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Artículos de Charles Leadbeater y Wedgwood

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Artículo de estos dos autores para la Iglesia Católica Liberal, fundada por ambos hace 100 años.

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  • THE LIBERAL CATHOLICMAGAZINE

    Articles by or aboutJ.I. Wedgwood and C.W. Leadbeater

    1924 1966(various)

    Vol. 2

  • 2By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD November 1936 Vol. XVII No. 2

    By THE RT. REV. J.I . WEDGWOODEARLY TEACHING December 1936 Vol. XVII No.3

    BY THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD January 1937 Vol. XVII No. 4

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOODTHE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE DOCTRINE February 1937 Vol. XVII No. 5

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD March 1937 Vol. XVII No. 6

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD REFORMATION DOCTRINES April 1937 Vol. XVII No.7

    BY THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD May 1937 Vol. XVII No. 8

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD June 1937 Vol. XVII No.9

    BY THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD July 1937 Vol. XVII No.10

    By THE RT. REV. J.I . WEDGWOOD September 1937 Vol. XVII No.12

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD A MODERN INTERPRETATION October 1937 Vol. XVIII No. 1

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOODSACRAMENTS AND MYSTERY CULTS November 1937 Vol. XVIII No. 2

    By THE RT . REV. J.I. WEDGWOODEARLY ANTICIPATION OF THIS INTERPRETATIONDecember 1937 Vol. XVIII No.3

    Vol. 2CONTENTS

    1. THE BODY OF THE LORD I 4A STUDY OF EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE

    2. THE BODY OF THE LORD II 10A STUDY OF EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE

    3. THE BODY OF THE LORD III 14

    4. THE BODY OF THE LORD IV 16

    5. THE BODY OF THE LORD V 18

    6. THE BODY OF THE LORD VI 20

    7. THE BODY OF THE LORD VII 24

    8. THE BODY OF THE LORD VIII 27

    9. THE BODY OF THE LORD IX 29

    10. THE BODY OF THE LORD XI 31

    11. THE BODY OF THE LORD XII 33

    12. THE BODY OF THE LORD XIII 35

    13. THE BODY OF THE LORD XIV 37

    (Part X, August 1937 Vol. XVII No. 11, is missing.)

  • 3By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST January 1938 Vol. XVIII No. 4

    By THE RT. REV. J.I . WEDGWOODPSYCHOLOGY February 1938 Vol. XIII No. 5

    By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOODSeptember 1941 Vol. XXI No.12

    By THE RT. REV. C.W. LEADBEATEROctober 1941 Vol. XXII No.1

    I. ESOTERICBy THE RT. REV. C.W. LEADBEATER Vol. XXIV No. 7

    By C.W . LEADBEATER(I) SACRAMENTAL FORCEA portion of an address given at Sydney, N.S.W., in the year 1926 and reprinted from THE LIBERAL CATHOLIC of March 1937.January 1949 Vol. XXVI No. 5

    - - - - - - -

    14. THE BODY OF THE LORD XV 40

    14. THE BODY OF THE LORD XVI 42

    15. THE WORLD CONGRESS OF FAITHS AT OXFORD 44

    16. TACT AND TOLERANCE 48

    17. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 52

    18. ADDRESSES TO PRIESTS 58

  • 4By THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOODNovember 1936 Vol. XVII No. 2

    The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the Holy Eucharist is to be found in some decisions of the Council of Trent held in the middle of the sixteenth century, with intervals from 1545 to 1563. That Council was summoned to take under review various doctrines promulgated by Luther, Calvin , Zwingli, Eck, Bucer and other pioneers of the Reformation, and its findings are still regarded by the Roman Church as its most authoritative pronouncement on the doctrine of the Eucharist and on that of some other of the sacraments. Indeed, one has only to look at any of the standard modern Roman Catholic books discussing the doctrine of the sacraments to find the Council's decisions constantly referred to. The Rev. Dr. Darwell Stone, an Anglican priest , author of a standard book bearing the title , writes as follows: "The chief mark in the attitude of the authorities of the Church of Rome since the time of the Council of Trent has been their careful adherence to the decrees of that Council'' (Vol. II, p. 441). The usages there discussed included the mixed chalice (that is, the mixing of water with the wine in thecommunion cup), the introduction of the vernacular, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice for the dead, the saying of parts of the Mass secretly and in a low voice, and among other propositions the question as to whether the Mass is simply a commemoration of the sacrifice on the Cross is in itself a real and proper sacrifice offered to God. It is hardly within the scope of this article to discuss these wider issues.

    There are two principal decisions and definitions in that Councils Decrees and Canons which bear upon our present subject. They can be quoted conveniently from a book, to which we shall have further occasion to refer, * by J. C. Hedley, formerly Roman Catholic Bishop of Newport. The book is one of a series called ''The Westminster Library for Catholic Priests and Students," and it ranks as a standard modern work. The first of these decrees of the Council of Trent is from Session XIII, cap. IV.

    "Seeing that Christ our Redeemer hath said that that which He offered under the appearance ( ) of Bread was truly His Body, therefore it hath ever been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Synod declares it afresh, that there happens a conversion ( ) of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the Body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood; which conversion conveniently and with propriety is called by the holy Catholic Church Transubstantiation."

    Bishop Hedley goes on to quote from the first Canon or definition of the same chapter:"If any one shall deny that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist is truly, really, and substantially the Body and Blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore Christ wholly and entirely ( ); but shall say that it is therein only as a sign, or figuratively, or virtually; let him be anathema." (Hedley, p.38)

    The word "species" figuring in the above definition is spelt alike in its Latin original and means appearance or form . It describes the thing as it is seen by the eye or contacted through the other senses. It is that which is outward and visible or extrinsic as opposed to that which is intrinsic. In the language of the Schoolmen (of whom we shall speak later) this outer appearance goes by the name of "accidents.'' That which stands behind this outer appearance and which is changed at the time of consecration is called "substance. (Latin: =beneath, = standing). The Latin means

    THE BODY OF THE LORDI

    A STUDY OF EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE

    A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

    The Holy Eucharist

    specie

    conversionem fieri

    totem Christum

    sub stans trans

  • 5across. Transubstantiation is therefore the changing across of the one substance into the other. The outer qualities of bread and wine remain.

    Let us glance for a moment at some of the implications of the doctrine. The following quotation is from an article written by J . Pohle in and forms part of a long and able exposition of Eucharistic doctrine. It is said that "together with His Body and Blood and Soul, His whole Humanity also, and, by virtue of the hypostatic union, His Divinity, i.e., Christ whole and entire, must be present." (Vol V, P. 578, column 2). By hypostatic union is meant the union of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity with the human nature of our Lord, the Greek hypostasis signifying "underlying nature or substance." Another technical term which figures in the doctrine is "circuminsession"; in virtue of the perfect indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity in each other we have in the consecrated species also the presence of the two other Persons of the Trinity. (Cf. A. Devine: pp.199, 200.) The Council of Trent also decreed that Christ whole and entire is present under either species of Bread or Wine (cf. Hedley, p.102) This is known as ''concomitance" (Latin: =with, unite or combine), and is held to justify the practical convenience of giving communion under one kind, that is, the administration of the Host but not of the Chalice, to communicants other than the celebrant .

    The definition of the Council of Trent given above states that the substance of the bread and wine is converted into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord. The reader should note that the word substance is here repeated. The bread and wine remain unchanged as regards their species or accidents. Bishop Hedley puts the meaning of substance quite clearly when he says that ''just as substance meant the thing itself, so species meant the thing as it affects the senses" (p. 39). There is one interpretation of this definition which is entirely acceptable to myself and would probably be to other Liberal Catholics. If one may take it to mean that that which lies behind the bread and wine is changed into that which found and finds expression through the body and blood of Christ the statement leaves nothing to be desired. The consecrated bread and wine become the instrument for the direct expression of the being, the life and the benediction of the Christ, as was His physical body in Palestine. Such an interpretation will be discussed later in this article. It is, however, a radical departure from the outlook of the other Churches, whether Roman, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant.

    As a preliminary observation we may note that the use of the word substance before the words "the Body of Christ" is constantly dispensed with. This may be attributed to carelessness, but it is a carelessness which is in keeping with the common outlook. Many instances of this omission could be given, but three from the books already mentioned and from one other will suffice for documentation. article says: the substance of the bread and wine departs in order to make room for the Body and Blood of Christ" (p. 580, column 1). Devine writes: Transubstantiation "means the change of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and the whole substance of the wine into the Blood, of Christ by virtue of the words of consecration'' (p. 204). Bishop Hedley writes: ". . . the bread . . wholly ceases, and nothing of its substance remains; but she (the Church) says, at the same time, that it is turned into the Body of Christ" (p. 49). The next quotation is not from a Catholic source but is contained in an Instruction from Luther to Melanchthon dated 1534: "This is the sum of our opinion, that the body of Christ is really eaten in and with the bread, so that all which the bread does and suffers, the body of Christ does and suffers, so that it is divided and is eaten and is bitten with the teeth" (Quoted in Darwell Stone, Vol. II, p. 21.)

