7. Doctrine of Irenæus

It has been necessary to disease this development of the sacrificial conception of the Eucharist because it was the deciding factor in the final shape assumed by the conceptions of the early Church as to the sacramental gift. In attempting to discover what this latter was, it is expedient to discuss separately the development in the East and the West, though the examination will not be detailed. All that may be expected is a gradual assimilation of various views, without deliberate discussion, but under the influence liturgical forms and popular conceptions; it is necessary here only to take up such views as offer a notion of one or other of the fundamental conceptions that were to be assimilated. Irenæus gives the first of these. He was appealed to in the Formula Concordica of Wittenberg (1536), as ha had already been by Luther in 1527, to support the Lutheran view; and it was not difficult for those who then read his words in the light of their own beliefs to find such support. His words, however, must be considered is their simple objective meaning, apart from modern ideas. Irenæus' words are (Her. IV., aviii. 5): "Then, again, how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with his blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life? . . . For, as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bred, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity" (ANF, i. 486). And again (He=r. V., ii. 3), of the bread and wine, that, " having received the Word of God, they become the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ " (ANF, i. 528). The interpretation of the first quotation hinges on the meaning given to the " heavenly reality," which has bean variously explained by those who have forgotten the caution just given. If one must define precisely the "heavenly reality," it will appear, from the parallel between the "becoming the Eucharist" of the elements and the "becoming incorruptible" of the body, as well as from Hnr. V., ix. 3, to be the Spirit of God, who is invoked upon the elements. But so precise a definition is not really needed. It is sufficient to observe that by the ekkleaia or epikleais (Hær. IV., aviii. 5) something heavenly is added to the elements, by which they become what they were not before--a food that guarantees the partaking of eternal life to the receiver. If this were the whole of Irenæus' conception, it would not be difficult to find in it a Greek view of the eucharistic mystery modified by the primitive thoughts about the resurrection of the ffeeh. But it is not the whole. Other passages, such as Htsr. V., ii. 2, must be taken into account in the attempt to determine the teaching of Irenæus. As s theologian familiar with the Greek culture of his time, he took the view which he found in common Christian tradition (specifically that of the school of John and of Asia Minor) -that the Eucharist is in eon sense the body and blood of Christ, intended as a food unto eternal

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life-and made it fit his own mental processes by a theory of the "consecration" of the elements, somewhat as Justin had done before him. He does not lessen the significance of the traditional belief by his theory, but enforces it by words which have a very material sound (" nourished with the body of the Lord and with his blood ") without observing that his unsatisfying explanation of the received designation of the elements does not really fuse the two thoughts combined by him.

This peculiarity of Irenaeus' view will appear more clearly when it is compared with that of the Alexandrian school. Clement need not here be considered; his view is practically the same as that found in a more developed form in his pupil Origen. The latter reproduces the same traditional belief discovered in Irenxua (In Num.. hom. xvi. 9; In Matt. ser. Lxwi.; In Exod. horn. xiii.

8. The 3; In P8. xxxvii. hom. ii. 6). And Origenistio here also, more intelligibly than in

Doctrine. Irenaeus, this traditional belief is put in the light of a mysterious consecration (In Exod. hbm. xvi. 9; Contra Celsum, viii. 33; In Lev. hom. xiii. 5, 6). The difference is that in Origen scarcely anything but the mere words of tradition remain. The spiritualism of Origen was unable to conceive the notion of either the "body and blood" of the ascended Lord, or of eating unto life everlasting, or, in fact, of the resurrection of the flesh. Thus he says: " even if [Christ] was a man, at any rate he is no longer man " (In Jer. xv. 6); " he has ceased to be man " (In Luc. hom. xxix.): the material belongs only to this transitory world, and perishes with it; eating and drinking have nothing to do with the spiritual life; in the resurrection, the material will disappear more and more from us, until in us too the word is fulfilled, " he who shall have followed Christ . . . will be no longer man " (In Luc. ham. ix. 11). Origen does not attempt to conceal the divergence of his view from the commonly received one; and he states with sufficient clearness what the eating of the body of Christ and similar liturgical expressions mean to him-the " body " in the Eucharist is a " typical and symbolic body," only pointing to the " true food," the Logos, the living Bread. We drink his blood "when we receive his words, in which is life," just as, when we read the words of his apostles, who also shed their blood " and attain unto life from them, we drink the blood of their wounds " (In Num. hom. xvi. 6). Accordingly, the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ are not confined to the Eucharist; the only preeminence which it has over other hearing of the word of God is in the fact that here the symbol is added to the word. In this spiritualism it is not alone the traditional Christian conception that disappears; there is really nothing left of the thought-more Greek than Christian-that the elements acquire a °1 helping power" (In John, xxxii. 16) by consecration.

