RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Lord's Supper
tian influences and superstitions within the Church. But the study of the question will be wholly unfruitful if it is pursued from the standpoint of sixteenth-century controversies. The oldest non- Scriptural sources give too little material, and as soon as more abundant testimony becomes available, it is in a world the civilization, education, and habits of thought of which are so totally different from those of the Reformation period as to give no premises for deducing the answer to the questions which agitated that period.
There were, prior to Irenaus and Tertullian, only three non-Scriptural authors who can be brought into the discussion: the author of the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, and Justin Martyr. The indications of the first-named are particularly interesting. Here the Lord's Supper is still a family feast of the believers, taking its relig- 2. The Di- ious character from the thanksgiving dache and (Gk., eucharistia) which precedes and
Ignatius, follows the eating and drinking; the prayers, obviously received by the author from tradition, are of venerable antiquity and great beauty. But the treatise does not show in what manner the eucharistic food was regarded, except that it was considered as spiritual nourishment unto everlasting life. Nothing is said of the body and blood of Christ; and the total omission of any reference to his institution or to his death is so singular that the theory of these prayers forming the close of the Agape (q.v.), and thus having no reference to the sacramental feast which followed it, is worthy of consideration. Ignatius has, besides other brief allusions, two passages of especial importance, in which some have found a distinct affirmation of the real presence of the glorified body of Christ (Ad Eph. xx.; Ad Smyrn. vii. 1; ANF, i. 57-58, 89). But it is possible to lay too much stress on them. According to Ignatius, two special blessings — eternal life and mystical union with God — are received by means of Christ's incarnation and triumph over death. These latter Ignatius is forced to emphasize by his opposition to the Docetics; the flesh and blood of Christ are to him the tangible security for the life-giving union with God. Thus, just as he calls the Gospel, the proclamation of this tangible security, the " flesh of Jesus " (Ad Phil. v. 1 ; ANF, i. 82), so bread and wine, the tangible symbols of this blessing in the Eucharist, might equally well be called the body and blood of Christ. Ignatius preaches so strongly the " bodily and spiritual unity," connects the spiritual blessing so closely with its outward representation, that the denial of the outward would endanger for him the reality of the inward; yet that does not mean that he confuses the two, or considers the material elements as such to bring with them the divine. His view of the Lord's Supper, then, is certainly not purely symbolic; but it would be rash to conclude from this that he accepted the real presence of the glorified body of Christ.
It is just as difficult to draw precise conclusions from the words of Justin. Only one passage in his writings needs special consideration for our purpose— the long-debated / Apol. lxvi., which is
worth quoting in full: " For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of
3. Justin Martyr.
God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh " (ANF, i. 185 [where the remark is made in a foot-note that " this passage is claimed alike by Calvinists, Lutherans, and Romanists; and, indeed, the language is so inexact, that each party may plausibly maintain that their own opinion is advocated by it."]) It is perfectly clear that Justin recognized the designation of the eucharistic food as the body and blood of Christ for a universal Christian usage. It may also be admitted that the clause " from which," etc., stands in inseparable relation to the " food which is blessed "; in other words, that by the Eucharist our flesh and blood is nourished " by transmutation " (kata metaboleri) . The most probable explanation of this is that through the Eucharist our bodies are so nourished that they experience a change, namely, " so as to be incorruptible." The " drug of immortality " of Ignatius (Eph. xx. 2) is more than a parallel; the dependence of Justin upon the prevalent teaching of Asia Minor, as met in Ignatius, may be shown from other passages. Justin, like Ignatius, sees in some manner the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist; and, following John vi., while he says nothing of remission of sins as a benefit conferred by it, he regards it as the food of immortality. There is no question of a change of the elements either in the Roman Catholic or the later Greek sense; nor is the body and blood of Christ so really present that they pass into the partaker " by transmutation," or are carnally eaten and drunk. The probable sense of the whole passage is this: as Jesus became man by the power of the Logos, so also the bread which is hallowed by the words of blessing derived from him becomes his flesh and blood; the Logos joins himself to the bread, as in the Incarnation he assumed flesh and blood. This theory, involving a real dynamic change of the elements, has been often repeated in later times; but it fails to tell anything of the fundamental meaning of the " this is " of the words of institution, and it is entirely foreign to the theories of the sixteenth century. So long as even the fuller expressions of later but still ancient times are studied in the light of that modern period, they can never be properly understood.
It will not do, then, to impale the Fathers upon the horns of a modern dilemma. But it must equally be admitted that the primitive Church spoke of the eucharistic elements as 4 Early *^e D0<^y and blood of Christ. Of Designa- course the teaching of the Church in tionsofthe the period about 150 did not bear the Elements, aspect of the later formal conciliar u1> terances; but Justin's word " we have been taught " shows that then (as thirty years later in Irenseus, V., ii. 2, and in the Apostolic Constitutions, viii. 12) the Church reiterated what the Gos-
Lord's Supper