3. Justin Martyr

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 1 AIOOI. Lzvi., 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 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 melabden). 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.