The Old Testament prophet Malachi announced by the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Pet. 1:20-21) that a time would come when all throughout the world the Gentiles would offer to God a pure sacrifice:
“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised thy name?’By offering polluted food upon my altar. And you say, ‘How have we polluted it?’ By thinking that the Lord’s table may be despised.When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that no evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that no evil? Present that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts.‘ And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us.’ With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? says the Lord of hosts. Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire upon my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table is polluted, and the food for it may be despised.‘ What a weariness this is,’ you say, and you sniff at me, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished; for I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is feared among the nations.” Malachi 1:6-14 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY
An examination of the earliest non-canonical sources confirms that from its very inception the early church understood the eucharist and Christian worship to be the fulfillment of Malachi 1:10-11. These Christians (some of whom were actual disciples of the Apostles themselves) all believed that “the Lord’s supper,” as it is typically referred to, was/is the pure sacrifice that the prophet foretold would be offered to God by the nations throughout the world.
The following references will show that the eucharist being the actual sacrifice of Christ, which he offered once and for all time for the redemption and salvation of his people, was a widespread belief held by the true followers of Christ throughout the then known world. The citations will also illustrate that Christians described the eucharist as a spiritual offering in which the Holy Spirit made the risen Jesus’ crucified body truly present in an unbloody manner.
The readers will further see that the church taught that the eucharistic sacrifice granted those who partook of it in a worthy manner healing and forgiveness from their sins. As one early bishop and disciple of the Apostles put, as he was on his way to being martyred in Rome:
Chapter 20. Promise of another letter
If Jesus Christ shall graciously permit me through your prayers, and if it be His will, I shall, in a second little work which I will write to you, make further manifest to you [the nature of] the dispensation of which I have begun [to treat], with respect to the new man, Jesus Christ, in His faith and in His love, in His suffering and in His resurrection. Especially [will I do this ] if the Lord make known to me that you come together man by man in common through grace, individually, in one faith, and in Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man and the Son of God, so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ. (Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians; bold and italicized emphasis mine)
With the foregoing in view, I now present a list of citations dating from the latter of part of the 1st century AD up until the 8th AD. All emphasis mine will be mine.
Chapter 14. Christian Assembly on the Lord’s Day
But every Lord’s day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord: In every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great King, says the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.
CONSTITUTION OF THE APOSTLES
HOW CHRIST BECAME A FULFILLER OF THE LAW, AND WHAT PARTS OF IT HE PUT A PERIOD TO, OR CHANGED, OR TRANSFERRED.
XXIII. For He did not take away the law of nature, but confirmed it. For He that said in the law, “The Lord thy God is one Lord;”3291 the same says in the Gospel, “That they might know Thee, the only true God.”3292 And He that said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”3293 says in the Gospel, renewing the same precept, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.”3294 He who then forbade murder, does now forbid causeless anger.3295 He that forbade adultery, does now forbid all unlawful lust. He that forbade stealing, now pronounces him most happy who supplies those that are in want out of his own labours.3296 He that forbade hatred, now pronounces him blessed that loves his enemies.3297 He that forbade revenge, now commands long-suffering;3298 not as if just revenge were an unrighteous thing, but because long-suffering is more excellent. Nor did He make laws to root out our natural passions, but only to forbid the excess of them.3299461He who had commanded to honour our parents, was Himself subject to them.3300 He who had commanded to keep the Sabbath, by resting thereon for the sake of meditating on the laws, has now commanded us to consider of the law of creation, and of providence every day, and to return thanks to God. He abrogated circumcision when He had Himself fulfilled it. For He it was “to whom the inheritance was reserved, who was the expectation of the nations.”3301 He who made a law for swearing rightly, and forbade perjury, has now charged us not to swear at all.3302 He has in several ways changed baptism, sacrifice, the priesthood, and the divine service, which was confined to one place: for instead of daily baptisms, He has given only one, which is that into His death. Instead of one tribe, He has appointed that out of every nation the best should be ordained for the