These, then, are the two views of the Lord's Supper which have the greatest importance in the history of eucharistic doctrine-the spiritualism of Origen, and the realism of Irenaeus. The most radical difference between them is that to the spir-. itualiat everything is spiritual, and the Eucharist a food for the soul only; while Irenaeus, though not excluding the spiritual effect, yet lays his emphasis on the imparting of immortality to the "body, made fit for the Spirit" by means of the Lord's Supper. But neither was realistic in the Roman Catholic or Lutheran sense. The realistic view of Ireneeua was only realistic-dynamic.

The spiritual-dynamic view became the prevailing one with the theologians of that period. None of the great Fathers who followed Origen was, it is true, as extreme a spiritualist as he;

9. The none of them allowed the divergence Symbolio-

8aerificiel of the spiritualist view and the re

View. ceived designation of the elements to appear as freely as he did; and even the most decided spiritualists among them, since they accepted the resurrection of the flesh, attrib uted to the faithful reception (following John vi.

54) a secondary significance also for the body. But

Eusebius of Cæsarea, Basil the Great, Gregory Nar zianzen, and Macarius the Elder - must, in their treatment of this subject, be classed as Origenists.

Athanasius, whom Steitz places wholly with them, was, it is true, strongly influenced in his eucharistic views by Origenistic conceptions, but Irenæus had a still greater influence on him. One term is of importance in the study of the Eastern doctrine be cause its meaning does not seem to fall under either of the two divisions adopted above, but rather points to a third view which was not without its effect on the later development. This is the ex pression employed by Gregory Nazianzen for the consecrated elements, "antitypea of the body and blood of Christ." Eusebius (Demonstratio evan

gelica, i. 10) uses the equivalent term "symbols"

only in relation to the idea of sacrifice; and in

Gregory too a reference to the sacrifice may lurk in the background. As objects of the "bloodless and reasonable sacrifice" (Eusebius, DemonsCratio

evangelica, ut sup.) or the "sacrifice without blood"

(Gregory Nazianzen, 4ratio iv. 52), the elements are symbols or antitypes of the real, historic body of Christ; as objects of reception, neither Eusebius nor Gregory could have called them by this name, since, in their view, the actual body and blood of

Christ have nothing to do with the reception.

Eustathius of Antioch, on the other hand, sees in

Prov. ix. 5 a reference to the "antitype to the members of Christ's body," and thus must have found the elements as objects of reception antitypea of the actual body of Christ. In this use of the term Steitz and Harnack have seen a transference of the sacrificial idea to the sacramental. In con nection with the latter, as soon as the thought of

"offering the memorial of the great sacrifice" had taken the shape of "offering the body," a reference to the actual body of Christ was inevitable even for the Origenists. Thus the desiguatip; Q1 Qg elements as " antitypes of the body and blood of

Christ " might be taken as a spiritualistic reservation; and so it might well have been originally

Alexandrian. But it is scarcely probable that

Eustathius, who was a vigorous opponent of both

Origen and Eusebius, would have taken up and de veloped an Alexandrian term; and there is no evi dence of its use or; definitely Alexandrian ground

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until later than his time. It is rather an independent tradition which meets us in Eustathius-the same that becomes evident concerning the Lord's Supper in a single passage in Theodore of Mopsuestia (on I Cor. xi. 34; MPG, lxvi. 889). Its essence consists in the subordination of the sacramental side to the sacrificial; as symbols of the body and blood of Christ, offered in sacrifice, the elements received communicate what was gained by the sacrifice of Christ, remission of sins and eternal life. Since Euatathius is in more than one aspect a precursor, if not a member of the school of Antioch, his words may be taken as a proof that he already entertained this Antiochian conception of the Lord's Sapper. The record of the fragments of Irenæus edited by C. M. Pfaff (Irenwi fragmenta, The Hague, 1715), which seem to show a similar view, must be left out of the question as these fragments have by Harnack (T U, xx. 3, pp. 1-69, 1900) been shown to be falsifications. Not the second Pfaff fragment, but the passage cited from Eustathius, is the oldest Oriental testimony for this view of the Lord's Supper, influential also in the West. It may be called the "symbolio-sacrificial" view. The peaceful assimilation of the three conceptions described above resulted in the later eucharistic doctrine; and the one last set forth was distinctly influential. It had this advantage over the other two-that it brought the Lord's Supper into a clear relation to the real body and blood of Christ, while the Origenista only made use of the Logos in him, Irenæus only of the incorruptibility of his body. The acceptance of the term " symbols " or " antitypes " in a sacrificial context by Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, and Macarius is an instance of the influence exerted by the Antiochian eucharistic doctrine in the fourth and early part of the fifth century.