Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/649

 EUCHARIST

57;

EUCHARIST

three great Eucharistic controversies, the first of which, begun by Paschasius Radbertus, in the ninth century, scarcely extended beyond the limits of his audience and concerned itself solely with the philoso- phical question, whether the Eucharistic Body of Christ is identical with the natural Body He had in Palestine and now has in heaven. Such a numerical identity could well have been denied by Ratramnus, Rabanus Maurus, Ratherius, Lanfranc, and others, since even nowadays a true, though accidental, distinc- tion between the sacramental and the natural condi- tion of Christ's Body must be rigorously maintained. The first occasion for an official procedure on the part of the Church was offered when Berengarius of Tours, influenced by the writings of Scotus Eriugena (d. about 8S4), the first opponent of the Real Presence, rejected both the latter truth and that of Transubstan- tiation. He repaired, however, the public scandal he had given by a sincere retractation made in the presence of Pope Gregory VII at a sjTiod held in Rome in 1079, and died reconciled to the Church. The third and the sharpest controversy was that opened by the Refor- mation in the sixteenth century, in regard to which it must be remarked that Luther was the only one among the Reformers who still clung to the old Cath- olic doctrine, and, though subjecting it to manifold misrepresentations, defended it most tenaciously. He was diametrically opposed by Zwingli of Zurich, who, as was seen above, reduced the Eucharist to an empty, meaningless sjTnbol. Having gained over to his views such friendly contemporary partisans as Carlstadt, Bucer, and (Ecolampadius, he later on seciu-ed influen- tial allies in the Arminians, Mennonites, Socinians, and Anglicans, and even to-day the rationalistic con- ception of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper does not differ substantially from that of the Zwinglians. In the meantime, at Geneva, Calvin w.'iis cleverly seeking to bring about a compromise between the extremes of the Lutheran literal and the Zwinglian figurative in- terpretations, by suggesting instead of the substantial presence in one case or the merely symbolical in the other, a certain mean, i. e. " dynamic ", presence, which consists essentially in this, that at the moment of re- ception, the efficacy of Christ's Body and Blood is communicated from heaven to the souls of the predes- tined and spiritually nourishes them. Thanks to Melanchthon's pernicious and dishonest double-deal- ing, this attractive intermediary position of Calvin made such an impression even in Lutheran circles that it was not until the Formula of Concord in 1577 that the " crypt o-Cahanistic venom" was successfully re- jected from the body of Lutheran doctrine. The Council of Trent met these widely divergent errors of the Reformation with the dogmatic definition, that the God-man is "truly, really, and substantially" present under the appearances of bread and wine, purposely intending thereby to oppose the expression vere to Zwingli's signia?), realitcr to CEcolampadius's figura, and cssentialiter to Calvin's virtus (Sess. XIII, can. i). And this teaching of the Council of Trent has ever been and is now the unwavering position of the whole of Catholic Christendom.

As regards the doctrine of the Fathers, it is not pos- sible in the present article to multiply patristic texts, which are usually characterized by wonderful beauty and clearness. Suffice it to say that, besides the Didache (ix, x, xiv), the most ancient Fathers, as Ignatius (.\d. Smyrn.,vii; Ad.Ephes.,xx; Ad. Philad., iv), Justin (Apol., I, Ixvi), Irenjeus (.\dv. H;pr., IV, xvii, 5; IV, xviii, 4; V, ii, 2), TertuUian (De resurrect, earn., viii; De pudic.,ix; De orat., xix; De bapt., xvi), and Cyprian (De orat. dom., xviii; De lapsis, xvi), at- test without the slightest sha<low of a misunderstand- ing what is the faith of the Church, while later patristic theology bears witness to the dogma in terms that ap- proach exaggeration, as Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. catech., xxxvii), Cjril of Jerusalem (Catech. myst., iv, V.-3?

2 sqq.), and especially the Doctor of the Eucharist, Chrysostom [Horn. Lxxxii (Ixxxiii), in Matt., 1 sqq.; Horn, xlvi, in Joan., 2 sqq.; Horn, xxiv, in I Cor., 1 sqq.; Hom. ix, de poenit., 1], to whom may be added the Latin Fathers, Hilary (De Trinit., VIII, iv, 13) and Ambrose (De myst., viii, 49; Lx, 51 sq.). Concern- ing the SjTiac Fathers, see Th. Lamy, "De SjTorum fide in re eucharistica" (Louvain, 1859). The position held by St. Augustine is at present the subject of a spirited controversy, since the adversaries of the Church rather confidently maintain that he favoured their side of the question in that he was an out-and-out "Symbolist". In the opinion of Loofs ("Dogmen- geschichte", 4th ed., Halle, 1906, p. 409), St. Augus- tine never gives the "reception of the true Body and Blood of Christ" a thought; and this view Ad. Har- nack (Dogmengeschiclite, .3rd ed., Freiburg, 1897, III, 14S) emphasizes when he declares that St. Augustine "undoubtedly was one in this respect with the so- called pre-Reformation and with Zwingli". Against this rather hasty conclusion Catholics first of all ad- vance the imdoubted fact that Augustine demanded that Divine worship should be rendered to the Eucha- ristic Flesh (In Ps. xxxiii, enarr., i, 10), and declared that at the Last Supper " Christ held and carried Him- self in His own hands" (In Ps. xcviii, n. 9). They insist, and rightly so, that it is not fair to separate this great Doctor's teaching concerning the Eucharist from his doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice, since he clearly and immistakably asserts that the true Body and Blood are offered in the Holy Mass. The variety of extreme views just mentioned requires that an attempt be made at a reasonable and unbiased explanation, whose verification is to be sought for and found in the ac- knowledged fact that a gradual process of develop- ment took place in the mind of St. Augustine. No one will deny that certain expressions occur in Augus- tine as forcibly realistic as those of TertuUian and Cyprian or of his intimate literary friends, Ambrose, Optatus of Mileve, Hilary, and Chrysostom. On the other hand, it is beyond question that, owing to the determining influence of Origen and the Platonic philosophy, which, as is well known, attached but slight value to visible matter and the sensible phe- nomena of the world, Augustine did not refer what was properly real {res) in the Blessed Sacrament to the Flesh of Christ {caro), but transferred it to the quick- ening principle (spiritux), i. e. to the effects produced by a worthy Communion. A logical consequence of this was that he allowed to caro, as the vehicle and antitype of res, not indeed a mere symbolical worth, but at best atransitory, intermediary, and subordinate worth {signum), and placed the Flesh and Blood of Christ, present under the appearances (figura) of bread and wine, in too decided an opposition to His natural, historical Body. Since Augustine was a strenuous defender of personal co-operation and effort in the work of salvation and an enemj to mere me- chanical activity and superstitious routine, he omitted insisting upon a lively faith in the real personality of Jesus in the Eucharist, and called attention to the spiritual efficiency of the Flesh of Christ instead. His mental vision was fixed, not so much upon the saving caro, as upon the spiritus, which alone possessed worth. Nevertheless a turning-point occurred in his life. The conflict with Pelagianism and the diligent perusal of Chrysostom freed him from the bondage of Platonism, and he thenceforth attached to caro a separate, indi- vidual value independent of that of spiritus, going so far, in fact, as to maintain too strongly that the Com- munion of children was aljsolutely necessary to salva- tion. If, moreover, the reader finds in some of the other Fathers difficulties, obscurities, and a certain inaccuracy of expression, this may be explained on three general grounds: (1) because of the peace and security (here is in their possession of the Church's truth, whence resulted a certain want of accuracy in