11. Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom

In his large catechetical work (chap. xwii.; NPNF, 2 eer., pp. 504-508) Gregory undertakes to show how the body, not only the soul, of the:..be- liever can attain "participation and mingling" with Christ. But a close study of his whole treatment shows that while Gregory has bin often called the originator of the theory of transformation rather than transubstantiation), he himself knew nothing of it, and carried the meaning of the Greek meraPoieiathei., "to transform," no further than what was already understood by hagiazeatluii, "to sanctify.", His, theory is the: assumption-theory of Justin, which Alexaudrians had spiritualized, and which now allied

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itself in a realistic form with that of Irenseua. In thin 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 realistio-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 Aleaendriana 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.

12. Doctrine in Fifth and Sixth Centuries

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 it of Antioch, while Cyril of Alexandria and the Monophyaitea favored the view which corresponded to their general C~ology, the realistic-dynamic is the form which it had assumed with Gregory of Nyssa. How far the former was dis credited by the general overthrow of the school of Antioch may be seen in Theodoret. The Antiochiaa traditions, which he combines with other views into such s curious mixture, did not wholly die out; but the definitive victory of Cyril's Christology in the reign of Justinian stamped the corresponding eu chariatic doctrine, the realistic-dynamic, as the accepted one. The fact pointed out under Irenæus

(ut sup., 18) that the older theologians attempted to combine two distinct meanings of the term

"body of Christ" without success became lees ob vious when, in the iconoclastic controversy, popu lar devotion made the " dim religious light,, of the mysteries still more dim. Even the iconoclastic council of 754 developed the view accepted as or thodox 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 di vine (a " divine body ") through the " inspiration " (Gk. epiphoitSais) 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 "antitypea of the body and blood of the Lord," they referred not to the 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 hypoetasis 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. meta Poiesis), that of transubstantiation (Gk., mtouaibais) came in, probably as a result of the negotiations with the Western Church for reunion. The Greeks agreed to the term netousiasis 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 is the West: The West was slower than the East to formulate s dogma on the point, not only because of the breach in continuity of intellectual development caused by the downfall of the empire, but because s different line was followed in the West. The result of the process is different, to begin with, and there is no parallel is the East for the preponderating influence exercised by Augustine in the West.