Are the body and blood still bread and wine?

[Scott Pierson]

I heard about this on a Christian Radio station and found the article below on a web page. This is a direct attack on the Orthodox faith and our right to freely practice our religion in the state of Nebraska :



Bill to Prevent Underage Drinking Potentially Targets Communion Wine

[NFT] Lowen Kruse, a Nebraska State Senator from Omaha, has introduced Legislative Bill 261. This bill is designed to eliminate exemptions in current law that allow minors to drink alcoholic beverages at home and on religious premises.

As the bill reads currently, this would make it against the law to serve wine to minors during the religious rites of Holy Communion. The original bill may also be interpreted as saying the priest or pastor or other religious leader serving the wine during Holy Communion, was breaking the law. Kruse says he did not intend for his bill to compromise religious worship, and is proposing an amendment to the bill; this amendment would make it clear that serving wine to minors during Holy Communion would remain exempt from the law.

The bill is intended to prevent minors from drinking at other church-related activities, such as bazaars, that take place on church property. Kruse does intend to make it illegal for minors to drink at home; there is currently an exemption in the laws that makes it legal for minors to consume alcohol at home.

Kruse has also introduced a companion bill, LB 336, which would increase the penalties for adults who provide alcohol for minors.

Kruse says that public attitudes are the most effective deterrent against drinking by minors, and encourages everyone to talk about the issue.

To contact Senator Kruse, go to www.lowenkruse.com (http://www.lowenkruse.com), email him at lkruse@leg.ne.gov, or by phone at (402) 471-2727.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Scott,

There is no problem. We do not serve wine in the Orthodox Liturgy: we administer the Body and Blood of Christ. The 'wine' isn't wine anymore!

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Rebecca Gabl]

I don't know...I've seen some kids who are pretty enthusiastic about the post-Communion wine! :)

Seriously, they could just say that kids can only have wine at a ceremony (as opposed to a church function), or have a limit on the amount (say, 2 ounces). What are they going to do, send cops to every church in the state on Sunday mornings?

[M.C. Steenberg]

There is no problem. We do not serve wine in the Orthodox Liturgy: we administer the Body and Blood of Christ. The 'wine' isn't wine anymore!

Interesting.

I should like to see some evidence from the fathers to the effect that the elements of the offering are 'no longer' bread and wine.

The Church confesses that they are the body and blood of Christ. This is not the same thing as confessing that they are no longer bread and wine.

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

I'm no liturgical scholar, of course. For one thing, we need to avoid the RC idea of 'accidents'. We know that that in the Divine Liturgy, the priest says, ' . . . make this bread the precious body of thy Christ . . . And that which is within this cup the precious blood of thy Christ' (wording as used at Essex). Those words seem clear enough. St Cyril of Jerusalem says, 'Wherefore with full assurance let us partake as of the Body and Blood of Christ . . . Having learned these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to the taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ.' ('On the Mysteries' IV Lecture XXII.) St Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, in his Longer Catechism says much the same: the bread truly, really and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord.'

'The Church confesses that they are the body and blood of Christ. This not the same thing as confessing that they are no longer bread and wine.' The Church says it is the same thing. Any other view tends to the notion of Consubstantiation. Orthodox Christians are bound to believe that the bread and wine are no longer in any way bread and wine.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Tim Grass]

'The Church confesses that they are the body and blood of Christ. This not the same thing as confessing that they are no longer bread and wine.' The Church says it is the same thing. Any other view tends to the notion of Consubstantiation. Orthodox Christians are bound to believe that the bread and wine are no longer in any way bread and wine.

I think this is simplistic...... and if you're worried about it tending towards consubstantiation, I'd say that what you've described sounds exactly like scholastic transubstantiation, which the Orthodox Church has rejected.

--tim

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Tim,

I'm not quite sure what point you are making. I was responding to Matthew's point which I put in quotation marks in my post. Far from suggesting scholastic transubstantiation, I sought to make it clear that the Orthodox belief and teaching is that the bread and wine are completely changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. I was saying that what Matthew said tended to Consubstantiation.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Tim Grass]

I'm not quite sure what point you are making. I was responding to Matthew's point which I put in quotation marks in my post. Far from suggesting scholastic transubstantiation, I sought to make it clear that the Orthodox belief and teaching is that the bread and wine are completely changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. I was saying that what Matthew said tended to Consubstantiation.

Sorry if I didn't do my quoting quite right and it was confusing..... but I was in fact responding to your comment: I think your insistence that the bread and wine exist no more..... that they're totally gone and what's left is "only" body and blood...... is basically scholastic transubstantiation, in effect if not in exact form.

The Liturgical books often call them "the bread and wine" after the consecration. This doesn't mean they're not Body and Blood. Mysteries aren't always "either-or."

--tim

[Rebecca Gabl]

If the Body and Blood of Christ are said to retain the appearance of bread and wine, can that not mean that the "appearance" may even extend to the molecular level (ie, a laboratory test would still say it's bread and wine)? I suppose I never thought about it much, just accepted that it was a mystery. Maybe one of the fathers here knows the church teaching more specifically?

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Tim,

It is not my insistence but that of the Orthodox Church that the bread and wine are no more and that what we have in the chalice are the Body and Blood of Christ, though they smell and taste like bread and wine. This is the undoubted teaching of the Church, as St Cyril and St Philaret say. Likewise, St John of Damascus. So say also basic books of catechesis and dogmatic theology, for example, see 'A Synopsis of the Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Church' by Dr. John Karmiris, p. 105.

It is vital that in such matters we do not have personal opinions but express only what the Holy Tradition of the Church teaches us. In view of the teaching of the Holy Fathers of the Church, it is not permissible for Orthodox Christians to hold any view other than that in the Divine Liturgy, by God's condescension, the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Then, the wine is not wine and the bread is not bread.

I hope I have expressed clearly the teaching of the Church - I believe I have.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Father David Moser]

Ther more I think about this the more insignificant it sounds. The topic of exactly how the bread and wine become the Most Holy Body and Most Precious Blood is an important topic an one that has been and will continue to be discussed by those much more learned than I. This is not the topic that I think is insignificant.

What I do think is insignificant is this proposed law. The state of Nebraska could indeed pass such a law, however, it would never stand up in court. It would almost immediately be thrown out as unconsitutional in that it limits the free practice of religion. Thus, it just doesn't matter whether this law is or is not passed, it will have no effect on the practice of giving Holy Communion - the courts won't let it, the ACLU won't let it. This is a Constitutional law issue.

Fr David Moser

[Scott Pierson]

What is "bread" and "wine" I guess that would be the first thing we need to figure out. Is it an object that is composed of certain types of atoms and molecules that is cooked and has such and such a texture, color, etc? If yes then wouldn’t anything that fulfills those specifications be bread (or wine respectively) regardless of the fact that it is also Christ body ?

Cant Christ’s blood be composed of wine ( and therefore fall under the definition of "wine" ) It doesn’t need to transfer oxygen so I would assume it wouldn’t have to be composed of red blood cells and such in order for Christ to have it as His blood. In other words couldn’t the wine be wine that is His blood without changing the atomic structure / physical properties ( Ie what is necessary for something to be defined as wine) in the same way he took on our flesh as flesh without changing its physical properties?

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Scott,

St John of Damascus advises us to believe WHAT happens but not to speculate HOW it happens. Perhaps this is the point at which we say, 'I will inquire no further'.

Lydia looks at the various posts (she hasn't seen this one of yours) in the Threads on this site sometimes, and she occasionally remarks, 'Huh! Very western!' The difference in approach to some things by those from traditionally Orthodox countries or backgrounds is sometimes a useful check.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

In other words couldn’t the wine be wine that is His blood without changing the atomic structure / physical properties ( Ie what is necessary for something to be defined as wine) in the same way he took on our flesh as flesh without changing its physical properties?

But Christ's flesh is incorruptible even while being of the same nature as we are.

Christ's flesh is that of real human nature which He shares with us. But yet His flesh is also something different in virtue of the fact that it is the flesh of the pre-eternal Word.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Margaret Mueller]

In Fr. John Damascene's biography of Fr. Seraphim Rose he tells that the first time Fr. Seraphim had communion a wonderful taste filled his mouth and lasted for more than two weeks. He thought all Orthodox experienced the Body and Blood of Our Lord this way, but didn't learn for years that they do not.

I grant that he received it from the hand of St. John Maximovitch, but I would think that St. John is not the reason that Fr. Seraphim was granted this understanding. I would think that it was Fr. Seraphim's reaching to the Lord that was critical, and the Lord's love for Fr. Seraphim.

Given this, can we understand that the Eucharist is received either according to our preparedness -- our love for God, and/or God's love for us; and that whether or not something is molecularly bread and wine, or the fullness of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, can only be fulfilled, comprehended, and realized as our individual participation in this mystery?

Am I missing something?

[M.C. Steenberg]

I would be inclined to say that any belief other than that in the mystery of the Eucharist one receives the true body and real blood of Christ is to deny the teaching and experience of the Church; and to insist on any scientific explanation of this encounter with the true body and blood in the gifts offered in the sacrifice, is to diminish the mystery of the sacramental encounter. This would, as far as I understand it, be equally as true in insisting on a specific interpretation of 'how' the encounter 'happens', as it would in insisting what that mystery means for the elements of the offering themselves. I see no patristic consensus whatever to the end that what is the real body and blood of Christ in the chalice therefore isn't bread and wine. The pedagogical instruction of certain fathers, usually given in catechetical settings (e.g. Cyril of Jerusalem), on the necessity of understanding a real transformation of reality and encounter in the mystery, is not the same thing as a dogmatic statement on nature, essence, etc. I think it would be unfair to the patristic testimony to insist dogmatically on such a conception (though it would also be unfair to insist dogmatically otherwise).

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Margaret,

I'm sure that the change of the bread and and wine is an objective reality rather than dependent on ('fulfilled' by) the communicant's spiritual condition. If Fr Seraphim Rose experienced something more than most of the rest of us, that was a mystery between him and God.

Generally, I think we westerners shouldn't be in a hurry to try to peer around the veil of mystery. We must be wary of enquiring too closely and not just accepting the essential mystery of the Church's sacraments and other aspects of the practice of the Orthodox faith, not because thereby we may find something which causes doubt, but because we should accept that, however much our intellect may be curious, we cannot fathom God's mysteries. Churches such as the Protestant ones have lost the essentials of faith because they lost - indeed, reject - any sense of the mystical. We partake of the Holy Gifts 'in a mystery'. The Holy Fathers must have good reason for counselling against too much curiosity.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Matthew,

I have read and re-read your line that says, 'I see no patristic consensus whatever to the end that what is the real body and blood of Christ in the chalice therefore isn't bread and wine.' I still see this as self-contradictory. Furthermore, I do not see how you can say that the words of Holy Fathers such as St Cyril do not mean all that they say. Catechetical teachings are to teach the Orthodox faith. That faith is that the Holy Spirit changes what is in the Chalice into the Body and Blood of Christ. The words of the Divine Liturgy are clear. In 'Orthodox Dogmatic Theology' by Pomazansky (trans. Fr Seraphim Rose), the teaching of the Church is put thus:

'[After the invocation], although our eyes see bread and wine . . . this is the true Body and true Blood of the Lord Jesus . . . This truth is expressed . . . in the following words (from the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs): . . . after the sanctification of the bread and wine, the bread is changed . . . into the actual true Body of the Lord . . . and the wine is changed . . . into the actual true Blood of the Lord . . . Yet again, we believe that after the sanctification of the bread and wine there remains no longer the bread and wine themselves, but the very Body and Blood of the Lord.'

It is not permissible for an Orthodox Christian to believe any other than this.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Bishop Kallistos and several others teach that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood, but miraculously retain the appearance and properties of bread and wine.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Andreas,

I do empathise with your thoughts (though I don't agree with your suggestion that I said the fathers don't mean what they said - which I didn't).

Years ago, when I more frequently said things basically along the lines of what you've written, I met a very holy elder and spiritual father. When I expressed these thoughts to him, he became quite upset. The first example he would cite was the Church's blessing of creation: namely in the oil of chrism and the water of baptism and blessing. In calling down the blessing of God on these items, they do not cease to be what they are; yet their existence as oil or water is transfigured, and one encounters in them the immediate presence of the holiness of God. They become 'holy oil', 'holy water', not having given up their nature, not aligning their nature to something different; but having their nature sanctified and transfigured.

But with the Eucharist, there was for him something more elemental. Fundamentally, he would tell me, one does not understand the nature of the incarnation of God if one insists dogmatically that the body and blood cannot yet be bread and wine. Christ was, in the flesh, both God and man. The becoming-human of the incarnation did not diminish nor change the fullness and completion of his divinity, nor did the eternal transcendence of that divinity cause the humanity of his incarnate nature to be anything else - or certainly anything other - than fully created, creaturely, human nature.

Nor, to a different degree, does the deification of any human person cause, by their transfiguration into adoption in God, their human nature to diminish or be 'replaced' by the divine.

But the fundamental question is incarnational. One encounters in the holy gifts the true, the real, body and blood of the Saviour, not by some magical transformation of these elements of creation outside of the created realm of their natures, but by the mystery of encounter in creation with the God who made himself a creature.

So, as I say, I speak to this perspective primarily because I was stiffly chastised when I spoke otherwise; but also because I think this a far more patristically-minded and theologically astute perception of the mystery of the Eucharist. It is easy to become 'Apollinarian' about the Eucharist - to suggest with a kind of simplifying insistence that the only way to encounter the fullness of the true God is in the diminution of the creation by and in which one encounters him. This must be, at least in part, why the rubrics of the Divine Liturgy themselves continue to speak of the 'Holy Bread' after the full presentation of the offering and canon (e.g. when the priest divides the Host; when he is instructed 'to place the Holy Bread in the deacon's hands', etc.). In fact, as the rubrics progress, they intermingle more frequently 'Holy Lamb', 'Holy Bread', etc.

An example of this kind of interchange, from the rubrics of the clergy's communion at the altar:


"The priest takes a portion of the holy Bread (Sl. hleba) for himself, and he prays:

Priest: Behold, I draw near to Christ, our immortal King and our God. The precious and most holy Body (Sl. Presvyatoe Telo) of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ is given to me ..."

Note the way the text draws the two together: the priest takes the bread, and looking at it in his hands says, 'This is Christ's body.'

There is a fundamental perception here of the nature of God's incarnate relation to the created realm; and with it, the mystery of encounter, which is that in which the Eucharist is centred. And this is precisely why the Church refrains from speaking dogmatically on the question. But we must be careful, too. The ultimate references to these kinds of questions are not debates on Eucharistic terminology, but incarnational theology.

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Herman,

It is true that that after sanctification, the Body and Blood of the Lord in the chalice look like bread and wine but that is the Lord's condescension to our weakness. That is not the same as saying that in any sense they still are bread and wine. I would hesitate to look at the miracle through the other end of the telescope as it were.

(Lydia is astonished that this debate is happening at all amongst Orthodox Christians!)

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Tim Grass]

I'm not totally sure I see the "debate" here..... Matthew S. is basically saying what my bishop and priests have always taught me. Andreas, you seem to be trying to make him out as denying that the Body and Blood are really Body and Blood.... why? He isn't saying that as all.... at least as I read what he wrote. Maybe he's saying that your insistence on one particular way of understanding how this works is too scholastic..... I don't know. For me, your words sound far to scientific: you seem to have worked out a scientific setup in your mind for how the Eucharist is what it is, rather than approaching it in simplicity and faith. Seems a danger to reject a humble approach to the chalice in favor of your preferred explanation of it.

--tim

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Tim,

I have avoided saying anything about HOW the change works. I am not insisting on anything except the teaching of the Church. As to WHAT happens, I have been at pains not to give my opinion. I have not 'worked out' anything, but seek only to state the teaching of the Church, as, in such matters, we must. The teaching of the Church IS simple faith: the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ - period (as I think you say in North America). What Matthew seems to be saying - but I want carefully to consider his last post before replying further - is that in some sense, after the sanctification of the bread and wine, there may remain, alongside the Body and Blood of Christ, bread and wine. Please, Tim, not my 'preferred explanation of it' - but the teaching of the Orthodox Church, which is the humble approach: to accept the miracle.

Somebody help!

Andreas.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Since there has been reference made to the teachings of the fathers, I thought it might be helpful to provide a few selections. Primarily these will show that the fathers do not express a single dogmatic declaration on this point: they insist that the Eucharistic chalice truly contains the true body and blood; but there is no dogmatic patristic consensus on the 'how' or 'what' of this real and true body and blood's relation to the elements of the offering.

From Gelasius, Bishop of Rome in the fifth century:


"Certainly the sacraments of the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive are a divine reality, because of which and through which we are made sharers of the divine nature. Nevertheless the substance or nature of bread and wine does not cease to exist. And certainly the image and likeness of the Body and Blood of Christ are celebrated in the carrying out the Mysteries."

Eusebius of Caesarea, writing earlier, speaks in the traditional patristic language of the eucharistic symbols: those created means by which one truly encounters things divine:


"We have received a memorial of this offering which we celebrate on a table by means of symbols of His Body and saving Blood according to the laws of the new covenant." (Demonstratio Evangelica)

Macarius the Great spoke in terms - again traditionally patristic - of the bread and wine being 'figures'; not in a weak sense of 'just representing', but in the deep sense of real encounter:


"Bread and wine are offered, being the figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who participate in this visible bread eat, spiritually, the flesh of the Lord." (Homily 27)

This, which some might consider a weak image, can be balanced with someone like Justin Martyr (and note here especially his focus on the incarnate Jesus as the one made present):


"We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these, but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus." (First [I]Apology 66)

Irenaeus, a near-contemporary of Jesus, makes the point of the bread and wine receiving the Word of God and becoming the body and blood, precisely as a means of showing how our body, which remains body, also receives Christ's incarnate life:


"He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood) from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported) how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life — flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord and is in fact a member of him?" (Detection and overthrow, 5.2)

Irenaeus also writes, stressing that the bread is the body and the wine the blood (i.e. they are one and the same - the whole thrust of his discussion):


"[Christ] has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own Blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own Body, from which he gives increase to our bodies."

The following is taken from the homilies of St Ephrem the Syrian. I find this particularly insightful and pure: St Ephrem intertwines precisely the reality of the bread that is the body - therefore a 'bread not to be regarded as bread':


"Our Lord Jesus took in His hands what in the beginning was only bread; and He blessed it, and signed it, and made it holy in the name of the Father and in the name of the Spirit; and He broke it and in His gracious kindness He distributed it to all His disciples one by one. He called the bread His living Body, and did Himself fill it with Himself and the Spirit. And extending His hand, He gave them the Bread which His right hand had made holy: 'Take, all of you eat of this; which My word has made holy. Do not now regard as bread that which I have given you; but take, eat this Bread, and do not scatter the crumbs; for what I have called My Body, that it is indeed. One particle from its crumbs is able to sanctify thousands and thousands, and is sufficient to afford life to those who eat of it. Take, eat, entertaining no doubt of faith, because this is My Body, and whoever eats it in belief eats in it Fire and Spirit. But if any doubter eat of it, for him it will be only bread. And whoever eats in belief the Bread made holy in My name, if he be pure, he will be preserved in his purity; and if he be a sinner, he will be forgiven.' But if anyone despise it or reject it or treat it with ignominy, it may be taken as certainty that he treats with ignominy the Son, who called it and actually made it to be His Body." (Homily 4.4)

And again from St Ephrem's homilies:


"After the disciples had eaten the new and holy Bread, and when they understood by faith that they had eaten of Christ's body, Christ went on to explain and to give them the whole Sacrament. He took and mixed a cup of wine. The He blessed it, and signed it, and made it holy, declaring that it was His own Blood, which was about to be poured out. ...Christ commanded them to drink, and He explained to them that the cup which they were drinking was His own Blood: 'This is truly My Blood, which is shed for all of you. Take, all of you, drink of this, because it is a new covenant in My Blood, As you have seen Me do, do you also in My memory. Whenever you are gathered together in My name in Churches everywhere, do what I have done, in memory of Me. Eat My Body, and drink My Blood, a covenant new and old." (Homily 4.6)

As before, what is notable is the way Ephrem refers to the bread and the body as one and the same 'the new and holy bread', in the eating of which the disciplies knew 'they had eaten of Christ's body'.

St Gregory of Nyssa, in his great catechism on the faith, writes the following, stressing that the bread is 'made over' into the Body, by the Word's 'lodging there' in the bread:


"Rightly then, do we believe that the bread consecrated by the word of God has been made over into the Body of the God the Word. For that Body was, as to its potency bread; but it has been consecrated by the lodging there of the Word, who pitched His tent in the flesh."

Perhaps Gregory is at his most succinct when he simply writes, in the same oration:


"The bread is at first common bread; but when the mystery sanctifies it, it is called and actually becomes the Body of Christ."

In a sense, St Gregory's whole thrust, summed up in this phrase, makes the point I am trying to express: that the fathers are certain that in the offering and sanctification the bread and wine are become the real, true, full body and blood of the Saviour; but they do not demand that it is no longer also bread.



But my point, despite how it seems to have been characterised in one or two of the above posts, is decidedly not that the fathers dogmatically insist that the body and blood must be still also bread and wine; to me this is just as problematic an error of over-intellectualising the mystery of the Eucharist. There are certainly fathers who speak emphatically in the other direction (though they are fewer). For example, St Cyril of Alexandria says this:


"We have been instructed in these matters and filled with an unshakable faith, that that which seems to be bread, is not bread, though it tastes like it, but the Body of Christ, and that which seems to be wine, is not wine, though it too tastes as such, but the Blood of Christ . . . draw inner strength by receiving this bread as spiritual food and your soul will rejoice." (Cat. 22.9)

And Andreas has already mentioned a passage from Cyril of Jerusalem in his pre-baptismal orations:


"Consider therefore the Bread and the Wine not as bare elements, for they are, according to the Lord's declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ; for even though sense suggests this to you, yet let faith establish you. Judge not the matter from the taste, but from faith be fully assured without misgiving, that the Body and Blood of Christ have been vouchsafed to you." (Or. 22.6)

[Scott Pierson]

Bishop Kallistos and several others teach that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood, but miraculously retain the appearance and properties of bread and wine.I think that goes back to my point of what we mean when we say "bread" or "wine". To me bread = something having certain ingredients, thats cooked, has a certain texture, taste, smell, molecular structure, etc. I guess if one has a more metaphysical definition of the true essence of "breadness" then maybe one could say "its no longer bread". What is it that makes something bread and how does the fact that a certain piece of bread is now Christs body prevent it from also being bread? I've always thought God took that particular piece of matter (bread or wine) and united it to himself so as to make it his flesh and blood without doing physical change to the matter. Why would God have to make the bread cease to be bread before He could have it as His body ?

[Tim Grass]

Dear Tim,

I have avoided saying anything about HOW the change works. I am not insisting on anything except the teaching of the Church. As to WHAT happens, I have been at pains not to give my opinion. I have not 'worked out' anything, but seek only to state the teaching of the Church, as, in such matters, we must.

Ah, but you *have* Andreas! In demanding that the bread and wine cannot remain once they've become Body and Blood, you're describing what happens very absolutely........ you're insisting that the only acceptible belief is that there is a true and complete ontological transformation of the natures of the elements into different natures, so that nothing of the original nature remains. You didn't use these words, but it's what you've said.


The teaching of the Church IS simple faith: the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ - period (as I think you say in North America).

..... but the phrase "the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ" doesn't say anything at all about whether the bread and wine are still present. You are adding an interpretation to how this happens, and insisting that it's part of the implicit meaning of the statement.


Please, Tim, not my 'preferred explanation of it' - but the teaching of the Orthodox Church, which is the humble approach: to accept the miracle.

You keep saying it's "the teaching of the Church"...... but what you're giving is a very exclusive definition of what happens in the blessing/consecration that I've never, in all my years (whole life) in the Church, heard demanded like this.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, Andreas..... I guess I have always been taught from the Church that this is a mystery, and that forcing a scientific explanation onto it is a kind of pretend "simple faith." It's actually pretty complex and intellectual. To me at least, real humble faith is the enter into the mystery.... just that. But in any case I'd be pretty careful about saying that my reading is the simple faith of the Church and someone else's isn't..... maybe I'm not the only who has read some of the earlier posts in this thread as implicitly suggesting that Matthew S. is a dangerous heretic who doesn't know the teachings of the Church? ;-)

--tim

[John]

Hi everyone,

I don't post very often (just from time to time), even though I read each day. This thread has captured my attention.

I'm not a theologian, so I just wanted to say this: I am entirely certain when I receive Communion that I am receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It's not even a belief, really. It's a certainly. I'm sure of this, without any questioning.

But I've been taught very specifically that it is heretical to insist that it can't be true that we are also receiving bread and wine. The quote from St. Gelasios (which somebody quoted before) was one of the writings of the Fathers that I was shown about this.

I was taught we're supposed to approach Christ in a simple faith, sure of what we're receiving but not trying to demand what we aren't.

John

[Andreas Moran]

Dear All,

This Thread is terribly important and goes to the very root of our faith as Orthodox Christians. For that reason, it is more important than just a debate.
It's late now (11.17pm) in England, and at this time I can't do justice to the points that have been raised, not least by Matthew in his artillery barrage of patristic quotations. We must, I think, get to the truth in this, but I must admit to be being concerned that some are prepared to accept that bread and wine may remain in the chalice after sanctification. It goes against everything I was taught.

With love in Christ,

Andreas.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear John,

May I ask who taught you this?

In Christ,

Andreas.

[John]

Dear John,

May I ask who taught you this?

In Christ,

Andreas.

Good morning, Andreas. Sure: I was taught this by my priest, and it was later confirmed to me by my spiritual father (a monk- actually an abbot).

Yours,
John

[Andreas Moran]

Dear John,

Good morning to you! Just to be clear - you were told that after the sanctification of the bread and wine in the chalice, bread and wine still existed along with the Body and Blood of Christ in some way?

Forgive my question but I want to be sure of our respective understanding here.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[John]

What Matthew seems to be saying - but I want carefully to consider his last post before replying further - is that in some sense, after the sanctification of the bread and wine, there may remain, alongside the Body and Blood of Christ, bread and wine.

Dear Andreas,This topic is important and I had lots to think about from this thread. On this point (the one I've quoted up above), I don't read what Mr. Steenberg has written like this. I think you should read again the post about the incarnation. There he talks about an Apollinarianist understanding of the Eucharist, and that we shouldn't have this because it's not a proper understanding of the incarnation. But here (in your quote) you're accusing of a basically Nestorian understanding. But that's not the proper incarnation either. It doesn't seem to me at all that that's what he's saying.

Do you believe Christ was at once and at the same time fully God and fully man, in a way that wasn't distinguishable (meaning there was no divinity "along side" humanity) and yet also wasn't mixed or confused?

If you do, how can you then object in this way?

Sincerely,
John

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

Having done a brief search this morning, I am reminded of a discussion that took place here in the Community a year or so ago on this question. That three-page thread can be found here: The Eucharist in the Orthodox Church (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1640). It deals with broader issues than just this; but the first page in particular holds archives of some good discussions on the topic to hand - from varying perspectives.

It may provide some additional thoughts for the present.

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

I hadn't realised that this had been gone through already! (Naturally, I'm with Max!) As I have read history, the early fathers were not exactly at one in their exposition of the Eucharist. And some sayings must be kept in context. Thus, Gelasius was writing against Eutchyes and Nestorius, and I don't think we can base our understanding of the Eucharist on that statement. St Cyril of Jerusalem intiated a new era in the history of the Church's view of the Eucharist which develped into what I had thought to be universal in the Orthodox Church until I read the posts here. In particular, I had thought that the Confession of Dositheos and the Council of Jerusalem in 1672 had declared the Orthodox faith in this as in other matters, and as I understand it, that Council, though not ecumenical, has always been accepted as of unimpeachable authority.

I realised this morning that what I quoted from 'Orthodox Dogmatic Theology' and is there described as 'Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs' is, in fact, from the Council of Jerusalem. The Fathers of the Council of Jerusalem say that 'we believe that after the consecration of the bread and wine the substance of the bread and the wine no longer remains'. We see one thing and believe another, as has been said. That Council also says that 'in every part and tiniest fragment of the changed bread and wine' there is the whole substance of the whole Lord Christ. How then can it be said that any part of the bread and wine is not the Body and Blood of Christ? Will anyone say that the Council of Jerusalem does not give us the Orthodox faith?

In Christ,

Andreas.

[John Charmley]

Dear Andreas,

I have followed this most interesting thread with great benefit. Can I offer not my own unworthy opinions, but some quotations from the Fathers:

(On the Lord’s sayings)
I have called It and It really is “My Body.” The smallest part of
this particle can sanctify Thousands of souls and is sufficient to
give life to those who receive It.
St. Ephram the Syrian

The Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, who suffered
for our sins, and which God the Father rose up.
St. Ignatius

The Food, which has been “eucharistised,” is the Flesh and Blood
of that Jesus who was made flesh.
St. Justin Martyr

The mingled cup and the manufactured bread receive the word of God and become the Eucharist or the Body and the Blood.
St. Irenaeus

The bread, which He took and gave to His disciples He, made His
own very Body by saying, “This is my Body.”
Tertullian

What can be sacrificed so full of love, and accepted so gratefully,as the flesh of our sacrifice, which became the body of our Priest!
St. Augustine

At the heart of a mystery surely is that is is mysterious? We can read what the Fathers say, we can follow the teachings of the Church; but when we presume to too close a definition according to our words and thoughts, do we not risk trying to confine our God?

In Christ,

John

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Matthew wrote:


Since there has been reference made to the teachings of the fathers, I thought it might be helpful to provide a few selections. Primarily these will show that the fathers do not express a single dogmatic declaration on this point: they insist that the Eucharistic chalice truly contains the true body and blood; but there is no dogmatic patristic consensus on the 'how' or 'what' of this real and true body and blood's relation to the elements of the offering.



Wow! A lot has gone on in this discussion since I took a look at it last night. But I think it best I reply directly to your post Matthew as my post is mainly a few thoughts from reading what you had posted yesterday.

Within Christ it is true that human nature does remain in its fullness & our understanding of the Eucharist must keep this fullness in mind. But it is not clear that the Eucharist is meant as an analogy of an Incarnational process following it from bread & wine to Body & Blood with the former representing human nature. Rather I would say from the Patristic witness that it is very possible to see the transformation being mysteriously from bread & wine to Body & Blood with the latter representing the point about the integrity of human nature that we are all making.

In other words the point here is that from a reading of the Fathers, it seems most possible to refer only to the Body & Blood remaining after the consecration without this in any way diminishing how this refers to an integral humanity. This is so for the simple fact that the Body and Blood of Christ already does refer fully to His humanity.

On the fundamental points concerning the Incarnation & how this relates to the Eucharist I don't think anyone is disagreeing. But we are seeing the bread & wine in relation to the Eucharist from different perspectives. I am not sure there can be any final resolution to this.

But I do wonder if some other element is being drawn in here in reference solely to the bread & wine. When we see the bread and wine as referring to the human nature of Christ then it seems, at least to me, that we are now seeing the Eucharist as an Incarnational process. The shift is subtle but I wonder if this detracts from a focus on the Incarnational mystery where the bread & wine become the Body & Blood of Christ. How also do we get out of the unintentional quandary that if the bread & wine represent the human nature of Christ then His Body & Blood must represent His Divinity ?(!)

I apologize Matthew if not all points here completely relate to the message you are making. But some posts (plus a very common point of view encountered in many of our books nowadays) do very insist very strongly on the bread & wine after the consecration while making a certain incarnational point about this. It is this point I question.


In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

I have just been talking to a Greek friend of mine who for many years taught theology, in Thessaloniki and in America. He has been a priest for several years. I put to him this question: after the sanctification of the bread and wine in the Eucharist, is there any sense at all in which bread and wine may remain or is it the case that all the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Our Lord, bread and wine no longer remaining? He replied, of course: every particle of bread and every drop of wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. There is no bread and wine remaining. He added, I never heard until now that anyone thought differently and such a view as you have described is not Orthodox - to say the least. I mentioned that certain early Fathers had been quoted in aid of the contra-argument. He said, in such matters, it is better to look for Conciliar authority; individual Fathers, however, great, are not always right about everything and in the early Church there was not a consensus but the view of the Eucharist developed over time.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear John,

I agree with you. It is a mystery. But it would be strange rather than mysterious if all the bread and wine did not become entirely the Body and Blood of Christ. And, in a sense, confining. The reason it's important is that we should be clear about our faith and not hold any ideas which tend to non-Orthodox notions. That's why this very point is dealt with in works of theology and catechesis; catechumens need to know what Orthodox belief is. Thus, for example, the Longer Catechesis of St Philaret I mentioned. And I am not aware that any doubt has ever been cast on the exposition of faith in the Council of Jerusalem.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Mary]

Forgive me for sticking my head in here. I was just going to skim through, and not post anything. It seems to me everyone's saying the same thing only slightly differently. So I'm all confused now. When I was learning about the Eucharist, the explanation that was simplest and most sensible to me was - I think from the radio programs hosted by Steve and Bill (our life in Christ).

