6. The sub-Apostolic Church. — (a) Clement f<f Borne. — To crumteract the disturbances resulting from the Corinthian rivalries. Clement urg^-s the necessity of order and reverence in the service, which will be effected by every one abiding in his own part (14). The bishops must offer 'the gifts blamele.ssly and holily " (44), i.e. 'the prayers and thanksgivings, the alms, the Eucharistic ele- ments, the contributions to the Agape, and so forth' (Lightfoot). His stately prayers and in- sistence upon orderliness may point to a develop- ing liturgical service, but the epistle sheds no real light upon the place or meaning of the Eucharist in the worship of the Church.
(b) Pliny's Letter to Trajan (A.D. 112).— This letter is of importance, but raises vexed questions. How far the practice described extended beyond
the Church of Bithynia. and the tnistworthiness and interpretation of evidence which he drew from apostate Christians, are doubtful. He says : ' Essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire carmenque Chrlsto qua.«i deo dicere secum invicem, seque Sacramento non in scelns aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abne- garent : qnibus peractis morem sibi discedendi fuisse, rursusque coeimdi ad capiendiim cibum, promiscuum tamen et iimoxiimi " (£p. 96. 7).
.Just wbM is involved in the word facramenium has divided scholars. Lightfoot (/jrn. i. 5«» ff.)and l:ant«ay iCh. in Horn. Empirt*. 219 f.) believe that the Eucharist and" the Agafie were >e[>arated at this time, and that the social meaU which was held in the eveninff. had been repressed in accordance with the Roman Inif>eria] policy against associations (Keating', bi ff.V Weiz.~acker is not very clear {op. eit. ii. 249. i^>). but Zahn PRE^ i. H6. art. •Asafien" ) and J. A. Kobinson yEncyc. Bihl., • Eucharist." § ^7^ are unwilling to draw such a conclusion. Possibly the abolition of the Asape was local and temfkorary (Mayor. Clem, of Alexandria Strom, rii. 3T6 ff.). In any case, undue emphasis should not be placed upon the Imperial pi>licy as a uniform influence, for there were other contributory local forces at work, introducing changies into worship; and* when Ismatins wrote, the Eucharist and the Agape were still united ' in some parts of Asia Minor, and probably at Antioch ' (Light- foot).
(c) TTie Teach ing of the Ticelte Apostles. — The uncertainty of the date and local origin of the didache renders its witness doubtful. Quite differ- ent in tone from Paul, and not influenced directly, it would appear, by John, it may be taken as a type of widespread Jewish Christian life within the limits of Palestine, and possibly Egypt, about the end of the l.st century. The Supper, called ' the Eucharist.' and associatetl with ' the breaking of bread," is mentioned in chapters 9. 10, and 14. The Eucharist is not yet separated from the Agape, if, indeed, they are not identical, for the latter is not mentioned, though some take ch. 9 to contain the closing prayers of the Agape, and ch. 10 those of the Eucharist (Zahn, Weizsacker. Weiss, Loofs). It is held on the Lord"s Day. and is preceded by confession, for only pure hearts make praise and thanksgiving possible. The order, as in the shorter form of Luke, is cup and bread : but nothing is said as to the method of celebration, except that. whUe a set form of prayers is given for ordinary use. prophets are allowed freedom. There is no sign of a priest. and the celebration is the common act of the whole Church. Only the baptized are to panake of the Eucharist, which is that holy thing that cannot be given to the dogs, though not because the Eucharistic elements are regarded as convey- ing some mysterious power, or are. in any sen.se, sacrificial ; for there is not much advance on Ro 121.*
The Didache is mystical, like the Fourth Gospel. Life and knowledge come through the appropria- tion of Jesus Christ as Messiah, but no reference is made to redemption through His blood. A unique figure — that of the grains of wheat being brought together to form one loaf — Is applied to the sanctifi- cation of the Church in a luiity. Thanks are given for knowledge of Gfd, for faith and unmon-dity brought through Jesus the Servant, and for daily food r but esp;ecially for the spiritual food through Jesus. After the stress of the present evil age, which may soon close with the advent of the Lord, will come the peace of perfect mystical union in the Church of the completed Kingdom (Bartlet. ' Didache.' Hastings" DB. Extra Voir439 ff. ; Drews in Xeut^st. Ap^>kr>jphen. 182-188).
(d) Ignatius. — Tlie Lord's Supper asstimes large
* ' evxafiurria. in Christiao nsafre has two concrete senses besides the abstract sense : (h a thanksgiving in words, and ('2) a thanksgiving in offeritigs : and in early times it appears to denote always the offering or thing «ffere<l itself, not the cere- mony or s^xice, or the institatioo ' (Uort, JTh^ voL iii. 595).
ro
LORD'S SUPPER
LORD'S SUPPER
importance. By a transference of the name for the prayer of thanksgiving to the whole meal it is called 'the Eucharist' {Eph. lo, Phil. 4, Hmyr. 6, 8). It is still associated witli the Agape {Smyr. 8. 1, 2), and tine term ' brealdng of bread' seems to inchide both (Eph. 20). His utterances often stand out untoned in the atmosphere of contro- versy with tlie Docetists, against whom he is never wearied of insisting upon tlie reality of the luiman nature of Jesus Clirist which is essential to salva- tion. Only in the one Church is this full truth preserved, and the Eucharist is tlie symbol of unity, for there the gifts of salvation which are tlie full fellowship of life with Christ find fleshly expression. So, to be valid, it must be celebrated by the bishop, who, as opposed to all heretics, performs the sacra- ment as an act of the Church as a whole. For Ignatius the spiritual supersensible world is in- tensely real, but it becomes illusory without an earthly or material form, and only thr(3ugh the appropriation of the flesh and blood of Christ do believers enter into mystical union with God. This is most fully realized in the breaking of bread, an action efficacious as an antidote to spiritual death — 'a medicine for immortality' {^dpfiaKov dOavacrLas, Eph. 20). Some hold that Ignatius regards tne elements of the Supper as purely symbolic, for in Phil. 5. 1, the gospel is called 'the flesh of Jesus'; in Trail. 8. 1, faith is 'the flesh of the Lord,' and love is 'the blond of Jesus Christ'; and in Eimi. 7, Eph. 5, 'the bread of God ' is an image of the blessings of saiva^ tion without any reference to the Lord's Supper (v. d. Goltz, Ignatius von Antiochifin, pp. 72, 7;> ; Lightfoot, Ifjn. ad Pom. 7 ; Loot's, PRE' i. 40). Harnack's most recent view is that in Ignatius, sixty years after St. Paul, the whilom clear theology has become fouled by the iVlysteries and their lore {Expansion of Christianity., i. 289). Apparently Ignatius does not think of magical powers as being inherent in material elements, but, influenced by Johannine mysticism, holds that the material forms must be interpreted by a spirit of faith, love, and thanksgiving in order to convey spiritual gifts. Yet he is ambiguous, and his realistic language, partly due to a mind more imaginative than penetrating, opens the door for the cruder conceptions which follow. Pei'haps we may go further, and see in his use of the term ' medicine for immortality ' the first evidence of the later view of Greek theology, which laid the chief stress of redemption rather on the annihilation of physi- cal corruption by the infusion of the Divine Nature of the Son of God, than on spiritual regeneration through the eternal Divine Person (Lightfoot, Ign. ii. 45, 171, 258; Inge, Christian Mysticism, 257, and Appendix C ; Swete in JThSt, iii. 1G8 ; Sanday, The Fo7irth Gospel, 241-245).