    Let us now examine the Roman teaching in further detail. The identity of the Eucharist Body of Christ with that of His earthly and post-Resurrection life is definitely put forward. "The bread is

    into the Body of Christ. That is the way it comes. It is changed into the very Body now in the heavens It has its natural figure; it has head, trunk, limbs, heart and hands" (Hedley, pp 49 and 53). "The human Body of Christ, with all its parts, exists under the least quantity of bread"

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    changed

  • 6(Devine, P. 208). "Christ, whole and entire, is present in this Sacrament; and in each separate particle of the species, and in each separate part of the species when divided from the whole. That is, the God-man that was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary - His Body that was laid in the manger in Bethlehem that was nailed to the Cross, and enclosed in the sepulchre; that same Body which was again united to His soul on the day of His resurrection, and which ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. (2) The Blood, the same that was shed for us in the garden of olives, at the scourging and the crowning, and on the road to Calvary, and which flowed from His five Sacred Wounds from the Cross, and which He assumed into His Body at His resurrection - that blood which is the price of our redemption. (3) His Soul, that same Soul that was sorrowful even to death, that went down to Limbo when the Body was in the tomb, and there consoled the souls of the just, which was united again to His Body, and now enjoys in the glorified Body the beatific vision" (ibid., p. 199). "Now, the glorified Christ , Who `dieth now no more' (Rom. vi, 9), has an animate Body through whose veins courses His life's Blood under the vivifying influence of the soul" ( , p. 578, column 2).

    The process by which this is brought about is characterised by the Council of Trent as "wonderful" and "singular," which means that it is outside the order of nature, falling not under the category of miracle but under that of mystery. We may quote Bishop Hedley once more:

    "The words of consecration change the substance of the Bread into the substance of our Saviour's Body. That is, the substance of our Lord's Body is under the species; but the words of consecration do not bring His dimensions or shape under the species. True, the dimensions and shape are there, but not in the localised sense of 'there.' That is, they have no relation to, or contact with, the species. If you insist that where a body is, there are its parts, we reply that it is one thing for the parts to be there, and another that those parts should be measurable or definable on, and by the dimensions which surrounded them. It is not imaginable, but it is quite conceivable. Our Lord's Body is not touched, or circumscribed, or bounded by the species" (pp. 52-53).". . according to the best-founded opinions not only the substance Body, but by His own wise arrangement, its corporeal quantity, i.e., its full size, with its complete organization of integral members and limbs, is present within the diminutive limits of the Host and in each portion thereof ." ( , p. 583, column 1).

    "Our Lord's Body is not a Spirit; and although it is truly said to be in the Holy Eucharist after the manner of a spirit, yet this statement is an analogy only. It is in place after the manner of a material substance deprived of actual dimensions, actual shape, actual extended parts; of a substance, therefore, which has no point of contact with any material surroundings; a substance of which place, in its formal sense, cannot be predicated. Therefore it can be in many places at once; because the truth is, that it is (properly) in none of them. It cannot be moved about from one place to another; because it is in no place to begin with. It is wholly in every particle or division of the species; because the species does not contain it as a stone is contained by the clay in which it is embedded, or a man's body by its surroundings - but in a way quite special to the Holy Eucharist, viz., as substance with no dimensive relation" (Hedley, p. 54).

    "To use the language of the schools, our Lord's Body in the Holy Eucharist is rightly said to be moved that is, it is not literally moved, but on account of something else being moved it receives new relations to certain extrinsic objects" (ibid., p. 56).

    Much more of this metaphysic might be quoted, but to do so, while interesting in itself would not be germane to the purpose of this article. In studying and passing judgement upon the thought of this period, as shown in the writings of the Schoolmen and as summarised in the Council of Trent, we have to recognise that it was the outlook of a particular age, of an age which made use of a system of dialectic analysis. Reason had had but little say in the early history of the Church; the appeal was to a

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    per accidens

  • 7living tradition and to revelation, the outlook was primarily mystical, and such philosophy as did emerge was mainly shaped on the Platonic method. It will be useful at this stage of our study to explain how the Scholastic philosophy arose and how it acquired its name. Who then were the Schoolmen? And what is the scholastic theology? The name and the method is inherited from the early Christian educational establishments. The heads of these came to be known as or

    . In the early centuries, say from the sixth century onwards, " " or logical discussion, based on the method of question and answer, was the only form of philosophy taught and practiced in the schools. To put it briefly the science of reasoning was taught. The system had been taken over from Greece. The subjects which came to be taught in the schools were those of "the seven liberal arts," namely, grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries universities were founded at Paris, Bologna, Salerno, Oxford and Cambridge. Those who taught philosophy and theology in these universities were also given the name of Schoolmen. The philosophy of Aristotle, embodying the methods of definition and syllogism or deductive reasoning, began to find its way more and more into Europe through Arabia, Syria and Mesopotamia, and on to the north coast of Africa. From this last-named source the Moors crossed over into Spain. One important Arab philosopher who influenced later philosophical thought is Averros (1126-1198).

    This Aristotelian philosophy made its entry into Christian theology round about the nineth century, as a consequence of the revival of learning in Europe dating from the time of Charlemagne (742-814). The early Christian thought had been separated off from or opposed to philosophy, and Tertullian (born probably in 160) was rather contemptuous of philosophy. There was some need for philosophy, however, and, as we have seen, Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought did shape early Christianity to some extent. Moreover, Augustine had been a philosophic pagan before he became converted to Christianity. Be all this as it may, the Emperor Justinian closed down all schools of philosophy in 529. In such philosophy as was incorporated into Church teaching during the ninth and tenth centuries there was not much originality; the method of dialectic was pursued. But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1204, speculation in terms of reason grew apace; it was applied to various doctrines of the faith, these were co-ordinated into a whole, and we get Scholasticism in full flow. Harnack with characteristic insight says that Scholasticism was simply the play of science applied to religion, and that science like philosophy has its variations and phases. The definitions which we have been studying represent the outlook of a particular period in which philosophy was beginning to shape itself in Europe. The Scholastic method is well defined by Professor Windelband. A text used as the basis for discussion is broken up by division and explanation into a number of propositions; questions are attached and the possible answers brought together; finally the arguments to be adduced for establishing or refuting these answers are presented in the form of a chain of syllogistic reasoning, leading ultimately to a decision upon the subject.'' ( , pp. 312-313). Scholasticism reached its zenith and power in St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), ''the Angelic Doctor.'' His masterpiece, the

    is subdivided into 3120 articles in which some 10,000 objections are proposed and answered. The argument of the period reveals certain limitations of thought. A modern outlook may proceed from different premises.

    SOME ADVENTURES IN SPECULATION

    The doctrine of the bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar not unnaturally gave rise to and invites much speculation. Indeed, to the departments of theology variously named Dogmatic, Moral, Pastoral, and Ascetical and Mystical, there might well be added one qualified as Speculative. We have mentioned already the dogma of the hypostatic union, that in our Lord divinity and humanity are indissolubly united. The writer in explains that the totality of the presence was constantly affirmed as part of the Christian tradition, so that there can be no question of partaking only of the Body and Blood, or, to use the technical word, sarcophagy, which

    scholasticidoctores scholastici dialectici

    A History of PhilosophySumma

    theologica

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  • 8means flesh-eating. He then discusses an issue which was among those which engaged the attention of the mediaeval writers. "In case the Apostles had celebrated the Lord's Supper during the

    (the time during which Christ's Body was in the tomb), when a real separation took place between the constitutive elements of Christ, there would have been really present in the Sacred Host only the bloodless, inanimate Body of Christ as it lay in the tomb, and in the Chalice only the Blood separated from His Body and absorbed by the earth as it was shed, both the Body and the Blood, however, remaining hypostatically united to His Divinity, while His Soul, which sojourned in Limbo, would have remained entirely excluded from the Euchartistic presence" (Vol. V, Eucharist, p 578, column 2). The same surmise figures in Devine. Speaking of circuminsession he says: "From which we may understand that if the Apostles had consecrated while Christ was dead, under the species of bread, the Body would be without the Blood and the Soul, and the Blood would be under the species of wine without the Body and Soul; but under each species there would be the Divinity, because whatever the Word hypostatically assumed He never relinquished" (p. 200). No suggestion is put forward that our Lord might have decided to arrange matters differently. We may also ask whether the Body need have been bloodless. Some particles of blood would certainly have remained in a semi-congealed state in the body, and it is part of the Catholic teaching that one particle suffices as matter for consecration.