They were probably quoting someone, I don't remember. But what they said was - it's a mystery (which I think everyone seems to agree on...) - but it is similar to Christ himself being fully man and fully God. I suppose if His blood and body were scientifically examined, they would appear fully human. But His divinity didn't exist in just one part of His body, did it? So it is with the bread and wine - there's really no way to explain how the Spirit changes is or in what way, it's just that it is. So when I partake of the communion, I know it's completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it tastes and feels like bread and wine in my mouth!

Please feel free to confuse me further or unconfuse me =)

In Christ,
Mary

[Andreas Moran]

So when I partake of the communion, I know it's completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it tastes and feels like bread and wine in my mouth!

Exactly! Completely the Body and Blood of Christ. Looks and tastes like bread and wine but isn't: none of it.

Thanks, Mary.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Tim Grass]

There is no bread and wine remaining. He added, I never heard until now that anyone thought differently and such a view as you have described is not Orthodox - to say the least.

At last, we've reached that important and constructive point in any conversation where we call those who disagree with us unorthodox heretics!

Seriously, Andreas, I think it's a little rich for you first to criticize someone who reads one of the Fathers differently from you, claiming that they think the Fathers don't mean what they say.... but when they then give several examples of the Fathers speaking for themselves, you say you shouldn't really listen to what the Fathers are saying at all, since they're just Fathers and not councils!


I mentioned that certain early Fathers had been quoted in aid of the contra-argument. He said, in such matters, it is better to look for Conciliar authority; individual Fathers, however, great, are not always right about everything and in the early Church there was not a consensus but the view of the Eucharist developed over time.

I don't think you've understood the point others are trying to make, Andreas. You seem to have your mind set on the idea that if people don't DEMAND that there can be nothing left of the bread and wine when we receive the true Body and Blood, that they don't really believe it's fully Body and Blood, and therefore they're not really Orthodox, "to say the least." But people have stressed that this isn't what they're saying..... What's really interesting is that no one in this thread has suggested that you SHOULD think bread and wine are still encountered, only that it's wrong to say the Church INSISTS you shouldn't. You started by quoting the Fathers..... Lots of quotes from the Fathers have since been offered to show that it's not a one-sided confession, as you claim it is. But now you're saying we shouldn't trust the Fathers.... simply and only a 17th century council. And yet your first authority was a 4th century bishop?

--tim

[Nina]

Who will help?

Please - who knows the story about someone who doubted that the Bread and Wine in the chalice were changed into the Body and Blood of Christ during Liturgy. Afterwards God allowed him to see in a vision Christ being sacrificed during Liturgy. Please remind me about this story if anyone knows it since I have forgotten where I read it, or who was the person involved.

[Tim Grass]

when I partake of the communion, I know it's completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it tastes and feels like bread and wine in my mouth!

Yes, Mary. Absolutely. Completely and truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

This is the unbending, unswerving, unaltering, uniform, universal and central faith of the Church.

But this....


Looks and tastes like bread and wine but isn't: none of it.


.... this isn't.

--tim

[Herman Blaydoe]

As to the original reason for this thread, if someone were to take the Eucharist and subject it to "scientific analysis", I suspect that analysis would only detect bread and wine, not flesh and blood. Perhaps other priests can say differently, but upon consuming the Chalice, our old priest, who was diabetic, had to be very careful and tended to use more water than wine in the Chalice because of it. It still had the exact effect as wine, physiologically speaking.

Even if it is no longer bread and wine, if the effects are still the same; legally speaking in terms of the law proposed, it is still bread and wine, regardless of what we call it. And a priest arrested under this proposed law would still be "guilty" in the eyes of the court, of giving wine to an infant, even if it is a very small and watered down amount (with I am certain, no ill effect regardless). But such a law, I am convinced, unless it had specific provisions for religion, would not stand a legal challenge.

As it is, since it is generally illegal NOW to "serve" alcohol to minors in many places, what happens every Sunday may well already be illegal but merely unenforced because the civil authorities do not see any threat to the public good in it.

[Mary]

So when I partake of the communion, I know it's completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it tastes and feels like bread and wine in my mouth!

Exactly! Completely the Body and Blood of Christ. Looks and tastes like bread and wine but isn't: none of it.

Thanks, Mary.

In Christ,

Andreas.

Forgive me Andreas, but that's not what I meant. What I meant is - the Eucharist is completely the Body and Blood of Christ, because it is. But it is also COMPLETELY bread and wine, because it is.

If the Eucharist can be compared to the two natures of Christ - God and Man - then, what you're saying would be: "Christ is fully God. He Looks and feels like a man, but He isn't." (which I know, you would never say!)

Isn't the Eucharist, like Christ Himself, completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and also completely bread and wine?

please forgive me if I have offended or angered you.

Mary.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Mary,

Please do not think that I might be offended or angry - not at all. I just thought that what you said seemed admirably succinct but it seems I misunderstood you. I'm sorry.

Dear Tim,

Of course, I didn't say we shouldn't trust the Fathers. The point is that you and those whose view you support have relied on early Fathers from a time when the Church's understanding of the Eucharist had not developed. My Greek theologian friend simply made the point that where we see early Fathers lacking consensus, we turn to a higher authority which is a Council whose statements can be accepted. Furthermore, the Council of Jerusalem was centuries after the Church's understanding of the Eucharist had already crystallised. The Council of Jerusalem is accepted authority. Are you saying that you don't accept that Council? Are there any Fathers or other authorities from the last 400 years who support the view that bread and wine remain? Are Bishop Eirenaios, Father Zacharias, the Lavra Fathers, and my Greek theologian friend in error?

Tim, if, as you say, what is in the chalice is, in your words, 'completely and truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ', how can it yet be that some of it isn't?

With love in Christ,

Andreas.

[Andreas Moran]

Sixteen years ago . . .

About 1991, when my interest in the Orthodox faith was still nascent, and before I met Bishop Eirenaios and Father Sophrony, I went along to the Greek Orthodox church in Leeds. The priest was a kindly and venerable archimandrite who had been abbot of Chrysorrogiatissa Monastery in Cyprus. He gave me a copy of the 'Catechism' of Metropolitan Germanos (Polyzoides) of Hieropolis (who was, as many here must know, a leading hierarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in America). The Metropolitan wrote (at p. 85), 'The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. After the Invocation, no bread and wine remain.' It must therefore follow that most here are bound to say that Metropolitan Germanos was in error.

With love in Christ,

Andreas.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Tim,

I think perhaps you've been a little too harsh (though I realise from past posts that frank directness is simply part of your style); I have not sensed in Andreas' posts any intention other than a real sincerity and faith. While I fear we're rather talking around each other, in the sense that I don't believe my point has really been taken on board, nonetheless I cannot see anything other than loving devotion in his words.

Let us be careful with our tone with one another!

INXC, Matthew

[John]

Hi everyone.

I'm a little worried about the nature of approach: remember that the Eucharist isn't something we're supposed to be intellectual about: we're supposed to receive it in humility and simplicity.

When I hear people taking on specific explanations of "since it is body, therefore it cannot be bread," this seems to me to be an intellectual practice, instead of a simple approach of faith and love. It seems to me (I'm sorry if this sounds judgmental) that this is more philosophizing about the faith. Too "academic," in the bad sense of that word, and not the living faith of encounter and experience that we have received from the Fathers.

There is a danger in being too intellectual about the faith, rather than living it in the heart.

Yours,
John

[Andreas Moran]

Dear John,

You are, if I may say so, quite right. I am not capable of being intellectual, academic or philosophical about this matter. I would have thought that the teachings I have cited (St Cyrill of Jerusalem, The Council of Jerusalem, the catechisms of St Philaret of Moscow and Met. Germanos, and, I can add, St Nektarios of Aegina (in his Treatise on the Eucharist)), together with what I have been taught by the people I have mentioned made it clear that the simple, humble approach to this mystery is that which all these have set forth: the bread and wine become the body and blood of Our Lord, nothing else is there, and the Holy Gifts only look and taste like bread and wine because, as St Nekrarios says, by divine economy the Gifts should not look like the visible body of Christ. Anything else seems to complicate matters.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear all,

Saint John of Krondstant preferred to keep things simple as well. Most cradle Orthodox Christians that I know just accept that it is the Body and Blood of Christ. The little children that are taught and accept that it is the Body and Blood of Christ are good examples, they trust the Priest and the Church.

One needs only to bring to mind the simplicity of the prayer before receiving the Eucharist relative to the modeling of our dispositions, which really is to be found in prayer. If we pray the entire canon before and after communion (which can be very lengthy in full) we can see that the appearances of bread and wine or matter etc. are not the focal point at all.

BEFORE RECEIVING HOLY COMMUNION:

I believe, O Lord, and I confess that Thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. I believe also that this is truly Thine own pure Body, and that this is truly Thine own precious Blood. Therefore I pray Thee: have mercy upon me and forgive my transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, of knowledge and of ignorance. And make me worthy to partake without condemnation of Thy most pure Mysteries, for the remission of my sins, and unto life everlasting. Amen.

Of Thy Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of Thy Mystery to Thine enemies, neither like Judas will I give Thee a kiss; but like the thief will I confess Thee: Remember me, O Lord in Thy Kingdom.

May the communion of Thy Holy Mysteries be neither to my judgment, nor to my condemnation, O Lord, but to the healing of soul and body. Amen.



"Here is one of the brief impromptu edifications pronounced by St.John of Krondstadt on October 29th 1908, in the last year of his life."


"During the Liturgy you heard today, and hear daily the clergyman's words: "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all." To this, on behalf of all gathered, the cantors reply: "We praise Thee. We bless Thee. We give thanks unto Thee, Oh Lord. And we pray unto Thee, O our God." When the clergyman pronounces the words: "Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all," in other words, 'a sacrifice is made on behalf of all and for all', he prays to God to send forth the Holy Spirit unto the Gifts lying before him, raises the Cup, and at that moment the Lord Himself enters the bread and the wine, so that they become the true Body and the true Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. At these terrifying yet great moments, the Church becomes the Heavens, and the Lord's Angels are present at the sacrament of the Lord's mercy and love for all people, during the greatest sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ - the incarnation of bread and wine into the true Body and true Blood of Christ. The sanctified Gifts are offered to those gathered. What a measure of endless love of our Lord for all mankind, what enormous clemency! I Thank Ye, Lord, I thank Ye!
He who takes the sacrament with Faith, receives great joy, is absolved of sins, is cured of illness, and purged of grief and sorrow. It is not in vain you receive communion, - you receive joy, peace, repose. What happiness, what felicity, what tenderness! Let me, Oh God, conduct the Liturgy to the end of my days, taking the sacrament myself and giving the sacrament to others. Amen."

[Father David Moser]

(Lydia is astonished that this debate is happening at all amongst Orthodox Christians!)


You might let her know that the same discussions are going on in the Theological Seminaries in Russia. There is a Professor Osipov (sorry don't know his Christian name off hand - I'd have to go look it up) who has given some very creative lectures (available in Russian on the internet I am told) about how the bread and wine become the Body and Blood. And in the theological journals there are responses to him from other Orthodox scholars. It seems to be a fairly lively debate (from what I've been told, since my ability to read/understand Russian is not even at the first grade level yet.) and some of the Russian clergy in our diocese have been following it with great interest.

Fr David Moser

[John]

Dear John,

You are, if I may say so, quite right. I am not capable of being intellectual, academic or philosophical about this matter. I would have thought that the teachings I have cited (St Cyrill of Jerusalem, The Council of Jerusalem, the catechisms of St Philaret of Moscow and Met. Germanos, and, I can add, St Nektarios of Aegina (in his Treatise on the Eucharist)), together with what I have been taught by the people I have mentioned made it clear that the simple, humble approach to this mystery is that which all these have set forth: the bread and wine become the body and blood of Our Lord, nothing else is there, and the Holy Gifts only look and taste like bread and wine because, as St Nekrarios says, by divine economy the Gifts should not look like the visible body of Christ. Anything else seems to complicate matters.

In Christ,

Andreas.

Hi Andreas. Sorry, you seem to have missed my point, and I apologize I have to bring it out more directly now. It's actually you who I think are being far too intellectual and academic about this, rather than simple. I find, myself, that what you've been insisting on in these posts has been more cerebral and stuck in the philosophy of the head than in the simple heart of experience.

Yours,
John

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

There is quite a lot going on in this very interesting thread. Many thanks to all who have contributed. Since a number of different aspects to this discussion are up in the air, permit me to (try to) respond to each. Forgive me in advance for what I anticipate will be a rather long message!

On the question of sources

One of the issues that has come up in the past few posts is that of where one turns for guidance from the Church on this sort of question. The original quotations offered were from Cyril of Jerusalem, a fourth-century bishop. Following this, there were (from me) several other quotations, from fathers writing between the second century (e.g. Justin, Irenaeus) to the fifth (e.g. Cyril of Alexandria, Gelasius of Rome, etc.). Elsewhere in the conversation, the statements of local councils (e.g. that held in Jerusalem in 1672). Following these various quotations, I note in particular the following comment:



Of course, I didn't say we shouldn't trust the Fathers. The point is that you and those whose view you support have relied on early Fathers from a time when the Church's understanding of the Eucharist had not developed. My Greek theologian friend simply made the point that where we see early Fathers lacking consensus, we turn to a higher authority which is a Council whose statements can be accepted. Furthermore, the Council of Jerusalem was centuries after the Church's understanding of the Eucharist had already crystallised. The Council of Jerusalem is accepted authority. Are you saying that you don't accept that Council? Are there any Fathers or other authorities from the last 400 years who support the view that bread and wine remain? Are Bishop Eirenaios, Father Zacharias, the Lavra Fathers, and my Greek theologian friend in error?


I would want first to question -- very strongly -- the idea that in the fourth and fifth centuries, for example, the Church's understanding of the Eucharist had not developed. We must keep in mind that the Divine Liturgy itself was a product of earlier centuries than these; and that theologians long previous to this period had written extensively on the Eucharist.

As a second point, the Church has always been very happy to recognise a variety of voice in the fathers; so if one is hesitant to take their testimony too directly in earlier periods out of a belief that at some later point in history they all spoke with the same voice -- this point does not come.

But as to the specific questions of local councils on this matter: Firstly, the decisions of a local council are not binding dogmatic statements of the Church. But the council of Jerusalem in 1672 is a particularly complex one. It was, following the quasi-Protestant (Calvinist) approach of Cyril Loukaris in previous decades, itself greatly influenced by Roman Catholic thought of the period, and in particular the scientific definition of 'transubstantiation'. While some other bodies in the Church had accepted the term 'transubstantiation' in this time period, most had refrained from the scholastic categories associated with it; the council at Jerusalem issues a statement, however, which accepts fully and completely the Aristotelean categories of 'substance' and 'accident' (e.g. in the phrase '"Further, we believe that after the consecration of the bread and the wine the substance of the bread and the wine no longer remains, but there is the body itself and the blood of the Lord in the species and form of the bread and the wine, that is to say, under the accidents of the bread' - this is a quotation exactly summarising Thomas Aquinas; the actual term 'transubstantiation' appears in the statement several times). The statement of the Jerusalem council of 1672 was drawn up by the Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem, who, interestingly, retracted it later in life.

It is worth remembering that the various local councils of this period (the council in Jerusalm followed on statements drawn up originally by Peter Mogila in 1640, a council held in Jash in 1642, further deliberations in 1643, etc.) are deeply concerned with confronting burgeoning Protestant eucharistic thought as it was encountered (the 1672 council, for example, spells out in its opening paragraph that it aims to combat that which 'the Lutherans most ignorantly and miserably think'). There has, perhaps at least partially on this account, never been a move to make these statements or conciliar documents dogmatic definitions of the Church more broadly.

On the question of 'one reading or the other'

On this matter, a quote:


The Metropolitan wrote (at p. 85), 'The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. After the Invocation, no bread and wine remain.' It must therefore follow that most here are bound to say that Metropolitan Germanos was in error.

No. I think that what has been said several times in this thread is that there is no consensus of articulation in the Church on this point. There are fathers who write that in the eucharistic encounter with the body and blood of Christ, the encounter with bread and wine still remains; and there are fathers who write that in the encounter, no bread and wine remain. Just as there are more contemporary Orthodox bishops who state both. I think the only expression of a 'one-or-the-other' standpoint in this thread has come in the form of insisting that if one does allow that bread and wine remain, one is therefore heretical. However, this places outside the realm of Orthodoxy many of the Church's saints, as I think a fair number of quotations have shown. Rather, what has been said, by many, is that the Church does not make a universal dogmatic statement on this matter, as part of her preservation of the true mystery of eucharistic encounter and experience. Whether or not one continues to encounter bread and wine in the true body and blood of the sacrament is something, ultimately, one cannot know 'dogmatically'; one speculates, no matter which approach one articulates. Such speculation need not be 'wrong' by definition, but it should not be insisted upon dogmatically. So I appreciated very much Mr Charmley's words (which I realise I here take a touch out of context, for which I should be chastised):


At the heart of a mystery surely is that is is mysterious? We can read what the Fathers say, we can follow the teachings of the Church; but when we presume to too close a definition according to our words and thoughts, do we not risk trying to confine our God?

Again, I think the greatest testimony to this expression of the full breadth and wonder of the mystery comes in the form of the words used in the Divine Liturgy itself, from which I offered only a brief quotation earlier. The text of the Liturgy continues to use 'Holy Bread' and 'Holy Wine' of the gifts long after what might be called 'the consecration' -- right through to the end of the service; even as it also calls them 'All-holy Body' and 'Most pure Blood'.

Speaking of one-and-the-same

This is, I think, right at the heart of the real issue in this thread: namely, whether one believes that the encounter with the true and full body and blood of Christ can be an encounter at one-and-the-same time with bread and wine, or whether the one mandates an abolition of the other. This is summed up in Mary's comment:


What I meant is - the Eucharist is completely the Body and Blood of Christ, because it is. But it is also COMPLETELY bread and wine, because it is.

What is comforting and reassuring for me to note is that no one in this thread has suggested or even hinted that one does not receive the true, full, real and pure body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Nor has anyone suggested (though it does seem to have been the implied false reaction to some people's views) that the bread and wine are found 'along side' the body and blood in the chalice (that is one expression of the council in Jerusalem that I have always admired: it's rejection of the 'Lutheran view' that the bread and wine are united to the body and blood 'by conjunction, as that the Deity of the Word is personally united to the bread of the Eucharist which is set forth'). I agree with Mr Whatford's characterisation of such a view as 'Nestorian'.

The real question is, does the universally held belief that one encounters the real and true body and blood of Christ, demand that one also confess the abolition of the nature of bread and wine in the offering. To my mind, to insist dogmatically on 'yes' goes against much of the theology of the Church; and this leads into the incarnational aspect.

The incarnational discussion

The real theological issue here is incarnational, not in the sense that it is a Christological question on the two natures of Christ, but in that it is grounded in the incarnational witness to the encounter and interaction between God and creation. In other words, it is not related to a specific correlation between the divine and human natures in Christ and the specific elements of the Eucharist, but the experience of the Eucharist needs to be rooted in the experience of the Incarnate One and built upon the testimony of divine relation to creation that the incarnation offers the world.

On this, I was extremely grateful for Father Raphael's expression of concern over one manner of approach the incarnation with reference to the Eucharist. He wrote (and I'll quote a fair bit of his post, since I think it is very important):


Within Christ it is true that human nature does remain in its fullness & our understanding of the Eucharist must keep this fullness in mind. But it is not clear that the Eucharist is meant as an analogy of an Incarnational process following it from bread & wine to Body & Blood with the former representing human nature. Rather I would say from the Patristic witness that it is very possible to see the transformation being mysteriously from bread & wine to Body & Blood with the latter representing the point about the integrity of human nature that we are all making. [...]

But I do wonder if some other element is being drawn in here in reference solely to the bread & wine. When we see the bread and wine as referring to the human nature of Christ then it seems, at least to me, that we are now seeing the Eucharist as an Incarnational process. The shift is subtle but I wonder if this detracts from a focus on the Incarnational mystery where the bread & wine become the Body & Blood of Christ. How also do we get out of the unintentional quandary that if the bread & wine represent the human nature of Christ then His Body & Blood must represent His Divinity?(!)

You have identified what is, to me, one of the key points here: one cannot and must not try to identify various elements in the eucharistic offering as somehow 'linked up' to one or another nature, or one or another aspect, of Christ. Not only does it lead to the bizarre problem of ultimately claiming that the physical body and blood somehow represent his divine nature, as you suggest and which is thoroughly absurd; but more fundamentally it serves to break apart the eucharistic encounter into a meeting up of component doctrinal representations, rather than focusing on the Eucharist as a relational encounter with a person -- the true human-divine person of Jesus Christ.

Where the incarnation is important to our perception of the Eucharist is not in a parallelism to the 'structures' of the sacrament, but in the testimony of the encounter of the Incarnate One to God's self-disclosure and presence in creation. Trying to link up an 'incarnational model' (oh, how I do loathe that term!) to the eucharistic mystery would simply be another way of scientifically analysing the 'how' of the mystery, which the Church does not do in any universally dogmatic manner. But the incarnation is God's chief disclosure of his relation to creation, of his presence in and redemption of his own handiwork. Our encounter with this Incarnate One is our relational revelation of how God makes himself truly and fully present in creation. And here the testimony is strong: when the Son became flesh, he did not lessen the true and complete reality of human nature in uniting it to himself. The nature of man was not abolished when it was taken up into the Word, such that when one encountered Christ one encountered divinity only. One encountered the God-man. The natures were not mixed or mingled, but expressed completely, wholly and truly through the full reality of one another. Nor did the natures exist 'alongside' one another in a type of conjunction, as if his divine nature and his human nature were simply 'terribly close together', sharing the same space. In the one person of the incarnate Son, the full divinity was encountered in the full humanity. One met the Son of the Father, with no qualification, no reduction, and did so wholly in and through the full and complete humanity.

This is the very heart of the incarnational mystery. Creation is drawn up into the life of its creator, not abolishing that which is lesser, but sanctifying it. When Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor and the apostles gaze upon him in his glory 'so far as they were able to behld it', that full and radiant glory of the eternal Son is manifest in his true humanity. His human nature is not abolished, but transfigured (the Greek word for this is metamorphosis, which is, tellingly, the customary term in the fathers for the change of the elements in the Eucharist!). Christ does not cease to be human in his metamorphosis, his change; his full humanity shines forth with his full divinity.

This incarnational revelation of God's presence in creation influences the whole way the Church understands that presence -- again, not by scientific analyses linking one or another of Christ's natures to one or another aspect of creation, but precisely by acknowledging that the Incarnate One, who was 'one and the same' person in his humanity and divinity, reveals that God makes himself present not against or instead of creation, but in and through it. So when we bless water at Theophany, we do not abolish the nature of water, but call the blessing of God to sanctify the water, so that in and through the water we encounter God's grace. So with holy chrism, which remains oil even as it brings union with the Spirit. So with the holy icons, which remain wood and paint, though in them we encounter directly God's power and grace.

And so the Eucharist. The Eucharist is first and foremost about encounter: the human encounter, my encounter, with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of the Father. This is the one I meet in the chalice -- the real Son, the real Saviour, 'who took flesh and dwelt amongst us'. And the Church is quite clear that it is the incarnate Son that we receive, for it is Christ in his flesh and blood that is taken into the mouth. How is it that the bread and wine of the bloodless sacrifice become for us the true and real body and blood of this Christ? We cannot know. The Church confesses a 'transfiguration', a change, a metamorphosis; a real becoming. But this is the metamorphosis of the one known in his humanity, who was known as most divine in his incarnation at precisely the moment he was most human.

Is it, then, right to state dogmatically that this One, who did not abolish the human in bringing to us his skin and bones, must, of necessity, abolish the bread and wine in bringing to us his body and blood?

INXC, Matthew

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

First, can I thank you for taking the trouble to compose an extremely thoughtful and most useful post; the quotation from my previous post is perfectly in the wider context in which you set it; I hope we shall all profit from what you write - and the manner in which it is written.

I am currently reading St. Cyril's Commentary on St. John and am much struck by what he has to say on John 14:20 [Randall's translation]:

It was not otherwise possible for man, forasmuch as he was of a nature that was perishing, to escape death, save by recovering that ancient grace, and partaking once more in God Who holdeth all things together in being and preserveth them in life through the Son in the Spirit. Therefore He hath become partaker of blood and flesh, i.e. He hath become man, being by nature Life, and begotten of the Life that is by nature, i.e. of God the Father----to wit, His Only-begotten Word, with intent that ineffably and inexpressibly and as He alone could skill to do, uniting Himself with the flesh that by the law of its own nature was perishing, He might bring it back unto His own Life and make it through Himself partaker of God the Father. ... He wears our nature and our body has become entitled the Body of the Word. For the Word was made flesh, according to the utterance of John. And He wears our nature, remoulding it unto His own Life. And He is also Himself in us; for we have all been made partakers of Him, and have Him in ourselves through the Spirit; for, for this cause we have Both, being made partakers of the Divine Nature, and are entitled sons, after this sort having in us also the Father Himself through the Son.

As the Saint writes earlier in the same part of the commentary, describing the purpose of the Incarnation:

So then it is abundantly evident and manifest I conceive unto all, that it was for these causes especially that, being by nature God and of God, the Only-begotten has become man; namely with intent to condemn sin in the flesh, and by His own Death to slay Death, and to make us Sons of God, regenerating in the Spirit them that are on earth unto supernatural dignity.

The divinizing purpose of the Incarnation is part of the mystery of the Eucharist - part of that personal encounter with the Incarnate Lord of which Matthew writes so movingly.

If I may be allowed a quotation from a non-Chalcedonian source, Fr. Tadros Y. Malaty, in his Christ in the Eucharist

... on the Cross, the word of God, the practical,
saving and lovely speech, had been spoken through the shedding of His
blood. And in the Eucharist the Holy Spirit awakens the hearts of men
to hear the same Word of the Cross, by recalling its effect. By the
power of the Holy Spirit we enjoy unity with the Crucified Christ as a
response to love and to the effective hearing of the word of God. We
hear the practical voice of salvation, which is the death of Christ and
His resurrection, not simply as a body and blood, but as the sacrificed
Body of Christ for our salvation. This means that Christ is not present
in the Eucharist “statically” but dynamically.
Thus, we look upon the redemption not as something of the past,
or as something that was done, but as something that still goes on. It is
operative in human history, liberating men in each succeeding
generation from their particular enslavements... This mystery is the
continuous sacrificial action of Christ. For He is present in the
sacrificial Eucharist, and He still has his has his inner approach, that is His
obedience to the Father until death, and the acceptance of passage
through death into the risen life. It is this manner that achieves
reconciliation between man and God. This way of His may flow
effectively into our lives through our unity

In Christ,

John

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Father David,

Lydia is all too well aware of the activities of Prof. A. I. Osipov in Russia. She didn't know his views had spread in the West. He has certainly created a following for himself and is vigorous in the promotion of his views which are controversial to say the least.

Andreas.

[Rick H.]

Dear Matthew,

Amen, amen.

As Paul has said to the Ephesians, may the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, continue to give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.

Your Grateful Brother in Christ,
rick

[Andreas Moran]

Dear John (Whatford),

I don't see how I personally can have been intellectual, academic or cerebral when I have not expressed any idea of my own but have based myself upon and have put forward only what I have been taught. All I have I done is to point to those authortites which uphold what I have been taught, and which is still being confirmed to me, as being the Orthodox faith.

In Christ,

Andreas.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear All,

This is my final contribution. I have looked through the posts on this Thread carefully. Apart from Matthew's quotations from the fathers, no one has cited any authority for the view that in some sense bread and wine may remain after the Invocation. The only father Matthew quoted who says otherwise is Pope Gelasius, and I have commented on that. Otherwise, the argument that bread and wine may still remain seems to be based on what the fathers did not say: 'they do not demand that it is no longer bread [and wine]' as Matthew put it. No one has cited any recent authority such as St Nektarios or pointed to any work of catechesis which allows the view argued for.

Yesterday, I was aware that over the past 6 days there was an increasing disturbance of soul. I had got to the point where I needed to turn to someone whose word could be trusted. Indeed I trusted in what my Greek theologian friend had said but despite his great experience as a theologian and pastor, he would be the first to say that he is not a spiritual father. So, I phoned Bishop Eirenaios in Athens. I told him that I had understood that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ and that, as St Nektarios said, there remained no bread and wine but that the Body and Blood had only the appearance and taste of bread and wine by divine economy.
'Yes', he said, 'that is very correct. So what's the problem?'
'There is a body of opinion that because earlier fathers do not demand that there is no bread and wine remaining, that there may be. They are saying that the encounter with the true and full body and blood of Christ can be an encounter at one-and-the-same time with bread and wine. Something similar is being spread about in Russia'. The Bishop's reply was emphatic.
'No! Absolutely not! This is wrong. I don't care who says this. I don't care how many say it: it is wrong. It is not the Orthodox faith. It is heretical. The words of Our Lord and the words in the Divine Liturgy are clear. Andrea - I've told you before: disturbances come from the evil one. Reject these ideas! Have nothing to do with them! Then you will see - the disturbance will leave you and peace, which comes only from Christ, will return to you. You know, the great elders of our time - Iakovos, Paiisios, Porphyrios, and Sophrony - all told us: these days are the first days of the last times. We can expect to hear false teachings and things which disturb the faithful. We must be vigilant. This my advice.'

And so, I pray that the Heavenly King and Comforter, the Spirit of Truth will lead you to the truth.

Andreas.

[M.C. Steenberg]

I would add, for my part, that I too spoke with a Greek Orthodox bishop this week about this question, and about this conversation thread on Monachos in particular. Indeed, my previous post in this thread was based on that conversation with him. Suffice it to say that the same fervour with which your bishop, Andreas, spoke of the approach you have described, so did this bishop of the view I have expressed (and I must give credit where it is due; it was he who pointed out to me the details of the Roman Catholic influence on the councils of the 17th century).

These are not the 'false teachings' of the end times; they are part of the heritage of the Church. I find it quite sad that an adherance to a particular scientific understanding of how the eucharistic change is effected, which is in concert with the Church's confession but clearly not the extent nor the exclusive testimony of it, leads people to condemn others as heretics, as unorthodox, as wolves tempting sheep. From the point of view of conversation, I find it sad that there is a lack of willingness even to consider the perception of others, which include members of this forum, clergy, fathers of the Church and even bishops, who do not say the same as oneself, and yet have taken pains to insist that they are not standing against another's reading, but suggesting that your condemnation of others for not agreeing with you is perhaps inappropriate.

But the advice on not seeking that which distresses the soul is important.

INXC, Matthew

[Tim Grass]

Since some people are being pretty frank..... I guess I should say that I just don't believe Andreas's approach is Orthodox at all, or that he understands the full reality of the Eucharist being the Body and Blood of Christ. What he's saying sounds like total science to me......... I keep trying to find something in it of the real personal encounter with Jesus Christ that I was brought up in the Church to find.

But the refusal to even listen to people who ask him to recognize his view isn't the only one, nor is it *the* view the Church....... that's the most unorthodox of all.

--tim

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

I wanted to say something further here, after reading the post just above (though I do hope the thread of discussion will continue among those who are interested).

Let's be careful about condemning people as unorthodox, when one does not know them, nor really understand their faith or spiritual life in the Church.

This is a discussion community, a place of dialogue and conversation. We will often disagree. And on matters of the Church, we will cling to what we have received. In the present conversation, I find myself disagreeing with Andreas (not on his own belief, but on his insistence that all other views are condemned by the Church), for what he writes is not what I have been taught in the Church, either by my spiritual fathers and bishops, nor by my fathers on Athos. But to disagree is not to anathematise!

Humility and love are prerequisites for real conversation...

