A Brighter Day Begins with His Word.

New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge • VOLUME 7

THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

['Herzog, J. J. (Johann Jakob), 1805-1882', 'Schaff, Philip, 1819-1893', 'Hauck, Albert, 1845-1918', 'Jackson, Samuel Macauley, 1851-1912', 'Sherman, Charles Colebrook, 1860-1927', 'Gilmore, George W. (George William), 1858-1933'] • Public-domain historical edition in the United States (published 1908); OCR from Internet Archive scan

THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

itself in a realistic form with that of Irenaeus. In this shape it appears in Cyril of Alexandria. It is more difficult in regard to Chrysostom to sustain the assertion that the development had still gone no further than the sum of the three views described above. He speaks of the presence of Christ in terms which sound so material that the universal agreement to attribute to him a belief in a real reception of the actual body and blood is not surprising. But several things must be remembered. He belongs thoroughly to the school of Antioch, but unites its traditions with the realistic-dynamic theory in a form which spiritualism does not succeed in refining away; he brings out these really irreconcilable thoughts colored by all the rhetorical artifice of his style as a preacher, accustomed to the wording of liturgical tradition; and he pushes the Lord's Supper back, as no one before him except the older Alexandrians Clement and Origen had done, into the awe-inspiring obscurity that hangs around the mysteries. It will not do to attempt to find dogmatic formulas in the exuberance of his gorgeous rhetoric. In a word, then, the conception of a change of substance is to be dated neither from Cyril of Jerusalem, nor from Gregory of Nyssa, nor from Chrysostom. Realistic expressions which may seem to involve it are not rare in the fourth and fifth centuries; but they are usually brief unformulated protests against the acceptance of a purely symbolic presence of Christ. The definite theological theory leading up to transubstantiation is of later origin.

The opposing views held in the fifth and sixth centuries as to the incarnation were reflected in very varied conceptions of the Eucharist. Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius still represent the

symbolic-sacrificial view of the school

12. Doc- 0f Antioch, while Cyril of Alexandria

Ffth6 ln<i anc* tne Monophysites favored the view

Sixth which corresponded to their general

Centuries. Christology, the realistic-dynamic in

the form which it had assumed with Gregory of Nyssa. How far the former was discredited by the general overthrow of the school of Antioch may be seen in Theodoret. The Antiochian traditions, which he combines with other views into such a curious mixture, did not wholly die out; but the definitive victory of Cyril's Christology in the reign of Justinian stamped the corresponding eucharistic doctrine, the realistic-dynamic, as the accepted one. The fact pointed out under Irenseus (ut sup., § 6) that the older theologians attempted to combine two distinct meanings of the term " body of Christ " without success became less obvious when, in the iconoclastic controversy, popular devotion made the " dim religious light " of the mysteries still more dim. Even the iconoclastic council of 754 developed the view accepted as orthodox in Justinian's time: the bread and wine are only the images (types) of the humanity of Christ; this image of the body of Christ is made divine (a " divine body ") through the " inspiration " (Gk. epiphoitesis) of the Spirit. But even before the date of this synod, John of Damascus, the leading upholder of the images, had opposed the view expressed by it: " the bread and the wine are not types of the body and blood of Christ; let

it not be thought; but it is the visible body of the Lord " (De fide orthodoxa, iv. 13). If, he goes on, certain of the holy fathers called the bread and wine "antitypes of the body and blood of the Lord," they referred not to tb consecrated but to the unconsecrated elements. These explanations of John were repeated by the second council of Nicaea (787). Since that time the Greek Church has had a eucharistic dogma; it teaches the real presence of the body and blood of Christ after consecration. And from the same date it has a theory of the change, for John of Damascus, who developed it, has remained the standard theologian of the East. According to him, the Logos assumes the body constituted out of bread and wine in the same hypostatic manner as he assumed the body born of the Virgin; but as there is only one hypostasis of the incarnate Logos, the eucharistic body on earth and the glorified body in heaven are one body, by virtue of the one hypostasis to which they belong. This solution satisfied the theological needs of the age, and remained an axiom for those that followed, in the West as in the East. The Greek Church went no further for centuries; then, in the place of the theory of transformation (Gk. metapoiSsis), that of transubstantiation (Gk., metousidsis) came in, probably as a result of the negotiations with the Western Church for reunion. The Greeks agreed to the term metousiosis in 1274 and 1277, in a confession of faith proposed by Rome; but it did not come into use among them until the fifteenth century, after the Union of Florence, and it was not until the contests raised by Cyril Lucar (q.v.) in the seventeenth that it gained a complete triumph, with all its accompanying details.

2. Development in the West: The West was slower than the East to formulate a dogma on the point, not only because of the breach in continuity of intellectual development caused by the downfall of the empire, but because a different line was followed in the West. The result of the process is different, to begin with, and there is no parallel in the East for the preponderating influence exercised by Augustine in the West.

The views of Tertullian and Cyprian must be first considered. The most essential point in regard to the latter is that he subordinates the sacramental aspect to the sacrificial: the Eucharist is " the sacrament of the Lord's passion and of our redemption." His thoughts being thus occupied with the crucifixion of the body and

,". er u " the shedding of the blood, it is not

Cyprian. surPrismg tnat he does not think of them as really present. The sacrament is a symbolic commemoration of the Passion; its reception conveys, not nourishment to eternal life or anything of that sort, but the benefit of Christ's redeeming work, in which every one has a share who enters into union with him. Cyprian's whole view is clearly and simply the symbolicsacrificial. The fact that an almost magical operation is attributed to the sacred symbol (as in De lapsis, xxv., xxvi.) is no proof to the contrary; the idea of some dynamic change in the elements was (unless spiritualized away) always connected in those days with that of consecration, and we prac-

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