    The philosopher and scientist Descartes (1596-1650) turned away from dialectic methods and made knowledge dependent on intuitional consciousness. In his work, and in the Inductive Philosophy of Francis Bacon who preceded him, scholars see the beginning of modern philosophy. Descartes roots everything in the activity of consciousness. He accepts the phenomena of experience as real only in so far as they are clear and distinct. The Cartesian philosophy largely influenced theology and inaugurated a period which saw the decline of the Scholastic regime. It had some peculiar reactions on Eucharistic doctrine. Basing themselves on this philosophy Maignan (1601-1676) Drouin and Vitasse advanced the theory that the Divine Providence so worked upon the five senses that after the consecration the bread and wine were phantasmagorical accidents, illusions to the sense of sight and other senses.

    We have already referred to the doctrine that Christ's body with its integral members and limbs is present ''whole and entire'' and "in its natural figure" is present in every particle of the Host . The mode of compassing such a presence came to be the subject of detailed discussion among later writers. Legrand (1711-1787) and Rossignol put forward the theory that our Lord was present in diminished stature. Others, such as Oswald, Casajoana and Fernandez postulated ''a mutual compenetration" of the members so that He could be comprised in the dimension of the point of a needle (Cf. , Vol. V, p. 583).

    Another adventure in speculation postulates the presence of Our Lady in the consecrated Host. Dr. C. J. Cadoux writes as follows: "The idea that in the Eucharist the communicant partakes, not only of the flesh of Jesus, but also of the flesh of Mary, was taught not only by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1566) and Cornelius Lapide (1567-1637) but by more recent Catholic writers like Heinrich Oswald (whose was published at Paderborn in 1850) and Faber 1814-1863), and was known by Pusey to be prevalent among the poorer classes in Rome (

    , p. 365). The theory was also put forward by Christopher de Vega in the seventeenth century. Darwell Stone gives quotations from Oswald and Faber (Vol. II, p. 419):

    "We maintain a presence of Mary in the Eucharist ... We are much inclined to believe an essential co-presence of Mary in her whole person, with body and soul, under the sacred species . . . The blood of the Lord and the milk of His Virgin Mother are both present in the Sacrament" (Op. cit., pp. 177, 179, 183).

    triduum mortis

    sub tit.

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    Dogmatische MariologieCatholicism and

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  • 9Oswald's book was disapproved by the Roman authorities and placed on the Index. F. W. Faber is well known as a writer of beautiful hymns. Before his entry into the Roman Church he was a priest of the Church of England. The following passage is to be found in a book of his entitled

    :"There is some portion of the precious blood which once was Mary's own blood, and which remains still in our Blessed Lord, incredibly exalted by its union with His Divine Person, yet still the same. This portion of Himself, it is piously believed, has not been allowed to undergo the usual changes of human substance ... He vouchsafed at Mass to show to St. Ignatius the very part of the host which had once belonged to the substance of Mary'' (pp. 29, 30).

    (To be continued).

    * * * * *

    *This book contains a wealth of carefully arranged documentation, and we may here express our indebtedness to it for many quotations given in this article

    The Precious Blood

  • 10

    By THE RT. REV. J.I . WEDGWOODII. EARLY TEACHING

    December 1936 Vol. XVII No.3

    The insistent stress laid in the Middle Ages on the corporeal presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist and on the Body being one with that which suffered on Calvary was a symptom of the urge for meticulous definition which marked that period of Christian thought and writing. It had its own value, as has all attempt at clear and precise and definite thinking. It is not without relief, however, that we turn to the noble symbolism and inspiring imagery of some of the primitive Christian writers. There are some passages stressing the unity of all life to be found in the or

    , dating from either the first or the second century. (On the historical value of this document the student will do well to consult the book edited by Dr Swete entitled

    , and especially the contribution by Dr. J. A. Robinson. Clement of Alexandria quotes the Didache as scripture and Athanasius says that it was used in his day for the instructions of catechumens. Eusebius speaks of it as among the works rejected from the canon.) The following passage from Didache 9, 10, is given in Darwell Stone (vol. I, p. 24).

    "Concerning the Eucharist thus give thanks. First, as to the cup: we give thanks to Thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus Thy servant: to Thee be the glory for ever. Then, as to the broken bread: we give thanks to Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus Thy servant: to Thee be the glory for ever. As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom: for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever. But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist but they who have been baptised in the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord hath said, 'Give not that which is holy to the dogs' (S. Matthew, vii. 6). And after ye have received thus give thanks: We give thanks to Thee, holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou didst make to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus that they might give thanks to Thee, but didst bestow on us spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy servant.

    We will pass over Clement and Origen for a moment and quote from the writings of a later writer Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, famous as a Church historian and a very learned man, who died in 339 or 340. A certain Marcellus of Ancyra is represented as citing our Lord's words "The flesh profiteth nothing'' and arguing that it was unreasonable to suppose that He permanently preserved His union with that flesh. Eusebius disposes of the argument in the following terms:

    "But do you, receiving the Scriptures of the Gospels, perceive the whole teaching of our Saviour, that He did not speak concerning the flesh which He had taken but concerning His mystic body and blood. For when He had sustained the multitudes with the five loaves, and in this had shown a great wonder to those who beheld it, very many of the Jews despised what was done and said to Him, 'What then doest thou for a sign, that we may see, and believe?' and then mentioned the manna which was in the wilderness, saying, 'Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.' To this our Saviour answered, 'It was not Moses that gave you the bread out of heaven; but My Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven.' Then He adds, 'I am the bread of life,' and again, 'I am the bread which came down out of heaven,' and again, 'The bread which I will give is My Body,' and He adds again, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh

    THE BODY OF THE LORDA STUDY OF EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE

    Didache The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles

    Essays on the Early History of the Church and Ministry

  • 11

    and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; for I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him.' When He had discussed these and such things more mystically, some of His disciples said, 'The saying is hard; who can hear it?' The Saviour answered them, saying, 'Doth this cause you to stumble? What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where He was before? The Spirit is the life-giver; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.' In this way He instructed them to understand spiritually the words which He had spoken concerning His flesh and His blood; for, He says, you must not consider Me to speak of the flesh with which I am clothed as if you were to eat that, nor suppose that I command you to drink perceptible and corporal blood; but know well that 'the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life,' so that the words themselves and the discourses themselves are the flesh and the blood, of which he who always partakes, as one fed on heavenly bread, will be a partaker of heavenly life. Therefore, He says, let not this cause you to stumble that I have spoken concerning the eating of My flesh and concerning the drinking of My blood; nor let the offhand hearing of what I have said about flesh and blood disturb you; for these things 'profit nothing' if they are understood according to sense; but the Spirit is the life-giver to those who are able to understand spiritually. ( , 111 pp.11-12, quoted in Darwell Stolle, vol. 1. pp 88-89*).

    Among the early writers the mystical apotheosis of the Eucharist finds its fullest expression perhaps in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement was for a time head of a school of learning at Alexandria, and was succeeded there by Origen. The one died c.215 the other lived from 185 till 253 or 254. Alexandria was a place where different lines of thought were liable to mingle and to fuse, and it was there that we find a great seat of early Christian thought and mysticism. Each of these writers stresses the allegorical interpretation of the Eucharist, though, as we shall presently have occasion to see, neither sets such an interpretation in antithesis to a conception of the Real Presence. These larger and more sublimated conceptions are an interesting contrast to the literalism of the Scholastic age.

    Clement's exposition of the doctrine may usefully be prefaced by some words of an author who has edited a collection of his writings, J.B. Mayor: "The flesh and blood of the Logos are the apprehension of the divine power and essence; the eating and drinking of the Logos is knowledge of the divine essence; the flesh is the Spirit, the blood is the Logos, the union of the two is the Lord who is the food of His people" (Hoyt and Mayor: , Book vii. p. 383). Darwell Stone gives the following three extracts from Clement of Alexandria :

    "The Lord expressed this by means of symbols in the Gospel according to John when He said, 'Eat My flesh and drink My Blood,' depicting plainly the drinkable character of faith and the promise by means of which the Church, as a human being consisting of many members, is refreshed and grows and is welded together and compacted of both, of faith as the body and of hope as the soul, as also the Lord of flesh and blood" ( , 1, vi p.38).

    "The blood of the Lord is twofold. In one sense it is fleshly, that by which we have been redeemed from corruption; in another sense it is spiritual, that by which we have been anointed. To drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the Lord's immortality; and the Spirit is the strength of the Word, as blood of flesh. As then wine is mixed with water, so is the Spirit with man. And the one, the mixture, nourishes to faith; and the other, the Spirit, guides to immortality. And the mingling of both - of the drink and the Word - is called Eucharist, renowned and beauteous grace; and those who will partake of it in faith are sanctified in both body and soul, since the will of the father has mystically united the divine mixture, man, by

    On the Theology of the Church

    Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies

    Paedagogus

  • 12

    the Spirit and the Word. For in truth the Spirit is joined to the soul that is moved by it, and the flesh, for the sake of which the Word became flesh, to the Word. " (Ibid, II, ii pp. 19, 20).