INXC, Matthew

[Scott Pierson]

To me it seems like it would be simmilar to the incarnation. The physical body of Christ didnt undergo a change to its atomic structure in order to be the body of Christ why would the bread and the wine have to go through a physical/ atomic / etc change in order to do the same. Yes its true that "all that is there is the body (and blood ) of Christ" yet that body is physicaly bread. If you disagree what exactly is your definition of "bread" and "wine"? To me bread is simple a type of physcial matter with certain physical qualitys.. the physical qualitys do not change thus Christs body in that instance is bread (ie he takes on Bread and Wine as His Body and Blood .). Its 100% His body and blood and nothing else, yet the physical composition of His eucharistic body/blood is Bread and Wine.

To a certain extent though I think I may not have much of a disagreement in principle with the people who say that its no longer bread and wine. Its simply a semantic difference - I define "bread" and "wine" in a differing way. I wonder how the dictionary defines "bread" I'll check and get back some other time and post it. Maybe my definition of "bread" is wrong?

[John Charmley]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

If it is not too provocative for someone who is not (yet) Orthodox to say so, can I add my voice to that of Matthew?

Sometimes we can read too much into a post; it is important that we observe what Our Lord says at Matthew 22:37-40:

Jesus said to him, `You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.


And here, we are all cyber-neighbours.

In Christ

John

[Owen Jones]

While there was a need for theological exactitude in the Chaledonian definition, it has some philosophical problems. A credal statement cannot have philosophical exactitude, but it does lead to potential problems. The Incarnation is not a combination of two "things" because we are not talking about "thingness" here. There is no Incarnation apart from consciousness of it, and the phenomenon of linguistic expression. The Incarnation is a noetic phenomenon, not a physical phenomenon. It is not simply a matter of "our minds" having an encounter, because there is no such "thing" as "our minds." There is nous, which by its very structure is a participatory phenomenon, not a thing.

I remember as a chaplain's assistant in a hospital being asked by the (atheist) pathologist whilst conducting an autopsy to point out the location of the soul. We as a group stood moot, unfortunately, precisely because of our lack of spiritual understanding due to the prevailing reductionism in theology.

Our eucharistic theology, likewise, depends on a "knowing subject" if you will -- the faithful who are gathered.

That is not to say that Jesus is not a man, but the attempt to define the Incarnation as a combination of two "things" or likewise the eucharist, leads to all kinds of confusion. As the desert fathers imply, the very existence of things is evidence of the Incarnation. A person is not a thing. The idea of "mankind" is not a reference to thingness. You have to have thingness as a condition, but that is not what man or mankind or personhood is. "Man" is a transcendent reference point.

[Bratislav]

Owen(Seraphim),

I'll give you ten bucks if you explain that a little more in depth and perhaps even with a different vocabulary so that I might better understand what you are trying to convey.

What say you?

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks so much for this Matthew. I would say we look at this in similar ways although my tilt is often more on the Divine side of the incarnational equation. I suppose the reason for this is at least partly pastoral. Without looking up towards the angelic aspect of what we are, without this recognition, man becomes frighteningly beastly. In a sense I tend to see the Divine as providing a definitional point for what it means to be human in these very troubling times. But then that's just my own take on an issue that definitely is always in need of balance.

In any case, it's also interesting that we come at this from within our own personal histories. Last time this discussion took place I had very much in mind certain Orthodox books which definitely taught that the bread & wine in themselves serve as markers of Christ's humanity. Somehow however whenever this was thought out from a Christological view a serious problem could be seen as Christ would be 'split apart' in His natures in exactly the way you warn about. (Interestingly a similar way of describing the distinction between Big T and little t tradition was used; Big T = Christ's Divinity, little t = Christ's humanity. So that's why little t can change. A very docetic way of seeing Christ although with the opposite intent!).

Upon investigating the footnotes in certain of these books much came back to Dom Gregory Dix. Then following his footnotes one came to an influence from existentialist philosophy of the early 20th c. It's always risky to follow influences on Orthodoxy in this way, but these influences did resonate with the fashion of the time which was to see the Liturgy as an opportunity to "be here now" and "the more we are here the more real the Liturgy is." In turn the Eucharist was seen as standing at the centre of the Liturgy precisely as an affirmative sign of this context.

What is central to this view is that by stressing the created element in the Eucharist, the human presence of the Liturgy is affirmed. And in a sense, according to this view, the whole reality of the Liturgy as something humanly affirmative depends on this consistent link between people-Liturgy- Eucharist. But the risk here is that, having lost sight of the theological/ascetic vision from within which we should approach the Liturgy, both Liturgy & Eucharist become affirming of an all too human event rather than the means through which we are transfigured in communion with Christ as God & man.

In any case, it is very heartening to recognize that in what is being described here we share the same Christological vision of the Eucharist, even if I am more drawn to summing up this vision in bread & wine becoming the Body & Blood rather than a concern that these are abolished.

In Christ- Fr Raphael










The incarnational discussion

The real theological issue here is incarnational, not in the sense that it is a Christological question on the two natures of Christ, but in that it is grounded in the incarnational witness to the encounter and interaction between God and creation. In other words, it is not related to a specific correlation between the divine and human natures in Christ and the specific elements of the Eucharist, but the experience of the Eucharist needs to be rooted in the experience of the Incarnate One and built upon the testimony of divine relation to creation that the incarnation offers the world.
one cannot and must not try to identify various elements in the eucharistic offering as somehow 'linked up' to one or another nature, or one or another aspect, of Christ. Not only does it lead to the bizarre problem of ultimately claiming that the physical body and blood somehow represent his divine nature, as you suggest and which is thoroughly absurd; but more fundamentally it serves to break apart the eucharistic encounter into a meeting up of component doctrinal representations, rather than focusing on the Eucharist as a relational encounter with a person -- the true human-divine person of Jesus Christ...

Where the incarnation is important to our perception of the Eucharist is not in a parallelism to the 'structures' of the sacrament, but in the testimony of the encounter of the Incarnate One to God's self-disclosure and presence in creation. Trying to link up an 'incarnational model' (oh, how I do loathe that term!) to the eucharistic mystery would simply be another way of scientifically analysing the 'how' of the mystery, which the Church does not do in any universally dogmatic manner. But the incarnation is God's chief disclosure of his relation to creation, of his presence in and redemption of his own handiwork. Our encounter with this Incarnate One is our relational revelation of how God makes himself truly and fully present in creation. And here the testimony is strong: when the Son became flesh, he did not lessen the true and complete reality of human nature in uniting it to himself. The nature of man was not abolished when it was taken up into the Word, such that when one encountered Christ one encountered divinity only. One encountered the God-man. The natures were not mixed or mingled, but expressed completely, wholly and truly through the full reality of one another. Nor did the natures exist 'alongside' one another in a type of conjunction, as if his divine nature and his human nature were simply 'terribly close together', sharing the same space. In the one person of the incarnate Son, the full divinity was encountered in the full humanity. One met the Son of the Father, with no qualification, no reduction, and did so wholly in and through the full and complete humanity.

This is the very heart of the incarnational mystery. Creation is drawn up into the life of its creator, not abolishing that which is lesser, but sanctifying it. When Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor and the apostles gaze upon him in his glory 'so far as they were able to behld it', that full and radiant glory of the eternal Son is manifest in his true humanity. His human nature is not abolished, but transfigured (the Greek word for this is metamorphosis, which is, tellingly, the customary term in the fathers for the change of the elements in the Eucharist!). Christ does not cease to be human in his metamorphosis, his change; his full humanity shines forth with his full divinity.

This incarnational revelation of God's presence in creation influences the whole way the Church understands that presence -- again, not by scientific analyses linking one or another of Christ's natures to one or another aspect of creation, but precisely by acknowledging that the Incarnate One, who was 'one and the same' person in his humanity and divinity, reveals that God makes himself present not against or instead of creation, but in and through it. So when we bless water at Theophany, we do not abolish the nature of water, but call the blessing of God to sanctify the water, so that in and through the water we encounter God's grace. So with holy chrism, which remains oil even as it brings union with the Spirit. So with the holy icons, which remain wood and paint, though in them we encounter directly God's power and grace.

And so the Eucharist. The Eucharist is first and foremost about encounter: the human encounter, my encounter, with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of the Father. This is the one I meet in the chalice -- the real Son, the real Saviour, 'who took flesh and dwelt amongst us'. And the Church is quite clear that it is the incarnate Son that we receive, for it is Christ in his flesh and blood that is taken into the mouth. How is it that the bread and wine of the bloodless sacrifice become for us the true and real body and blood of this Christ? We cannot know. The Church confesses a 'transfiguration', a change, a metamorphosis; a real becoming. But this is the metamorphosis of the one known in his humanity, who was known as most divine in his incarnation at precisely the moment he was most human.

Is it, then, right to state dogmatically that this One, who did not abolish the human in bringing to us his skin and bones, must, of necessity, abolish the bread and wine in bringing to us his body and blood?

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Fr Raphael and others,

I very much enjoyed and appreciated your most recent post, above.

The great mystery of the Eucharist is that of encounter: it is not a project of specific acts or a science of component symbolisms, elements, transformations, etc. It is chiefly and above all the encounter of the communicant with Jesus Christ -- and for this reason the Eucharist is always intrinsically incarnational since the incarnation is, itself, an encounter. There is a sense in which the true question is not 'what has happened here', but 'whom do I meet?' This is, to my mind, why the fathers are as insistent as they are on the real 'change' (metamorphosis), the real 'becoming', of the Eucharist, that in this mystery one truly encounters the true fullness of God.

I think this is something to do with what Owen was talking about in his most recent post in this thread. But I would like to hear more!

INXC, Matthew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Scott Pierson wrote:



To me it seems like it would be simmilar to the incarnation. The physical body of Christ didnt undergo a change to its atomic structure in order to be the body of Christ why would the bread and the wine have to go through a physical/ atomic / etc change in order to do the same. Yes its true that "all that is there is the body (and blood ) of Christ" yet that body is physicaly bread. If you disagree what exactly is your definition of "bread" and "wine"?

One main point in my posts is to illustrate what I think is a problematic way we have of seeing the Eucharist. The Eucharist is emphatically not bread & wine 'alongside of' (Matthew S's words) the Body & Blood. My point is in making the bread & wine markers of Christ's humanity we overlook that the Body & Blood of Christ already represent His humanity. (thus my rhetorical question, 'if the bread & wine represent Christ's humanity then do His Body & Blood represent His Divinity?!). Matthew then further points out that the Eucharist is to be seen as the unified Body and Blood in which are revealed inseparably both Christ's Divine & human natures. Just as with Christ Himself, His natures are not one added to another or consumed by the other; they are both in one. So then the Eucharist is the Body & Blood of the Divine/human Christ both at once and not one or the other. (actually I suspect we have been influenced by some of the westernizing teachings which see the Eucharist as a representation of Christ's human dispensation in a sense which cuts this off from His Divine participation.)



To me bread is simple a type of physcial matter with certain physical qualitys.. the physical qualitys do not change thus Christs body in that instance is bread (ie he takes on Bread and Wine as His Body and Blood .). Its 100% His body and blood and nothing else, yet the physical composition of His eucharistic body/blood is Bread and Wine.

Part of Andreas' point I think is to say that when the bread & wine become the Body & Blood of Christ then there is a real change in their nature even if we can still perceive bread & wine. Even if bread & wine in some sense still remain this is not bread & wine as we commonly know this similarly to how Holy Water is not water as we commonly know it.

Maybe more radically, at times I agree with this in the sense that I do not see the bread & wine as being part of a process illustrative of the Incarnation which then becomes the Body & Blood of Christ. Rather I just see bread & wine, then there is the consecration through the Holy Spirit, and then there is the Body & Blood of Christ. That is why I have always found the words so often found in the Fathers, "the bread and wine are..." or "the bread & wine become..." so wonderfully expressive of what actually occurs.

Now since Christ's Body & Blood encompasses all things I suppose bread & wine could also be included here. But in a more immediate sense of what appears on the Altar I share Andreas' understanding of what is to be found there. Maybe it's personal but when I see the Eucharist the role of bread & wine do not enter into this. It still seems to work! :)

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

"Since Christ Himself has declared the bread to be His Body, who can have any further doubt? Since He Himself has said quite categorically, This is My Blood, who would dare to question it, and say that it is not His Blood? Therefore, it is with complete assurance that we receive the bread and wine as the Body and the Blood of Christ. His Body is given to us under the symbol of bread, and His Blood is given to us under the symbol of wine, in order to make us by receiving them one body and blood with Him. Having His Body and Blood in our members, we become bearers of Christ and sharers, as St. Peter says, of the divine nature... Do not then regard the Eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the Body and Blood of the Lord, as He Himself has declared. Whatever your senses tell you, be strong in faith."
From the Catecheses of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (+ 386)

Please do not try to rationalize the mystery of God!
That is how heresies start: when one tries to make sense of the mysteries of God. This does not mean that the mysteries of God are irrational, or illogical, but that they are beyond human logic. In other words only logic and nous illumined by the Divine and Uncreated Light of Christ (as in the saints), is capable to comprehend such mysteries. Even then not in their entire fullness, for God and His mysteries are ever incomprehensible.
Since I do not posses that kind of enlightenment, I would listen to someone who has: Saint Cyril of Jerusalem for example is one of them.

For those of you who find contradiction between the sayings of the saints on this topic, I would like to emphasize a few points. First, that there is a difference between eisegesis and exegesis:

Eisegesis meaning the projection of your own thoughts, beliefs and ideas into the text, so that when you interpret the text, in reality you simply dig out your own interpretation, and not what the author is trying to convey.

Exegesis is the proper way of interpreting the text by discovering what the author really meant leaving your subjectivity behind.

These two terms are relevant and significant interpreting both secular authors and theological authors, however concerning the theological authors; in addition to objectivity one needs the illumination and the energies of the Holy Spirit in order to have a proper understanding of the text. In other words our theological texts and sayings of the fathers have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, therefore in order to enter the realm of understanding such text you need the Holy Spirit as a key.

Second, what seems to be a contradiction between the fathers of the church, it is not a contradiction, for they are all inspired by the same Holy Spirit, but they are simply addressing different audiences, or different heresies, therefore they address the issue from different angles. If one doesn't understand this point then one ends up into a theological slippery slope. Such as the people who view factual discrepancies between the gospels-writers as theological discrepancies, but we know that the gospel writers were not interested in historical facts and truths, but in redemption, and ontological truths.
Therefore, in Orthodoxy one is not interested in the HOW, but in the WHAT, i.e., not how the mystery of Eucharist happens, but what this mystery represents for our salvation, and entrance into the Kingdom of God.

In other words, to illustrate my point (as Fr. Michael Pomazensky states in his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology) "in several of the ancient writers, the [Eucharist] teaching is not expressed in completely exact terms, and in some expressions there seems to be almost a symbolical interpretation (something which the protestants point out). However, this means of expression in part is to be explained by the polemical aims which these writers had in mind: for example Origen was writing against a crudely sensual attitude to the Mystery; Tertullian was combating the heresy of Marcian; and the apologists were defending the general Christian truths against the pagans, but without leading them into the depths of the mysteries." ("Do not give the Holy to the dogs and do not place your pearls before swine, lest they crush them under their feet and turn against you" Matthew, ch. 20:7)

In conclusion, we must rather focus on the spiritual benefits we acquire from partaking the Body and Blood of our sweet Christ, than, how the mystery happens. "Whatever your senses tell you, be strong in faith!"

PS Like Father Raphael says I also share Andreas' stance regarding the Holy Communion.

[M.C. Steenberg]

I am very grateful for Fr Raphael's latest post here. To my first reading it seems to encapsulate precisely what we were discussing previously: how the incarnational focus of encounter with the true Christ is the focus of the fathers when speaking of the Eucharist, and how this simple mystery, when it is not made into some kind of pseudo-science by an insistence on one 'how' or another, finds expression in the Church in different and not mutually-exclusive ways.

I agree whole-heartedly, and find the discussion very encouraging.

INXC, Matthew

[John]

Hi everyone.

I guess I would just want to add this to the thread: I always get concerned when people start to argue against other people's comments with the argument: "You're rationalizing, insteading of being simple." To reflect on the Mystery of the Faith is not to be un-simple. And I also think that sometimes people who present their thoughts as "the simple approach of faith" conceal (not always intentionally, sometimes I'm sure they don't realize it) a very complex rational system.

My evening has been filled with joy on reading the posts from the last day here. I'm edified by seeing how Fr. Raphael and Matthew speak the same theological language, and how they've both shown a deep sense of the Church's view, which includes Andreas's.

Yours,
John

[Tim Grass]

I just got a good chastizing e-mail from a fellow member here, telling me I'd been rude and too direct in this thread. So please let me apologize to anyone I offended.

I just think these matters are very important to our life..... so I become probably too zealous when I hear people saying things about them that I believe disagree with some of the basic proclamations of the Orthodox Church, which can be dangerous. This is how I felt with some of what Andreas was saying..... not about his view on the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, but in his statements that this is the only way the Church allows people to understand the sacrament. I do think that is dangerous, and risks persuading people of ideas the Church doesn't teach. But if I was too frank and short, I'm very sorry.

I realise that in the end, some people will just lable me "too rationalizing"..... but I suppose that's always going to happen. That kind of judgmentalism is too frequent, especially on the internet. It's all perception, of course.... I agree with what John's just written....... that it's used too often just to disagree with someone whose understanding is different from yours. For example, Nina's just basically implied that I'm too rationalizing and not faithful or simple, since I don't agree with Andreas.... though as I've written before, from my own perspective, the view that Andreas is arguing for is far more philosophical and scientific! But this just proves John's point...........

--tim

[Mary]

I just got a good chastizing e-mail from a fellow member here, telling me I'd been rude and too direct in this thread. So please let me apologize to anyone I offended.
--tim

Gosh, Tim, you went and ruined everything that I wanted to say by appologizing! =) - I had wanted to respond to your previous note. Since you're so frank, I thought I'd write to you frankly. But, I haven't learned how to hold my tongue yet, I hope you'll forgive me.

You said:

I just think these matters are very important to our life..... so I become probably too zealous when I hear people saying things about them that I believe disagree with some of the basic proclamations of the Orthodox Church, which can be dangerous.

And when I read his posts, I believe Andreas feels exaclty the same way as you do! Perhaps I 'feel' things differenlty than you do. I didn't feel at all that he was being unorthodox.

You're both being very faithful to what you have been taught. Isn't that what we've all been called to do? Faithful and obedient? Not reasoning and debating... After all, on the judgement day, God isn't going to quiz us on what we've been taught, but rather on whether we've been faithful or not.

And too, I didn't find either one of you rationalizing or being so scientific that you left out the mystery part of it either! Ok, so maybe I'm blind. I just wanted to say that I appreciate you both, and the fact that you're both not too timid to speak your minds. I'm on the cowardly side and would rather listen than confront.

I have said more than I should. Please forgive this garrulous sinner.

In Christ,

Mary.

[Scott Pierson]

Now since Christ's Body & Blood encompasses all things I suppose bread & wine could also be included here. But in a more immediate sense of what appears on the Altar I share Andreas' understanding of what is to be found there. Maybe it's personal but when I see the Eucharist the role of bread & wine do not enter into this. It still seems to work! :)

Thank you for the response Father Raphael I think (as I said above) the area of disagreement I have is not so much theological as it is semantic.

[Scott Pierson]

Even if bread & wine in some sense still remain this is not bread & wine as we commonly know this similarly to how Holy Water is not water as we commonly know it.

I cant disagree with that.

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear Matthew Steenberg,

After reading this thread, I’m compelled to think of the Transfiguration which is not only about who God is but us as well, really a feast of our humanity. It shows us what our human nature will be in the age to come, in the image and likeness of God. Saint Gregory tells us that the transfiguration proclaims the glory of the ultimate glory of the resurrection. We are to be carried from the level of time to the level of eternity, the beloved 8th day that you have reference in the past that Saint Andrew of Crete also expressed. “It is finished (perfect).” "He rose early on the first day of the week" so it seems the 1st day is the same as the 8th day. Christ reminds us that many prophets and the righteous have desired to see and hear what we see and did not see it or hear it. With the incarnation and the resurrection we can see the glorified body and blood of Christ. We can see this in the Icon of the Decent into Hades or the Resurrection with Christ standing on the cross as the Prophets and Saint John the Baptist eloquently speak. The new Adam reaching for the old Adam who is different than the old Adam thanks be to God.

Archbishop Alypy gave a wonderful homily during the feast day of Elevation of the Cross of the Lord a few years ago.

"Upon the Cross, the Lord Showed the Highest Degree of Selflessness, Meekness and Humility"

“The cross is also an expression of "the invincible trophy" of Christ. How did this victory come? Death upon the cross is the epitome of the suffering and humiliation of the Lord, in which was His main victory, with which the pride of the devil was crushed.”

As such to see humble bread and wine which becomes the body and blood of Christ raising on high the king of all, as do those encounters that marvel at the utter humility of Christ. The incarnation raises up Adam and we raise the king of all. Even the Priest takes particles of bread during proskomedia commemorating our loved ones living and departed placing those particles on the diskos. All of creation fell with Adam, only in Christ do we raise on high the King of all, who by God's great love for mankind raises all who put on Christ. Some fathers with the eyes of faith would see fire in the chalice, baptism, immersion and so forth.

Saint John Chrysostom mentions: God on earth, man in heaven; and all became mingled together"

It is not difficult to be struck by the reality of the communion of Saints, the Priest incenses the Holy Gifts, the Icons and turns to the faithful as well, the entire Church.

If my memory serves me correctly, Saint Maximos reminds us that the entire cosmos is to be liturgical nothing is the same. In Christ, both wine and blood are red with life thanks be to God.



In Christ,

Matthew Panchisin

[Nina]

For example, Nina's just basically implied that I'm too rationalizing and not faithful or simple, since I don't agree with Andreas.... though as I've written before, from my own perspective, the view that Andreas is arguing for is far more philosophical and scientific! But this just proves John's point...........

--tim

It was not the purpose of my posting to imply things about you, or anyone else. My goal is rather an effort, or contribution toward a proper Orthodox understanding of the Sacraments of God, and of the ultimate destination of our Orthodox journey, i.e., theosis.

Sacraments of God are impossible to be expressed, or described properly in their entirety, therefore we employ the fallible human language, notions, and concepts as regrouped in two basic categories: the kataphatic theological language (positive and affirmative statements about God e.g 'God is Good', 'God is Just, Merciful' etc.) and the apophatic language (the negative way e.g 'God is not soul, not intellect, not greatness, not smallness, not powerful, not power, not being' etc -from the "The Divine Names, Mystical Theology" of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite ).

Even though the apophatic language is far more mystical and spiritual language, when it comes to describing God and His Mysteries, still it does not do justice to the entire incomprehensible reality that is God.

Dionysius the Areopagite says, that only when we go beyond these languages we find what he describes as total darkness. In this total darkness, where there is no kataphatic or apophatic theology, no words, or images of God one finally contemplates the Uncreated Light of Christ. In other words, the mystical encounter with Christ happens only after we divorce ourselves from both the preconceived rational attributes of God and from their negation.

Unfortunately, we must use this fallible language, whether is symbolic, or philosophical, for without it there would be no way of describing God, but while we employ such inadequate human tools we must be vigilant to not entangle ourselves and our minds by over-rationalizing the semantics. Semantics is only means to an end. As I said previously the goal of our life is not the deciphering of the mysteries of God, but rather the event of being transformed from them and becoming one with God through His uncreated energies.

[Andrew]

What exactly are A.I. Osipov's controversial theories? I have seen something before in a brief interview where he condemns We Shall See Him As He Is, and that put a bad taste in my mouth. But anyways, can someone tell me what his theories are regarding communion?

[Andreas Moran]

Andrew - my wife knows more about this, and she's still in Moscow. But as I remember her explanation, Osipov holds the view that after the words of invocation, there in some sense remains bread and wine. I can't be more exact, and I don't know if his view is like consubstantiation but in any case, his view is condemned as heretical in the main in Russia, but he does have a following.

[Mina Soliman]

Dear all,

I've skimmed through the topic, and so far I haven't seen this question asked.

First, I like to say thank you, because I, like Andreas, have taken a view that the bread and wine indeed was transubstantiated, as I have put myself in agreement with St. Cyril of Alexandria on that one. Now, I see a whole range of opinions from Holy Fathers that indicate that's not the case.

This then made me wonder the most important thing about the Eucharist is that whether you believe in a transubstantiation or a consubstantiation, that in the end, I am still eating and partaking of the Deified Body and Blood of Christ. In that case, I'd like to ask if these two views are just considered theologoumenons and plausible in the Orthodox Church?

Second, does the Lutheran Church teach something like consubstantiation or do they still have what we may consider a wrong belief on the Eucharist? The reason I ask is because the Coptic Church in dialogue with the Lutheran Church consider this one of the major points of dispute of division, and I'd like to know EO and perhaps other OO views.

God bless.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Mina,

I think one of the points addressed in the above was that the Orthodox Church has not subscribed either to the doctrine of transubstantiation or of consubstantiation, primarily on grounds that they attempt too scientific an explanation of what occurs in the mystery (transubstantiation), or to weak a perception of the full reality of the body and blood.

INXC, Matthew

[Adrian Matthews]

As one who is on the journey towards a more Orthodox understanding....I have found this thread both inspirational and informative.

I hesitate to post and would welcome comment...correctional or otherwise.

For me, what really counts is the fact that in reality and in the present moment we truly encounter the Risen Christ in this Holy Mystery.

Perhaps how things happen we can never fully comprehend, because all of our theologically reflective language and mental abilities will always fall short of truly expressing or fully understanding the Mystery of God and His divine movement of Love within His creation.

What happens within that amazing and eternal moment, where simple bread and wine become His Body and Blood, we will perhaps never truly know in this life...but we are taught and encouraged in our faith by the Early Fathers that in the Eucharist we meet with the Risen Christ in all His Fullness...(not a dead victim) and encounter Him in our hearts, in Spirit and in Truth.

I believe that this should be a life changing encounter as we eat of the Bread of Life which came down from heaven...and find that in our union with Him we have His Life as a gift within us...

Enabling:-

by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, within the Love of the Father

Change, Growth in grace, Theosis...which is His High calling... and our aim in and on the journey.

L&B

Fr Adrian.

[John Charmley]

Dear Fr. Adrian,


For me, what really counts is the fact that in reality and in the present moment we truly encounter the Risen Christ in this Holy Mystery.
That seems to me to be really at the heart of it. As St. Isaac the Syrian puts it:

Blessed is he who consumes the bread of love, which is Jesus! He who eats of love eats Christ, the God over all, as John bears witness, saying, 'God is love'.
As Matthew has recently reminded us in the 'Nature of the Church thread #136:

The fundamental centre of the Church is the chalice. It is precisely this grounding in the mystery of human-divine communion that at once makes the Church indissolubly one

As he reminds us above, to attempt too close a definition is to put the Ineffable into words, and in confining it, we lose sight of what is at the centre - which is the personal encounter with the Risen Lord. I loved your way of putting it
I believe that this should be a life changing encounter as we eat of the Bread of Life which came down from heaven...and find that in our union with Him we have His Life as a gift within us...
In that experience are we transformed, and He is in us as we are called to be in Him. The 'why?' and the 'how?' which used to concern me before I was received into Orthodoxy have quite ceased to concern me - they pale into insignificance as compared with the fact of it.

Many thanks, Father, for a beautifully-expressed posting.

In Christ,

John

[Adrian Matthews]

Quotation:
"The fundamental centre of the Church is the chalice. It is precisely this grounding in the mystery of human-divine communion that at once makes the Church indissolubly one"

How very true.

We are by ingrafting and nourishment part of that true vine, Christ our Living Lord...

The Bread of Life comes to us in Grace and Love...in our hearts as we call upon His Holy Name...

And in all His healing grace within the Eucharistic feast.

How can we be the same after such an encounter.

Within the words of the Divine Liturgy...we are drawn into the redemptive Love of God as our hearts respond to His promptings... in recognition, repentance...right worship...and reception.

Personal encounter...lived out as part of the vine as "very members incorporate of that mystical body which is the blessed comapny of all faithful people." ( BCP...Book of Common Prayer)



Thank you for the affirmation John.

INXC

Fr. Adrian.

[Owen Jones]

We are saved, not by our human nature being destroyed, but lifted up to a new level.

[Mark Harrison]

If someone can demonstrate to the contrary, please do, but the evidence I have read from SS John Chrysostomos, Basil the Great, Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, etc. etc. and so forth all point to an absolute agreement with St Paul and the very words of Christ that in the Eucharist we participate truly and without reservation in the very Body and Blood of Christ. Any statement short of that, as far as I can tell is heresy. I haven't viewed the other thread so I can't say anything about what was said there.

It is important to understand terms like "symbolon" and "antitypos." If we say that the bread and wine "symbolise" the Lord's Body and Blood, we are not saying that they stand in the stead of the latter, rather that they communicate the very reality of the later. Bishop KALLISTOS observes, I think rightly, that Orthodox have been reluctant to define exactly HOW this happens, only that it does happen. The Greek verb used at the epiklesis in the Liturgy of St John is "metabolein" from which our English word "metabolise" comes. It implies a conversion, but not necessarily the mechanism of "transubstantiation" in its very specific sense as defined by the Latins. When we approach the Holy Mysteries, we pray, "I believe, O Lord, and I confess…that this is truly Thine Own most pure Body and this is truly Thine Own precious Blood." We do not affirm anything about the relationship between the Lord's Body and Blood and the bread and wine with which we started.

The only room for any private opinion that I can imagine is that some might be more inclined to accept the exact Latin definition of transubstantiation than others, but anything short of an unequivocal affirmation that Holy Gifts are in truth Christ's Body and Blood, is, to the best of my knowledge, Protestant heresy.

[Tim Grass]

Hi Mark...... I hope you'll read this thread, so we don't just stomp around the same turf again. The last time was annoying.

--tim

[Mark Harrison]

Hi Mark...... I hope you'll read this thread, so we don't just stomp around the same turf again. The last time was annoying.

--tim

Hello Tim,

I am sorry you were, annoyed, but when I posted this, it was in a different thread and the editors moved my post to this thread. I was, therefore, responding in a different context. I hope you'll forgive the repetetive nature of what I said.

[Andreas Moran]

At the monastery here in Essex, the English word they use in the epiklesis is 'transmaking'.

[Celinda Grace]

This incarnational revelation of God's presence in creation influences the whole way the Church understands that presence -- again, not by scientific analyses linking one or another of Christ's natures to one or another aspect of creation, but precisely by acknowledging that the Incarnate One, who was 'one and the same' person in his humanity and divinity, reveals that God makes himself present not against or instead of creation, but in and through it.

I have found this thread very illuminating. I think most of the commenters here are missing Matthew's point that I quote above.

We say that in Christ and through Him and by Him all things were made that were made. Maximus the confessor talks much about contemplating the Logos of God.

St. Maximus, Chapters on Knowledge

28Just as before his visible and fleshly appearance the Word of God dwelt spriitually with the pariarchs and prophets prefiguring the mysteries of His coming, so after this presence he comes not only to those who are still infants, spiritually supporting them and bringing them to the age of perfection in God, but he comes also to the perfect and in a hidden way he delineates in advance in them as in a picture the features of His future coming.

Our mind does not in this first encounter hold converse with the naked Word, but with the word made flesh, certainly in a variety of languages; though He is the Word by nature, he is flesh to the sight.


Macarius the Great spoke in terms - again traditionally patristic - of the bread and wine being 'figures'; not in a weak sense of 'just representing', but in the deep sense of real encounter:
"Bread and wine are offered, being the figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who participate in this visible bread eat, spiritually, the flesh of the Lord." (Homily 27)

The quotes above may all seem disconnected but they come together in one point. According to those who have spiritual knowledge the material reality that can be measured and understood scientifically is only a reflection, a figure, of Christ the Logos of God who is in all things and defines all things. To think in terms of scientifically figuring out how the mystery happens is like trying to find the living landscape that was the original inspiration of a painting by examining the molecules which make up the paint.

[Mark Harrison]

Celinda,

Excellent!!!

The other day I thought of another point that is similar. During the Ikonoclast controversy (before Ikonoclasm was formally anathematised), the Ikonoclasts tried to compare the Holy Mysteries with Ikons. I forget which of the Church fathers it was who refuted their argument, but that father's argument said categorically that there was no comparison because the Holy Mysteries are not Ikons. The discussion attributed a consubstantiality between an Ikon and its prototype, and the same relationship between the Eucharistic Gifts and Christ Himself. The Church father argued, however, that the analogy does not hold because the Eucharistic Gifts are not Ikons of Christ at all, they are truly His Body and Blood and ARE consubstantial with Him.

