Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
We have to be careful when quoting the early church fathers that we do not take them out of context. For example when Ignatius writes "they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.", the "they" are the gnostics - they abstained from the Eucharist because they denied that Jesus came in the flesh. They denied what the Eucharist represented, not a doctrine which says that the Eucharist changes into anything.
|
Exactly! However, St Ignatius of Antioch clearly says that for him, the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.
They [i.e. the Gnostics] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that THE EUCHARIST IS THE FLESH OF OUR SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again. (Letter to Smyrnians 7:1)
I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the Bread of God, WHICH IS THE FLESH OF JESUS CHRIST, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I DESIRE HIS BLOOD, which is love incorruptible. (Letter to the Romans 7:3)
Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: FOR THERE IS ONE FLESH OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, and one cup IN THE UNION OF HIS BLOOD; one ALTAR, as there is one bishop with the presbytery… (Letter to the Philadelphians 4:1)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Augustine wrote "“a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself” (On Christian Doctrine, 2, 1). "
“Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs (such as the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord) for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being misled by error. (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 3,9).
So Augustine believed that to mistake the bread and wine for the actual body and blood of Christ is error.
|
Are you sure you are not reading St Augustine out of context?
It was Augustine who said:
"I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table….That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ" (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).
"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" (ibid., 272).
"The fact that our fathers of old offered sacrifices with beasts for victims, which the present-day people of God read about but do not do, is to be understood in no way but this: that those things signified the things that we do in order to draw near to God and to recommend to our neighbor the same purpose. A visible sacrifice, therefore, is the sacrament, that is to say, the sacred sign, of an invisible sacrifice… . Christ is both the Priest, offering Himself, and Himself the Victim. He willed that the sacramental sign of this should be the daily sacrifice of the Church, who, since the Church is His body and He the Head, learns to offer herself through Him.
Source: St. Augustine, The City of God, 10, 5; 10,20, c. 426