    "The food is the mystic contemplation; for the flesh and blood of the Word are the comprehension of the divine power and essence. 'Taste and see that the Lord is Christ,' it is said; for so He imparts of Himself to those who partake of such food in a more spiritual manner, when now the soul nourishes itself, as says the truth-loving Plato. For the eating and drinking of the divine Word is the knowledge of the divine essence .( V, x, p. 67).

    It will be convenient and fitting at this stage of our study to cite some other words of Clement of Alexandria in which the elements are identified with the Body and Blood of the Incarnate Christ:

    "' Eat ye My flesh,' He says, 'and drink ye My Blood.' This suitable food the Lord supplies to us, and offers flesh and pours out blood; and the little children lack nothing that their growth needs." ( I, vi, p. 43)

    There are other passages in the writings of Clement in which the consecrated elements are identified with the Body and Blood of Christ.

    We pass next to Origen. The teaching of Origen on the nature of the sacrament will only be seen in its right perspective when his general outlook on religion has been grasped. Scholars are disposed to think that he and Clement were influenced in their outlook by the teaching of the Greek mysteries. Origen moves in a realm of thought seldom entered, or at any rate seldom brought down into concrete expression, by other early or mediaeval writers on the doctrine of the sacraments. He sees in the Holy Eucharist the cosmic process at work in terms of the pleading of the Great Sacrifice before the throne of God. In his writings (VII, p. I, and VIII, p. 21) Origen speaks of those whom the truth has set free as "offering to the God of the universe a reasonable and smokeless sacrifice" and again of the true worshipper as "continually offering the bloodless sacrifices in his prayers to the deity." On this side of his teaching Darwell Stone (I. pp. 51-52) writes with real insight:

    "Students who have made a serious attempt to master the theology of Origen will hardly be confident that they have fully understood the intricacies and versatility of his thought or exhausted the meaning of a thinker so enterprising and eccentric, so subtle and profound. But amid all that is doubtful this much seems clear. To Origen the centre of Christian life and worship was in the perpetual pleading of the ascended Lord at the Father's throne. In the heavens are an altar and a sacrifice, not an altar of wood or stone or a sacrifice of carnal things, but the abiding offering of that sacred Manhood which the Son of God took for the salvation of the creatures in the Incarnation, the blood of which He shed in His death. In that offering the holy dead and the priestly society of the Church on earth have their place and share. Into it are gathered all the elements of the sacrificial life which Christians live, the sacrifices of praise and prayers, of pity and chastity, of righteousness and holiness. To it there is access in Communion, and he who keeps the feast with Jesus is raised to be with Him in His heavenly work. So Origen says, with the emphasis of constant repetition, that our Lord in His heavenly life 'is our advocate for our sins with the Father,' 'approaches the altar to make propitiation for sinners,' presents in the inner sanctuary, the true Holy of Holies the heaven itself, all those sacrificial offerings which Christians in the outer sanctuary on earth bring to God's altar, so that they `come to Christ, the true High Priest, who by His blood made God propitious to' man 'and reconciled' man 'to the Father,' and 'hear him saying, "This is My blood" '; and that 'the souls of the martyrs' and 'those who follow Christ' 'stand at the divine sacrifices' and 'reach to the very altar of God, where is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the High Priest of good things to come'."

    Stromata

    Paedagogus

    Contra Celsum

  • 13

    (To be continued)

    *With a view to simplifying this article for readers various references to original Greek words given in brackets in Darwell Stone's text, are omitted. (JIW)

  • 14

    BY THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOODJanuary 1937 Vol. XVII No. 4

    In the quotations to follow Origen is certainly speaking in terms of the Logos doctrine, according to one phase of which the life of the Second Person of the Ever-Blessed Trinity is continually outpoured for the sustenance, the nourishment and the uplifting of the world. "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. . . . He came unto his own and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:.. (John 1, 3, 10, 11, 12). In the first of these quotations the idiom used is strange to a generation nurtured in the scholastic theology and used to the system of approaching the divine mysteries "from below upwards.'' Food is life and refreshment for the body. Every work and word of the Lord is seen by Origen in terms of spiritual nourishment . ''Clean food" as applied to the Apostles and to true disciples means that they in their turn are transmitters of spiritual nourishment and grace to the world. To use the more modern idiom, they are a pure channel through which the waters of life can flow for the helping of the world, instruments in the Lord's service. The passage reads as follows:

    ''Our Lord and Saviour says, Unless ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye will not have life in yourselves; My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. Because therefore Jesus is wholly clean, His whole flesh is food, and His whole blood is drink, because every work of His is His and every word of His is true. Therefore also His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink. For by the flesh and blood of His word as clean food and drink He gives drink and refreshment to the whole race of men. In the second place after His flesh Peter and Paul and all the Apostles are clean food. In the third place are their disciples. And so each one, in proportion to the extent of his merits and the purity of his senses, is made clean food for his neighbour." ( . VII, p. 5).

    We may pass on to three other passages which continue the same idiom."Those of the Jews who followed the Lord were offended and said, Who can eat flesh and drink blood? But the Christian people, the faithful people, hear the saying, and embrace it, and follow Him who says, `Except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye will not have life in yourselves; for My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink.' And moreover He who thus spoke was wounded on behalf of men, for He Himself 'was wounded for our sins,' as Isaiah says. "Now we are said to drink the blood of Christ not only in the way of Sacraments, but also when we receive His words, in which life consists, as also He Himself said, `The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life.' Therefore He. Himself was wounded, whose blood we drink, that is, receive the words of His teaching.'' ( . XVI, p. 9).

    The bread which God the Word confesses to be His own body is the word that nourishes souls, the word proceeding from God the Word, and is bread from the heavenly Bread, which is placed upon the table of which it is written, 'Thou hast prepared before me a table against those that trouble me.' And that drink which God the Word confesses to be His blood is the word that gives drink and excellent gladness to the hearts of those who drink, which is in the cup of which it was written, 'And Thy gladdening cup, how excellent it is.' And that drink is the fruit of the True Vine, which says, 'I am the True Vine.' And it is the blood of that grape which, cast into the wine-press of the passion, brought forth this drink. So also the bread is the word of Christ, made of that corn of wheat which falling into the ground yields much fruit. For not that visible bread which He held in His hands didGod the Word call His body, but the word in the mystery of which that bread was to be broken. Nor did He call that visible drink His blood, but the word in the mystery of which that drink was to be poured out. For what else can the body of God the Word, or His blood, be but the word which nourishes and the word which gladdens the heart? Why then did He not say, This is the bread of the

    THE BODY OF THE LORDIII

    In Lev. Hom

    In Num . Hom

  • 15

    new covenant, as He said, This is the blood of the new covenant?' Because the bread is the word of righteousness, by eating which souls are nourished, while the drink is the word of the knowledge of Christ according to the mystery of His birth and passion. Since therefore the covenant of God is set for us in the blood of the passion of Christ, so that believing the Son of God to have been born and to have suffered according to the flesh we may be saved not in righteousness, in which alone without faith in the passion of Christ there could not be salvation, for this reason it was said of the cup only, 'This is the cup of the new covenant.' " ( ., p. 85).

    "Let the bread and the cup be understood by the more simple according to the more common acceptation of the Eucharist, but by those who have learnt to hear more deeply according to the more divine promise, even that of the nourishing word of the truth." ( . XXXII, p. 24).

    These last passages need not be taken to mean that Origen rejected the doctrine of the Real Presence under the veils of bread and wine. It is more probable that he was urging that the earthly rite should be seen in its larger and wider context of the heavenly and cosmic sacrifice. That he regarded the two ideas as complementary may be judged from some other passages of his writings. In the following passage the words "upper room'' evidently mean the higher ranges of man's being:

    " He who keeps the feast with Jesus is above in the great upper room, the upper room swept clean, the upper room garnished and made ready. If you go up with Him that you may keep the feast of the passover, He gives to you the cup of the new covenant, He gives to you also the bread of blessing, He bestows His own body and His own blood. " ( . XVIII, p. 13).

    Darwell Stone writes as follows (Vol. 1, p. 38) : " Origen speaks of . . . Christians receiving 'thebread which becomes a kind of holy body because of the prayer ( VIII p.33). If in some places he seems to identify the flesh and blood of Christ with His words, in one remarkable passage he reminds his hearers of the reverent care which they know is taken to prevent any part of the body of the Lord which is received in the mysteries from falling to the ground or being lost, and exhorts them to be no less careful to receive the words of Christ than to protect His body which Origen thus distinguishes from them: 'If for the protection of His body ye take so great care, and are right to take it, can ye suppose that to be careless of the word of God is a less offence than to be careless of His body?' ( . XIII, p. 3).