I am sorry that I don't have anything to cite or the time to research it. If someone else wishes to, I suggest that you look in the writings of St Germanos of Constantinople, St John of Damascus, & St Theodore the Stoudite to start off with; perhaps also St Maximos the Confessor. It is possible that in the argument, reference was made back to St Maximos or St Germanos. If anyone finds anything, please do let us all know. The exact argument and its logic, I think would be very enlightening here.

In Christ, Sdn Mark Harrison

[Shawn Lazar]

Friends,

There can be no doubt that the elements of bread and wine, even after their consecration, remain physically unchanged, as can be confirmed by common sense or by scientific analysis. I don't see any point in denying this. Trying to convince the faithful otherwise is certainly an act of cruelty that will only serve to weaken their faith. For example, imagine insisting that a certain person has been miraculously healed of paralysis, and commanding them to rise from their bed and walk, when, in fact, their physical disability remained clearly and experientially unchanged.

And yet the elements do become Christ's body and blood. But how?

I submit that this 'problem' points to an important fact about our sacramental theology - namely that it will always depend upon a certain ontology, or theory of what it means for something to exist. For example, several posters appealed to the 'transubstantiation' explanation, which depends entirely upon (antiquated) Aristotelian metaphysics. Others appealed to the sacrament as 'encounter' which language is thoroughly existential ('encounter' is a good buzzword, but try explaning what it means without resorting to emotional vagueries!). And no doubt if we looked hard enough at the relevant literature we would find a number of disciples of Plato offering their own interpretations of the sacrament.

Perhaps a step towards understand the truth of the claim that the bread and wine change to become Christ's body and blood lies in admitting that our existence, our being, is not merely physical in nature, so that there is no reason to suppose the bread and wine have to change in a physical way to become Christ's flesh and blood. Christ has aspects of his being that cannot be reduced to physical realities, such as his goodness, his virtue, his love, his consciousness, etc. If the bread and wine change at all, no doubt they will change in ways that extend beyond the physical.

[Robert Hegwood]

Didn't Chirst say, "this bread is my body"? Perhaps it is significant that he didn't say this bread becomes my body...or something similar. I've wondered if we don't look at the Eucharistic change from the wrong end of the binoculars. Could be not just as well say Christ makes His body to be bread? (This bread is my body). This is to say He give us his flesh as bread. It does not stand for his body, but is his body. He became man by the power of the Holy Spirit...what precludes some extension of the incarnation to take in and change those things that with consumption become man. So...we eat it...it eats us...so to speak. That is to say in becoming what we are it can make us what it is if we receive it. Perhaps we've been so busy trying to figure out how bread becomes flesh...it might just be working the other way...flesh becoming bread...in a sense so that we can eat it. It does not cease being the flesh of Christ to become the bread of the Eucharist that we can partake of.

This is all a very cumbersome and perhaps wrongheaded way to consider the matter...so if it is the kind of thing that strays into unacceptable areas of thought...feel free to offer your kind corrections.

[Andreas Moran]

I'm much struck by the last three posts, of Mark, Shawn and Seraphim. The Eucharist I sometimes think of as being like Christmas: Christ condescendingly came to us in humility as a baby. In the Eucharist, He likewise comes to us in humble simplicity, as bread and wine. Real flesh and blood would be repugnant; also He would thereby force Himself upon us and so take away the need for faith. The question, what does it mean for something to exist in a particular form, is interesting. God is not limited by the 'pattern' He used for creation.

I wonder if we need to keep two ideas separate here? 'That' and 'how'. I think what got this thread going the way it did was that some of us said that after the epiklesis the bread and wine became completely the Body and Blood of Christ, whilst others said that in some sense bread and wine remained. Correct me if I have mis-stated things. This was, as I understood it, a difference as regards 'that' because the latter position seemed to limit 'that' and so had something to do with what we believe. The Holy Fathers warn us against investigating 'how'.

[Celinda Grace]

Perhaps a step towards understand the truth of the claim that the bread and wine change to become Christ's body and blood lies in admitting that our existence, our being, is not merely physical in nature, so that there is no reason to suppose the bread and wine have to change in a physical way to become Christ's flesh and blood. Christ has aspects of his being that cannot be reduced to physical realities, such as his goodness, his virtue, his love, his consciousness, etc. If the bread and wine change at all, no doubt they will change in ways that extend beyond the physical.


Gregory of Nyssa when talking about the Fall talks about God clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skin which is our mortality. There is no doubt that after the Fall physical reality in some way changed, something was added such that it was now corruptable.


II Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

Notice in the quote above that the elements are destroyed but the earth laid bare. Considering the testimony of the mystics of the need to escape the senses, it does not seem too much of a stretch to think that the sensible material reality (the elements) operating under the law of entropy, is what was added at the Fall, and that the true physical reality underlies that, is its real substance, but is hidden by it. To take out Christ's physical reality and replace it with non-physical energies such as virtue and consciousness is heading in dangerous directions. (not that the virute, etc. is not there too. The lesser always contains and is contained by the greater)

[Mark Harrison]

Celinda's most recent post reminds of the at the epiklesis in the Liturgy of St Basil:

Send down Thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered to BLESS, to HALLOW, and to SHOW, this bread to be the precious Body of Thy Christ, and this cup to be the precious Blood of Thy Christ, shed for the life of the world. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN.

I may have paraphrased slightly, but the significant points are that the words "changing them by Thy Holy Spirit" were only added later to avoid confusion. The original text of the prayer says only, "bless," "hallow," and "show." The implication is that whatever change may take place, will be, as some have suggested in the last day, beyond the physical.

I am also reminded of the patristic understanding of the Our Father, associating it with the Eucharist (which is why we pray it at the point in the Liturgy that we do). The connection they make is through the words, "ton arton imon, ton epiousion" which we generally read in English as "our daily bread." The concept of "daily" is absolutely, categorically, NOT there. "Epiousion" means "beyond being" or "beyond essence" - "supersubstantialem" was the original Latin rendering before it was changed to quotidianem," with the rather mundane meaning of "daily." If we look back at the previous posts I think we'll all see that we have been pointing to the same reality that our Liturgy and Church Fathers observe: that this is a Mystery that exists beyond ordinary existence - "epi-ousion." The Liturgy of Saint Basil, as the later interpolation tells us, was not intended to imply a weak docetist sense of mere appearance, whcih would have been totally contradictory to every trend of Christology of that era. By showing the Gifts to be the Body and Blood of Christ, the Spirit would be revealing their true essence. I suppose there is some implication of a change, here, in that this revleation was not ever understood as possible without the celebration of the Liturgy.

Yes, I agree that attempting to convince the faithful that the Holy Gifts are empirically something other than bread and wine would be both foolish and damaging. What happens is truly a Mystery of the Holy Spirit, and the result is equally a mystery. If the Our Father is a clue, the essence of the Lord's Body and Blood is beyond essence as empirical science can identify by any qualitative or quantitative means.

[Trudy]

I am also reminded of the patristic understanding of the Our Father, associating it with the Eucharist (which is why we pray it at the point in the Liturgy that we do).

I have never heard of this before! Thank you for sharing it. Would you be able to elaborate further on how the Our Father is associated with the Eucharist? Or is the association just what you wrote about regarding the translation of the words?

Thank you,
Athanasia

[Antonios]

To take out Christ's physical reality and replace it with non-physical energies such as virtue and consciousness is heading in dangerous directions.

Dear Celinda,

This is a very important point. Christ is the Risen Son of God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, who ascended into heaven after His resurrection. In my reading, I believe I have come under the impression that His resurrected Body was in fact a transformed one, a new soteriological reality. It is the uncorruptable Body of the God-man. It is the prototype of what the saints' bodies in Christ will be, when they shall see Him as He is. This is what ancient tradition believes in. (If this is wrong, someone please correct me.)

At the same token, the Lord Himself told us to pray in Spirit. That God is Spirit. The Father, Whom Christ reveals, is Love. These should not be limited to the definition of non-physical energies, but the true path to righteousness as revealed by the Holy Trinity.


...it does not seem too much of a stretch to think that the sensible material reality (the elements) operating under the law of entropy, is what was added at the Fall, and that the true physical reality underlies that, is its real substance, but is hidden by it.

Your notion that the law of entropy was added to Creation as account of the Fall is an interesting one. The manifestation of entropy would, I think, be a better way of wording it. The point you make next about the true physical reality, the true substance, being hidden in the fallen, sensible material reality is also an interesting notion. Much to contemplate here. These are discussions of a theological-science bent which I always find mind-boggling!

Thank God the Jesus Prayer is so easy to remember!

[Andreas Moran]

I was taught that the Body and Blood at the Eucharist are the deified Body and Blood of Christ, as He was and is after the Resurrection. Is this the accepted teacing?

[Mark Harrison]

Hi all,

I just found this on the web site of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). It is a theological and pastoral discussion of the Holy Mysteries, the Orthodox understanding of the metabole vs. transubstantiation, and why we don't practice so called "open communion."

The article is by Fr John Breck, who was on the faculty at SVS when I was a student there from 1990 to 1995.

http://www.oca.org/CHRIST-life-article.asp?SID=6&ID=132&MONTH=June&YEAR=2007

I hope you all enjoy it.

[Andreas Moran]

I followed the link in Mark's post. Fr John Breck's piece reflects what was written by Archimandrite Kallistos (as he then was) in 1980 in 'Communion and Intercommunion', published by Light and Life Publishing Co. Though I am not Bishop Kallistos's greatest fan, I think this essay is very useful and I hope Bishop Kallistos still stands by what he wrote there. In Fr John Breck's piece, he writes that that we need to ackowledge that many Protestants believe that their Eucharist offers participation in Christ's Body and Blood. I don't think this helps: we can only look to what any Christian denomination believes, not any individual.

The reasons why there cannot be 'open communion' or 'intercommunion' are the same reasons why non-Orthodox should not be commemorated in the Proskomidi. (In England, though, there are reports of this being done, not least by those who should know better.) This whole issue is also central to any debate about ecumenism (which I cannot understand - the Christian denominations are more or less in error: the Orthodox Church is not). As I understand things, non-Orthodox may not receive Holy Communion at the Divine Liturgy and we may not participate in any non-Orthodox eucharist (or, according to some, even attend a non-Orthodox service).

[Andreas Moran]

Mark's post No 98 prompted me to look up this point, and it's fascinating. The wording of the Lord's Prayer, in Greek, is not the same at Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3, and it seems debate about the meaning of 'epiousion' has been going on since early times. St Jerome translated it as 'quotidianum'-daily in Luke but as 'supersubstantialem'-superessential in Matthew. Apparently, the Greek word 'epiousion' is almost unknown in ancient/koine Greek, save that, according to one source, it appears on an ancient papyrus next to some items on a shopping list, indicating they were essential! 'Needful' is sometimes put forward as the meaning, and my wife tells me this is the meaning in the Slavonic version. The expression 'ton arton imon ton epiouison dhos imin simeron' surely cannot refer only to common bread since we do not live by bread alone but by the Word and His Body and Blood (cf Matt. 4:4; John 6:48-51)). The liturgical dimension to this part of the Lord's Prayer is full of meaning: the bread refers to the Eucharist, the bread of life; coming after the epiklesis but before we take Holy Communion, the Prayer point us to the need to prepare ourselves by receiving the forgiveness of our sins (by prior confession) and by our forgiving the sins of others. We both repent and forgive so that we may benefit from the Eucharist. There is also the eschatological dimension:see 2 Baruch 29:8, and John 6:54 with Christ's reference to the last day.

Perhaps rather than trying to decide on one interpretation or another, we can just think of all these facets of meaning when we say the Lord's Prayer - even if we do say 'give us this day our daily bread'.

Thank you, Mark, for bringing this out for us.

[Mark Harrison]

Glad to give what turned out to be a fruitful lead. I think your conclusion that we should see facets, not mutually exclusive alternatives here is good.

I wish were in NY and could ask Fr Paul Lazor more about "nasushni" in Slavonic. He has a keen mind for nuance - including in Slavonic, which he reads like English. Brilliant, truly, he is in such matters. Somehow, however, the meaning goes beyond simply necessary, which is more the significance of quotidianum (sp?)

Jerome did indeed render the two versions of the Our Father differently. I couldn't remember the details, so I am grateful to Andreas for his supplemental contribution - and great research. I believe your connection to Christ's words is not only relevant, but very much in line with Tradition.

Fr John Breck's article I thought was useful here insofar as it discussed the issue of transubstantiation, and was a good pastoral response to questions about open communion. He is very much like Bishop KALLISTOS, and that can definitely be problematic.

MAH

[Andreas Moran]

My wife agrees that, of course, 'nasushni' means more than the common bread we need but carries with it the meaning of spiritually necessary. It's a word not used in modern Russian, she says. (Lydia is familiar with the literary Russian used before the Revolution, as well as with Church Slavonic.) When I was trying to learn the Lord's Prayer in Slavonic, I once said 'nasushi', and Lydia said, 'no, not Japanese fish!'

I was further thinking that Our Lord's only comment on the Prayer He gave us is that if we do not forgive others, our Father will not forgive us. Linking this to Holy Communion, the priest administers the precious Body and Blood to us saying, 'for the remission of sins' - but how can we expect this if we have not forgiven our debtors? And our debtors may include people from our past, even those who have departed this life.

[Mark Harrison]

We really need an Orthodox translation of the Our Father!

MAH

[Andreas Moran]

Easier just to say it in Greek!

[Anthony]

We really need an Orthodox translation of the Our Father!

MAH

I thought part of the problem was that we already had too many... Seriously though, this might be a good theme for a thread.

[Mark Harrison]

Andreas, you have a point! If only people would really understand it that way.

Anthony, you also have a point. Believe me, I could really get going, if I had time, on a translations thread. I am a certified translator for Spanish, and I have given much thought to the issue. If anybody wants to read a document that would make an EXCELLENT starting point for such a discussion, find the latest set of rules promulgated by the Vatican. I am absolutely serious. Pope Benedict was sick of the lousy translation theory and process long before he became pope. Now there are new rules out, and they are far more sound philosophically. I don't have time, but if someone wants to google it and post it, that would be great. Again, it's the theoretical underpinning of the translation work that I am praising.

[Andreas Moran]

I don't know how reliable Wikipedia is always, but I found this link interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiousios It says that Origen believed that the term 'epiousios' was coined by the Evangelist(s). The word was likely a hapax, a word used only among Christians and lacking meaning outside the eucharistic context.

I'm no scholar (and not very widely read - a careless magpie of a reader) but I regularly refer to my interlinear NT since so often there is no satisfactory substitute for the original Greek. The English language is not a good vehicle for these things (though, it seems, better than French). When my wife is searching for a word or phrase, she concludes that English is 'a poor language'. But even the Slavonic NT is by no means a perfect translation, it seems. Yet I'm sure God did not have in mind that all Christians should know koine Greek. My late first wife inspires me to keep in mind that salvation does not depend on scholarship. If I spent half the time praying that I do cogitating (and sinning), I'd be better off.

[Andreas Moran]

I forgot to mention that last night, I was talking about this thread with a friend of mine. He said he once read (he couldn't remember where but thought it might have been St Ignatius Brianchaninov) about making a connection between Holy Communion and the Jesus Prayer. Something on the lines that invoking the Name of Jesus could be 'daily bread' where daily Communion was not possible.

[M.C. Steenberg]

One of the best early treatments on the question of the meaning of epiousion in the prayer of Christ is by St Cyril of Jerusalem, who notes that it can properly mean both 'daily' and 'super-substantial'.

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

Thank you, Matthew. There we are then - St Cyril agrees with me that we can keep in mind various layers of meaning as we say the Our Father! Perhaps we can even continue to say, 'give us this day our daily bread'.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Perhaps better to say that one has found a voice that echoes the fathers, than that the fathers have come to agree with us. :)

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

It was very tongue in cheek, Matthew.

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

The patristic witness (but let's face it, there is very little of it on this matter, so little that it is hardly definitive) favours consubstantiation - the continuing existence of trhe bread and wine together with the Body and Blood of Christ.

For example we have this from "On the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by St John of Damascus, Chapter 13.

Concerning the holy and immaculate Mysteries of the Lord.


"The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself...

"Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as we believe, doubting nothing. Let us worship it in all purity both of soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire. Isaiah saw the coal. But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity."

N.B. ***"Not plain bread but bread united with divinity"****

Thne we move along a few centuries to Saint Symeon the New Theologian:


"The grace of the Spirit, also called the fire of the Deity, belongs to our God and Savior by nature, essentially. But his Body does not have the same origin, for it comes from the holy and all-pure flesh of the Theotokos, from her all-spotless blood. In assuming it from her, He made it into His own....Ever since then, the Son of God and of the All-pure imparts to the saints, that which proceeds from the nature and the essence of his co-eternal Father, the grace of the Spirit, that is, divinity; and from the nature and essence of her who really gave birth to Him, He gives them the Flesh which He assumed from her."

"Forgiveness of sin and participation in life are bestowed on us not only in the bread and wine of communion, but in the divinity which attends them and mysteriously mingles with them without confusion ...If Christ is God, His holy flesh is no longer mere flesh, but flesh and God inseparable and yet without confusion visible in the flesh, that is, the bread, to the bodily eyes. In His divinity He is invisible to the eyes of the body but is perceived with the eyes of the soul."

[Andreas Moran]

The patristic witness . . . favours consubstantiation

As we saw above, this seems to be true of some of the earlier patristic witness but not all and is not the position of the Council of Jerusalem, more recent witness (e.g. St Philaret of Moscow, St Nikolai of Zica, St Nektarios of Aegina) nor of the opinions of eminent theolgians (e.g Karmiris and Pomazansky). How would this notion of consubtantiation differ from the consubstantiation of the Lutherans?

[Andrew]

As we saw above, this seems to be true of some of the earlier patristic witness but not all and is not the position of the Council of Jerusalem, more recent witness (e.g. St Philaret of Moscow, St Nikolai of Zica, St Nektarios of Aegina) nor of the opinions of eminent theolgians (e.g Karmiris and Pomazansky). How would this notion of consubtantiation differ from the consubstantiation of the Lutherans?

In St. Theophylact's Commentaries on the Gospels he says that Holy Communion is the body and blood of Christ, not bread and wine, and that it only looks like bread and wine because Christ condenscends to our weakness and inability to eat what looks like human flesh and blood. I've seen other saints say similar things - but I know that there are a lot of theologians who say otherwise.

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

As we saw above, this seems to be true of some of the earlier patristic witness but not all and is not the position of the Council of Jerusalem,
The Statement of the Council of Jerusalem is counted as one of the Symbolic Books of Orthodoxy.

All the same, the general opinion is that the mention of transubstantiation, small though it is, is the adoption of a latinisation in order to combat the new reality which had just appeared in Western Europe, namely, Protestantism.


more recent witness (e.g. St Philaret of Moscow, St Nikolai of Zica, St Nektarios of Aegina) nor of the opinions of eminent theolgians (e.g Karmiris and Pomazansky).The Orthodox are quite free to adopt a notion of transubstantiation as they wish. It is not binding nor authoritative but it lies in the grey area of theologoumena. However, when we refer to the older layer of patristic witness we find the teaching that the bread and wine are not destroyed or transubstantiated but continue to exist. Some modern theologians seem to be veering back to this; they see it as more analogous to the incarnation where the divinity assumed human flesh without destroying it.



How would this notion of consubtantiation differ from the consubstantiation of the Lutherans?I do not know. I do not know enough about the Lutheran theory of consubstantiation. They often say that we understand them wrongly. But our difference with them may be as great as our difference with the Catholics over the term "transubstantiation?


When Bishop Kallistos first began writing in the 1960s he was able to describe the Synod of Jerusalem (The Confession of Dositheos) as one of the Symbolical Books of Orthodoxy, that is, as a full and proper and trustworthy expression of the Orthodox Faith. Forty years later people in America are able to speak scorningfully of this particular Symbolical Book as a useless piece of "scholastic and augustinian JUNK"!!!!! My, my, times change and we are now able to speak disrespectfully of our Fathers in the faith??!

In summary, I would say... jettison the term "transubstantiation" if we now find it is too contaminated by heretical thought to be safely used as the ancient Greek Fathers used it. But while we have no special predeliction for the term "transubstantiation" we must always remain aware that our Fathers taught the reality of the change and the fulness of Christ, true God and true man, in the divine Eucharist (body, blood, soul, divinity, mind, consciousness, etc.) . While the *terminology* of the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 may now be too "Catholic" for modern taste as the result of a Catholic arrogation of the term "transubstantiation" , the doctrine which the Jerusalem Council expressed is still bedrock Orthodoxy.

The question which forms the basis of this thread: Are the Body and Blood still bread and wine? Major patristic writers have thought so.

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

As we saw above, this seems to be true of some of the earlier patristic witness but not all ...You are quite right. For example our holy Father Irenaeus of Lyons seems to have understood it as impanation -"The Logos enters into the bread."

Impanation, consubstantiation, transubstantiation - all theologoumena, none being binding.

[Nina]

In St. Theophylact's Commentaries on the Gospels he says that Holy Communion is the body and blood of Christ, not bread and wine, and that it only looks like bread and wine because Christ condenscends to our weakness and inability to eat what looks like human flesh and blood. I've seen other saints say similar things - but I know that there are a lot of theologians who say otherwise.

Also Saint Nephon saw in church, that baby Christ is being slain during Liturgy... it is such an awesome account.

[Andreas Moran]

From what I have read, it seems that Consubstantiation means that the Body and Blood of Christ exist 'locally' in the consecrated bread and wine, the bread and wine continuing to exist alongside the Body and Blood co-mixed as it were. There are, apparently, various ways to describe this co-existence but one is that just as the Word took on a human body while retaining its substance, so does Christ assume the nature of bread in the eucharist. In the west, this notion had some support around the 11th century but was repeatedly condemned as heretical by the Roman Church (at councils held in Rome in 1050, through to the Council of Trent). Consubstantiation seems to appeal to the Protestant way of thinking which seeks rational and logical explanations and tends to avoid the mystical.

Some Lutherans deny that their belief is in Consubstantiation (which they condemn as a philosophical explanation) and prefer to call their belief Sacramental Union. This view says that there is something 'carnal' about the 'local' presence of the Body and Blood in the bread and wine, and say rather that the consecrated bread and wine 'unite' with the Body and Blood of Christ which are present not 'locally' but by way of Christ's omnipresence. The bread and wine remain but the words of consecration bring the Body and Blood of the omnipresent Christ into the bread and wine. This is likewise condemned by the Roman Church as denying the full change of the bread and wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ.

It is probably better for us Orthodox to avoid the word 'transubstantiation' but it is worth noting that where this has been used (as in the text of the Council of Jerusalem) it is not meant in the RC way as defining how the change is made but to signify completely and really that the change takes place in the Orthodox eucharist. Pomazansky writes (in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology) that after the invocation by the priest, 'the bread and wine actually are changed into the Body and Blood by the coming down of the Holy Spirit. After this moment, although our eyes see bread and wine on the Holy Table, in their very essence, invisibly for sensual eyes, this is the true Body and True Blood of the Lord Jesus' (p. 279). Christ is not present in the bread and wine in any of the ways taught by Zwingli (symbols), Calvin (Christ present dynamically) or Luther (penetrating co-existence) but the bread and wine are changed into the Body and and Blood of Christ entirely.

'We believe that in this sacred rite our Lord Jesus Christ is present not symbolically, not figuratively, not by an abundance of grace, as in other Mysteries, not by a simple descent, as certain Fathers say about Baptism, and not through a "penetration" of the bread, so that the Divinity of the Word should "enter" into the bread offered for the Eucharist, as the followers of Luther explain it rather awkwardly and unworthily - but truly and actually, so that after the sanctification of the bread and wine, the bread is changed, transubstantiated, converted, transformed, into the actual true Body of the Lord . . . Yet again, we believe that after the sanctification of the bread and wine there remains no longer the bread and wine themselves, but the very Body and Blood of the Lord, under the appearance and form of bread and wine.' - Encyclical of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs.

'Such a teaching of the holy Mystery of Communion may be found in all the Holy Fathers, beginning from the most ancient ones, such as St Ignatius the God-bearer, and other ancient church writers such as St Justin the Philosopher [Dialogue with Trypho, 41]. However, in several of the ancient writers, this teaching is not expressed in completely precise terms' - Pomazansky, p. 281.

One can find many early Fathers who attest to the complete change:

'The sacrificial gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ' - St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Treachery of Judas, 1:6

'He did not say, "This is the symbol of My Body, and this of My Blood", but, "This is My Body and My Blood", teaching us not to look upon the nature of what is set before us, but that it is trasnformed by means of Eucharistic action into Flesh and Blood' - Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Matthew, 26:26.

I accept all this as the Orthodox faith. Where some early Fathers seem to suggest some kind of co-existence of consecrated bread and wine with the Body and Blood of Christ, I accept that they were not writing with the precision that we would like, and we may find reasons for that. Indeed, they may be theologoumena on the same lines as the opinion of St Gregory of Nyssa on universal salvation. Most early Fathers and modern saints did write in terms which clearly exclude the possibility of any co-existence of the consecrated bread and wine with the Body and Blood of Christ. This is what I have been taught and it is what I understand the Orthodox faith to be. I cannot in all conscience entertain as Orthodox notions that have their roots in western heresies and which even the Roman Church has condemned.

[Andreas Moran]

I should make clear that the 'Encyclical of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs' to which I referred means the 'Answer of the Orthodox Patriarchs on the Orthodox Faith to the Non-Jurors', composed in 1718 and arriving in England in 1722 or 1723. This was composed by Patriarch Chrysanthus of Jerusalem and agreed by the Orthodox patriarchs, metropolitans and clergy at Constantinople and is thus an answer from the Orthodox Church as a whole. It is one of the chief statements of doctrine since 787. I have read that there are anathemas against anyone who would teach any doctrine which gives metabole any lesser meaning than that given.

[Peter S.]

May be we should admit that we/I dont know fully about matter
neither about spirit

It is normal to think that we know all, or at least that science will know all that is needed to know about matter.

Peter

[Andreas Moran]

Of course, we don't know 'fully about the matter' because it's a mystery. Science has nothing to tell us about this. What we do know is what the Orthodox faith is as we have been given it.

[Vasiliki D.]

Bishop Kallistos and several others teach that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood, but miraculously retain the appearance and properties of bread and wine.

Not always ... there are cases recorded where people have witnessed the actual slaughtering of a baby .. others actual pieces of meat on the spoon .. in these cases, the church has clear instructions that this Communion is NOT to be consumed by the faithful and that the Pre-Sanctified Gifts administered instead.

[Vasiliki D.]

Dear Tim,

I have avoided saying anything about HOW the change works. I am not insisting on anything except the teaching of the Church. As to WHAT happens, I have been at pains not to give my opinion. I have not 'worked out' anything, but seek only to state the teaching of the Church, as, in such matters, we must. The teaching of the Church IS simple faith: the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ - period (as I think you say in North America). What Matthew seems to be saying - but I want carefully to consider his last post before replying further - is that in some sense, after the sanctification of the bread and wine, there may remain, alongside the Body and Blood of Christ, bread and wine. Please, Tim, not my 'preferred explanation of it' - but the teaching of the Orthodox Church, which is the humble approach: to accept the miracle.

Somebody help!

Andreas.

Hi Andreas, I have heard a few sermons on this .. almost always I find that they say that it DOES become Body and Blood of Christ mystically but retains the characteristics of Bread and Wine ... in the situations where by miracle the Bread and Wine changes its visible characteristics to resemble actual body or blood - the church is strict to NOT administer it to the faithful because this then becomes carnal and contradicts the teachings of the church ...

I am sorry I read 2 pages of posts and got tired and decided to blurt this point here and suffer the consequences ... also, I do not know what I am writing is right or wrong ..its just what I have heard and therefore believe ... I think it seems to lean more towards DCN Matthews posts ... Im not sure.

[Vasiliki D.]

Friends,

There can be no doubt that the elements of bread and wine, even after their consecration, remain physically unchanged, as can be confirmed by common sense or by scientific analysis. I don't see any point in denying this. Trying to convince the faithful otherwise is certainly an act of cruelty that will only serve to weaken their faith. For example, imagine insisting that a certain person has been miraculously healed of paralysis, and commanding them to rise from their bed and walk, when, in fact, their physical disability remained clearly and experientially unchanged.

And yet the elements do become Christ's body and blood. But how?

I submit that this 'problem' points to an important fact about our sacramental theology - namely that it will always depend upon a certain ontology, or theory of what it means for something to exist. For example, several posters appealed to the 'transubstantiation' explanation, which depends entirely upon (antiquated) Aristotelian metaphysics. Others appealed to the sacrament as 'encounter' which language is thoroughly existential ('encounter' is a good buzzword, but try explaning what it means without resorting to emotional vagueries!). And no doubt if we looked hard enough at the relevant literature we would find a number of disciples of Plato offering their own interpretations of the sacrament.

Perhaps a step towards understand the truth of the claim that the bread and wine change to become Christ's body and blood lies in admitting that our existence, our being, is not merely physical in nature, so that there is no reason to suppose the bread and wine have to change in a physical way to become Christ's flesh and blood. Christ has aspects of his being that cannot be reduced to physical realities, such as his goodness, his virtue, his love, his consciousness, etc. If the bread and wine change at all, no doubt they will change in ways that extend beyond the physical.

I think that this is very well put. It captures much of what I have heard many (uneducated) church fathers say over my 30 years of being a cradle GO.

They support that the change to the Actual Body and Blood is NOT symbolic it DOES take place we literally consume HIM but it does not alter the physical realities of the bread and wine either ... you know .. its quite humerous in that it almost is like an analogy of the incarnation if you think about it ...oops sidetrack.

:)

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

From what I have read, it seems that Consubstantiation means...... the bread and wine continuing to exist alongside the Body and Blood co-mixed as it were.In a sense, yes, in the teachings of St John of Damascus and St Symeon the New Theologian..

On the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by St John of Damascus, Chapter 13"

"...the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity."


Saint Symeon the New Theologian:

"Forgiveness of sin and participation in life are bestowed on us not only in the bread and wine of communion, but in the divinity which attends them and mysteriously mingles with them without confusion...."



There are, apparently, various ways to describe this co-existence but one is that just as the Word took on a human body while retaining its substance, so does Christ assume the nature of bread in the eucharist. Could you write a bit more about this? I have not encountered the idea that Christ assumes the nature of bread before. The concept of some sort of hypostatic union between bread and the divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity boggles the mind.

[Vasiliki D.]

In a sense, yes, in the teachings of St John of Damascus and St Symeon the New Theologian..

On the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by St John of Damascus, Chapter 13"

"...the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity."


Saint Symeon the New Theologian:

"Forgiveness of sin and participation in life are bestowed on us not only in the bread and wine of communion, but in the divinity which attends them and mysteriously mingles with them without confusion...."

Could you write a bit more about this? I have not encountered the idea that Christ assumes the nature of bread before. The concept of some sort of hypostatic union between bread and the divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity boggles the mind.

I posted something just before you ... I know your response is to Andrew but I am in schock because of what you posted by St. Symeon the New Theologian ... I jokingly said that it is something like the Incarnation and it really humbled me to read this sentence.

It would be hard to comprehend with the human mind that Christ "takes on Bread" much like he "takes on human form" and yet he DID take on the human form through the borrowed flesh of Adam (which He made anyway) in the person of the Panaghia (the Bread?) ... No sperm was involved, hence why no one can ever say that Christ/God went INTO an existing person and altered him ... The "sperm" was the mystery of the incarnation ... it was God uniting with his creation ...

Much like the Eucharist in some ways ... the existing SACRIFICE not co-existing in the bread and wine but INCARNATING it wearing the physical properties of the bread and wine but retaining the essence of the Sacrifice/God in a mysterious way ...??

I hope none of this discussion is blasphemous/heretical - God forgive us if it is, He knows our intentions are not to cause problems.

I have a headache .. . this is too hard for me to continue talking about because it goes over my level of comprehension scholastically. I fear saying something/pondering something that is wrong or not right ... forgive me all.

[Peter S.]

Of course, we don't know 'fully about the matter' because it's a mystery. Science has nothing to tell us about this. What we do know is what the Orthodox faith is as we have been given it.

I was thinking about that we dont have language to describe too. When God says "I am/I am who I am", it can seem strange to us. It is a divine language. The same with Jesus saying "I am the ressurection and life".

Science can only use "rational" scientific language, and we are often thinking in these categories when we speak about divine things, because it is the language we are used with. The Church has its divine language, hidden or not belonging to its knowledge and experience. Mystery and human language is difficult to connect, maybe thats why there are different opinions about the matter in Church as Andrew put it.

