Gelasisus, Bishop Of Rome: Denies The Eucharist?

[sdenko]

So I am starting to take more and more seriously my study of the Eucharist among the other things of the Catholic Church.

I was reading a section of Justin Martyr's treatise on the Eucharist and there was a footnote that the translator (or editor?) added that had this quote from Gelasisus, the Bishop of Rome:

By the sacraments we are made partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be in them,” etc. (See original in Bingham’s Antiquities, book xv. cap. 5. See Chryost., Epist. ad. Cæsarium, tom. iii. p. 753. Ed. Migne.)

Can someone explain this to me? IT seems like he is saying that the bread and the wine doesn't turn into Jesus at consecration but it almost seems like he is implying consubstantiation.

Thanks!

[CatherineM]

In the 1200's three ideas began to emerge. One was consubstantiation, that both realities were present in the Eucharist; one was that the power of God annihilated the bread and wine completely replacing them, and the last was transubstantiation. The first person to use the term was Hildebert of Tours, and was later used at the Fourth Lateran Council. Thomas Aquinas explained it as the physical appearance of the bread and wine was a sacred sign of a spiritual reality. The consecrated bread and wine were "both sacrament and reality." They signified the body and blood of Christ, and were in fact the reality they signified. When the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood, the "substance" or reality changed, while the "accidents" or appearances did not.

[Apotheoun]

Gelasius was influenced by the Augustinian understanding of a "sign" as something that merely points to a reality beyond itself, and so he did not posit a change in the nature of the elements. A good explanation of the quotation, along with a fuller translation of the text of Gelasius' [i]De Duabus Naturis[/i] 14, can be found in the book [url="http://www.amazon.com/Eucharist-West-Edward-J-Kilmartin/dp/0814662048/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1229835648&sr=11-1"][u]The Eucharist in the West[/u][/url] by Edward J. Kilmartin.

Edited December 21, 2008 by Apotheoun

[sdenko]

Hi again,

I've been doing some more research on the Eucharist, this time on the ECFs and I've found some seemingly contradictory quotations from particular ECFs that I thought supported the concept of the Eucharist being the actual blood and body of Christ. Is there any Catholic response to this?

Irenaeus, circa 180:

"These slaves had nothing to say that would meet the wishes of their tormentors, except that they had heard from their masters that the divine communion was the body and blood of Christ. Now, imagining that it was actually flesh and blood, those slaves gave to their inquisitors answer to that effect."

Clement of Alexandria, circa 195:

"Elsewhere the Lord, in the Gospel according to John, brought this out by symbols, when He said: 'Eat my flesh and drink my blood', describing distinctly by metaphor the drinkable properties of faith."

Lactantius...date?

"The bread signifies His body. For He Himself is the food and the life of all who believe in the flesh that He bore..."

I'm really wrestling with these quotes. It seems like what they are saying is that the Eucharist isn't the body and blood of Christ. Yet so many other ECFs point out that it is!

What gives here?

Edited December 24, 2008 by sdenko

[MithLuin]

[i]*double post*[/i]

Edited December 24, 2008 by MithLuin

[MithLuin]

As [b]Catherine[/b] pointed out, the doctrine on transubstantiation wasn't really finalized until the 1200's. So, prior to that, no one was as particular as we might hope in the discussions of the Eucharist. The Church Fathers all have the same basic idea, but when you look at it from a modern perspective, some seem more 'right' than others - they're closer to the mark. It's just that when they were writing, no one had set the mark yet, because we hadn't had particular heresies to make us hammer out what we really, truly believed yet.

One of the heretics that helped us figure out what the Eucharist really is was Berengar, who was refuted by Lanfranc. Berengar is also one of the few heretics in history who actually changed his view to bring it into line with the Church after being corrected (this was well before the Inquisition existed, so it wasn't under threat of torture or anything either).

[qfnol31]

You mention Irenaeus...I recently did a paper on his Christology, including a brief section on his understanding of the Blessed Sacrament if you're interested.

[Graciela]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1732944' date='Dec 20 2008, 11:07 PM']In the 1200's three ideas began to emerge. One was consubstantiation, that both realities were present in the Eucharist; one was that the power of God annihilated the bread and wine completely replacing them, and the last was transubstantiation. The first person to use the term was Hildebert of Tours, and was later used at the Fourth Lateran Council. Thomas Aquinas explained it as the physical appearance of the bread and wine was a sacred sign of a spiritual reality. The consecrated bread and wine were "both sacrament and reality." They signified the body and blood of Christ, and were in fact the reality they signified. When the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood, the "substance" or reality changed, while the "accidents" or appearances did not.[/quote]

And this idea of "accidents" versus "substance" comes from Aristotle and so was not used until Greek texts became available and translated in Western Europe after the dark ages. In fact, if you read Martin Luther's treatise "The babylonian captivity of the church," he specifically objects to adopting pagan Greek philosphical concepts in Christian theology, including in developing the transubstantiation explanation of HOW Christ is truly present in Eucharist.
Transsubstantiation and consubstantiation both hold the real presence, but with different explanations of how it's happening at the material level.