    - - - - - -

    In Mat. Comm. Ser

    Tn Joann

    In Jer. Hom

    Contra Celsum

    In Ex . Hom

  • 16

    By THE RT. REV. J.1. WEDGWOODTHE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE DOCTRINE

    February 1937 Vol. XVII No. 5

    The famous Council of Nicaea held1n 325 marked the beginning of a movement in the Church for closer formulation of doctrine. The Council itself, and four others which followed it during the next century-and-a-quarter, were mainly occupied with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Stress is increasingly laid on the sacrament being that of the Body and Blood of Christ, but the language used is still marked by a wealth of imagery. There is reference to Old Testament tradition, prophecy and miracle, to New Testament miracle, to Christ as our great High Priest in heaven - likened sometimes to Melchizedek, to the tabernacle in heaven, and much stress is laid on the Church as the mystical body of Christ. To show the nature of the language used we may glance in passing at a few brief passages from the writings of the period. For these we are once more indebted to the book of Dr. Darwell Stone.

    "Our Sanctuaries, as always, so also now are clean, adorned only with the blood of Christ and the worship of Him". (Quoted from an Encyclical Letter by Athanasius in his

    , 5.)

    "We do not approach a temporal feast, my beloved, but an eternal and heavenly. Not in shadows do we show it forth but we come to it in truth. For they (the Jews) being filled with the flesh of a dumb lamb, accomplished the feast, and having anointed their door-posts with the blood, implored aid against the destroyer. But now we, eating of the Word of the Father, and having the lintels of our hearts sealed with the blood of the new covenant, acknowledge the grace given us from the Saviour" (Athanasius, A.D. 295-373 , IV, p. 3).

    "The manna is a type of the spiritual food which by the resurrection of the Lord became a reality in the mystery of the Eucharist ." (Unknown writer in , XCV, P. 3).

    "Melchizedek showed the future mystery of the Incarnation and passion of the Lord when to Abraham first as the father of the faithful he gave the Eucharist of the body and blood of the Lord that there might be beforehand in the case of the father a type of that which was to be a reality in the case of the sons" ( CIX , p. 18).

    Nothing else is brought about by the participation of the body and blood of Christ than that we pass into that which we receive, and bear throughout both in spirit and in flesh Him in whom we died and were buried and were raised together with Him." (Leo the Great, of the fifth century, LXIII, P. 7.)

    "O God of truth, let Thy Holy Word come upon this bread that the bread may become the body of the Word, and upon this cup that the cup may become the blood of the Truth." (Serapion of Thmuis, a contemporary of S. Athanasius, , Eucharistic Anaphora I).

    The last quotation of this series is taken from a work by a certain Macarius Magner who lived at the end of the fourth Century. The book is written in the form of a Dialogue between a Christian and a heathen who questions and makes objection to the Eucharist:

    THE BODY OF THE LORDIV

    Defence against the Arians

    Festal Letters

    Questions on the Old and New Testaments

    Ibid

    Serm.,

    Prayers

    Apocritica

    "Common bread that is grown in the earth, even though it is the flesh of the earth, is not declared to have eternal life, but it bestows upon those who eat it only a short-lived benefit, since without the divine Spirit its force is quickly quenched. But the bread that is grown in the blessed earth of Christ,

  • 17

    Certain words are used during this and the preceding period to describe the relation of the consecrated elements to the indwelling Presence: symbol, sign, figure, image, likeness, copy, representation, type, antitype, "trans-make," ''transelement.'' In modern times words like figure and symbol have the sense of denying reality. We speak of a thing as being `only figurative or symbolical." This is largely the outcome of the dualistic philosophy which came to dominate the teaching of the Roman Church, a philosophy which offsets natural and supernatural, nature and grace, material and spiritual, body and soul, man and God. (The official Roman catechisms do not speak of man as a tripartite being; they equivalate soul and spirit and so reduce man to a duality. The following passage is from Cardinal Gasparri's (p.77). "What is man? Man is a creature, made up of a rational sdul and an organic body.'') The earlier original use of the words now being discussed conveyed the idea of a true and real correspondence between the physical object and that which is re-presented. This interpretation of such words has always been stressed by leading writers of The Liberal Catholic Church. "Symbol," says Darwell Stone, "is one of the words which the Alexandrian theologians obviously borrowed from the terminology of the Greek mysteries. Clement of Alexandria uses it for the various acts and objects which in these mystic rites were regarded as at once the signs and the vehicles of divine gifts - the eating out of the drum, the drinking from the cymbal, the carrying the vessel, the entrance into the bridal chamber, the reception of the touch of the serpent gliding over the breast, the dice, the ball, the lamp, the sword and other material things." (1, p. 30). And he quotes Harnack to the same effect: "What we now-a-days understand by `symbol' is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time 'symbol' denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, really is what it signifies." (Harnack , II. p. 144).

    By way of illustration a few brief passages making use of some of the words mentioned may be cited. Tertullian (born about the middle of the second century, died c.220 or 222) uses the following words:

    "The Lord . . . even up to the present time has not disdained the water which is the Creator's work, by which He washes His own people, or the oil whereby He anoints them, or the mixture of milk and honey with which He feeds them as infants, or the bread by which He makes present ( ) His very body, requiring even in His own Sacraments the 'beggarly elements' ( ) of the Creator." (Tertullian, ., I, p. 4.

    Eusebius speaks of the consecrated elements as "the symbols of His body and His saving blood" ( , 1, X, P.28). S. Cyril of Jerusalem uses the words: "In the figure of bread is given to thee the body" ( , XXII, p.3), the Greek word used being equivalent to our "type." S. Cyril also makes use of the expression "anti-type" and the same word figures in the writings of other theologians of the period; they speak of the bread and the wine being antitypes of the precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

    being united to the power of the Holy Ghost, by the mere taste gives immortality to man. For the mystic bread, having received the inseparable invocation of the Saviour - the invocation that is on His body and blood - unites him who eats to the body of Christ and makes him the limbs of the Saviour. For as the writing-tablet receives power through the letters which the teacher writes on it and gives this power to the scholar, and by means of it uplifts and unites him to the teacher, so the body, which is the bread, and the blood, which is the wine, receiving the immortality of the unstained deity, give it from themselves to him who receives them, and by means of it restores him to the uncorruptible abiding of the Creator. Therefore the flesh of the Saviour when it is eaten is not destroyed, and this blood when it is drunk is not consumed, but he who eateth attains to an increase of divine powers, and that which is eaten remains unspent, since it is kindred to and inseparable from the inexhaustible nature." (III p.23.)

    The Catholic Catechism

    repraesentatmendicitatibus Adv. Marc

    Demonstratio EvangelicaCatechetical Lectures

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    VBy THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD

    March 1937 Vol. XVII No. 6

    Lastly we come to an interesting passage from of Gregory of Nyssa of the fourth century:

    "Moreover, that body (the body of Jesus Christ) by the indwelling of God the Word was transmade to the dignity of Godhead. Rightly then, do we believe that now also the bread which is consecrated by the word of God is transmade into the body of the God the Word. . . He bestows these gifts as He transelements the nature of the visible things to that immortal thing by virtue of the consecration" (ch. 37).

    As the years pass on the attempt to define and to explain the mode of the presence shows itself increasingly. This is not unnatural. Human reason needs to play its appointed part in the processes and adventures of life. And speculation in the domain of the spiritual is in keeping with this natural urge in man. Theories and hypotheses are called forth in answer to doubt and scepticism, and it was in this fashion that much of the early for the Eucharist came into being. The process which had to be defined was the feeding of the worshipper by our Lord with His Body and Blood. We find at an early stage the imagery shaping itself of a mother feeding her child with the product of her own body. This idea is worked out by Clement of Alexandria in a passage of which part has already been quoted. The language is conspicuously that of imagery.

    The young brood which the Lord Himself brought forth with throes of the flesh, which the Lord Himself swaddled with precious blood. O holy birth, O holy swaddling clothes, the Word is all to the babe, father and mother and tutor and nurse. 'Eat ye My flesh' , He says, 'and drink ye My blood' . This suitable food the Lord supplies to us, and offers flesh and pours out blood, and the little children lack nothing that their growth needs." (I.,VI pp.42,43)

    The same imagery is worked out in the Dialogue of Macarius Magnes to which reference has also been made in the course of this article. The argument is summed up by Darwell Stone as follows: In the , which represents a discussion between a heathen opponent and a Christian, the heathen is depicted as taking exception to the Eucharist. The command to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood as a condition of life is said to be unreasonable and savage; and it is maintained that even if the words have some allegorical and mystic meaning the impression created by them is still injurious to the soul. To this objection a lengthy reply is given. A new-born babe, it is said, must die unless he eats the flesh and drinks the blood of his mother, since his food is the mother's blood which a physical process has converted into milk If, then, the infant thus eats the flesh and drinks the blood of his is mother, it is not unreasonable that Christ should command those to whom He gave authority to become the children of God to eat His flesh and drink His blood, to eat the mystic flesh and drink the mystic blood of her who bare them. For the Wisdom of God brought forth children and fed them from the two breasts of the two covenants and gave them her own flesh and blood and bestowed on them immortality; and this Wisdom of God is Christ'' (Vol. I., p.73).