All spirit and matter that exists is Gods work and he truly knows its inner reality. As John says
we dont yet know what we are going to be.

That Christ "takes on bread" seems interresting.

Peter

[Andreas Moran]

That Christ "takes on bread" seems interresting.

I wouldn't want to get interested in this notion because I think it goes against at least the counsel of the Fathers that we shouldn't enquire into the 'how'. I'm trying to keep with the 'that'. I accept the teaching that is to be found in many places that after consecration, the bread and wine look and taste like bread and wine but are the Body and Blood of Christ with no bread and wine remaining.
St Philaret of Moscow in his longer catechism (para. 340) refers to the exposition of the faith by the Eastern Patriarchs (which I mentioned above and which says that no bread and wine remain) and says, 'only this much is signified, that the bread truly, really, and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord. In like manner, John Damacene, treating of the Holy and Immaculate Mysteries of the Lord, writes thus: It is truly that Body, united with Godhead, which had its origin from the Holy Virgin; not as though that Body which ascended came dowm from heaven, but because the bread and wine themselves are changed into the Body and Blood of God. But if thou seekest after the manner how this is, let it suffice thee to be told that it is by the Holy Spirit . . . (J. Damac. Theol. lib. iv. cap. 13, 7.)' [Translation from pravoslavieto.com] Notions of consubstantiation and so forth are Protestant and not part of this Orthodox teaching.

[Father David Moser]

That Christ "takes on bread" seems interresting.


I wouldn't want to get interested in this notion because I think it goes against at least the counsel of the Fathers that we shouldn't enquire into the 'how'... Notions of consubstantiation and so forth are Protestant and not part of this Orthodox teaching.

Peter's statement above calls to mind the argument of Prof. Osipov which caused quite a stir among the Russian community. I don't read Russian beyond about a first grade level (if that) and so don't speak from direct knowledge, however, what I heard of his argument was that he proposed that in the Mysteries, Christ took on the bread and wine in much the same way as he took flesh in the incarnation. I believe that in the theological journals of the MP this view was pretty much rejected and refuted (but again, I don't read Russian and so can't say directly).

Fr David Moser

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

Notions of consubstantiation and so forth are Protestant and not part of this Orthodox teaching.Yes, notions of consubstantiation a la Lutheranism are Protestant. Notions of transubstantiation a la Catholicism are also "Protestant."

But the teaching from Saint John Damascene's "Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" - that of "bread united with divinity" cannot be simply put aside as proto-protestantism. Saint John was a prominent and meticulous exponent of the Church's faith. He represents 700 years of the Church's traditional understanding and he was attempting to explain it exactly.

Likewise with Saint Symeon the New Theologian and his teaching of "commingling" - "the divinity which attends them and mysteriously mingles with them without confusion...." Saint Symeon is speaking out of 1000 years of the Church's reflection on the change.

It does not invalidate what they taught to say that it has been superceded by a more 'precise' teaching from, say, the Council of Jerusalem (heavy Latin influence, desire to combat Calvinism) or more recent Saints. This tends to put us into the Roman Catholic camp of doctrinal development. It is, I think, better to hold to an agnostic view (Orthodoxy's traditional view in this matter) and, provided the reality of the presence of the complete Christ is maintained, theories about how this occurs may be left as interesting theologoumena. This indeterminateness is, for me, the traditional teaching of the Church. Our traditions should not be "updated" by new Saints from the 18th and 19th centuries. Let us listen to them with respect but not discard the older Saints and their views which are also legitimate hypotheses. We may be advised to be in no great hurry to impose on this matter anything like systematic definition or closure.

[Vasiliki D.]

I just want to post (for the record) I dont believe that "Christ takes on bread" (like putting on a jacket) ... I justed wanted to point out that how the bread IS the body and the wine IS the blood is a mystery JUST LIKE the Incarnation is a mystery ... :)

The rest, I am very much happy to let it go and leave it to the experts .. the responses are interesting and those that avoid bringing in Latin West theology are my favourite (because those who interpreted the Scripture without a firm understanding of the Greek original text ... got it wrong. St. Augustine for example. He hated Greek and this was his flaw ... other than that he was brilliant and faithful).

[Andreas Moran]

I believe that in the theological journals of the MP this view was pretty much rejected and refuted (but again, I don't read Russian and so can't say directly).

Fr David Moser

As have indicated before, I have discussed Osipov's views with clergy in Russia and they say that Osipov's views on the eucharist are considered heretical.

No one would put aside the writings of St John Damascene and St Symeon the New Theologian! But I'd be inclined, if I could, to go the original Greek texts and be sure of exactly what they were saying here, and try to work out what they really meant. It is well known that where Fathers are not unanimous in something, the correct position can be determined by later conciliar authority and later developments. And it is worth bearing in mind that saints and writers before as well as after these two did not suggest some kind of consubstantiation. I don't see why some notion of consubstantiation should be preferred on the basis of these sayings from these two saints when there is such large body of opinion which authoritatively and clearly teaches against this. If I hold to the teaching that I do, I know I will not be in danger of error; if I hold any view which suggests consubstantiation, I fear the danger of falling into error (as Osipov has) since it is so close to Protestant ideas.


provided the reality of the presence of the complete Christ is maintained, theories about how this occurs may be left as interesting theologoumena.

It is the reality of the presence that is the nub of the matter: whether that reality means an entire, whole and complete presence or whether it means some mode of co-existence with the bread and wine. Both views cannot be right - one is right and one is wrong. How the change occurs is indeed another matter about which perhaps, given what St John Damascene counsels in the quote I gave from St Philaret, which we should not even have opinions.

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

As have indicated before, I have discussed Osipov's views with clergy in Russia and they say that Osipov's views on the eucharist are considered heretical..
Not all that is odd about Osipov. As someone remarked --- Professor Osipov, for example, asserts that natural disasters are caused not by the "wrath of God" but by our sins. There is considerable patristic evidence for this view -- we talk of creation rejoicing with the Nativity, mourning with the Passion, or changing with the fall of Adam. So perhaps the best thing we can do about Global Warming is to try to live a holy life. Now that is entirely politically incorrect ...

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

As have indicated before, I have discussed Osipov's views with clergy in Russia and they say that Osipov's views on the eucharist are considered heretical.
I have not read any of Osipov's writings and probably shan't but I see that there is an archpriest of the Russian Church Abroad who contributes here who does not see his eucharistic teaching as heretical.

"The Eucharist in the Orthodox Church"

http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1640

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

Another thread where a couple of priests are not against saying that the bread and wine remain after consecration. It is interesting that these priests also are clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

"The Eucharist - East and West"
http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1643

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I have not read any of Osipov's writings and probably shan't but I see that there is an archpriest of the Russian Church Abroad who contributes here who does not see his eucharistic teaching as heretical.

"The Eucharist in the Orthodox Church"

http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1640

It's interesting going through some of those old posts!

I still think that relating the bread & wine to the human nature of Christ has a major weakness in that it leaves the Body & Blood itself to the Divine nature of Christ. Even terminologically, let alone theologically there seems a problem.

But I was thinking that if the bread & wine were seen as symbols of the Body & Blood perhaps it could work.

Actually it was the recent thread on the priest as male icon of Christ that got me thinking about this (specifically Fr Dn Matthew's remarks about symbol & icon).

Perhaps if the bread & wine were seen as direct iconographic symbols of the Body & Blood then this explanation could work.

On the other hand though I still feel inclined towards the view that once the consecration occurs and the bread & wine are changed into the Body & Blood of Christ then the bread & wine are no longer such in any normal sense anymore.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

I have not read any of Osipov's writings and probably shan't but I see that there is an archpriest of the Russian Church Abroad who contributes here who does not see his eucharistic teaching as heretical.

"The Eucharist in the Orthodox Church"

http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1640

If you are going to refer to my comments of 4 years ago when I first heard of Prof Osipov's opinions, then you need also to realize that during the intervening four years I have also come to regard those same opinions as erroneous.

You must also recognize that as I do not read or speak Russian, everything that I learned was "in translation" and so there was a significant interpretive "filter" on the part of those who relayed Prof Osipov's comments to me. I learned not long after my 2004 comment that there was significant opposition to those comments and again "in translation" I was given an understanding of the critique. It is better, if you are going to reference my opinion, to reference the recent comment I made in this self same thread in my post 133 (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=72250&postcount=133)

Fr David Moser

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

If you are going to refer to my comments of 4 years ago when I first heard of Prof Osipov's opinions, then you need also to realize that during the intervening four years I have also come to regard those same opinions as erroneous.

You must also recognize that as I do not read or speak Russian, everything that I learned was "in translation" and so there was a significant interpretive "filter" on the part of those who relayed Prof Osipov's comments to me. I learned not long after my 2004 comment that there was significant opposition to those comments and again "in translation" I was given an understanding of the critique. It is better, if you are going to reference my opinion, to reference the recent comment I made in this self same thread in my post 133 (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=72250&postcount=133)

Fr David MoserThanks for the updated reference. My apology for not being more aware that your earlier views could have been revised. At my age, two years ago seems as yesterday!

Father, do you have something (a website? a critique?) which gives a quick synopsis of Osipov's views on this matter. I really don't want to make my way through any long turgid monographs of his but something short would be ideal... interesting to see on what patristic witness Osipov attempts to base what Mr Moran reports as heretical beliefs in the eyes of Russian clergy.

Many thanks.

[Peter S.]

I wouldn't want to get interested in this notion because I think it goes against at least the counsel of the Fathers that we shouldn't enquire into the 'how'. I'm trying to keep with the 'that.


I agree. I am f. ex. not into the roman Catholic transubsansiation doctrine bringing in Aristotles essential and not essential matters.


It is, I think, better to hold to an agnostic view (Orthodoxy's traditional view in this matter) and, provided the reality of the presence of the complete Christ is maintained, theories about how this occurs may be left as interesting theologoumena.


I can live very well with that.


On the other hand though I still feel inclined towards the view that once the consecration occurs and the bread & wine are changed into the Body & Blood of Christ then the bread & wine are no longer such in any normal sense anymore.

In my heart that also seems what is correct.

Peter

[Father David Moser]

Father, do you have something (a website? a critique?) which gives a quick synopsis of Osipov's views on this matter. I really don't want to make my way through any long turgid monographs of his but something short would be ideal... interesting to see on what patristic witness Osipov attempts to base what Mr Moran reports as heretical beliefs in the eyes of Russian clergy.

Sorry, no, I don't have anything like that. What I learned both of Prof Osipov's views and the critique thereof was from conversations with my brother priests. If you find yourself in San Francisco, you might ask Fr Peter about it, or in Seattle, Fr Alexei.

Fr David Moser

[Shawn Lazar]

In the Divine Liturgy book translated by Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary (3rd edition, 1985), in the introduction, Fr. Alkiviades Calivas explains that (p. xxv) "Through the power of God the bread and wine of the Liturgy are changed into the very Body and Blood of Christ. This change is not physical but mystical and sacramental. While the qualities of the bread and wine remain, we partake of the true Body and Blood of Christ."

Materialists would, of course, balk at the idea that things can undergo a meaningful non-material "change". But then, who cares? Christians aren't materialists. We believe, for instance, in various "energies", right?

At the same time, I don't think that, as Orthodox, we need accept the Aristotelian metaphysics that underlies the Catholic conception of transubstantiation.

[Andreas Moran]

But I was thinking that if the bread & wine were seen as symbols of the Body & Blood perhaps it could work.

Forgive me for saying so but this cannot be right: all the authorities I have read insist that the Gifts are not symbols.


once the consecration occurs and the bread & wine are changed into the Body & Blood of Christ then the bread & wine are no longer such in any normal sense anymore.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

This must be right. We might remember that it is not Christ Who effects the change but the Holy Spirit.

[Father David Moser]

But I was thinking that if the bread & wine were seen as symbols of the Body & Blood perhaps it could work.
Forgive me for saying so but this cannot be right: all the authorities I have read insist that the Gifts are not symbols.

I think that the fathers do present a symbolic element in the eucharistic elements - but it is not that they are only symbols, but that the symbolic meaning is layered onto the sacramental reality of the change.

Fr David Moser

[Andreas Moran]

Perhaps, given that some Protestants say that the bread and wine are symbols, it is better to avoid using the word but I take the point that in an Orthodox sense there are layers of meaning for us in the reality of the change.

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

Sorry, no, I don't have anything like that. What I learned both of Prof Osipov's views and the critique thereof was from conversations with my brother priests. If you find yourself in San Francisco, you might ask Fr Peter about it, or in Seattle, Fr Alexei.

Happy Feast of Saint Finnian!
[Good news for some of us who are Irish and in the Russian Church Abroad. The fast is entirely dispensed with. See "ROCOR Western Rite fast rules"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Occidentalis/message/10251 ]

Father, my sense of fair play is troubling me. The thing is that Osipov whom I don't know and may never read has been said to be heretical - but also very cleverly heretical since his views are accepted even by clergy. Now when a man is a heretic it is a terrbile thing and an even worse thing when he holds some sort of senior position in academic theology and is leading not only the "little ones" but even the clergy astray. Such a heretic (a material heretic as the Catholic would term him) we would say and certainly the holy Fathers would say, has very probably endangered his salvation..

However, and this is where my sense of fair play troubles me, we have been told he is a heretic and not one substantiating quote has been given against him. I am sure that the charge has not been made lightly and I am sure that people are not engaging in defamation of character... but I believe that a serious charge like this has to substantiated..?

[Andreas Moran]

I was told that Osipov has expressed his views about the eucharist in lectures and it is these utterances which have been reported. I have also been told he is a persuasive speaker. I'll ask if he has published these views in print. By the way, it is his views on the eucharist that I have heard condemned as heretical. About any of his other views I have not heard.

[Anna Stickles]

I'm out of my depth here on what constitutes correct and incorrect explanation of this mystery, but my thought on the issue of whether the Eucharist is bread and wine or body and blood, is that on an ontological level, what difference does it make? The difference between flesh and bread is the difference of rearraging a few molecules. When I think of Christ uniting Himself with creation, then He united Himself with the material/physical level of creation and He did that through taking on our flesh. Maybe I am much too eastern/mystical in my thinking, but at some level isn't the whole of creation in communion with each other, (ie one) at some level? It is not like the physical creation at that level is separated into various hypostasis, but rather is one substance formed various ways.

One problem, though, that I have not heard brought up, is that we are not simply flesh beings. We have thoughts, emotions, etc. which although not material are nevertheless part of our created nature. It seems to me that saying that the Eucharist is merely the divine nature of Christ uniting with bread then the Eucharist is no longer seen to contain in it the fullness of human nature that Christ took on.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Anna Stickles wrote:


my thought on the issue of whether the Eucharist is bread and wine or body and blood, is that on an ontological level, what difference does it make? The difference between flesh and bread is the difference of rearraging a few molecules. When I think of Christ uniting Himself with creation, then He united Himself with the material/physical level of creation and He did that through taking on our flesh. Maybe I am much too eastern/mystical in my thinking, but at some level isn't the whole of creation in communion with each other, (ie one) at some level? It is not like the physical creation at that level is separated into various hypostasis, but rather is one substance formed various ways.

One problem, though, that I have not heard brought up, is that we are not simply flesh beings. We have thoughts, emotions, etc. which although not material are nevertheless part of our created nature. It seems to me that saying that the Eucharist is merely the divine nature of Christ uniting with bread then the Eucharist is no longer seen to contain in it the fullness of human nature that Christ took on.


It is not that the bread & wine do not refer in any way to Christ's humanity- they obviously do. But when the bread & wine are referred to Christ's human nature in such a way we inadvertently divide the bread & wine from the Body & Blood according to His two natures. Then we are left with the very problematic implication that the Body & Blood of Christ are referred exclusively to His divine nature.

Obviously even terminologically we have a problem here since Body and Blood are things of His humanity. But the Eucharist as Christ's Body & Blood cannot be separated from the bread & wine in such a fashion without dividing the material from the divinized in Christ as if these were two different things. Christ's humanity is not two- the material with a 'layer' of Divinity on top- but rather one human nature Divinized. Whatever our vision and explanation of the Eucharist is it must be based on this understanding.

What then is the relationship of the bread & wine to the Body & Blood? I do not think that the bread & wine is a complete chimera once we have the Eucharist before us. But neither are these separately existing things. Rather in the Eucharist the bread & wine are sacramental symbols to the Body & Blood of Christ one within the Other.

But here we're coming very close- or perhaps saying exactly the same thing- as is found already referred to in the prayers and Patristic commentaries of the Divine Liturgy.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Vasiliki D.]

Anna Stickles wrote:

It is not that the bread & wine do not refer in any way to Christ's humanity- they obviously do. But when the bread & wine are referred to Christ's human nature in such a way we inadvertently divide the bread & wine from the Body & Blood according to His two natures. Then we are left with the very problematic implication that the Body & Blood of Christ are referred exclusively to His divine nature.

Obviously even terminologically we have a problem here since Body and Blood are things of His humanity. But the Eucharist as Christ's Body & Blood cannot be separated from the bread & wine in such a fashion without dividing the material from the divinized in Christ as if these were two different things. Christ's humanity is not two- the material with a 'layer' of Divinity on top- but rather one human nature Divinized. Whatever our vision and explanation of the Eucharist is it must be based on this understanding.

What then is the relationship of the bread & wine to the Body & Blood? I do not think that the bread & wine is a complete chimera once we have the Eucharist before us. But neither are these separately existing things. Rather in the Eucharist the bread & wine are sacramental symbols to the Body & Blood of Christ one within the Other.

But here we're coming very close- or perhaps saying exactly the same thing- as is found already referred to in the prayers and Patristic commentaries of the Divine Liturgy.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

My apologies - they are NOT sacramental SYMBOLS. Perhaps you chose the wrong term accidently but if not then you must stop referring to it as symbolic when the Church has a firm position on this matter. The bread and wine IS the body and blood ... without their properties being altered.

The properties are altered when we consume the Eucharist ... we partake of Christ's DNA. We eat Him and this then works mystically in our members .. scientifically, if you like, once we consume food, it is processed through our liver and converted into blood that flows through our body and keeps us alive and working healthy.

When we consume Christ, we consume His DNA .. the properties of the Body and the Blood are THEN converted into actual tangible properties of body and blood through our liver and then spread throughout our body via the heart ....

God's knowledge knows no bounds ... ours does. But when the fathers are strict in their terminology and they say that the Eucharist IS the Body and the Blood; we should adopt this terminology and not go re-inventing the wheel.

The bread and the wine are not symbols.

[Peter S.]

The word 'symbol' has changed its meaning over the years, with the result that you can say 'symbol' almost without thinking of what the symbol is a symbol of.

Peter

[Father David Moser]

The properties are altered when we consume the Eucharist ... we partake of Christ's DNA. We eat Him and this then works mystically in our members .. scientifically, if you like, once we consume food, it is processed through our liver and converted into blood that flows through our body and keeps us alive and working healthy.

When we consume Christ, we consume His DNA .. the properties of the Body and the Blood are THEN converted into actual tangible properties of body and blood through our liver and then spread throughout our body via the heart ....

i think perhaps you go a bit too far here. IIRC St john Chrysostom in speaking about the reception of the holy mysteries states that when we receive the Most Holy Body and Most Precious Blood, it is mystically spread throughout the body without passing through the stomach and digestive system. Beyond this, the fathers do not comment and perhaps we should observe the same restraint.

Fr David Moser

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Vasiliki wrote:


My apologies - they are NOT sacramental SYMBOLS. Perhaps you chose the wrong term accidently but if not then you must stop referring to it as symbolic when the Church has a firm position on this matter. The bread and wine IS the body and blood ... without their properties being altered.

The properties are altered when we consume the Eucharist ... we partake of Christ's DNA. We eat Him and this then works mystically in our members .. scientifically, if you like, once we consume food, it is processed through our liver and converted into blood that flows through our body and keeps us alive and working healthy.


By this point in my post I was writing mainly as trying to explain how someone could maintain that in the Eucharist there still remain bread & wine.

With this in mind I do not mean symbol in the modern sense of something which stands aside from that which it represents. Rather I mean symbol as that which includes in its own composition something of that which it represents.

Even though I incline more towards the belief that the Eucharist is solely the Body & Blood of Christ because the bread & wine have been altered I cannot discount the bread & wine as complete chimera. After all the classic expression of the Fathers is that the Eucharist is 'under the form' of bread & wine.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Vasiliki D.]

Vasiliki wrote:

By this point in my post I was writing mainly as trying to explain how someone could maintain that in the Eucharist there still remain bread & wine.

With this in mind I do not mean symbol in the modern sense of something which stands aside from that which it represents. Rather I mean symbol as that which includes in its own composition something of that which it represents.

Even though I incline more towards the belief that the Eucharist is solely the Body & Blood of Christ because the bread & wine have been altered I cannot discount the bread & wine as complete chimera. After all the classic expression of the Fathers is that the Eucharist is 'under the form' of bread & wine.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Awesome Father ... I didnt know that symbol is used in a different context so I apologise for my response then. The footnote changes your paragraph immensely.

[Vasiliki D.]

i think perhaps you go a bit too far here. IIRC St john Chrysostom in speaking about the reception of the holy mysteries states that when we receive the Most Holy Body and Most Precious Blood, it is mystically spread throughout the body without passing through the stomach and digestive system. Beyond this, the fathers do not comment and perhaps we should observe the same restraint.

Fr David Moser

I think I have mentioned it before I am not educated like you all are and my comments are just that ... uneducated, so please find some tolerance for us less fortunate but passionate Christians.

I have never read St. Chrysostom's homily on how the Eucharistia spreads throughout the body .. and so, if it says this exact phrase I will accept it on blind faith and no longer presume something which came out of my own scientific knowledge. Its a shame really because as Christs body and blood IF it went through the liver and converted into our own blood for me (IF this hypothesis was true) this is the point that we have sealed a physical relationship with Christ ... much the analogy of Groom and Bride and then a consumation of a marriage .. this would be a consumation of blood uniting us as Groom and Bride ... but, as you say, if Chrysostom says otherwise .. this romantic (in a non sexual context) concept I had thought about is not to be pursued any longer.

Another thing, one homily I do know of is the one where St John Chrysostom is disappointed with his congregation for they do not challenging him in matters of the church ... to him this showed a lack of passion for the knowledge of Christ ... you speak to me with disappointment when I challenge the topic in my own uneducate way ...

I pray that you can find tollerance for people who are not as skilled in "comprehension" and general stuff ...

[Peter S.]

I think I have mentioned it before I am not educated like you all are and my comments are just that ... uneducated, so please find some tolerance for us less fortunate but passionate Christians.


I pray that you can find tollerance for people who are not as skilled in "comprehension" and general stuff ...

Dear Vasiliki

That we partake in Christs DNA is a strong opinion. Check the facts before you postulate that, something I am not so good at myself. I can say I am patristic uneducated myself, but I hope I know its best to check the facts.

Btw it sounded strange that we partake in his DNA. I didnt like to read it. And the DNA was found not so long ago. The Eucharist is a mystical union with Christ.

Peter

[Vasiliki D.]

Dear Vasiliki

That we partake in Christs DNA is a strong opinion. Check the facts before you postulate that, something I am not so good at myself. I can say I am patristic uneducated myself, but I hope I know its best to check the facts.

Btw it sounded strange that we partake in his DNA. I didnt like to read it. And the DNA was found not so long ago. The Eucharist is a mystical union with Christ.

Peter

If my biological forefather is Adam and his wife Eve, then biological imprints are carried down through generations via our DNA. However, when I am baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity biological DNA is irrelevant. The DNA I am referring to is spiritual and my forefather becomes Christ. When I participate in Holy Communion I take in Christ ... and by taking in Christ I receive a spiritual DNA imprint - perhaps its love, perhaps its humility ... whatever gift He wishes to give me ... that is how I view it and I am not scared to have this opinion.

Can I just ask people not to force people not have opinions ... it is healthy to have an opinion as long as its in good faith ... the rest should be left up to God ... if an opinion is wrong, He will teach this to the person with time ... if you read my passage and felt it was strange that is OK ... 4 sentences can not capture the essence of what a person is really trying to say or what they experience.

So forgive me if I have scandalised you but I still believe that when we take Holy Communion we are joining to Christ ... and His DNA is metaphysical it IS the ultimate DNA ... it is the spiritual DNA/fruits of the Holy Spirit that we all are working towards in our lives to achieve ...

God Bless and be patient with me.

[Peter S.]

Can I just ask people not to force people not have opinions ... it is healthy to have an opinion as long as its in good faith ... the rest should be left up to God ... if an opinion is wrong, He will teach this to the person with time ... if you read my passage and felt it was strange that is OK ... 4 sentences can not capture the essence of what a person is really trying to say or what they experience.

I can tell that the reason why I reacted about "partaking in Christs DNA" was that it reminded me of cannibalism. That is just my feeling... I dont need to explain more to you. I am not saying that you had that in mind.

Peter

[Vasiliki D.]

I can tell that the reason why I reacted about "partaking in Christs DNA" was that it reminded me of cannibalism. That is just my feeling... I dont need to explain more to you. I am not saying that you had that in mind.

Peter

Hi, I have heard that the Church has come across situations where the Eucharist WAS actually turned into real body and real blood. In these cases, the Church forbids the Holy Eucharist to be given to anyone for this exact reason .. as it is seen to be an actual act of cannibalism. When you partake of the body and blood as bread and wine (not symbolically I add) but mystically it is all mystical ... I use DNA because I can not think of a better word ..its symbolic ... blood has DNA ... Christs blood has spiritual "DNA" - find me a better word and I will use it ...I wish sometimes I could just speak instead of writing things down :-) Its frustrating not to be understood ... :-)

[M.C. Steenberg]

I have heard that the Church has come across situations where the Eucharist WAS actually turned into real body and real blood. In these cases, the Church forbids the Holy Eucharist to be given to anyone

Indeed, there is an appendix in various patristic and liturgical handbooks for priests that address precisely this possibility: "What to do if you gaze into the chalice and find that the holy bread and holy wine have visible become flesh and blood"; and, as you say, the instruction is that this not be consumed or given to the people.

The bread and wine offered at the altar become the true body and true blood of the Saviour. This is unequivocally stated at the prayer before communion, as in so many other places. It is still identified in the text and prayers of the Liturgy itself as 'holy bread', even after the fullness of the consecration in which it mystically becomes the Lord's flesh, as we've discussed previously here. The task of the faithful person is not to attempt the dissection of this, too, by some scientific formula -- even if that formula is the pious insistence that 'bread is no longer bread, wine no longer wine'. This may be pious; it is still scientific and analytical. Rather, we draw near in faith to the mystery of the one who makes himself fully available, fully encountered in the eucharist; who takes bread and says 'this is my body', wine and says 'this is my blood'. We are blessed to receive the true blood and body of Christ -- a gift beyond any other in creation. Especially at the Nativity, we are called to receive Him, rather than dissect Him.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Eric Peterson]

Amen, Father Deacon!

[Hieromonk Ambrose]

Beautifully expressed, Father Matthew.

Your manner of expression reminded me of Mother Maria (Gysi) for whom I have the greatest admiration.

Hmonk Ambrose

[Peter S.]

We do not eat it in the cases when it has become meat, but still it is the body and blood of Christ. Aren't we supposed to burn it then? Or what? Has this not something to do with this phrase: Luke 21:33 ? Todays reading btw.

Peter

[Father David Moser]

We do not eat it in the cases when it has become meat, but still it is the body and blood of Christ. Aren't we supposed to burn it then?

We are supposed to call the Bishop. He decides what to do after that.

Fr David Moser

[Aidan Kimel]

Greetings, friends. I've been away from the forum for many, many months and discovered today that this old thread on the Eucharist has been resurrected. I thought that folks might find of interest an article I wrote a year ago summarizing the eucharistic reflections of Fr Herbert McCabe: "When Bread is Not Bread (http://pontifications.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/when-bread-is-not-bread/)." In light of the questions raised in the thread, I think you will find this piece interesting and germane. I expect you will disagree with some of it, but you may also find yourself nodding in agreement too. I welcome your thoughts about it.

Blessings,
Fr Kimel

[Anna Stickles]

Very interesting, I am not qualified to judge what's being said overall but one thing that caught my attention.



I am suggesting that the consecrated host exists at a level of reality at which the questions of whether it is bread cannot relevantly be asked; our language breaks down when we try to speak of it, just as it does in the case of God. What happens at the consecration is not that the proper description of the host shifts within our language (from “bread” to “Body of Christ”) but that it no longer becomes possible to give an account of it within our language at all. (p. 152)


So often in philosophical approaches to God's mysteries, in our mind's presumption we twist things by asking the wrong questions the wrong way and then wonder why the answers make no sense. One thing I like here is that there is recognition of this truth. Here he asks us to submit our mind to the mystery instead.

For the Fathers, the efforts at dogmatic formulations of the mystery of our salvation always had a very practical aspect. They were protecting the sheep against formulations that would damage people's faith and their ability to grow in their relationship with God, not out to find objectively true explanations of those mysteries in a rational sense. Therefore the question "How do we describe or articulate this mystery" Which maybe is what the medeival Catholic theologians were asking and many moderns on this issue is irrelevant.

But the Patristic question seems to me to be "How do we protect the faith of the faithful?"

[Anna Stickles]

Dear Fr Kimel and others,

In giving a brief glance back over "When Bread is Not Bread", other questions on this thread, and also reading through Fr Kimel's lastest post on "The Sacramentality of the Sacraments", it struck me that there is a very different underlying approach between the early Fathers I have been reading and medeviel and modern ways of thinking about this.

In asking questions about the change that occurs, our modern mind drifts to questions about what the bread and wine become, but in reading St Ireneaus lately, I think that a more foundational question that needs to be asked is -- what is the relationship of the bread and wine to Christ.

One of the things I was confronted with when I started reading the early Church Fathers is that they do not have a substitutionary view of the atonement, but rather a participatory view. Christ takes on, participates in, human nature and its fallen condition and that nature is raised up through His union with it and we in turn partake of the deification of that nature through a willing participation in Him.

In a way I think that modern thinking about the Eucharist is substitutionary also. We tend to ask questions revolving around whether the bread and wine are replaced by Christ's body and blood, or we wonder how both can exist in the same place.

I noticed this interesting quote from Fr Schmemann

We might say that the symbol does not so much "resemble" the reality that it symbolizes as it participates in it, and therefore it is capable of communicating it in reality.
…it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other. All of this is the symbol (from symbállō, "unite," "hold together"). In it -- unlike in a simple "illustration," simple sign, and even in the sacrament in its scholastic-rationalistic "reduction" -- the empirical (or "visible") and the spiritual (or "invisible") are united not logically (this "stands for" that), not analogically (this "illustrates" that), nor yet by cause and effect (this is the "means" or "generator" of that), but epiphanically. One reality manifests (epiphaínō) and communicates the other, but -- and this is immensely important -- only to the degree to which the symbol itself is a participant in the spiritual reality and is able or called upon to embody it. In other words, in the symbol everything manifests the spiritual reality, but not everything pertaining to the spiritual reality appears embodied in the symbol. The symbol is always partial, always imperfect: "for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect" (1 Co 13:9). By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." However real a symbol may be, however successfully it may communicate to us that other reality, its function is not to quench our thirst but to intensify it.

This idea that the symbol itself communicates to us this Reality, ie allows us to participate in Him, partake of Him, be in communion with Him --by means of the symbol itself participating in that spiritual reality-- seems to me to be very different emphasis from talking about the symbols changing or being changed.

Recently I was reading St Ireneaus on the fact that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." He says that indeed flesh and blood do not inherit - for they do not have this power in and of themselves, but they are inherited by God. The symbols, the bread and wine cannot wholly contain God, but are wholly contained by Him, it is a difference in the direction of our thinking, it is a difference in how we think about the relationship of creation with Creator.

There is a very practical pastoral point to this also that is mentioned in the last line of Fr Schmemann's quote. The Orthodox paradigm leads to an internal dispostion of poverty. If the goal is a continuous willing participation in something which we cannot receive or keep or have in an of ourselves then we recognize our inadequacy and strive towards God continually. However, the substitutionary view, in all the many and various ways that it pops up, denies this basic truth and we rest content with what we think has been done for us or given to us.



