During the last couple of months, my personal studies have focused on the Eucharist and liturgy. After publishing three posts on the Eucharist, I have been pondering over what my next post should be. Last Wednesday, in the combox of the previous AF thread (link), Ian Miller suggested to me that I, "could look at his [Kauffman’s] claims about the tithe being the sacrifice, or how some Fathers (Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian for instance) use the word 'symbol.'"
There is no question that some of the Church Fathers spoke of the Eucharist as a sign/symbol. This fact has led some anti-Catholic apologists to conclude that the CFs who employed such terminology to describe the Eucharist believed the Eucharist was ONLY a sign/symbol; and as such, did not believe in the real, substantial presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. This understanding is an all too common misreading of the CFs by anti-Catholic polemicists.
Last year, this issue was competently addressed by Tim Staples (link to bio) in a contribution published by Catholic Answers (link)—from Tim’s “Is the Eucharist a Symbol, or Is It Real?” we read:
In the introduction to his classic Catholic Catechism, Fr. John Hardon describes well the perennial challenge of the Catholic Church to strike a balance between the manifold and false “either/or” propositions that constitute the great heresies and errors of Church history and what Fr. Hardon called the truth of “the eternal and.” For example, the pantheist says the universe consists of God alone. The material is mere illusion. The materialist says it is all and only matter. The truth is, it’s both. The Protestant says we are saved by “faith alone”; the various Pelagian sects say it is by “works alone.” The truth is, it’s both. The Monophysite says Jesus is God alone; the Arian (or the Jehovah’s Witness today) says he is man alone. The truth is, he’s both. The list could go on and on.
So it is with the Eucharist. For many, there are only two options. Either it is a symbol or it is Jesus. I know this was my thinking when I was Protestant. “When Jesus says, ‘This is my body,’ or ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man,’ it is obvious he is speaking symbolically,” I would say. “Bread and wine were to nature what Jesus Christ is to our super-nature. Bread and wine are obviously excellent symbols of Jesus Christ.” In my mind as a Protestant, if I could show communion to be symbolic, I had proved my point. The idea of “both/and” was never even a consideration.
In the rest of his treatment, Tim goes on to prove that the correct reading of the Church Fathers concerning the Eucharist is NOT an ‘either or proposition’, but a ‘both/and' one; the Eucharist is a sign/symbol and truly is what it symbolizes—i.e. the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
In an older online posting (link), Joe Heschmeyer focuses on Tertullian’s reflections concerning the Eucharist. Before delving into Tertullian’s affirmations of the real presence, Joe writes:
When Protestants talk about Sacraments being symbolic, they typically mean that they’re only symbols. And of course, as Catholics, we think that’s false. But we don’t deny that the Sacraments are symbols.
Joe proceeds to point out that all the sacraments are "efficacious signs of grace", and then writes:
So we can readily affirm that the Eucharist is both a symbol and the Body and Blood of Christ. Jesus could have consecrated something else: say, a melon. But He didn’t. He chose bread and wine...
In section "II. Tertullian on the Real Presence", Joe provides selections from Tertullian's corpus that demonstrate he clearly believed in the Real Presence. He summarizes those quotes with the following:
1. Marcion denied that Christ had a true Body of Flesh and Blood. If that were true, then we would have to believe that the Eucharist was just bread, and that Christ on the Cross was just bread.
2. He says that Christ explained exactly what He meant by “Bread” when He described it as His Body. According to Tertullian, the question now is why Christ referred to His Body as “Bread,” rather than something else (like a melon). He answers this by saying that Christ’s Body is referred to throughout Scripture as Bread.
3. He quotes a passage from the Septuagint version of Jeremiah to show that Christ’s Crucified Body is rightly called “Bread.”
4. The Eucharistic Bread and Wine affirm the reality of Christ’s Flesh, since He couldn’t give us His Body or Blood if He didn’t have actual Flesh. Christ’s Flesh, in turn, proves that He had a true Body.
5. Christ consecrates the wine, fulfilling the Old Testament typology.
Tertullian’s understanding of the Eucharist is the same as
the official teaching of the RCC; the Eucharist truly is what it
symbolizes—i.e. the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Shall conclude this post with links to Joe Heschmeyer’s three compilations of quotes from the CFs on the Eucharist:
Very Early Church Fathers on the Eucharist - LINK
Early Church Fathers on the Eucharist (c. 200 – c. 300 A.D.) - LINK
Early Church Fathers on the Eucharist (c. 300 – 400 A.D.) – LINK
Grace and peace,
David