    And we come finally to St. Augustine of Hippo, who has been called 'the father of mediaeval Christianity' and who lived from 354-430, somewhat later than the other two writers. His thesis is now shaping itself more concretely and more in terms of dogma. We are indebted once more to Darwell Stone for a summary of the argument: "In an earlier passage . . . from the

    (I., p. 6), St. Augustine uses the comparison between a mother feeding her child with her own body and the feeding of the children of God with the body and blood of Christ. He there says that our Lord has willed our salvation to be in His body and blood, and that His humility

    THE BODY OF THE LORD

    the Catechetical Oration

    apologia

    Paedagogus

    Dialogue

    Enarrations on the Thirty-third Psalm

  • 19

    has made it possible for us to eat and drink these. The food which the mother eats becomes fit food for her infant child by means of the process of passing through her flesh. In like manner the Wisdom of God feeds Christians and the Incarnation and the Passion have made possible the gift to them of the flesh and blood of the Lord'' (Vol. I., p.48).

    I have quoted these passages at length because they act as a signpost to the development of doctrine in regard to the mode of the presence. Emphasis came to he laid increasingly on the presence in the sacrament of the post-Resurrection flesh and blood with a view to stressing the continuance of the human nature of Christ and of His touch with us. Doctrinal disputes as to the nature or being of the Christ figure largely in the early history of the Church. Various schools arose propounding different and conflicting theories. Of these three may be mentioned by way of illustration. The controversies date from the later part of the fourth century to the middle of the fifth. The Apollinarians, named after a certain Apollinaris, regarded Christ as a man into whom at the highest spiritual source the Logos had been introduced. Nestorianism, named after Nestorius, saw in Him a being in whom the two natures, divine and human, co-existed held together by a moral union, that is by conformity of will. Eutychianism, named after Eutychius, otherwise known as Monophysitism, held that there was but one nature in Christ, the human having been absorbed into the divine. (Needless to say, details of the teachings are disputed; the above summaries are those of alleged teachings). These controversies called forth official definitions as to the being of the Christ. The Council of Chalcedon, held in 451, condemned the errors of Eutychius and affirmed the existence of two natures in Christ. Formulation of doctrine as to the mode of the presence in the Eucharist followed gradually in the wake of these doctrinal developments and decisions, and we find stress being laid increasingly on the taking up of the manhood into heaven and of the coexistence of that in the consecrated species. It is easy to see how controversy of one sort and another led to increasingly exact definition of belief. And we come eventually to the close reasoning of the Schoolmen.

    - - - - - -

  • 20

    VIBy THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD

    April 1937 Vol. XVII No.7

    REFORMATION DOCTRINES*

    With the advent of the Protestant Reformation new doctrines of the Eucharist came to the fore and found acceptance. The Reformation needs to be seen in its historical perspective if it is to be rightly understood. What was the Reformation? It was partly a revolt against the usurpation of civil authority by ecclesiastics and against the worldliness in their life and outlook which was widely prevalent. The amassing of wealth and such matters as the selling of indulgences had become a crying scandal. What is called Humanism or the New Learning, the revival in Italy of classical studies and culture, played its appointed part, as also the influx of Arabic culture, of a high order, through the universities of Spain and of Southern Italy. The Moorish Empire had spread into many countries. The Arabs had assimilated learning from a number of different sources Chinese, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Christian; they had also contacted the literature and thought of Greece. It has often been pointed out that the Crusaders had found in Islam a civilization a great deal more advanced than their own. The invention of printing, which wrested the monopoly of learning from the few, was another potent factor in the emancipation of the intellect from the fetters in which it had been held during the so-called Dark Ages. The introduction of printing led to the wide dissemination of the Scriptures so that the sources of religion no longer had to be accepted at second-hand. Learning was no longer the monopoly of the few. We may add to these influences the widening of the world's horizons by the voyages of explorers and the expansion of trade and national intercourse. It was at this period that Christopher Columbus discovered America. In the realm of philosophy Plato could be offset as against Aquinas. In the realm of theology the Greek text of the New Testament could be offset as against the Latin Vulgate with its many errors. The new learning left Italy more or less undisturbed. But the leaven worked its fill in countries like Germany, Switzerland, and the Low Countries. It took the scholars of those countries back to the study of the Greek New Testament and to original and primitive Christianity. This was contrasted with the endless speculation and foibles of the Schoolmen - arguments which, it should be remembered, had lost much of their original acumen and had too often deteriorated into interminable hair-splitting.

    In this article we are concerned with the effect which the Reformation had on Eucharistic doctrine. To examine the various doctrines of the period at length will serve no useful purpose. Ideas were slowly emerging and some of the writing is obscure. Some of the leaders in the Reformation changed or developed or modified their views as the years moved on. Attempts were made to smooth over differences between pioneers of the Reformation and between groups of their followers by ambiguity of language and by formulating points of agreement while ignoring points of divergence. The complexity of the situation will be illustrated by the fact that a certain Christopher Rasperger published in the year 1577 at Ingolstadt a book dealing with some two hundred interpretations of the words of consecration .

    Four important modifications of the doctrine are summed up under the terms Consubstantiation, Zwinglianism, Receptionism. and Virtualism.

    (1) . This was the doctrine put forward by Martin Luther (1483-1546), the German pioneer of the Reformation. The word explains the doctrine. It is that after the consecration of the elements the substance of the bread. and wine remain side by side (without confusion or union of substance) with "the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.'' The doctrine did not originate with Luther. It was taught explicitly by Berenger of Tours in the eleventh century and can be read into the writings of Irenaeus of the second century. It was put forward by John Wyclif (1324-1384)

    THE BODY OF THE LORD

    Consubstantiation

    Hoc est corpus meum

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    and defended by a Bohemian, John Hus (1369-1415). What lies at the back of the contention is the setting up of an analogy between what takes place at the consecration and what took place at the Incarnation. Our Lord assumed a human body and in so doing the natural substance of the body was not overthrown. As He was at once divine and human, so, it was reasoned, the bread and wine did not depart from their proper nature but became used also as the instrument or vehicle of the higher process. The words of Irenaeus (140-200) are sometimes quoted (as by Gore in his

    , pp. 111-113) as supporting this doctrine: ''For as the bread of the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but Eucharist, made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so also our bodies, partaking of the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. ( In the pursuit of all these studies we have to remember that definition of doctrine is a gradual process and that too much stress should not be laid on statements made before the doctrine had really passed through the mill of discussion. Irenaeus was actually concerned to refute certain Gnostic speculations and wrote at a period when (as Gore himself says) the belief in Christ's manhood was really imperilled by a false supernaturalism . . . (p.112). Readers who are interested in the philososophical background of the discussion as between consubstantiation and trans-substantiation will find much to interest them in Bishop Gore's . He claims that: ''Throughout the period during which the doctrine of transubstantiation was in controversy, the reality of our Lord's manhood, and the principle of the Incarnation which its reality expresses, were very inadequately held. The dogmas were indeed retained but their meaning was little considered. What has been already described as nihilianism was the current mode of conceiving the Incarnation: that is to say, the manhood of Christ was regarded almost exclusively as the veil of Godhead or as the channel of its communication'' (p.279).

    The doctrine of consubstantiation was adopted and stressed by Luther as a reaction against certain ideas advanced in the discussions of the Schoolmen. There was the proposition, for instance, whether it was possible for the same body to be at the same time present locally in two different places. The Scotus (the school who followed John Duns Scotus) maintained that this was possible in the abstract, and the Thomists (the school who followed St. Thomas Aquinas) denied it. Luther maintained that by accepting the idea that real bread and wine and not only their accidents were on the altar "fewer superfluous miracles would have to be introduced. "

    Before taking leave of Luther it may just be mentioned that he follows the custom of the time in not being careful to use the word "substance" before "Body of the Lord." In (1529) he defines the Sacrament of the Altar thus: ''It is the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in and under the bread and wine . . . " But in a later writing dated 1534 he says: "We hold that the body and blood of Christ are present with the bread and wine in the Sacrament by way of substance or essence" (quoted from Darwell Stone, vol.ii. pp.16 and 22).