And just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season, or as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely gives to this mortal immortality, and to this corruptible incorruption because the strength of God is made perfect in weakness, 2 Cor. xii. 3 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bible/asv.iiCor.12.html#iiCor.12.3). in order that we may never become puffed up, as if we had life from ourselves, and exalted against God, our minds becoming ungrateful; but learning by experience that we possess eternal duration from the excelling power of this Being, not from our own nature, we may neither undervalue that glory which surrounds God as He is, nor be ignorant of our own nature, but that we may know what God can effect, and what benefits man receives, and thus never wander from the true comprehension of things as they are, that is, both with regard to God and with regard to man. St Ireneaus


I think too, that this participational paradigm is at the heart of why for the Orthodox there is much more emphasis placed on the fact that the Church Herself is a sacramental entity rather then a focus on individual sacraments. She, Herself, participates and invites us to participate in Christ by grace, whereas in the western (? modern?)* view our thoughts tend to focus on what we are receiving from the individual sacraments.

Again there is a big difference in thinking about what I am getting vs thinking in terms of striving towards deeper levels of willing participation. Could this be why there has been such a problem with passivity among the laity in the sacramental churches in the West? But this is probably for another thread.

*I say modern instead of Western since I think that maybe it was this very passivity within the Eastern Orthodox Church itself that Fr Schmemann was fighting against.

[Anthony G. Peggs]

hi,

i haven't spoken on this topic yet, but i came across what is quoted below, and i have absolutely no clue what is being talked about here.............. i have never heard of anything like that before. of course being Orthodox i know that The Holy Eucharist is The Actual Flesh and Blood of Christ, but how can a Priest gaze into The Chalice and find flesh and blood and not give it to the people? i just don't get whats being said here.....please help me understand.



Indeed, there is an appendix in various patristic and liturgical handbooks for priests that address precisely this possibility: "What to do if you gaze into the chalice and find that the holy bread and holy wine have visible become flesh and blood"; and, as you say, the instruction is that this not be consumed or given to the people."

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

hi,

i haven't spoken on this topic yet, but i came across what is quoted below, and i have absolutely no clue what is being talked about here.............. i have never heard of anything like that before. of course being Orthodox i know that The Holy Eucharist is The Actual Flesh and Blood of Christ, but how can a Priest gaze into The Chalice and find flesh and blood and not give it to the people? i just don't get whats being said here.....please help me understand.

The back of the Slavonic Priest`s Service Book contains multiple instructions on what to do in case of various exceptional circumstances.

Among these the above is also referred to.

I`m not sure if this is what is being asked.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Evan]

This is an extremely difficult thread to keep track of. In the hopes of gaining clarity...

Is it incorrect to say that either a.) the earthly bread and wine remain after the consecration or b.) the earthly bread and wine do not remain after the consecration-- so long as one affirms that the Christ is wholly present in the bread and the wine, and that is truly His Body and Blood?

In Christ,
Evan

[Paul Cowan]

The bread and wine appear to be bread and wine to our earthly eyes; but if we had heavenly eyes, we would see the body and blood of Jesus in the chalice. It is becuase we don't have heavenly eyes that we see bread and wine. Same for our other 4 senses. We are only human and cannot see the mysteries of God as they should really appear unless He allows it.

Paul

[Anthony G. Peggs]

The back of the Slavonic Priest`s Service Book contains multiple instructions on what to do in case of various exceptional circumstances.

Among these the above is also referred to.

I`m not sure if this is what is being asked.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

please forgive my ignorance as i have only been in The Church a short while, but, we believe that the bread and wine are the True Body and True Blood of Christ, so if there was flesh and blood in The Chalice, isn't that the same thing? i'm not trying to promote anything like transubstantiation, but i also don't see how something so Holy like The Eucharist could have (please forgive my term as this is used for lack of a better word) a mistake or any such thing like that. it's the actual Body and Blood of Christ.

if there isn't to be anything like visible flesh and blood in the chalice, that doesn't take away our belief in The Real Prescense does it?

[Herman Blaydoe]

please forgive my ignorance as i have only been in The Church a short while, but, we believe that the bread and wine are the True Body and True Blood of Christ, so if there was flesh and blood in The Chalice, isn't that the same thing? i'm not trying to promote anything like transubstantiation, but i also don't see how something so Holy like The Eucharist could have (please forgive my term as this is used for lack of a better word) a mistake or any such thing like that. it's the actual Body and Blood of Christ.

if there isn't to be anything like visible flesh and blood in the chalice, that doesn't take away our belief in The Real Prescense does it?

The actual appearance of flesh and blood is considered scandalous, not miraculous, it would more likely "freak out" the congregation rather than give them comfort, disrupting the Divine Liturgy and the life of the parish, turning it into a "freak show" rather than a celebration. In short, the Church sees these incidents as harbingers of God's displeasure with us and are not to be "bragged over".

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain
Herman the Pooh

[Rick H.]

There are two contributions to this thread that I think really speak to the heart of the matter, and provide a conclusion to the whole matter, the first is:





At the heart of a mystery surely is that is is mysterious? We can read what the Fathers say, we can follow the teachings of the Church; but when we presume to too close a definition according to our words and thoughts, do we not risk trying to confine our God?




And, the second is:





I think that what has been said several times in this thread is that there is no consensus of articulation in the Church on this point. There are fathers who write that in the eucharistic encounter with the body and blood of Christ, the encounter with bread and wine still remains; and there are fathers who write that in the encounter, no bread and wine remain. Just as there are more contemporary Orthodox bishops who state both. I think the only expression of a 'one-or-the-other' standpoint in this thread has come in the form of insisting that if one does allow that bread and wine remain, one is therefore heretical. However, this places outside the realm of Orthodoxy many of the Church's saints, as I think a fair number of quotations have shown. Rather, what has been said, by many, is that the Church does not make a universal dogmatic statement on this matter, as part of her preservation of the true mystery of eucharistic encounter and experience. Whether or not one continues to encounter bread and wine in the true body and blood of the sacrament is something, ultimately, one cannot know 'dogmatically'; one speculates, no matter which approach one articulates. Such speculation need not be 'wrong' by definition, but it should not be insisted upon dogmatically.

[Moses Anthony]

There are two contributions to this thread that I think really speak to the heart of the matter, and provide a conclusion to the whole matter, the first is:





And, the second is:

Forgive me, as I've come to this discussion late.
Years ago on a Sunday morning before Divine Liturgy, I atttempted to prepare myself for Communion by saying prayers. When I got to church I tried to not focus on my hunger, and as the Liturgy progressed I got more "into it", forgetting about my hunger. And then, it was time for Communion.
The Bread and Wine were hot. When I arrived home after the service the thought hit me: What an experience having the Body and Blood of Jesus as your first meal of the day. WOW!
For a certinty it was bread and wine which my tongue tasted, but therein is the mystery of the mystery. We do not know how; whether it is in the epiclesis prayer or not, that the change occurs, and no one has come to any definitive conclusion. Still we know through faith that we receive not bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of the Lord. And so, a mystery and the Sacrament.
Why do we need to figure it out? Is not that part of our faith as Christians, submitting, even in the differences of our intellect to the wisdom of the Church, and moving on!

the sinful and unworthy servant
Moses

[Shawn Lazar]

I think I may have posted something to this effect before, but it would be fairly easy to falsify certain Eucharistic claims, if you really wanted to. Taking their example from St. Thomas, someone could simply take the consecrated bread and wine to a lab and have it tested to see if it has become human flesh and blood. And if the results came back negative (as they surely would), we could then start arguing about other, more spiritual interpretations of the change that occurs in the sacrament.

[Evan]

I think I may have posted something to this effect before, but it would be fairly easy to falsify certain Eucharistic claims, if you really wanted to. Taking their example from St. Thomas, someone could simply take the consecrated bread and wine to a lab and have it tested to see if it has become human flesh and blood. And if the results came back negative (as they surely would), we could then start arguing about other, more spiritual interpretations of the change that occurs in the sacrament.


I don't think this is correct. Per Aquinas, the doctrine of transubstantiation posits that the "accidents" of the bread and wine, that is, their taste, smell, and other tangible qualities remain, whereas their substance, that is, their non-tangible, essential character, is changed. Substance isn't something that could be determined in a laboratory test. If the test determined that all of the compositional/chemical qualities we associate with bread remained after the consecration, that wouldn't speak to its substance.

[Aidan Kimel]

I think I may have posted something to this effect before, but it would be fairly easy to falsify certain Eucharistic claims, if you really wanted to. Taking their example from St. Thomas, someone could simply take the consecrated bread and wine to a lab and have it tested to see if it has become human flesh and blood. And if the results came back negative (as they surely would), we could then start arguing about other, more spiritual interpretations of the change that occurs in the sacrament.

St Thomas Aquinas formulated his doctrine of transubstantiation precisely to counter the claim that the eucharistic bread and wine experience a material change, a change that presumably a chemical test could confirm or disconfirm. According to Aquinas, the eucharistic change is radically unlike any "change" that we know in this world. It is not a change from one this-wordly thing to another this-worldly thing; it is not a change that could ever be demonstrated empirically. The eucharistic transformation, rather, occurs at the deepest level of existence. In McCabe's words: "It is not that the bread has become a new kind of thing in this world: it now belongs to a new world."

I refer folks again to my article on Herbert McCabe, cited above. May I also encourage you to download McCabe's article "Eucharistic Change (http://www.pford.stjohnsem.edu/ford/courses/sacramental-theology/docs/McCabe%20on%20Eucharist.pdf)." McCabe was one of the translators of the Summa Theologiae and knew Aquinas well.

[Shawn Lazar]

Sorry, Alvin, wrong St. Thomas! Of course, we Orthodox don't regard Thomas Aquinas as a saint. Though I personally enjoy reading him.

No, I was referring to St. Thomas the Apostle and famous doubter, who couldn't be satisfied that the miracle of the resurrection occurred until he could stick his finger in Jesus' wounds.

Likewise, if someone really wanted to know whether the bread and wine turned into flesh and blood... well, that could be established empirically, just as we could establish whether someone was actually healed of cancer, or whether someone actually transformed water into wine. My point is, if the tests came back negative, then we would have to come up with a more 'spiritual' or perhaps 'metaphysical' interpretation of the mystery. I suppose Aquinas' formula could work, substance and accidents and what not. But then it would commit us to an Aristotelian metaphysics, and that, in the long run, might do us more harm than good.

[Mark Harrison]

What stands out in my mind from when this rubric was first pointed out to me (some 20+ years ago), is that the ROCOR priest who explained it said that the point was to not offend the faithful. We don't want someone to associate the Eucharist with cannibalism (which was an accusation made against Christians in the times of the Roman persecutions). I seem to also recall that the edition he read from (in Slavonic) said to wait until the Holy Gifts returned to their usual state, and then distribute them. Apparently, in some cases, the experience of having them become visibly and tangibly flesh and blood has been brief.

What does this say about our conviction that the Holy Gifts become truly the Body and Blood of Christ? As far as I can see, absolutely nothing. The transformation (metabole - note the relationship to our English word "metabolism") is mystical. The Greek and Slavonic (and some ancient Latin) texts of the Our Father read "give us this day our super-substantial (epiousion / nasushnii) bread…" and at least some of the Fathers understood this line in the context of the Eucharist. Could we then say that the transformation is "beyond essence"? We are absolute (as we should be) in our conviction (dogma) "that this is truly Thine Own Most Pure Body and that this is truly Thine Own Precious Blood," but do we need to see manifestations of this truth? Christ told Thomas, "blessed is he who has not seen and yet believes." I have to wonder (and I emphasize that I am merely speculating) whether the experience of seeing flesh and blood in the chalice was for the sake of priests who, perhaps subconsciously, were having little crises of faith.

Another thought has crossed my mind: cannibalism is an absolute sin, right? Would partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood manifested as flesh and blood encourage cannibalism; is that, perhaps, part of why God gave us the Eucharist as a mystical participation? I believe that we receive the Holy Gifts as bread and wine - by God's providence - in no small part to not revolt us (this made sense when that ROCOR priest first read this rubric and explained it to me), but perhaps part of the reason is also to not appeal to the basest part of our fallenness. Of course, with that logic, one might wonder why God would have us use alcohol since that triggers some people.

All in all, it is implicit in the word "mysterion" that there are no easy, rational answers. Nothing will completely satisfy the non-believer. First, we must believe with Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" for anything in Christianity to make sense. Without that conviction, the Word of the Cross is foolish and/or scandalous. Trying to exhaust the mystery in words, to come up with an explanation that is totally internally consistent (based on empirical science) is impossible. The most consistent argument is the insistence in mystical reality - reality that is "beyond essence." After all, we believe in God, not to mention God being Trinity. Our God is "ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible." How then, could the mystery of the Eucharist be any nicely, exhaustively expressed in a "scientific" treatise?

Sdn Mark Harrison

[Mark Harrison]

Ironically, in the light of the Western tendency to rationalize these things, there is a Latin hymn that has this line (translated):

"I believe whatsoever the Son of God hath told; what the truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold."

And another that goes:

"Faith alone when sight forsaketh, shows true hearts the mystery."


I love both hymns, but the first seems especially apt here. We can exhaust ourselves with discussion, but most of it will end up in speculation. In the end there is only one fact for each person on the personal level, that we do or do not believe what Christ Himself said.

[Antonios]

...Likewise, if someone really wanted to know whether the bread and wine turned into flesh and blood... well, that could be established empirically, just as we could establish whether someone was actually healed of cancer, or whether someone actually transformed water into wine. My point is, if the tests came back negative, then we would have to come up with a more 'spiritual' or perhaps 'metaphysical' interpretation of the mystery. I suppose Aquinas' formula could work, substance and accidents and what not. But then it would commit us to an Aristotelian metaphysics, and that, in the long run, might do us more harm than good.

Dear Shawn,

The Lord, as you know, told us He would build His Church on faith. If the Holy Gifts look, tasted, and were determined by modern scientific investigation to be blood and flesh, than where is the faith? In fact, there would be no need applying modern scientific investigation into whether It was Blood and Flesh because common sense would have determined that from the beginning.

Would this mean that then and now there wouldn't be those who would wish to scientifically investigate the Holy Gifts, to study It's properties? Of course not. In fact, even more so!

But God in His Wisdom knows better. The Lord's will is mysterious to all but Himself. Why He doesn't allow this to happen, I cannot answer with certainty. If I could guess, it would be because He loves us and knows what we need better than we do.

Faith cannot be measured scientifically. Neither can divinity.

In Christ,
Antonios

[Shawn Lazar]

Dear Antonios,

I have to disagree, at least partially. I don't think faith is really the issue here. I think the debate is really about the nature of the Eucharistic miracle.

For instance, some miracles are empirical. They don't require faith in something that is not evident to the senses. They can and should be verified because they involve claims of physical change. For instance, when Christ changed water into wine, or when he healed the blind and lame, or raised the dead, those miracles could be tested. I'm sure you would agree it would be totally absurd for someone to claim to have healed someone of cancer, if medical tests can show the patient still has cancer throughout her body.

Other miracles are really more like spiritual events. Hearing voices, seeing angels and visions, the presence of the soul in the body, the regenerative presence of the Spirit, etc. These sorts of things can't be verified in any obvious way, and are not meant to be, because they aren't empirical miracles.

So either the Eucharist is an empirical miracle or it isn't. Some people think the Eucharist is an empirical miracle. They think the bread and wine truly actually physically turn into flesh and blood. If that's true, we should be able to test it in a laboratory, and see whether a miracle has occurred or not, the same way we would test a miraculous claim of healing.

However, I really don't think the Eucharist is a miracle in that sense. If it was, as I say, it could be verified or falsified. Rather, my guess is the Eucharist is probably more like a spiritual event, of Christ being truly present in the bread and wine, in the same way that our souls are present in our bodies, or the Holy Spirit is present in our lives. If the Eucharist is more like a spiritual event, then, yes, I agree with you, we need faith, especially in the sense of believing in Jesus's presence even though it isn't evident to our senses.

[Paul Cowan]

So either the Eucharist is an empirical miracle or it isn't. Some people think the Eucharist is an empirical miracle. They think the bread and wine truly actually physically turn into flesh and blood. If that's true, we should be able to test it in a laboratory, and see whether a miracle has occurred or not, the same way we would test a miraculous claim of healing.




Matthew 12:38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.


Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.

Like the bumper sticker says "Because God said so."

Paul

[Andreas Moran]

Rather, my guess

Forgive me for saying so, but this isn't something about which we should guess.


Christ being truly present in the bread and wine, in the same way that our souls are present in our bodies, or the Holy Spirit is present in our lives.

I fear this tends towards the Lutheran notion of consubstantiation.

[Evan]

Dear Antonios,

I have to disagree, at least partially. I don't think faith is really the issue here. I think the debate is really about the nature of the Eucharistic miracle.

For instance, some miracles are empirical. They don't require faith in something that is not evident to the senses. They can and should be verified because they involve claims of physical change. For instance, when Christ changed water into wine, or when he healed the blind and lame, or raised the dead, those miracles could be tested. I'm sure you would agree it would be totally absurd for someone to claim to have healed someone of cancer, if medical tests can show the patient still has cancer throughout her body.

Other miracles are really more like spiritual events. Hearing voices, seeing angels and visions, the presence of the soul in the body, the regenerative presence of the Spirit, etc. These sorts of things can't be verified in any obvious way, and are not meant to be, because they aren't empirical miracles.

So either the Eucharist is an empirical miracle or it isn't. Some people think the Eucharist is an empirical miracle. They think the bread and wine truly actually physically turn into flesh and blood. If that's true, we should be able to test it in a laboratory, and see whether a miracle has occurred or not, the same way we would test a miraculous claim of healing.

However, I really don't think the Eucharist is a miracle in that sense. If it was, as I say, it could be verified or falsified. Rather, my guess is the Eucharist is probably more like a spiritual event, of Christ being truly present in the bread and wine, in the same way that our souls are present in our bodies, or the Holy Spirit is present in our lives. If the Eucharist is more like a spiritual event, then, yes, I agree with you, we need faith, especially in the sense of believing in Jesus's presence even though it isn't evident to our senses.


I am curious: What people think that the bread and wine "truly actually physically" turns into flesh and blood, such that we could test the truth of their beliefs by means of a laboratory test? This would seem to me to be a belief that participating in the Eucharist is an act of cannibalism.

[Aidan Kimel]

I am curious: What people think that the bread and wine "truly actually physically" turns into flesh and blood, such that we could test the truth of their beliefs by means of a laboratory test? This would seem to me to be a belief that participating in the Eucharist is an act of cannibalism.

I have not met anyone who believed that the the eucharistic conversion was of such a type that it could be confirmed by laboratory testing. I am sure such people exist, both in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches; but their opinions do not represent the formal teaching of the two Churches.

However, one does come across theologians who come close to saying something like this, with one important qualification: by a supernatural act God prevents us from actually seeing what really exists.

On the Catholic side, I instance Regis Scanlon (http://web.archive.org/web/20041012222324/http://newoxfordreview.org/2002/feb02/regisscanlon.html):


Thus, when the priest says the words of consecration over the bread (and wine), the physical bread outside the mind of the priest and congregation ceases to exist, but the “appearance” of the bread (i.e., the color, shape, feel, and taste) continues to exist in the minds of the priest and congregation. It is important to realize that, prior to the consecration of the bread and wine by the priest, the appearance of the bread was being impressed upon the senses and mind of the priest and congregation by the bread upon the altar. After the consecration, however, the appearance of the bread (tan or white, round, doughy, and wheat-like taste) emanates from the mind of the priest and congregation and not at all from the Host upon the altar. For that which is on the altar is no longer bread but Jesus Christ in the flesh. Obviously, Jesus Christ is not white or tan, round, doughy, and wheat-like in taste. Jesus did not turn Himself into bread, but rather He turned bread into Himself. Thus, our Lord permits Himself to be recognized, approached and received bodily by the ones He loves without fear in a most pleasant way under the appearance of bread and wine.

On the Orthodox side I instance Vladimir Moss (http://www.romanitas.ru/eng/DIALOGUE%20BETWEEN%20AN%20ORTHODOX%20AND%20AN%20EC UMENIST.htm):


The change is supernatural in two senses. First, the instantaneous change of one physical substance into another is obviously not something that we find in the ordinary course of nature. Of course, bread and wine are naturally changed into flesh and blood through the process of eating and digestion. But in this case the change is effected, not by eating, but by the word of prayer – and it’s instantaneous. For, as St. Gregory of Nyssa points out, “it is not a matter of the bread’s becoming the Body of the Word through the natural process of eating: rather it is transmuted immediately into the Body through the Word” (The Great Catechism, 37). Secondly, the change is effected by a supernatural agent – God. So what we have is the change of one physico-chemical substance into another through a non-physical, supernatural Agent, the Spirit of God. ...

I do not know, of course, what would happen if anyone – God forbid! - were so blasphemous as to perform such a molecular analysis. Nevertheless, IF God allowed him to do it, and to analyze the results, I expect that they would indicate that the consecrated Gifts are bread and wine, not flesh and blood, and so contain no haemoglobin. ... the reality revealed by faith is not the appearance revealed to the fallen senses, of which science is simply the extension. Faith, as St. Paul says, “is the certainty of things unseen”; science is an uncertain apprehension of things seen. In the case of the Mystery we see and taste one thing; but the reality is something different. God veils the reality from our senses; and no amount of scientific observation and analysis can discern the reality if God chooses to hide it. He does this in order that we should not be repelled by the sight of human flesh and therefore refrain from partaking of the Saving Mystery. As Blessed Theophylact says, “since we are weak and could not endure raw meat, much less human flesh, it appears as bread to us although it is in fact flesh” (On Matthew 26.26). It is absolutely essential to realize that we cannot trust our senses here – even if aided by a microscope. In fact, when it comes to the Mystery, all sense-perception, of any kind, must be discarded: it can be seen by faith alone.

Regarding the charge of cannibalism, I for one am not terribly bothered by it (see my essay "Eating Christ (http://www.scribd.com/doc/2199922/Eating-Christ)"). After all, did not Jesus tell his disciples that they must eat his Flesh and drink his Blood, and were not many scandalized? We should not be too eager to "spiritualize" the Holy Eucharist.

[Andreas Moran]

Cannibalism is the eating of the dead flesh of another human being. Christ is not dead, and He is not merely another human being. Furthermore His flesh of which we partake is His deified Body. 'Eating Christ' and cannibalism are unrelated.

[Evan]

It would indeed be blasphemous to charge that participating in the Eucharist, properly understood, would constitute an act of cannibalism-- my use of that term was poorly considered. I was simply trying to determine whose beliefs was being alluded to in the post I cited. It is not my understanding that either the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church promulgate teachings about the Eucharist that a laboratory test could refute or affirm.

[Shawn Lazar]

Andreas, I'm not quite sure I follow your reasoning. Cannibalism simply refers to eating a member of your own species, whether dead or alive. Surely, the Eucharist is a form of ritual cannibalism, whether we chew symbolic or actual flesh and blood? Christ was human. He's still human. We eat him. That's ritual cannibalism, no?

[Aidan Kimel]

Perhaps of interest here is the Lutheran/Orthodox statement on the Eucharist: The Holy Eucharist in the Life of the Church (http://www.helsinki.fi/~risaarin/lutortjointtext.html#euch).

[Andreas Moran]

Andreas, I'm not quite sure I follow your reasoning. Cannibalism simply refers to eating a member of your own species, whether dead or alive. Surely, the Eucharist is a form of ritual cannibalism, whether we chew symbolic or actual flesh and blood? Christ was human. He's still human. We eat him. That's ritual cannibalism, no?

No, it isn't. The central difference is the sacramental dimension in the eucharist - we partake of Christ's deified humanity.

[Owen Jones]

It seems to me that one cannot speak of the Eucharist apart from the spiritual environment, so to speak, meaning the spiritual condition of the priest and the faithful who come forward to receive the Eucharist, i.e. one cannot treat the Eucharist "objectively" as if it were an isolated event or condition. An interesting development in the Latin Church was, given the high degree of corruption among the clergy, they developed this theory that the "validity" of the mass did not depend on the moral and spiritual condition of the priest. That the mass had objective validity. I'm not aware of any similar development in Orthodoxy. Presumably we do not believe in any "objective" "validity" of the Eucharist but much, if not everything depends on the condition of the beholder, and of the consumer of the Eucharist, but also in some sense, the spiritual condition of the priest. We had a similar discussion here on the nature of the "true light."

Biblically we are taught that the Eucharist can actually kill you if you are not in the right spiritual state to receive it. So much for an objective analysis of the Eucharist. Is there a typological equivalence here to the olive tree that Jesus caused to wither and die?

So the Eucharist is not something that can be analyzed, nor received apart from the ascetical practices of the Church. There must be kenosis prior to reception. As with all things, charity and laxity are not to be confused, as we are reminded by St. John Chrysostom every Pascha.

[Aidan Kimel]

It seems to me that one cannot speak of the Eucharist apart from the spiritual environment, so to speak, meaning the spiritual condition of the priest and the faithful who come forward to receive the Eucharist, i.e. one cannot treat the Eucharist "objectively" as if it were an isolated event or condition. An interesting development in the Latin Church was, given the high degree of corruption among the clergy, they developed this theory that the "validity" of the mass did not depend on the moral and spiritual condition of the priest. That the mass had objective validity. I'm not aware of any similar development in Orthodoxy. Presumably we do not believe in any "objective" "validity" of the Eucharist but much, if not everything depends on the condition of the beholder, and of the consumer of the Eucharist, but also in some sense, the spiritual condition of the priest. We had a similar discussion here on the nature of the "true light."

The assertion of the efficacy of the sacraments of the Church, independent of the sin and unworthiness of the celebrant/officiant, goes back to the Donatist controversy. I do not believe that it is accurate to state that it was a development caused by the "high degree of corruption among the clergy"; rather, it flows from the apprehension that the true minister of the sacraments is Jesus Christ himself, acting in grace and freedom for the good of the Church. Hence the judgment of St Optatus: "When therefore you see that all who baptize are agents, not masters, and the sacraments are holy through themselves, not through human beings, why is it that you claim so much for yourselves?" (Against the Donatists, trans. Mark Edwards, 1997, p. 103.).

How awful it would be if we could not be confident that the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Savior occurs despite the sins and spiritual and moral unworthiness of the celebrant/minister.

Do Eastern Orthodox theologians actually side with the Donatists on the question of sacramental efficacy? I was not aware of any disagreement between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on this question. Please point me to books, articles, and internet discussion where this question is examined. Thank you.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Fr Alvin, you wrote:


Do Eastern Orthodox theologians actually side with the Donatists on the question of sacramental efficacy? I was not aware of any disagreement between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on this question. Please point me to books, articles, and internet discussion where this question is examined. Thank you.

I rather suspect Owen was speaking of something else (though I won't presume to speak for him; I trust he'll respond on his own behalf). But as to the specific question: no, you are quite right, that Orthodox do not side with the Donatists (!) on this matter.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Owen Jones]

I guess what I'm trying to do is get at something that I consider more simple or basic, and perhaps using the RC doctrine of "validity" was a poor example. Consider at least that you cannot have the Eucharist without persons. You have to have both priest and faithful to have the Eucharist. This is a part of the canons but that is not the point of it. The point of it is not that you cannot have a Eucharist without a priest and a member of the faithful present because the canons say you can't, but because of something more basic, and more simple. And that is you cannot have salvation without people. And so the Eucharist is meaningless and empty without people. This may sound like an absurd statement, because it is self-evident. But I am afraid that it apparently is not self-evident, given the degree to which we try to objectify the eucharist and define the eucharist apart from people. One might just as well try to define a person, or mankind, apart from our Creator. It's the same problem. It's always the same problem.

Now, from there, we can ask, OK what type of people? Is it important how they are living and what they believe? While on the one hand, simply believing something does not make it so, belief is part of the reality of the Eucharist. How one perceives the Eucharist, understands the Eucharist, what posture one approaches the Eucharist, are all part of the reality of the Eucharist. You cannot in principle wrench one from the other.

So we can apply the same question of this thread to everything. When God saves us, do we cease being human? Were I to take a DNA test before and after Baptism, would there be a difference? What if there were? What if there weren't? The change that takes place in the Eucharist is, pardon me, useless and meaningless, unless and until a person receives the Eucharist. Right? This change, can it be tested? Well, yes, by the way a person changes they way he thinks and lives. We believe it is not just a "spiritual" change, or just a moral change, but a material change, that gives us eternal life. We only know this to the extent that we believe, deepen our faith, and notice the outwardly observable changes in others, and inward changes in ourselves. You know the Eucharist by its fruits, not be some surefire definitive analysis of what it is. Because in and of itself it is nothing. Just like you and me.

[Andreas Moran]

The eucharist is an objective reality. That this is believed in by A but not by B cannot alter that reality. The Divine Liturgy does not 'create' the eucharist but manifests Christ's eternal once-and-for-all sacrifice within time and space; there is One Bread and One Cup because Christ offered Himself on the Cross once. The sacrifice on the Cross and the eucharist are one. The consecrated elements and the Risen Christ are one. Past, present and future, the Church militant and the Church triumphant are all united. One priest may celebrate the Divine Liturgy with one person present (as St Theophan used to in his reclusion, he and his cell attendant) but also present are angels and saints. A person's belief is to do with his response to this reality but cannot alter its quality. After all, those who are present at the Lenten Pre-Sanctified Liturgy and who commune at it may be a different set of people from those present at the Sunday liturgy at which those Gifts were consecrated.

[Mark Harrison]

The assertion of the efficacy of the sacraments of the Church, independent of the sin and unworthiness of the celebrant/officiant, goes back to the Donatist controversy. I do not believe that it is accurate to state that it was a development caused by the "high degree of corruption among the clergy"; rather, it flows from the apprehension that the true minister of the sacraments is Jesus Christ himself, acting in grace and freedom for the good of the Church. Hence the judgment of St Optatus: "When therefore you see that all who baptize are agents, not masters, and the sacraments are holy through themselves, not through human beings, why is it that you claim so much for yourselves?" (Against the Donatists, trans. Mark Edwards, 1997, p. 103.).

How awful it would be if we could not be confident that the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Savior occurs despite the sins and spiritual and moral unworthiness of the celebrant/minister.

Do Eastern Orthodox theologians actually side with the Donatists on the question of sacramental efficacy? I was not aware of any disagreement between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on this question. Please point me to books, articles, and internet discussion where this question is examined. Thank you.

If there is any point where Orthodox doctrine clearly agrees with Augustine, it is in his anti-Donatist teaching. The mystical transfrmation takes place regardless of the moral depravity of the priest/bishop. This is far different from saying that the transformation ("metabole") is empirical. It just means that whatever that transformation is, it happens independent of moral worthiness - even unto the damnation of the undiscerning (St Paul). On this key point I believe Greeks and Latins stand absolutely united.

[Mark Harrison]

Father Alexander Schmemann's works, especially For the Life of the World maybe of particular interest here with his focus on the liturgical assembly as the requisite context.

[Owen Jones]

If the Eucharist were something called "an objective reality" (and I am uncertain as to what that phrase means, my basic thesis being that there is no such thing as an objective reality, on heaven or on earth) then, of course, you would not require any faith or belief. I fear the intention behind this formulation represents a weakness of faith and belief. Nor do I think Orthodoxy has a tradition of relying on Thomistic type proofs of the existence of God. We do not need to prove anything to anyone, least of all ourselves. We need to live it.
This is the type of dogmatic metaphysics that creeps into a religion when it is in its dotage.

Perhaps the Patristic tradition on eucharistic theology refutes my points. But if so I am sorry I have missed it.

The subject deserves much more thought and explication than I can put into it at this time, but it might do well to take a look at what St. John Damascene says on the subject. First, as to proofs of the existence of God, one can get a sense of what St. John, and Orthodoxy means by proofs. In that passage, St. John focuses entirely on the distinction between created and Uncreated, between that which is mutable and that which is immutable. Then he deals with the issue of infinite regression, quite well I think!!! But it is really a common sense argument that any human being can understand and appreciate, and hardly one that requires any special illumination, only an open mind.

Then, in a relatively long passage on the Holy Mysteries, we have this: ( suggest reading the whole thing )

The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine are changed into God's body and blood(7). But if you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord took on Himself flesh that subsisted in Him and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energises and is omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched out(8). But one can put it well thus, that just as in nature the bread by the eating and the wine and the water by the drinking are changed into the body and blood of the eater and drinker, and do not(9) become a different body from the former one, so the bread of the table(1) and the wine and water are supernaturally changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body and blood of Christ, and are not two but one(2) and the same.

Wherefore to those who partake worthily with faith, it is for the remission of sins and for life everlasting and for the safeguarding of soul and body; but to those who partake unworthily without faith, it is for chastisement and punishment, just as also the death of the Lord became to those who believe life and incorruption for the enjoyment of eternal blessedness, while to those who do not believe and to the murderers of the Lord it is for everlasting chastisement and punishment.

