel, 5,3)
So, it is clear that many quotations from the early church imply that the Eucharist is not a total, literal transformation of bread into the physical flesh of Christ. That is clearly not what is "unanimously" held by the fathers to be the truth. Clearly, much can be produced which would support views other than transubstantiation.
Still, it cannot be said that the fathers were modernist in their understanding and had to explain away a spiritual truth by resorting to mere rationalistic symbolism. Volumes can be produced which equate the bread and cup with Christ's body and blood.
Ignatius, in the early first century wrote of those influenced by Gnosticism: "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ" Ignatius (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1 [A.D. 110]).
Justin, in the mid second century wrote: "the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" Justin (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151])
Augustine, a favorite of Catholic and Protestant alike said, "What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice is the Blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction. Augustine, (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411])
Pope Galasius in the fifth century: "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." Galasius, (cited in Philip Schaff, 95)
Such quotations can be produced over and over from a wide variety of figures in the early church.
I, as a layperson, looking across the span of church history, am forced to a conclusion. There is no "unanimous consent of the fathers" which fully supports the medieval Roman view that the whole substance of the bread and wine are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ. Yet, neither is there even the remote possibility that the bread and wine are mere symbols to be used in a personal contemplation of the meaning of Christ's death.
Rather, what it seems can be said most univerally is that the bread and the cup represent a true spiritual reality. That when one, by faith, eats and drinks the bread and cup, he truly "participates" and "identifies with" the once for all sacrifice of Christ, and thus becomes united with Him in His death and resurrection. We truly, but not literally, commune with Christ, feed on him, are nourished by Him, partake of Him, die with him, rise with him.
Just as a faithful Jew consumed the passover and thus wholly identified with that sacrifice, we consume in some mysterious sense, Christ our sacrifice. In God's mercy, the physical sacrifice was accomplished once for all, but Christ provided a way of partaking of that sacrifice in a mystery of bread and wine.
The Eucharist, then, is not a repeated sacrifice of Christ at the hands of a priest, nor is it a mere reflection on the meaning of Christ's death. It is a spiritual union of the believer with His death.
I suspect Luther, perhaps Cranmer and perhaps Calvin were correct in their assessment that the Scholastics of the Roman church had gone too far in their speculations. It seems clear as well that later Reformers, beginning with Zwingli were too radical in stripping away everything that could not be fit into their personal reading of scripture. Truths which lay just below the surface, which the early church held to be vital were too quickly tossed aside with the Scholastic baggage.
But if a consensus of what has been believed "always, everywhere and by all" is our goal, a goal of Christian unity, then we must accept that the Eucharist is a vital, essential part of Christian faith and practice, that it truly unites believers with Christ and each other, that it is a true partaking of the body and blood of Christ even though the bread and wine remain bread and wine, and leave the divisive metaphysical explanations for how this can be true in the realm of mystery.
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