    (2) . Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) was the leader of the Swiss Reformation. He was opposed to Luther on many points, notably in regard to the latter's insistence upon an objective presence in the Eucharist. The contention of Zwingli and his followers (often called the "Sacramentaries though the name was sometimes used to include the followers of Luther and others) was that the words "This is My Body" were figurative, just as other words of our Lord, "I am the Vine,'' "I am the Door." In a work called written in 1525 he says that "we find in Scripture that the words `Body of Christ' are taken in three different senses. They designate in one case the natural body of Christ that was born of the Virgin, and which died on the Cross. Again, they designate Christ's risen body, and again, Christ's mystical body, which is the Church. Which of these bodies did Christ give to His disciples to eat when He said 'Take, eat, this is My Body'? Plainly, it was not His natural body. Jesus could not enjoin His disciples to eat it and to bruise it with the teeth, since He had declared positively that the 'flesh profiteth nothing.' There could, on the other hand, be no question of eating Christ's risen body, because, at the time of the Institution of the Supper, Christ had not yet been raised. Finally, there was no question of eating the mystical body of Christ, for it

    The Body of Christ

    Adv. Haer. iv. xviii, p. 5).

    Dissertations

    The Greater Catechism

    Subsidium

    Zwinglianism

  • 22

    had not then been delivered unto death. We must therefore understand the words, 'This is My body' figuratively" ( , Alexander Barclay, 1927, p.58). In the controversies which arose phrases like "The seven good kine are seven years' (Genesis XLI, 26) are quoted as supporting the theory that in the Words of Institution the word "Is'' carries the meaning of "signifies." The consecrated elements are figures or symbols (in the later meaning of the word) or images or types of the Body and Blood. An act done in remembrance of Christ implies the bodily absence of Christ. There is no question of the elements being anything more than bread and wine. The rite is thus purely a commemoration of the Last Supper and of our Lord's death and crucifixion, in which Christians are exhorted to realize their fellowship with Christ and with one another. In

    , 11, p.212, he writes as follows: "The Eucharist or Communion or Lord's Supper is nothing else than a commemoration, whereby those who firmly believe that they have been reconciled to the Father by the death and blood of Christ announce this life-giving death, that is, praise it and glory in it and proclaim it." Elsewhere he says that the bread is no more the Body of Christ than "if a wife, pointing to a ring of her husband which he had left with her, should say, 'This is my husband' " ( . p.293). The sacraments bring and dispense no grace, but are a public testimony, the badge of our profession as Christians.

    Like other writers of the period Zwingli seems to have modified or stressed differently his opinions under the formative influence of controversy. The reader who wishes to study in detail the teaching of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other reformers will find a detailed account of the controversies of the time in the book by the Rev. Alexander Barclay from which we have quoted above. Barclay speaks of three phases of Zwingli's teaching. In the first he stresses the idea that external signs have no value in themselves. Faith is the essential thing. What the worshipper receives in the Lord's Supper is a strengthening of his faith. We do not say that ..Zwingli denies the mystical union of the believer with Christ. He does not deny this union, but he regards it rather as a consequence of faith than as a direct result of participating in the Supper" (Barclay, p.56). In the second period he was in controversy with Luther and this period was one of much negation and denial. In the third phase, Barclay insists, there came some more positive elements in consequence of mediating influences, and there are passages in his writings which imply some fashion of feeding on Christ by the contemplation of faith. Scholars are divided in opinion as to whether this third stage represents a change of belief or was an attempt at conciliation with Luther and other Reformers. His real belief is perhaps well summed up in the following words:

    "All Sacraments are so far from conferring grace that they do not even bring or dispense it . . Sacraments are given for a public testimony of that grace which is previously present to each individual. . . By Baptism the Church publicly receives him who has previously been received by means of grace. Therefore Baptism does not bring grace, but it bears witness to the Church that he to whom it is given has received grace . . . . A Sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing, that is, of grace which has been given. In the Holy Eucharist, that is, the Supper of thanksgiving, the real body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith, that is, those who give thanks to the Lord for the benefit conferred on us in His Son recognise that He took real flesh, that in it He really suffered, that He really washed away our sins by His Blood, and so that everything done by Christ becomes, as it were, present to them by the contemplation of faith. But that the body of Christ essentially and actually, that is, the natural body itself, is either present in the Supper or is committed to our mouth and teeth, as the papists and certain people who look back to the fleshpots of Egypt maintain, this we not only deny but we constantly affirm that it is an error which is opposed to the word of God" ( , II, p.541).

    The Protestant Doctrine of the Lord's Supper

    Opera

    Ibid

    Opera

  • 23

    We may study briefly the modifications of Zwingli's doctrine at the hands of other Reformers. ( (1482-1531) whose real name was Johann Heusigen or Hussgen, figures a good deal in the discussions of the period. He was born at Weinsberg in Suabia. He worked at Basle and was the right-hand supporter of Zwingli. Like Zwingli he denied that the sacraments were channels of grace. Bishop A.P. Forbes says that CEcolampadius "saw nothing more in the Eucharist than a symbol whereby one is bound to sacrifice for one's neighbour, after the example of Jesus Christ, one's body and blood, as baptism is a sign by which one binds oneself to give one's life for the faith which one professes" ( Vol. II, p.497). In one of his publications De

    he speaks of the Last Supper as an external symbol, which the faithful should receive less for their own sakes than for the social example they set. The bread is called a body in a figurative sense. As the bread which serves to nourish a man's body is broken, so Christ's body is said to be broken in the sacrament for the feeding of the soul with heavenly food.

    - - - - - - -

    *In the section which follows sentences have occasionally been incorporated from a book by the present writer published in 1928 by The Theosophical Publishing House, entitled

    .

    Ecolampadius

    Explanation of the 39 ArticlesGenuina Verborum Expositione

    The Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion

  • 24

    VIIBY THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD

    May 1937 Vol. XVII No. 8

    or (1491-1551) was an Alsatian who played the role of mediator between Luther and Zwingli. His statements are often obscure and at times seem to be contradictory. Like Zwingli he denied that Christ was "present in some manner of this world or enclosed in or joined together with the bread and wine,'' but held that "we through faith are raised to heaven and placed there together with Christ, and lay hold of Him in His heavenly majesty and embrace Him." These passages are from a published in 1550. To relieve him of his political difficulties, Archbishop Cranmer invited Bucer to England in 1549, and seems to have been influenced not a little by his friend's views. Bucer was made Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, where he died shortly afterwards.

    . We come finally to John Calvin (1509-1564), who lived a generation later than Luther and the others, and whose name is associated with Geneva. He was born in France of a French father and a German mother. His early training was that of a Schoolman and not under Humanist influence, which fact perhaps led him to continue the work of Bucer in striking a note of compromise between Luther and Swingli. He teaches an extreme form of Receptionism together with a touch of Virtualism. He seems to hold that the elements of bread and wine are unchanged, and, as is only consistent with his theory of predestination and election, insists that faith is a necessary condition of reception for Christ to be received without faith is no more reasonable than for a seed to sprout in the fire'' ( , IV., XVII, p.33). Christ's Body is in heaven and nowhere else." They locate Christ in the bread; while we deem it unlawful to draw Him down from heaven" ( ., p.31). He speaks of those who are detained in the outward sign as wandering from the right way of seeking Christ. Hence he held that by the action of faith "a power emanating from the Body of Christ, which is now in heaven only, is communicated to the spirit" (Forbes, , p.499); the faithful thus receive from heaven the efficacy of Christ's Body and Blood, whilst for others the Sacrament is only a bare symbol. The Dutch Hervormde Kerk, as well as the Dutch Gereformeerde Kerk, still hold to the Calvinistic doctrine, though in their ordinary catechisms one misses the Virtualist element noted above.

    (3) . This doctrine is best described in the words of the Anglican divine, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), taken from his work , a book renowned for its weighty argument and faultless courtesy: "the Real Presence of Christ's most blessed Body and Blood is not therefore to be sought for in the Sacrament but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament" (Book V. 1xvii). Those who hold the doctrine in a positive sense deny any objective presence of the Christ in the bread and wine. The act of consecration does not change the bread and wine, but attaches to them, not a presence, but a promise - the promise that when the communicant shall partake of the bread which has been blessed he shall be a partake of the Lords Body. It is at the reception of the Sacrament that the communicant partakes of the Sacred Body and Blood, and then only by virtue of faith. Most Receptionists would add that he receives them not in a corporal or carnal manner - that the Presence is not to the elements at any stage, but to the soul of the receiver thereof. There are adherents of this doctrine who prefer to associate such action as does take place at the altar with the entire Prayer of Consecration and not specifically with the recital of the Words of Institution. A memorandum to this effect was signed by a group of Anglican clergy in recent years.