The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, "This is My body," not, this is a figure of My body: and "My blood," not, a figure of My blood. And on a previous occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eateth Me, shall live(3)(4).

Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as we believe, doubting nothing. Let us pay homage to it in all purity both of soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross s let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire. Isaiah saw the coal(6). But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion(7) is not plain bread but bread united with divinity. But a body s which is united with divinity is not one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another belonging to the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is not one nature but two.




It is quite striking the extent to which St. John uses analogy and symbolism to make his case here. Although not surprising since this is true theological method at its core. What is quite clear is that he has no intention of dealing with what we might call metaphysical absolutes in making his case. (btw, I am glad to have read this again to have explained the purpose of holding your arms across the chest when receiving communion -- if it was ever explained to me thus, I have forgotten it, and apparently my parish has too). Farther down in the passage he warns against receiving communion from heretics and giving communion to heretics.

Now, perhaps someone will say that it is exactly St. John's method and purpose to arrive at a proof of the Eucharist as an "objective reality." Forgive me, but I fail to "see" it.
The fact that he states that the Eucharist is not a mere figure (symbol?) is not quite the same in my mind as saying that it is an "objective reality."

I think the most important factor, and this can be seen throughout St. John Damascenes thesis, is that God is incomprehensible and that this same admission applies to His Mysteries, and so there is a point at which we must end the analysis, a point at which no words suffice, and that further concepts hinder rather than help. If anything, it is the heretic who engages in endless analysis.

His hope is for us to arrive at a true understanding, that we be changed. I see no evidence that a true understanding depends on an objective proof, rather he makes his case by analogy and symbolism, based on common, everyday examples.

[M.C. Steenberg]

I haven't much time to write at the moment, so my response to the above, quite thought-provoking series of posts, must be rather brief.

The call to 'objective reality' is, most often in my experience, raised with little thought as to what this phrase actually means, and by and large as a simplified reaction against perceived diminutions of the true experience of any given thing -- in this case, of the true receipt of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the holy Eucharist. In some sense I agree with Owen, that, as I often see it being used, 'the intention behind this formulation represents a weakness of faith and belief'; for it is most often used not to express anything concrete and positive, but to deny something perceived as amorphous or wishy-washy. So the Eucharist as 'objective reality' is used to counter arguments taken to imply that the Eucharistic mystery is not really an engagement with Christ's true Body and Blood, etc.

So far as I am aware, the only theological enterprise to engage with the Eucharist (or any other sacramental experience) as 'objective reality' is the scholasticising movement of the medieval West (and those places where it interacted with, and touched on, expression in Orthodox lands). It certainly is not a part of traditional patristic approach or expression.

The Eucharist is authentic, true reality, precisely because it is not 'objective', but mystogogical and personal. It does not so much speak to an alternative perception of 'represented thing' and 'real thing' (the foundational categories that lead to articulations of transubstantiation, consubstantiation, etc.), as it denies the very relevance of such categories to truly deified experience.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

As ever, we should be clear about the terms we use. I had assumed that 'objective reality' was shorthand for what what we all know and believe. 'Objective' can, however, have various meanings (see OED). The meaning I had assumed is that the eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ exists as such independently of the beliefs and opinions of observers, and external to any person's mind. I equate this with expressions such as 'truly, really, substantially' (St Philaret, Catechism), and 'actually' (St Gregory of Nyssa, Sermon on Christ's Baptism). But faith that it is what it is does not mean that its being what it is is dependent on faith. Faith's role is in two aspects. First, that the eucharist is 'truly, really, substantially, and actually' the Body and Blood of Christ: 'for even though sense suggests this to you yet let faith establish you. Judge not the matter from taste but from faith' (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical lecture xxii). Secondly, what is personal to each communicant is his approach to the chalice as St John of Damascus writes in the quotation supplied by Owen. You can only either believe it or not, and so I can't see how believing it can represent 'a weakness of faith and belief' - if you believe it, where's the weakness?

[Owen Jones]

I object!!!

All seriousness aside, though, it is an interesting point to say that the Eucharist (or God for that matter) exists quite apart from what people believe. I think in a sense that is true, but also not true. It is not true in the sense that it would be irrelevant. Certainly with respect to the Eucharist, apart from belief there never would have been a Eucharist in the first place. But we cannot speak of God apart from people who believe in God. And so while we might say, with truth, that God pre-exists His creation, the fact is that it is at the very least a paradoxic statement, because it requires His creation in order to speak (write) the words. So immediately the issue of an objective reality apart from the subject is being called into question.

There is a history of philosophy issue here. No one could even use the term "objectively true" prior to Descartes, who successfully managed to convince people since that reality is divided up into knowing subjects and knowable objects. This false dichotomy between subjects and objects is the cause of a lot of bad philosophy and theology, and the result is a lot of personal (existential?) confusion. The result is that nothing is deemed to be true unless it can be objectively proven. Any thing else is, of course, just a matter of subjective feeling or opinion. It's quite a disaster.

But allow me to take a somewhat different approach. Let's start with God. At first, it is a word on a page (or in this case, digital reality). It is not a thing but a word, and the intention, my intention in this case, is to convey meaning. The word has to be intelligible. And the only way that it can be intelligible is if it refers to something other than an object. It has to evoke something in the consciousness of the reader. There is a problem with this from the outset. Because there is a paradoxic structure of consciousness and its relation to reality. On the one hand, we can speak of consciousness as a something located in human beings in their bodily existence. In relation to this concretely embodied consciousness, reality assumes the position of an object intended, and in this respect, reality assumes the position of an object intended. Moreover, a touch of external thingness.

However, this bodily located consciousness is not another genus of reality, but is part of the same reality that we have referred to as an object -- let's call that "thing-reality." In this second sense, then, reality is not an object of consciousness but the something in which consciousness occurs as an event of participation between partners in the community of being.

So reality moves. It moves from the position of an intended object to that of a subject, while the consciousness of the human subject intending objects moves to the position of a predicative event in the subject reality as it becomes luminous for its truth. Consciousness, thus, has the structural aspect not only of intentionality (toward objects) but also of luminosity. Moreover, when consciousness is experienced as an event of participatory luminosity in the reality that comprehends the partners to the event, it has to be located, not in one of the partners, but in the comprehending reality; consciousness has a structural dimension by which it belongs, not to man in his bodily existence, but to the reality in which man, the other partners in the community of being, and the participatory relations among them occur. Utilizing a spatial metaphor, we can say that the luminosity of consciousness is located somewhere "between" human consciousness in bodily existence and reality intended in its mode of thingness (i.e. as an object of consciousness).

Now, I will leave it to you to decide if this is an accurate refutation of Descarte's subject/object dichotomy, but let me just cut to a conclusion here: There is no autonomous, nonparadoxic language, ready to be used by man as a system of signs when he wants to refer to reality. It is a fact that the epiphany of structures in reality -- be they atoms, molecules, genes, biological species, races, human consciousness, or language -- is a mystery inaccessible to explanation.

If you all wish to carry this further, I can speak a little bit more about the spoken and written word as something more than just signifying something, but as a power in reality that evokes structures in reality by naming them. For example: God, or Eucharist.

[Aidan Kimel]

All seriousness aside, though, it is an interesting point to say that the Eucharist (or God for that matter) exists quite apart from what people believe. I think in a sense that is true, but also not true. It is not true in the sense that it would be irrelevant. Certainly with respect to the Eucharist, apart from belief there never would have been a Eucharist in the first place. But we cannot speak of God apart from people who believe in God. And so while we might say, with truth, that God pre-exists His creation, the fact is that it is at the very least a paradoxic statement, because it requires His creation in order to speak (write) the words. So immediately the issue of an objective reality apart from the subject is being called into question.

Is there a sense that it is not true to say that either the Eucharist or God exists apart from what people believe? I do not think so. Of course, I am simply an obtuse Westerner ... but aren't we all. :)

I do think it is true to say that if God had not revealed it, we would never have conceived of Deity apart from the world he had made; but once we have conceived it, I do not think we are involved in paradox. We no doubt break our finite language in trying to express this crucial point, but ... I do not believe that "the issue of an objective reality apart from the subject is being called into question." Quite the contrary!

God is God. He does not need the universe he has made in order to be God, nor is his being or majesty diminished if he had never created the universe. This, I confess and assert, is divine revelation and absolute truth, according to the gospel.

Perhaps I am not sufficiently subtle and intelligent to catch the nuances ...

[Owen Jones]

Yes, God is God, but I am a creature of God, a creation of God, writing these words, and without me there would be no words about God. Hence, the paradox. That should not be too hard to get.

Reality, language, consciousness, is paradoxic in its structure.

So we cannot treat God simply as an object. Nor the Eucharist. I think this is quite crucial, and while I do not think you have to be an Eastern Orthodox Christian to get this, there are a number of problems in the development of philosophy in the Latin West that is the cause of this confusion. In Orthodoxy, reality is always participatory. It is not divided up into discreet subjects and objects. Unless you have been to public school in the West.

Just a little aside, it was really Hegel who exemplified most explicitly the claim to be able to objectively look at reality. I found especially helpful the intro to Seraphim Rose's Nihilism in which he very clearly lays out how truth is not some objective body of information -- it is a realm in which one participates. Perhaps that will help illuminate the issue. I always cringe when I hear American converts say that they became Orthodox because it is the truth, and then they go on to explain that it has all the true doctrine that has been handed down over the ages from the Ecumenical Councils, etc.etc. which means they are still defining truth in a very unOrthodox way.

[Rick H.]

. . . truth is not some objective body of information -- it is a realm in which one participates. Perhaps that will help illuminate the issue.




If this is a true statement, in a world of competing truth claims, how could any one particular group maintain that they (and their practices) hold any superior place in this kingdom/domain in which one participates?

[Owen Jones]

That's the whole point, Rick -- claiming that you have an objective body of religious facts behind you is an insufficient truth claim which simply leads to the opposite conclusion, because everyone else can make a counter claim. There is no spiritual truth apart from transformation of the believer through what we call theosis. And theosis is not some static, definable state but a movement from this "world" to the next.

Orthodoxy is nothing apart from the witness of saints lives (and that of everyday believers as well) who demonstrate its truth through how they live differently and how they see things differently than the conventional pattern. Claiming that it is objectively true based on a set of facts based on a time line is a myth based on modernist assumptions based on certain historicist and scientistic fallacies that leads to fragmentation of reality, and fragmentation of the psyche as well. There is no Archimedean vantage point from which a person can observe reality from a point separate from it. We are always part of the reality that we claim to be observing. The Eucharist being a prime example.

The background, of course, is that we have a plurality of truths and a plurality of truth claims when it comes to political, social, spiritual and religious matters. And there are conventional responses to that plurality, from tolerance to intolerance, from questioning doubt to dull indifference, from imperial claims for this story as the one and only truth, to diplomatic acceptance of coexistence among the plurality of verities, from pragmatic skepticism that will conform to the dominant truth because peaceful order is preferable to the violent disruption of society by fanatical truth-fighters, through historical relativisms that consider the ever-increasing plurality of truth claims as conclusive proof that the quest for truth is vain, to the extreme of radical nihilism. But none of these conventional responses contribute anything to our understanding, and if anything prevent us even further from entering into God's presence. To simply believe is not good enough, because the demons believe. So we must be transformed, from a state of bodily/spiritual fragmentation, so to speak, into something that is whole and real, precisely because we are always part of something greater. There is no such thing as an "I" distinct from reality as a whole, as if we were nothing more than walking microscopes.

Behind the assertion that our faith, our God, our Eucharist is objectively true is a condition of dissatisfaction, which is really the starting point for every human being, with our own personal and social existence. Otherwise, why ever seek some truth outside of ourselves? But the claim of objectivity only deepens this dissatisfaction. The person who makes this claim is still living in a state of spiritual disorder which he hopes to quell by asserting, in a sense, that he is the creator of truth, or the possessor of truth, or the guarantor of truth, or the controller of truth, rather than a willing and open partner in the truth.

Truth does not exist in the form of eternal verities showering down on us from above, with a small group of Guardians protecting it, like the people protecting the artifacts in "Warehouse 13." Truth is a quest, it is a partnership, it is a realm of existence which one can grow into or fall out of. What is the Exodus all about? Christ is not a factual, objective entity. Christ is our Exodus, from a world and a condition of untruth, of resistance to truth, into the realm of truth. That does not exhaust the imagery of who and what Christ is, of course, but it's a start.

[Peter S.]

In any case we must come to the Eucharist with fear of God, faith and love as the deacon says before the gifts are given.

I think God exists without me thinking of him btw, but it is me who are saying this I know. Don't know Hegel.

But not forcing ourselves in the moment to believe that this is the Body of Christ is the key if you understand what I mean. Instead fear of God, faith in that it is the Body of Christ and love. It must come natural I mean.

Peter

[Owen Jones]

An excellent observation!

[Peter S.]

There is no such thing as an "I" distinct from reality as a whole, as if we were nothing more than walking microscopes.

This is true.

Isn't "I" distinct from reality as a whole what we are told in western school today?

[Owen Jones]

The person is treated as a thing, an entity, an "objective" entity. Likewise, humanity as a whole, according to the species concept. The psychological "sciences" all treat the psyche as some kind of self-contained entity that can be objectivized, analyzed, understood (and thereby controlled). Whenever you hear someone talk about something being objectively true, look out, because what he is really after is control.

This has nothing to do with individualism vs. collectivism or anything like that. It is simply the basis of all so-called modern thought that man exists as an observer, a measurer, a thinker, a doer, a controller. There is no contingent or participatory factor to existence. Whereas St. Maximos points out that existence is a contingent reality. And of course he would never, ever attribute the category of existence to God.

[Joshua G.]

what a thread.

I must say that before I read Fr. Raphael Vereshack's post (from several years ago now) I had always seen the Eucharist as an analogy to the Incarnation. But he reaised very valid points. I have to wonder if this is not just a very neat but modern way of explaining it. Cna we find this analogy drawn in the Early Church?

That said, perhaps I can offer another (SLIGHTLY different approach).

What is bread? I mean, without getting all platonic about it... what is it? You know it when you taste it. Same with wine. Seriously, stay with me here. We know what bread is. It doesn't have to be a deep question. It's just... bread. And it's wine and it is because our senses tell us that it is.

So, my question is, are we told that we should deny what our senses tell us about reality? Yes, certainly when they go against the greater reality Christ revealed to us. So, when our senses tell us that having intercourse with our girlfriend whom we love so much feels SO RIGHT... we should distrust those senses because they are leading us to do something evil and they are a direct result of our fallen humanity.

However, for those who have walked a long way on the road of Theosis and are connected to God in such a way that they are almost in heaven on Earth, my guess is that they're senses begin to match what is the will of God.

So, is the fact that we do not see actual flesh and blood a byproduct of our sinful nature? Near the end of his life, would a saint such as Seraphim of Sarov have ceased to see and taste and feel bread and wine, but rather see the actual flesh and blood of Christ (whatever that would look like)?

I could be wrong on this, but my guess is that he still sensed bread and wine while surely also in a way that God wills to sense (on a deeper level that would be inexplicable) His flesh and blood.

So I suppose if we approach this from a platonic point of view we can argue the bread and wine out of existence. But how much more intellectual could we possibly get?

I am not trying to convince anyone to believe that the bread and wine are still there and certainly I do nto support an official position be taken by the Church on this.

But, to take it to the point of absurdity as the West has by talking about accidents and all of that is just odd at best. The DOGMA of transubstantiation is what FORCES us to have huge conversations about the bread. It actual distracts from the conversation.

The Orthodox approach is that is IS the body and blood of Christ. How you approach the fact that the bread and wine are still PERCEIVED is up to you? Do you condemn your senses? Do you explain them away? Do you accept them? Who cares? Do what you need to do. BUT, in the end, your goal is to have NO doubt that what is in that Chalice IS the body and blood of Christ. Beyond that NECESSARILY has to get into philosophy and even scholasticism and while that is perfectly fine on a personal level, it is ridiculous on the level of Official Church Doctrine.

Also, as far as that Synod in Jerusalem goes, it is odd how extremely Vatican the words of that Council sound, especially on the Eucharist. And it is no coincidence that the Patriarch Cyril who led that Council (and most other bishops) did most of their theological studies in the West (as they were under Turkish rule). There may be a very good reason why that council is not yet considered Ecumencial.

Joshua

[Owen Jones]

Just as a slight quibble, Plato would be the last person to claim that the existence of physical reality is just a matter of false or undeveloped perception. If I am wrong on this, I would like to see a specific reference...

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I don't mean what I wrote about the Eucharist in a categorical way. More I was trying to raise what are very important questions concerning contemporary views of the Eucharist. These views have been influenced by what is referred to as incarnational theology. This tends to see Christ in a dual: material/divine way, rather than as One unified subject Who is both divine and human at once. The effect here is to shift the emphasis and very meaning of the Incarnation onto the material. From here then it is easy to see how the Eucharist itself is seen in a dual way also: bread/Body:wine/Blood with the material bread & wine corresponding to Christ's human nature and the Body & Blood to His divine nature. The problem here- a Christological one- should be obvious but it rarely is noticed or commented on; and that also was one of my points.

Now of course in the Fathers there is a spectrum of views concerning the Eucharist. I don't see the need to deny this. But set our views into the modern categories described above (and very often this was presented in Orthodox writings of the 20th c) is something I believe that needs questioning.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Aidan Kimel]

A further observation related to transubstantiation: the driving concern underlying all scholastic reflections on the eucharistic presence is the churchly practice of eucharistic adoration (both within and outside the liturgy). How can adoration of the Holy Gifts be proper and not idolatrous if the bread and wine are still there as creaturely substances after the consecration? Theories such as consubstantiation and impanation were rejected because they seemed to imply the worship of creatures. Transubstantiation became seen by the schoolmen as a way to resolve this very practical and real question of how to justify the practice of eucharistic adoration and prayer directed to the consecrated elements. If St. Thomas Aquinas's formulation of the matter is inadequate, and it may well be, can you provide a better one?

Nor do I think it is adequate to dismiss this question as specifically and pathologically Western. All Christians must be concerned to rightly distinguish Creator and creature and not to engage in idolatry. Hence St Nicholas Cabasilas finds himself having to explain that when the Orthodox prostrate themselves before the oblations during the Great Entrance, they are not adoring the oblations, for the bread and wine have not yet become the Body and Blood. Yes, it's all mystery, but it's still proper to ask, Is eucharistic adoration a form of idolatry, and if not, why not?

[Steven Roberts]

A further observation related to transubstantiation: the driving concern underlying all scholastic reflections on the eucharistic presence is the churchly practice of eucharistic adoration (both within and outside the liturgy). How can adoration of the Holy Gifts be proper and not idolatrous if the bread and wine are still there as creaturely substances after the consecration? Theories such as consubstantiation and impanation were rejected because they seemed to imply the worship of creatures. Transubstantiation became seen by the schoolmen as a way to resolve this very practical and real question of how to justify the practice of eucharistic adoration and prayer directed to the consecrated elements. If St. Thomas Aquinas's formulation of the matter is inadequate, and it may well be, can you provide a better one?

Nor do I think it is adequate to dismiss this question as specifically and pathologically Western. All Christians must be concerned to rightly distinguish Creator and creature and not to engage in idolatry. Hence St Nicholas Cabasilas finds himself having to explain that when the Orthodox prostrate themselves before the oblations during the Great Entrance, they are not adoring the oblations, for the bread and wine have not yet become the Body and Blood. Yes, it's all mystery, but it's still proper to ask, Is eucharistic adoration a form of idolatry, and if not, why not?

They are both Bread and Body, Blood and Wine (Check the fathers on this)

[Joshua G.]

A further observation related to transubstantiation: the driving concern underlying all scholastic reflections on the eucharistic presence is the churchly practice of eucharistic adoration (both within and outside the liturgy). How can adoration of the Holy Gifts be proper and not idolatrous if the bread and wine are still there as creaturely substances after the consecration? Theories such as consubstantiation and impanation were rejected because they seemed to imply the worship of creatures. Transubstantiation became seen by the schoolmen as a way to resolve this very practical and real question of how to justify the practice of eucharistic adoration and prayer directed to the consecrated elements. If St. Thomas Aquinas's formulation of the matter is inadequate, and it may well be, can you provide a better one?

Nor do I think it is adequate to dismiss this question as specifically and pathologically Western. All Christians must be concerned to rightly distinguish Creator and creature and not to engage in idolatry. Hence St Nicholas Cabasilas finds himself having to explain that when the Orthodox prostrate themselves before the oblations during the Great Entrance, they are not adoring the oblations, for the bread and wine have not yet become the Body and Blood. Yes, it's all mystery, but it's still proper to ask, Is eucharistic adoration a form of idolatry, and if not, why not?
But the fact remains that our God-given senses still percieve bread and wine. Is that wrong? Is that due to our fallen nature? Are our senses lying to us? If so, it would seem that the likes of St Seraphim of Sarov would no longer perceive bread and wine. And may they no longer due. But if they do, it would seem that it is God's will that we percieve this. Yes, certainly it is God's body through and through, but God meant for us to percieve bread and wine so in a very real (albeit mundane) way their is bread and wine present.

So here we are probably having a conversationt aht was never meant to be had. In most of the quotes Fr Dn Matthew offered a few pages back you don't see these writers focusing on the presence or non-presence of bread.

And, to say that we worship the bread just ignores the reality of those who believe it is there. No. They don't worship the bread. It might make sense in the syllogism you have created but the reality is that they don't. I mean, I don't know how else to tell you. It's a bit like saying that St Thomas was in danger of worshipping the robe Christ wore when he prostrated before Him. Of course that's silly and I am sure you'll be able to point out why it's lacking in analogy but there is a point there. In the end, you need to step back for a second and realize the reality of the situation and not over theorize. The fact is that many Orthodox believe that the bread is there for reasons above. It actually helps them NOT make an issue of it. For many people to say "it's not there even though in everyway I sense it" forces them to have to enter into this absurd dialog about accidents and what have you. For others, if that dialog helps them, great. But if it creates a stumbling block, then why? It just gets silly.

The fact is, we shouldn't concentrate on the bread and wine as the West has forced itself to in that the Catholics have to explain it away with complicated theory (and yes, it is complicated for many people) and the Lutherans are instructed that they MUST believe it's there. Just leave it alone. Don't make it an issue if it need not be.

Now, maybe in the West this was necessary for whatever reason. But we are fortunate to not to be in such an unfortunate situation. And I'm not saying a bishop should not express their strong opinion on this if he feels this is needed for his flock, but there is no need for the Church dogmatize it. All devout Orthodox I know beleive this is truly the Body and Blood of Christ and I have found no evidence that Catholics believe this any stronger than the several Orthodox I know who personally hold to a belief similar to what Galcius (spelling? the first guy mentioned in Fr Dn Matthew's ECF quote post) asserted.

My two cents.

Joshua

[Joshua G.]

I don't mean what I wrote about the Eucharist in a categorical way. More I was trying to raise what are very important questions concerning contemporary views of the Eucharist. These views have been influenced by what is referred to as incarnational theology. This tends to see Christ in a dual: material/divine way, rather than as One unified subject Who is both divine and human at once. The effect here is to shift the emphasis and very meaning of the Incarnation onto the material. From here then it is easy to see how the Eucharist itself is seen in a dual way also: bread/Body:wine/Blood with the material bread & wine corresponding to Christ's human nature and the Body & Blood to His divine nature. The problem here- a Christological one- should be obvious but it rarely is noticed or commented on; and that also was one of my points.

Now of course in the Fathers there is a spectrum of views concerning the Eucharist. I don't see the need to deny this. But set our views into the modern categories described above (and very often this was presented in Orthodox writings of the 20th c) is something I believe that needs questioning.

In Christ- Fr Raphael
Father Bless!

I think I still get what you are saying. You are saying that this analogy of bread/wine being co-present with Christ's body/blood to the incarnation seems to be an modern analogy and one that offers us no deeper understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation (and even risks to confuse it). It risks making a bigger deal of the bread and wine than should be made and (worse yet) may serve to trivilize the humanity of Christ. Because certainly in the Eucharist, our focus is on Christ's body and blood as life-saving (not the bread and wine aspect), and if we take this analogy into a theological realm it would lead us to believe that Christ's divinity is somehow more important in our salvation and His humanity is secondary at best. Is that it more or less? If so, consider it a well-recieved message. Before I read your post I liked the analogy because it was neat on paper. But I never really thought it through. Now, I do see that analogy as pop-Orthodoxy at best (not to be disrespectful) and will cease from using that from this point on.

Thank you Father!

Joshua

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

In some Orthodox descriptions of the Eucharist which I read years ago there was an insistence on the bread & wine as focus points to maintain the reality of the Incarnate Christ. It often was explicitly stated that the bread and wine relate to Christ's human nature.

My point is that by portraying the Eucharist in this way we arrive at an absurd Christology: bread & wine= Christ's human nature: Body & Blood= Christ's divine nature(?!).

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Peter S.]

In some Orthodox descriptions of the Eucharist which I read years ago there was an insistence on the bread & wine as focus points to maintain the reality of the Incarnate Christ. It often was explicitly stated that the bread and wine relate to Christ's human nature.

My point is that by portraying the Eucharist in this way we arrive at an absurd Christology: bread & wine= Christ's human nature: Body & Blood= Christ's divine nature(?!).

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Yes, and the Eucharist is beyond explanation. We must accept it as something divine into this world.

[Anna Stickles]

A further observation related to transubstantiation: the driving concern underlying all scholastic reflections on the eucharistic presence is the churchly practice of eucharistic adoration (both within and outside the liturgy). How can adoration of the Holy Gifts be proper and not idolatrous if the bread and wine are still there as creaturely substances after the consecration? Theories such as consubstantiation and impanation were rejected because they seemed to imply the worship of creatures. Transubstantiation became seen by the schoolmen as a way to resolve this very practical and real question of how to justify the practice of eucharistic adoration and prayer directed to the consecrated elements. If St. Thomas Aquinas's formulation of the matter is inadequate, and it may well be, can you provide a better one?

Nor do I think it is adequate to dismiss this question as specifically and pathologically Western. All Christians must be concerned to rightly distinguish Creator and creature and not to engage in idolatry. Hence St Nicholas Cabasilas finds himself having to explain that when the Orthodox prostrate themselves before the oblations during the Great Entrance, they are not adoring the oblations, for the bread and wine have not yet become the Body and Blood. Yes, it's all mystery, but it's still proper to ask, Is eucharistic adoration a form of idolatry, and if not, why not?

It seems to me that the schoolmen fell into the same trap as the reformers. They tried to impose external solutions in order to fix what is basically an internal problem. The Protestants got rid of adoration of icons, and rejected the adoration of the saints, etc. in order to try to escape the abuses they saw in the Catholic Church. But they didn't escape the problem, they just moved it. In the PC there are simply many whose approach to the Scriptures is basically a type of Biblio-idolatry.

Here the schoolmen try to stop idolatry by redefining things. However, the problem is not the art, the saints, nor the definition of the eucharist. The problem is that the human heart is prone to rejecting a right relationship with God and replacing it with a relationship that is safer, more managable, less uncertain, requires less of us, etc.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that for the Orthodox, the issue of correctly distinguishing Creator and creature is not something that can be solved by proper logical definitions of the Eucharist, but that discernment comes through the ascetic struggle to purify the mind and heart. Only in this do we cease to become idolaters. In other words, to stop idolatry we don't change how we define the material object of adoration, rather we work toward a heart that is no longer adulterous.

[J. Matta]

Speaking as one trained by the Jesuits in Augustine (their favored church father), please allow some comparisons to our Orthodox Faith.

The Papal church's "Transubstantiation" teaches that the Essence of "Breadness" is exchanged in substance with the actual Flesh and Blood of Christ Jesus our Saviour. They use the philosophical construct of the "appearance" being of Bread, etc.

The Russian Church - still coming out of the "latin captivity" from Czar Peter - no doubt has been infiltrated with some of these westernisms. However, Orthodox Christianity has never and should never reflect this literal-ness. St. Gregory Palamas' correction of the latinist Barlaam is exactly on point: the Western Augustinian philosophers say that God's "Essence" may be shared by His Creation (we see this in Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega point" etc); St. Gregory teaches us that God relates to His Creation through his Divine Energies (i.e. the Burning Bush, etc). His Uncreated and Divine Energies allow His Presence to deify those who give themselves over to His Holy Spirit, becoming "gods" by Grace, not by Nature. The same "Energies" bring His presence in the Elements of the Holy Eucharist in order to "Feed" His Sheep. This is Food for body and soul - burning away the "thorns of our sins".

Note our hymns after Holy Communion: "We have seen the True Light (Uncreated Energies); we have received the Heavenly Spirit..." We call His Presence a "Mystery" for good reason. We do not attempt to explain How the Lord Jesus Christ becomes present in the Bread and in the Wine, just that He IS present. This is accomplished by the Holy Spirit during the Epiklesis - not by the words of the clergy, but by the Faith of the people and priest calling upon the All-Holy Spirit to "Come and Make this Bread the precious Body of Thy Christ...", etc.

The Papal Church believes that the sacramental externals (i.e. words, actions) of the priest automatically bring about the Essential change. Note that the Papal Church uses non-leavened wafers, not "real leavened" Bread which signifies the Resurrection of Christ! Real Bread not a "wafer" that melts in the mouth. Thus, they would assert that Christ's Body - now seated at the Right Hand of the Father - is being sacrificed again (Scripture tells us that "once, for all, Christ died for our sins", etc). (The nuns used to say "now, don't chew the wafer - you'll hurt the Lord, etc") With this pantheistic material, literal misunderstanding, there would of course, be the resultant "idol worship" of the wafer in the Monstrance.

The distinctions relating to the Eucharist lies at the heart of the problem for the Western Church, of either being Pantheistic with God present in His Essence in every tree and plant, or a "god" so alienated from His Creation that He is unable to relate to us. In my "catholic" days, this latter was the case, so that any idea of becoming holy or "saintly", was only possible after death and purgatorial fires!! God forbid! How I appreciate and praise our God and Saviour Jesus Christ for His Holy Orthodox Church - His Bride!

[Vincent Ragay]

Forgive me for sticking my head in here. I was just going to skim through, and not post anything. It seems to me everyone's saying the same thing only slightly differently. So I'm all confused now. When I was learning about the Eucharist, the explanation that was simplest and most sensible to me was - I think from the radio programs hosted by Steve and Bill (our life in Christ).

They were probably quoting someone, I don't remember. But what they said was - it's a mystery (which I think everyone seems to agree on...) - but it is similar to Christ himself being fully man and fully God. I suppose if His blood and body were scientifically examined, they would appear fully human. But His divinity didn't exist in just one part of His body, did it? So it is with the bread and wine - there's really no way to explain how the Spirit changes is or in what way, it's just that it is. So when I partake of the communion, I know it's completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it tastes and feels like bread and wine in my mouth!

Please feel free to confuse me further or unconfuse me =)

In Christ,
Mary

Hi Mary,

I wrote a book discussing the essence of the Communion (historical development, meaning, ancient practice, etc.). In brief, I do not see why for almost two millennia that certain believers have come upon this idea of Transubstantiation which is not supported by Scriptures. Of course, that is my opinion but backed up by historical, scriptural, legal, contemporary and spiritual evidences. (I plan to re-publish the book soon.)

Basically, I hinge my argument upon the idea that when Jesus said, "This is My body", He was prophesying about His death and also establishing a living monument of His love and His ministry through a simple, common meal in His kingdom on Earth. He never said anything about changing the elements into His body. (The Jews' misunderstanding of Jesus statement in John 6:53-56 has all but superseded the real intent of the Lord and has clouded many people's minds.) Acts 2 shows us clearly how this was practiced and proves its simplicity. Certainly, the many rites we all perform in compliance with the command has drifted away from the purity, simplicity and spontaneity of the Agapes or Love-Feasts then.

I respect what people do in response to how they understand the words of Jesus; but as a sincere student and follower of the Bible, I look at the message always as having been written by and read by ordinary people, not by "learned" men and women. Like the noble Bereans, we cannot go wrong if we use our own common sense as we allow the Spirit to guide us. Paul commended those people and we should also commend those who search honestly the Truth.

I believe we should bring the message back to its former simplicity and purity.


I hope this doesn't confuse you at all. Thanks.


A servant of Jesus,

Vincent

[Ben Johnson]

The amount we take at the Eucharist is so small, would that quantity count?

