II. The Church Doctrine

Doctrine (the teaching of the Fathers and the Early Church, the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Churches of the Reformation. See also the articles Mass and Transubstantiation).

1. In the East

1. Difficulties of the Problem

Precisely because the New Testament exegesis of the past did not succeed in giving a decisive answer to the questions which have made the love-feast of the primitive Church a battle-ground for contending creeds, a constant appeal to history has entered into the controversy. Early in the discussions of the sixteenth century, (Ecolam padius appealed to the vetustissirni audores, and in 152'7 Luther found himself involved in a learned discussion with him on passages in Augustine, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Hilary, and Cyp rian. And so, in more recent times, the various beliefs of the opposing religious bodies have been found by their adherents mirrored in the history of eucharistic doctrine. Ponderous treatises have been written to prove that the Roman Catholic, Or the Lutheran, or the Zwinglian view is that of antiquity; but they have not been fruitful in conversions. This lack of result is scarcely surprising, for little is really to be learned of the sense of the original institution from the history of the doctrine. The student finds too soon misconceptions and perversions, which are the result of non-Chris-

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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 nonScriptural 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.

2. The Didache and Ignatius

There were, prior to Irenaeus 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- ious character from the thanksgiving (Gk., eucharistia) which precedes and 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 fol lowed it, is worthy of consideration. Ignatius has, besides other brief allusions, two passages of espe cial importance, in which some have found a dis tinct affirmation of the real presence of the glori fied 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 rep resentation, 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 Sup per, 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.