    THE BODY OF THE LORD

    Martin Bucer Butzer

    John Calvin

    Receptionism

    Confession Concerning the Holy Eucharist

    Institutes of the Christian Religion

    Ibid

    op. cit

    Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

  • 25

    It is difficult to trace the origin of Receptionism in history. Some foundation for it may be seen in the writings of St. Augustine, which, like many of the older writings, are not altogether consistent when studied critically. Bishop Charles Gore writes as follows: "Augustine's language is certainly as a whole susceptible of being interpreted in the sense of an 'objective' spiritual presence in the elements, after such a manner as does not interfere with the permanence of the bread and wine, such a presence as faith only can either recognize or appropriate; or it may fairly be interpreted on a receptionist theory like Hooker's - it is in fact probably somewhat inconsistent - but it is not susceptible of an interpretation in accordance with the doctrine of transubstantiation" ( , p. 232). Again: Augustine "speaks of the consecrated elements in the Eucharist as in themselves only 'signs' of the body and blood of Christ; signs which, if they are themselves called the body and blood of Christ, are so called on the principle that signs are called by the name of the thing they signify. He draws a marked distinction between the physical manducation of the sacrament which is possible to all and the manducation of the flesh and blood of Christ which he sometimes plainly declares to be possible only to the believing and spiritually minded, or to those who hold the unity of the Church, 'the body of Christ' in love" (p. 232). Dr. Gore then in a footnote gives some quotations which support the view he is expounding, that "the spiritual gift of the eucharist is really the flesh and blood of Christ," the same flesh and blood in which He lived on earth, but 'raised to a new spiritual power, become "spirit and life," and that "the consecrated elements are signs of the body and blood, and not in themselves the things they signify" (p. 233).

    Darwell Stone among other quotations cites the following: " 'This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. Yes, but he who eats that which pertains to the virtue of the Sacrament not that which pertains to the visible Sacrament; who eats within, not without; who eats in the heart, not he who presses with the teeth" ( , XXVI., 12). Harnack' s view is that Augustine "agrees undoubtedly with the so-called pre-Reformers and Zwingli. The holy food is rather, in general, a declaration and assurance, or the avowal of an existing state, than a gift" ( , Vol. V., p. 159). Darwell Stone's judgment is that in the document above quoted "the ideas of feeding on Christ by faith and the need of spiritual union with Christ if sacramental communion is to be profitable cross and re-cross the conception of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ" (Vol. I, p.92).

    Receptionism in its explicit form developed after the Reformation. We may see in it a reaction against the teaching of the real absence propounded by Zwingli. Hooker, whose classic phrase was quoted in defining this particular doctrine, carefully abstained from indicating his own belief in regard to the objectivity of the Presence in the bread and wine. He has been claimed on both sides of the controversy. He wrote at a critical period of change and upheaval when, as he himself explained, "some did exceedingly fear lest Zwinglius and (Ecolampadius would bring to pass that men should account of this Sacrament but only a shadow, destitute, empty and void of Christ" (

    , V., 1xvii). He saw signs of an earnest desire for agreement and of its realisation, and his thesis was that people could unite on the simple minimum basis proposed by him. The doctrine came to be held widely in the Church of England; it was not devoid of spiritual idealism but admitted just that form of compromise in which the "safe" party in the Anglican Church delighted and is still apt to delight. It is fast losing ground in that communion in favour of a belief in the Real Presence. It is really no mark of skill to say that "down here" in this world of which we do know something, there exist ordinary bread and wine and that in the spiritual or heavenly world, of which the ordinary man knows nothing, some mysterious process takes place. There is no explanation or consistent theory here at all. The difficulty has simply been burked by refusing to it any consideration in this world, and then referring the whole problem to a world of unknown character where it is left unsolved. I may quote a few trenchant words from the pen of a clear-headed and experienced theologian of the Anglican Church, the late Canon Malcolm MacColl, of Ripon, taken from his able book,

    :

    Dissertations

    Treatise on the Gospel of St. John

    History of Dogma

    Ecclesiastical Polity

    The Reformation Settlement

  • 26

    "The Eucharistic Presence is quite independent of the faith of the recipient. Faith creates nothing. Its province is not to create but to receive a gift external to it and offered to it. Faith is sometimes compared to an eye. But the eyes does not create the light. It receives and transmits it to the brain and intellect. But a man may injure his eyes, so that they cease to be accurate conductors to the soul. The vision is thus blurred and distorted. Or he may destroy his eyes altogether and then the whole realm of light, with all its entrancing visions, is shut out from the soul. But the light is there all the same. It embraces the blind man in its radiance, but can find no avenue into his soul, since he has destroyed his organs of vision. The light is there, but no longer for him. Yet it impinged on his blind eyes. It touches his optic nerve. But there is no response, for the organ of apprehension is gone. And this is true of all our senses; the function of each is to receive an impression, an impact from an external object charged with its appropriate virtue. And philosophers may discuss, and have discussed, whether the gift is in the external object or in the recipient of the impact; whether the sweetness is in the sugar or in the palate; whether the beauty is in the sunset or in the percipient mind. The sunset prints the same image on the eye of the brute as on the human eye; but there is no corresponding , if I may so express myself. For indeed Nature is a sacrament, as the old Fathers loved to think; "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual Presence energising through all her operations and phenomena.

    But however philosophers may dispute, we all agree that our bodily senses are our organs of communication with external facts, and that our sensations are no mere subjective impressions but impressions resulting from contact with objective realities. The senses do not create the impressions. They only receive and convey them.

    So with faith. It no more causes the Presence in the Eucharist than the eye causes the sunset. The Presence is objective - that is, outside of it and indepedent of it. If faith be lacking, the Presence has no more access to the soul than the glory of the setting sun has through sightless eyeballs. . . .

    Thus we see that, alike in the Kingdom of Nature and of Grace, the Presence that nourishes the soul must be objective before it can become subjective. (pp. 12-14).

    - - - - - - - - -

    res sacramenti

  • 27

    VIIIBy THE RT. REV. J.I. WEDGWOOD

    June 1937 Vol. XVII No.9

    IV. . This doctrine, as usually understood, is a between that of the objective Real Presence and that of Receptionism. It was developed as one of the many reactions from the Scholastic philosophy, which, as we have seen, holds that the substance of our Lord's Body is under the species, but that the act of consecration does not bring His dimensions or shape under the species, in other words, that the dimensions and shape are there, but not in the localized sense of "there." Among the questions discussed at the Reformation was one to the effect that if Christ's Body is in heaven how can it be localized in the sacrament? Luther solved the difficulty - only to raise a fresh one - by developing his theory of the ubiquity of Christ's Body. Where Christ is as God, he reasoned, there must He also be as man. Since He is present everywhere as God the Body must be everywhere. Faced with the dogmatic assertion that Christ is at the right hand of God the Father (as affirmed in the Nicene Creed) he replied, in 1580, that "the right hand of God is everywhere" (Formula of Concord).

    The aim of the time was to get rid of elaboration of this sort, and Virtualism is certainly an attempt to escape from this impasse. It was as a reaction to such questionings and in order to dissociate themselves from the idea of a carnal or corporal presence that some thinkers developed the doctrine of Virtualism. Its distinguishing feature is that Christ's Body and Blood are not present objectively but that their virtue and effect is conveyed to the soul. The bread and wine are not in themselves changed, they are set apart by the act of consecration for sacred purposes, and when administered to the faithful convey to the soul the virtue and grace of union with Christ. There is no need, in this way, to maintain that the sacrament presents either Christ's natural Body or His post-Resurrectional or glorified Body.

    This doctrine crops up with some regularity from the time of the Reformation onwards. It varies in the detail and manner of its presentation. It is opposed, on the one hand, to the teachings of Luther, Bucer and Calvin, and, on the other hand, to those of Zwingli and (Ecolampadius. Virtualism in the sense above defined seems to have been the final view reached by Archbishop Cranmer (1489-1556). It was put forward in

    (1550) and in his famous Answer to Stephen Gardiner (1551). The gist of his teaching can be summed up in a few sentences from the latter document:

    . my meaning is that the force, the grace , the virtue and benefit of Christ's body that was crucified for us and of His blood that was shed for us be really and effectually present with all them that duly receive the Sacraments; but all this I understand of His spiritual presence, of the which He saith, 'I will be with you until the world's end' and `Wheresoever two or three be gathered together in My name, their am I in the midst of them,' and 'He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me, and I in him.' Now no more truly is He corporally or really present in the due ministration of the Lord's Supper than He is in the due ministration of Baptism." (p.3.)

    A similar doctrine is propounded by Dr. Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) , at one time Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Canon of Windsor and Archdeacon of Middlesex. Waterland writes thus of the Words of Consecration:

    "They cannot mean that this bread and wine are really and literally that body in the same broken state as it hung upon the cross, and that blood which was spilled upon the ground 1700 years ago. Neither can they mean that t