--Ben

[Paul Cowan]

Hi Mary,

I wrote a book discussing the essence of the Communion (historical development, meaning, ancient practice, etc.). In brief, I do not see why for almost two millennia that certain believers have come upon this idea of Transubstantiation which is not supported by Scriptures. Of course, that is my opinion but backed up by historical, scriptural, legal, contemporary and spiritual evidences. (I plan to re-publish the book soon.)

Basically, I hinge my argument upon the idea that when Jesus said, "This is My body", He was prophesying about His death and also establishing a living monument of His love and His ministry through a simple, common meal in His kingdom on Earth. He never said anything about changing the elements into His body. (The Jews' misunderstanding of Jesus statement in John 6:53-56 has all but superseded the real intent of the Lord and has clouded many people's minds.) Acts 2 shows us clearly how this was practiced and proves its simplicity. Certainly, the many rites we all perform in compliance with the command has drifted away from the purity, simplicity and spontaneity of the Agapes or Love-Feasts then.

I respect what people do in response to how they understand the words of Jesus; but as a sincere student and follower of the Bible, I look at the message always as having been written by and read by ordinary people, not by "learned" men and women. Like the noble Bereans, we cannot go wrong if we use our own common sense as we allow the Spirit to guide us. Paul commended those people and we should also commend those who search honestly the Truth.

I believe we should bring the message back to its former simplicity and purity.


I hope this doesn't confuse you at all. Thanks.


A servant of Jesus,

Vincent

Dear Vincent. I am happy for you for writing a book. But because you wrote a book does not mean anything to the 2 millenial old church who believed these things from the beginning regardless of the historical, scriptural, legal, contemporary and spiritual evidences you think you have uncovered. Since the reformation protestants have been pushing aside what Jesus said and as you type yourself "'This is my body'"...this is my blood". I don't think he could have gotten any more specific than this.


John 6:48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
52 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”
53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed,[h] and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
Many Disciples Turn Away

60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”
61 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?”


His blood and body are not symbols and the wine is not grape juice. Re-read the first ecumenical councils on this. Our modern day brains think we know so much more than the ancients. Man has not changed in 7500 years. We are as smart now as we were then. Only our technology has improved. But funny how when the power goes out, we reach for candles.

You quoted Acts 2. What specifically in Acts 2 were you quoting. It is a long chapter with many topics. The fact they ate their bread and food? We eat that now. But within the Liturgy, we eat Christ himself. He told us to in remembrance of Him. Not to eat symbolically. But This is my body. That doesn't leave any room for discussion. It is what it is.

Paul

[Ben Johnson]

I went to Nebraska's web site and found the bill was indefinitely postponed on April 17, 2008. If you would like, you can read the introduced copy at:

http://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/100/PDF/Intro/LB261.pdf

[Herman Blaydoe]

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

The belief that the Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Christ is a fundamental teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church regardless of personal opinions and "proofs". We do not need to go into depth defending the accepted teachings of the Church. In maintaining the topic of this particular thread, we should try to concentrate on how the Fathers and accepted theologians and commentaries viewed the Eucharist in light of the Church's revealed doctrine.

Herman, moderator

[Owen Jones]

Everything in the Church has symbolic significance. Just because the bread and wine are the body and blood does not mean that it loses symbolic significance. It enhances the symbolic significance. Let's not get into a trap here by conceding a point to the radical empiricists that if something has symbolic significance it is somehow less real.

[Vincent Ragay]

Dear Vincent. I am happy for you for writing a book. But because you wrote a book does not mean anything to the 2 millenial old church who believed these things from the beginning regardless of the historical, scriptural, legal, contemporary and spiritual evidences you think you have uncovered. Since the reformation protestants have been pushing aside what Jesus said and as you type yourself "'This is my body'"...this is my blood". I don't think he could have gotten any more specific than this.



His blood and body are not symbols and the wine is not grape juice. Re-read the first ecumenical councils on this. Our modern day brains think we know so much more than the ancients. Man has not changed in 7500 years. We are as smart now as we were then. Only our technology has improved. But funny how when the power goes out, we reach for candles.

You quoted Acts 2. What specifically in Acts 2 were you quoting. It is a long chapter with many topics. The fact they ate their bread and food? We eat that now. But within the Liturgy, we eat Christ himself. He told us to in remembrance of Him. Not to eat symbolically. But This is my body. That doesn't leave any room for discussion. It is what it is.

Paul


Dear Paul,


I really appreciate your comments.

Unfortunately, my previous post has been tagged as an infraction of certain rules. I apologize for that. I did not mean to proselytize or to cause any further confusion on the matter. I do respect the objectives of the community and desire eagerly to learn from it. At the same time, I do desire to express my own points of view when it is deemed necessary. But since I cannot do that, may I refer you to another forum where I may freely respond to you.


<http://vinceragay.blogspot.com/2009/11/transubstantiation-revisited.html>


I do not presume to know all truth; but I do desire to seek earnestly the truth promised and freely given to anyone who sincerely asks God. (James 1:5)


Thanks.


Vincent

[Vincent Ragay]

Dear Paul,

I am resending the link again, as I did not properly set it up.

My response (http://vinceragay.blogspot.com/2009/11/transubstantiation-revisited.html).



Vincent

[Michael Woods]

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

I have much room for error in my question and statement.

But it seems to me that the gifts we offer to Christ in worship. The gifts of wine and of bread; The gifts that are given, sincerely are a symbol of us the giver. For the Love that we give is symbolized by our gifts. This symbolizes that by the gifts that we are offering is the very gift of ourself. Unless it stands for the giver, the gift is empty and hypocritical.

In return, Christ accepts our gifts of wine and of bread, And gives back to us the gift of Life. Which is actually his body (real flesh) and his blood (real blood).

My question is: What about the remaining bread? The bread offered to the congergation after Holy Communion. Is this just bread, like I eat at dinner? Is it bread that has been blessed only? Is it bread that is blessed with a possible small miracle for those in need? Or is it actually the body or flesh of Christ?

To even ask such a question, I feel I should offer an apology for such thoughts, but I would like to know.

In Christ,
Michael

[Herman Blaydoe]

My question is: What about the remaining bread? The bread offered to the congergation after Holy Communion. Is this just bread, like I eat at dinner? Is it bread that has been blessed only? Is it bread that is blessed with a possible small miracle for those in need? Or is it actually the body or flesh of Christ?

To even ask such a question, I feel I should offer an apology for such thoughts, but I would like to know.

In Christ,
Michael

Only a portion of the bread is actually used for the Eucharist. The remaining bread is the antidoran, that portion of the bread that was NOT specifically offered up, from which the Lamb and particles that were offered up on the altar were taken.

[David Robles]

Fr Deacon Matthew and Fathers;

Please give me your blessing!

At the moment of the Epiclesis, the priest prays; "and send down Thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts, and make this bread the precious Body of Thy Christ, Amen. And that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Thy Christ, Amen. Changing them by Thy Holy Spirit, Amen, Amen, Amen".

I have a few questions concerning this most holy prayer, but before I enumerate them I have to say that even now after 13 years of hearing this words from the mouth of priests, I am in absolute awe of the magnitude and significance of this prayer. My heart trembles with dread and longing for what we are asking! And I'm not sure I fully understand what we are asking!

1) The prayer is addressed to the Person of the Father...why? Why isn't it addressed to the Son?

2) When the priest prays upon us and upon these gifts;
A) This us , does it mean all of us clergy and laity alike? My understanding is that it includes all of us and not only the celebrating clergy, but I need references.

B) The gifts must be changed and it seems to me that the same change or close to it, must happen within us (again clergy and laity?) to be able to receive them. Please comment.

3) If my understanding, that this 'us' refers to all of us, then there must be a significant difference between the Roman Catholic understanding of the function of the clergy and the Orthodox understanding of the same. It seems to me that eventhough the presence of a priest is indispensable for the celebration of the Eucharist, the priest can only do so from within his role as representative of the people before God, while in the midst of them. This being so even if the priest is celebrating without any parishioners or readers or other clergy with him, at that moment.

4) Is the phrase "Changing them by Thy Holy Spirit"ever substituted for something else. I think I have heard the phrase 'which is shed for the life of the world' ( and did not hear çhanging them etc.)at some liturgies. And this seems very strange to me. I realize I do not have to hear everything but I am concerned with the dogmatic implications of all of this.

5) Where can I further read about the history and development of the prayer of consecration (Epiclisis), and the development of its dogma in detail?


Please forgive me for this lenghty inquiry. I am fascinated by this subject. And I think a proper dogmatic understanding is very important here.

[Father David Moser]

1) The prayer is addressed to the Person of the Father...why? Why isn't it addressed to the Son?

Nicholas Cabasilas addresses this question specifically in his book A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy The very first sentence, which summarizes all of his remarks, in answer to this question is, "It is to teach us that the Savior possesses this power of sanctification not in his quality as a man, but because he is God, and because of the Divine power which he shares with his Father." There is much more and I heartily recommend this work of Cabasilas as a commentary on the meaning of the Divine Liturgy.


3) If my understanding, that this 'us' refers to all of us, then there must be a significant difference between the Roman Catholic understanding of the function of the clergy and the Orthodox understanding of the same. It seems to me that even though the presence of a priest is indispensable for the celebration of the Eucharist, the priest can only do so from within his role as representative of the people before God, while in the midst of them. This being so even if the priest is celebrating without any parishioners or readers or other clergy with him, at that moment.

The priest can never celebrate the Liturgy alone - it is not possible nor permitted by the canons of normal Church order. There must be at least one other person there singing the responses. I think your impression is correct that the priest (indeed all of the clergy) only act within the Church, the Body of Christ. The priesthood does not exist independently of the Church, but as an integral part of the Church. It is significantly different from what I understand the R.C. position to be. There is no "indelible mark" of the priesthood in Orthodoxy and so a priest who is defrock is no longer a priest. There is no such thing as "valid but illicit" in Orthodoxy. Even if a priest were to abandon the Church and out of mercy in the hope he might repent and return was not immediately defrocked, any "sacramental" actions outside the Church he might attempt would have no force or effect as they were outside the Church.


4) Is the phrase "Changing them by Thy Holy Spirit"ever substituted for something else. I think I have heard the phrase 'which is shed for the life of the world' ( and did not hear çhanging them etc.)at some liturgies. And this seems very strange to me. I realize I do not have to hear everything but I am concerned with the dogmatic implications of all of this.

What you heard was the formula of the consecration at the liturgy of St Basil. It is a slightly expanded version of the same consecration in the liturgy of St John Chrysostom:


And the priest, rising, maketh the sign of the cross over the Holy Gifts thrice, saying:

Priest: And make this Bread to be the precious Body of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Deacon: Amen.

And again the deacon pointeth to the holy chalice and saith:
Deacon: Bless, Master, the Holy Cup.

And the priest blessing, saith:
Priest: And this Cup to be the precious Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Deacon: Amen.

Priest: Shed for the life of the world.

Deacon: Amen.

And again the deacon, pointing to both the Holy Things saith:

Deacon: Bless them both, Master.

And the priest, blessing both the Holy Things saith:

Priest: Making the change by Thy Holy Spirit.

Deacon: Amen, Amen, Amen.



5) Where can I further read about the history and development of the prayer of consecration (Epiclisis), and the development of its dogma in detail?

The book I mentioned above by Cabasilas is a good source.

Fr David Moser

[David Robles]

Fr David!
Father bless! Thank you so much for your answers! I particularly appreciate the fact that the Liturgy of St Basil, also includes "changing them by the Holy Spirit" This question had been bothering me for some time now. But I had never heard it.
I only need the answer to question number 2) send They Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts...does it include both celebrating clergy and laity?
and both the gifts and the people must be acted upon by the Holy Spirit?....
Thank you again!

[Anna Stickles]

Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian were among a few early fathers who believed that the eucharist was a figure (figura) or representation of Christ, not literally his actual flesh. I think if we were to be intellectually honest, we would allow for more variety in the traditions that have come down.

Judson made this comment in another thread and I thought it worth following up on. I don't think that any of the Church fathers had the illusion that they were eating actual flesh. As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, when something like this happens by some kind of miraculous occurrence it is not eaten.

What can happen is that we read the Father's statements about the Eucharist being the real body and blood of Christ and interpret this in a material sense. Real vs figure among the Fathers did not mean material reality vs a figure or representation that was not real.

[Anna Stickles]

Ah, I found the quote I was looking for.

"The meaning of "symbol" was disastrously dissolved in Latin sacramental theology from as early as the Lateran Council of 1059 where it was opposed to the term "real". Thus, today, in the minds of most Western christian, symbol does not carry with the meaning which the Fathers of the Church took for granted. The symbol, while still a means of knowledge, ceased to be knowledge of, and became knowledge about reality. Here we can do know more then provide an inadequate idea of the word's authentic meaning while also pointing you to a study, Sacrament and Symbol, from which this passage is extracted: "The symbol is means of knowledge of that which cannot be known otherwise, for knowledge here depends on participation- the living encounter with and entrance into that 'epiphany' of reality which the symbol is." For the Life of the World, Fr Alexander Schmemann

Obviously what is being partaken of is not our fallen flesh which Christ put on at the Incarnation, but the resurrected body of Christ, ie that flesh fully adopted into the Godhead and deified.
Paul in I Cor 15 says, 42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
In the Liturgy we live this transformation and this exchange of the earthly for the heavenly. And so I think when we read Fathers who are speaking of the Eucharist as Christ's actual flesh, we have to keep in mind the context of the fact that they are speaking of this resurrected flesh, which lies outside the bounds of the physical laws as we know them. We do well also to remember that in the language and sacramental mindset of the Fathers this Eucharist is both real and symbol - it is the reality of the Risen Christ present, and a participation in His real spiritual, life-giving body. Christ's body cannot be divided into parts, it is present, but not divided; It becomes present, not by bringing Christ back down to earth - it is not a reincarnation, but it becomes present by raising us up to be seated with Him in the heavenly realms. The Church is the place where heaven and earth meet and we participate in a dual reality.

It might be very productive to look at some of the actual statements about the Eucharist made by the early apologists and examine them in this context. Maybe Tertullian and Clement were outside of Tradition, or maybe they have been misunderstood. Maybe those who seem to be literalists aren't literalists in the way we think they are. It would be worth checking into.

[Rick H.]

Hi Anna,

I read For the Life of the World about four years ago when I was trying to come to terms with what I was getting myself into as I was moving towards Orthodoxy. I came away from this book with a kind of reasoning that I expressed to the priest of the local church in the form of the Eucharist being a 'symbolic realism' and a 'realistic symbolism.'

After reading your above post, if I am tracking with you, I'm not sure how much this applies . . . but, I have wondered since then if these expressions that I just shared with you were used by the author, or if this is just what I came away with. Do you remember reading these expressions anywhere in For the Life of the World?

Thanks,
Rick

[Anna Stickles]

I've read a little of Fr Schmemman's writings and don't remember this terminology specifically. Whether what you came away with is what he is saying I can't tell. Anyway it is always worth rereading things once we have grown a little since if we come back to something several years later we always find things we missed at first.

I actually have not read For the Life of the World, the quote is from the footnotes in the book, The Truth of Our Faith, by Elder Cleopas.

Against Heresies by St Ireneaus is full of good participational theology and his explanation of the deification of the flesh is what helped me start to get a grip on the theology of the Eucharist. It was not merely what he says, but the way that he thinks about the issue that struck me. It's not merely different presuppositions with the same old logic applied, but a whole different approach. I think most of this was in book 5 although some may have been in book 4.

[RichardWorthington]

2) When the priest prays upon us and upon these gifts;
A) This us , does it mean all of us clergy and laity alike? My understanding is that it includes all of us and not only the celebrating clergy, but I need references.

B) The gifts must be changed and it seems to me that the same change or close to it, must happen within us (again clergy and laity?) to be able to receive them. Please comment.


2a) If we were truly worthy we would see the Glory of God upon the Gifts, and upon all who are worthy. I do remember reading in the life of a Russian saint (19th/20th century?) of how a layman was able to see fire upon the heads of those who were worthy in God's eyes. (Not all in church had such fire!) The saint-priest kept looking at this man as if to acknowledge that he too could see.

The prayer of St Symeon the New Theologian before Communion ("From sullied lips") states the following,


And rejoicing and trembling at once,
I who am straw partake of fire,
And, strange wonder!
I am ineffably bedewed,
Like the bush of old
Which burnt without being consumed.

(cribbed from http://www.stmaryofegypt.org/prayerbook/praycomu.htm )


The fire is, of course, the Holy Spirit, like at Pentecost.

b) Yes, there is a change in us. However, here it is probably better to think of 'strong' versus 'weak', rather than 'worthy' versus 'unworthy', as the latter pair can bring to mind thoughts of guilt and of being unacceptable to God. We are "made acceptable in the Beloved", but are not strong enough to see in the Spirit, and so the see the Spirit of Light.

St Gregory Palamas describes such a change within us,



'No one, neither man nor angel, has seen God, nor will ever see him, because we only see by our senses and by our mind, and this is true of angels as of men; but he who has become Spirit and sees in Spirit, how should he not contemplate that which resembles his mode of contemplation?' [i.e. the Spirit, the divine light - my note]
...
(for those who have attained supernatural grace) 'know also spiritually, above sense and intelligence, that God is Spirit, for in their entirety they become God, and know God in God'

'Spiritual light is not only the object of vision; it is also the faculty enabling us to see'

"A study of Gregory Palamas", Fr John Meyendorff, p. 172


Quite a change - into "partakers of the divine nature"!!

On page 154 Meyendorff summarises Gregory in the words, "It is within our body, grafted on to the body of Christ by baptism and the Eucharist, that the divine light shines"

Mr Robles, I salute your perception!!

Richard/Alban

[Judson]

I'm not saying that one must be a first or second century writer in order to have any clout. However, it does help if one is in the spirit of the Fathers and within the Church before one begins their theological work. The Church being the Body of Christ on Earth is a very important idea in Orthodoxy, and so when the Church, either formally (as in an Ecumenical Council) or unofficially (as a consensus of belief over a period of time without a challenge), speaks to a point of dogma, it is considered to be the Church speaking as a whole, and therefore infallibly. However, those outside that community are not part of the Church. Those outside of it who speak of theology are disconnected from the Body of Christ that has been treasured and preserved since the Apostles. Therefore, it becomes quite difficult for a heterodox theologian to gain great traction within Orthodoxy because they are separated from what we view as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. As Calvin famously quotes as the beginning of his Institutes, "You cannot have God as your Father without the Church as your Mother."
I agree that for those issues for which the Church spoke as one, these are taken as infallible truth. I believe the true spirit of orthodoxy was one that made dogmatic affirmations based on was found in Holy Scripture - in other words, in the early church, tradition and scripture were "coincident" with each other in perfect harmony; they were echoes of one another. As time wears on however, we find tradition developing and a greater variation in interpretation occurring. Certainly, theology is the task of the church, as faith seeks understanding. I wouldn't say that Calvin or the Reformers were outside the church, so I'm not clear on your point. The quote you attributed to Calvin is actually him quoting St. Cyprian. Like the other Reformers, he was well versed in patristics and saw his task as returning the church to patristic theology. His debates are full of examples showing his Roman opponents how they had failed to align themselves with the Fathers.


Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't "wiggle room" within Orthodoxy. Many have varying perspectives on issues and all are perfectly acceptable. One of these issues is the Eucharist, as you mentioned. While the Church affirms for us that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, we do not seek to explain this Holy Mystery, as the Latin Church has done in their doctrine of transubstantiation. Now, that does not mean there aren't those who affirm transubstantiation within Orthodoxy. There are. That also doesn't mean there aren't those who affirm consubstantiation, usually thought of as a high church Protestant perspective. The Church simply doesn't dogmatize on what "truly the Body and Blood of Christ" means, because we recognize a limit to human comprehension on the things of God.


Clement of Alexandria (The instructor, book 1, ch. 6).
The flesh figuratively represents to us the Holy Spirit; for the flesh was created by Him. The blood points out to us the Word, for as rich blood the Word has been infused into life; and the union of both is the Lord, the food of the babes - the Lord who is Spirit and Word. The food - that is, the Lord Jesus - that is, the Word of God, the Spirit made flesh, the heavenly flesh sanctified.
Christians, even from the earliest of times, were not in 100% agreement on all matters. It is simply inaccurate to say that every Father believed in the literal flesh and blood of the eucharist, and it is naive to think that any one tradition preserved everything the apostles taught perfectly just as they had intended. The only method i know of that comes close is careful exegesis of Holy Scripture. Interesting, isn't it, that with all the disagreements we have about doctrine, one of the few things we do agree upon is that Scripture is infallible. I believe the doctrines of the deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by grace, etc are essential to Christian faith and infallible, but only in as much as they accord with infallible revelation. The literal presence, apostolic succession, the sinlessness of the Virgin and others have a much greater range of possible interpretation (as evidenced from the variety of interpretations from the fathers) and should not be deemed dogma.

[Michael Stickles]

Clement of Alexandria (The instructor, book 1, ch. 6).


The flesh figuratively represents to us the Holy Spirit; for the flesh was created by Him. The blood points out to us the Word, for as rich blood the Word has been infused into life; and the union of both is the Lord, the food of the babes - the Lord who is Spirit and Word. The food - that is, the Lord Jesus - that is, the Word of God, the Spirit made flesh, the heavenly flesh sanctified.

Christians, even from the earliest of times, were not in 100% agreement on all matters. It is simply inaccurate to say that every Father believed in the literal flesh and blood of the eucharist, ...

You skipped some important context - namely, the immediately preceding section (emphasis added):


"Eat ye my flesh," He says, "and drink my blood." Such is the suitable food which the Lord ministers, and He offers His flesh and pours forth His blood, and nothing is wanting for the children’s growth. O amazing mystery! We are enjoined to cast off the old and carnal corruption, as also the old nutriment, receiving in exchange another new regimen, that of Christ, receiving Him if we can, to hide Him within; and that, enshrining the Saviour in our souls, we may correct the affections of our flesh.

But you are not inclined to understand it thus, but perchance more generally. Hear it also in the following way.


Note the "also". And after this, in book 2 chapter 2 (which I quoted from in an earlier post), he teaches using other figures and analogies. None of these are exclusive of each other. He is looking at the Eucharist in his teaching from multiple angles and various positions. And nothing in any of it contradicts the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; rather, it makes more sense if understood as coming from an Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist, because then the analogies and symbols he uses "fill out", so to speak.

One final thought - I would venture to say that if Clement here is being read as primarily teaching about the Eucharist, he is being read backwards. He seems to me to be using the Eucharist as a basis from which to illustrate and teach other things.

In Christ,
Michael

[Paul Cowan]

You skipped some important context - namely, the immediately preceding section

This is exactly why I am no longer Protestant. The word "heresy" comes from the Greek hairetikos "able to choose" (haireisthai "to choose"). Heretics pick and choose what they want to believe or push onto others. Thank you Michael for exposing this half truth/lie.

[David Robles]

Richard:
Thanks for your comments. The reason I asked is because a clergyman I know, claimed that 'upon us and upon this gifts' means only the
clergy around the altar at that time. I thought this was wrong!
As an encouragement to all of us I would like to share an incident my priest shared with me. We have a school in our parish. During class, a small child (one of ours in the parish) approached the teacher and asked; "what is that blue light that comes in the church, especially around the altar, at every Divine Liturgy?" The teacher was stunned to hear this but did not comment or answer the question and got the kid occupied with something else. Then she went and told the priest.
I know what St Symeon the New Theologian's books tell me, what St Gregory Palamas teaches us. I am also very aware that God's Grace healing me is very real. But its a great reassurance to hear our children say that God is among us at every Divine Liturgy! May we all be granted the blessedness of beholdig Him!

[Judson]

You skipped some important context - namely, the immediately preceding section (emphasis added):
Note the "also". And after this, in book 2 chapter 2 (which I quoted from in an earlier post), he teaches using other figures and analogies. None of these are exclusive of each other. He is looking at the Eucharist in his teaching from multiple angles and various positions. And nothing in any of it contradicts the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; rather, it makes more sense if understood as coming from an Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist, because then the analogies and symbols he uses "fill out", so to speak.

One final thought - I would venture to say that if Clement here is being read as primarily teaching about the Eucharist, he is being read backwards. He seems to me to be using the Eucharist as a basis from which to illustrate and teach other things.


Speaking of context, let's delve further into Clement. Earlier in the paragraph prior to your quote, he writes,
O mystic marvel! The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and one is the only virgin mother. I love to call her the Church. This mother, when alone, had not milk, because alone she was not a woman. But she is once virgin and mother - pure as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, viz., with the Word for childhood. Therefore she had not milk; for the milk was this child fair and comely, the body of Christ, which nourishes by the Word the young brood, which the Lord Himself brought forth in throes of the flesh, which the Lord Himself swathed in His precious blood. O amazing birth! O holy swaddling bands! The Word is all to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse. “Eat ye my flesh,” He says, “and drink my blood.” (Joh_6:53, Joh_6:54) Such is the suitable food which the Lord ministers ...

His argument in the whole chapter is to argue that milk is figurative for the word of God. He is teaching about the importance of the word for the nourishing of new Christians. He writes,
"Thus, then, the milk, which is perfect is perfect nourishment, and brings to that consummation which cannot cease. Wherefore also the same milk and honey were promised in the rest. Rightly, therefore, the Lord again promises milk to the righteous, that the Word may be clearly shown to be both, “the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end;” (Rev_1:8) the Word being figuratively represented as milk.

The John 6 citation does not only appear in your quote, but he speaks of it earlier in the text, about two paragraphs earlier:
Elsewhere the Lord, in the Gospel according to John, brought this out by symbols, when He said: “Eat ye my flesh, and drink my blood;” (Joh_6:54) describing distinctly by metaphor the drinkable properties of faith and the promise, by means of which the Church, like a human being consisting of many members, is refreshed and grows, is welded together and compacted of both, - of faith, which is the body, and of hope, which is the soul; as also the Lord of flesh and blood. For in reality the blood of faith is hope, in which faith is held as by a vital principle. And when hope expires, it is as if blood flowed forth; and the vitality of faith is destroyed. If, then, some would oppose, saying that by milk is meant the first lessons - as it were, the first food - and that by meat is meant those spiritual cognitions to which they attain by raising themselves to knowledge, let them understand that, in saying that meat is solid food, and the flesh and blood of Jesus, they are brought by their own vainglorious wisdom to the true simplicity.

Again, he is trying to argue that milk (the word) is perfect spiritual nourishment. He goes on to argue, in effect, that life giving blood becomes eventually discharged as milk.


What an absurdity is it, then, not to acknowledge that the blood is converted into that very bright and white substance by the breath! The change it suffers is in quality, not in essence. You will certainly find nothing else more nourishing, or sweeter, or whiter than milk. In every respect, accordingly, it is like spiritual nourishment, which is sweet through grace, nourishing as life, bright as the day of Christ.


This is the real context that must be kept in mind before attributing a literal eating of the Lord's flesh in Clement. The "amazing mystery" of which he speaks is not the eating of Christ's literal flesh, but the partaking of the life giving word, which is the same as partaking of spiritual milk, and a spiritual partaking of Christ. I would agree with you then, that for Clement to say "hear it also in following way ..." is reiterating this very same point from another perspective. It could not be, however, that he is thinks of the eating Christ's flesh as BOTH symbolic and literal at the same time, this is contradiction as you should well admit.

I don't think he is using the eucharist as the foundation to teach other things. His thought development is clearly to expound on spiritual milk as the word of God, linking it with (and correcting) its association with Christ's flesh and blood.

[Anna Stickles]

Hi Anna,

I read For the Life of the World about four years ago when I was trying to come to terms with what I was getting myself into as I was moving towards Orthodoxy. I came away from this book with a kind of reasoning that I expressed to the priest of the local church in the form of the Eucharist being a 'symbolic realism' and a 'realistic symbolism.'

The following is from Alexander Schmemann's The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom

"The history of religions shows us that the more ancient, the deeper, the more "organic" a symbol, the less it will be composed of such "illustrative" qualities. This is because the purpose and function of the symbol is not to illustrate (this would presume the absence of what is illustrated) but rather to communicate what is manifested. We might say that the symbol does not so much "resemble" the reality that it symbolizes as it participates in it, and therefore it is capable of communicating it in reality. In other words, the difference (and it is a radical one) between our contemporary [and I think you could say he means, such as, the last 1,000 years] understanding of the symbol and the original one consists in the fact that while today we understand the symbol as the representation or sign of an absent reality, something that is not really in the sign itself (just as there is no real, actual water in the chemical symbol H2O), in the original understanding it is the manifestation and presence of the other reality -- but precisely as other, which, under given circumstances, cannot be manifested and made present in any other way than as a symbol.

This means that in the final analysis the true and original symbol is inseparable from faith, for faith is "the evidence of things unseen" (Heb 11:1), the knowledge that there is another reality different from the "empirical" one, and that this reality can be entered, can be communicated, can in truth become "the most real of realities." Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol. For unlike "convictions," philosophical "points of view," etc., faith certainly is contact and a thirst for contact, embodiment and a thirst for embodiment: it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other. All of this is the symbol (from symbállō, "unite," "hold together"). In it -- unlike in a simple "illustration," simple sign, and even in the sacrament in its scholastic-rationalistic "reduction" -- the empirical (or "visible") and the spiritual (or "invisible") are united not logically (this "stands for" that), not analogically (this "illustrates" that), nor yet by cause and effect (this is the "means" or "generator" of that), but epiphanically. One reality manifests (epiphaínō) and communicates the other, but -- and this is immensely important -- only to the degree to which the symbol itself is a participant in the spiritual reality and is able or called upon to embody it....

By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." However real a symbol may be, however successfully it may communicate to us that other reality, its function is not to quench our thirst but to intensify it: "Grant us that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never ending day of Thy Kingdom." It is not that this or that part of "this world" -- space, time, or matter -- be made sacred, but rather that everything in it be seen and comprehended as expectation and thirst for its complete spiritualization: "that God may be all in all." ...

Christian worship is symbolic because, first of all, the world itself, God's own creation, is symbolic, is sacramental; and second of all because it is the Church's nature, her task in "this world," to fulfill this symbol, to realize it as the "most real of realities." We can therefore say that the symbol reveals the world, mankind, and all creation as the "matter" of a single, all-embracing sacrament"(pp. 38-40)

Notice here two things. The symbol communicates reality by participating in it. In this way it unites disparate realities. Notice also in the last couple of paragraphs. The movement of the communication is toward the fulfillment of the symbol. Therefore it is not simply a uniting of two different things, but a movement from part to full, from type to antitype.

Here's a simple thing. What happened to the food that Christ ate when he appeared to the disciples after the resurrection? When we eat, we join ourselves with creation, and creation unites with us. When Christ ate that food, it must have become, in Him, deified and part of His body, and yet not lost. As Fr Dcn Matthew has said many times, deification, the union of creation with the Godhead does not negate what creation is. The Divine does not replace the created nature but fulfills it. This has been my picture of the bread after the prayers, although how good of a picture this is I don't know.

For me the fact that the Eucharist is both bread and Body seems important, this says something about God's relation not just with us but with creation, and about our relation with creation as well.

[Rick H.]

Thanks very much Anna. You know, I read the Eucharist just before I read For the Life of the World, maybe this is exactly what I was thinking of. And, you know, my memory is being "jarred" again about some canning my wife was doing during and after the time I read these books (pun intended). And, this is again, a kind of lame example, but after she did a round of canning some apple butter and preserves one fall, she left the next morning for a weekend quilting retreat in a lodge.

So there I was with my face hanging out in the kitchen the next day, and I found myself staring at these jars still on the cooling racks. It is my job to take the rings off the jars and wash them off after the pop and cool.

But, after I was done, I started looking at these nice looking jars of stuff and it occurred to me that these jars are symbols of the reality of our family, and of the love of my wife to do things like this. These jars had her work that she did in the kitchen and her work picking some of these fruits . . . and these jars contained both the fruit of her labor (is that a pun too or a mixing of metaphors?) and these jars contained her love, and we are not always a functional family, but these jars represented to me a functional family and home life. So these jars are not our family, we are not in these jars physically, but these jars do symbolize the reality of our family . . . and that day in the kitchen when I was alone for the weekend, these jars did bring me into a participation with the reality that these symbols revealed (even though I was alone physically). All of this without even sneaking some of the products in the jars that day! ;)

Why have I just shared this story with you? I'm not 100% sure why? Maybe there is something in this that applies to something.

I still haven't had any coffee for the day, I seem to be staggering around the house this morning doing everything except that one needful thing of grinding some beans! Can you tell? :0)