priesthood; and that not their bodies should be examined for blemishes, but their religion and their lives. Instead of a bloody sacrifice, He has appointed that reasonable and unbloody mystical one of His body and blood, which is performed to represent the death of the Lord by symbols. Instead of the divine service confined to one place, He has commanded and appointed that He should be glorified from sunrising to sunsetting in every place of His dominion.3303 He did not therefore take away the law from us, but the bonds. For concerning the law Moses says: “Thou shalt meditate on the word which I command thee, sitting in thine house, and rising up, and walking in the way.”3304 And David says: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law will he meditate day and night.”3305 For everywhere would he have us subject to His laws, but not transgressors of them. For says He: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that search out His testimonies; with their whole heart shall they seek Him.”3306 And again: “Blessed are we, O Israel, because those things that are pleasing to God are known to us.”3307 And the Lord says: “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”3308 (Book VI, Sec. IV.—Of the Law)
JUSTIN MARTYR
Chapter 41. The oblation of fine flour was a figure of the Eucharist
Justin: And the offering of fine flour, sirs, which was prescribed to be presented on behalf of those purified from leprosy, was a type of the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed, in remembrance of the suffering which He endured on behalf of those who are purified in soul from all iniquity, in order that we may at the same time thank God for having created the world, with all things therein, for the sake of man, and for delivering us from the evil in which we were, and for utterly overthrowing principalities and powers by Him who suffered according to His will. Hence God speaks by the mouth of Malachi, one of the twelve [prophets], as I said before, about the sacrifices at that time presented by you: ‘I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord; and I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands: for, from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, My name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure offering: for My name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord: but you profane it.’ Malachi 1:10-12 [So] He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to Him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist, affirming both that we glorify His name, and that you profane [it]. The command of circumcision, again, bidding [them] always circumcise the children on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision, by which we are circumcised from deceit and iniquity through Him who rose from the dead on the first day after the Sabbath, [namely through] our Lord Jesus Christ. For the first day after the Sabbath, remaining the first of all the days, is called, however, the eighth, according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and [yet] remains the first. (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Chapters 31-47)
Chapter 117. Malachi’s prophecy concerning the sacrifices of the Christians. It cannot be taken as referring to the prayers of Jews of the dispersion
Justin: Accordingly, God, anticipating all the sacrifices which we offer through this name, and which Jesus the Christ enjoined us to offer, i.e., in the Eucharist of the bread and the cup, and which are presented by Christians in all places throughout the world, bears witness that they are well-pleasing to Him. But He utterly rejects those presented by you and by those priests of yours, saying, ‘And I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the Gentiles (He says); but you profane it.’ Malachi 1:10-12 Yet even now, in your love of contention, you assert that God does not accept the sacrifices of those who dwelt then in Jerusalem, and were called Israelites; but says that He is pleased with the prayers of the individuals of that nation then dispersed, and calls their prayers sacrifices. Now, that prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God, I also admit. For such alone Christians have undertaken to offer, and in the remembrance effected by their solid and liquid food, whereby the suffering of the Son of God which He endured is brought to mind, whose name the high priests of your nation and your teachers have caused to be profaned and blasphemed over all the earth. But these filthy garments, which have been put by you on all who have become Christians by the name of Jesus, God shows shall be taken away from us, when He shall raise all men from the dead, and appoint some to be incorruptible, immortal, and free from sorrow in the everlasting and imperishable kingdom; but shall send others away to the everlasting punishment of fire. But as to you and your teachers deceiving yourselves when you interpret what the Scripture says as referring to those of your nation then in dispersion, and maintain that their prayers and sacrifices offered in every place are pure and well-pleasing, learn that you are speaking falsely, and trying by all means to cheat yourselves: for, first of all, not even now does your nation extend from the rising to the setting of the sun, but there are nations among which none of your race ever dwelt. For there is not one single race of men, whether barbarians, or Greeks, or whatever they may be called, nomads, or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, among whom prayers and giving of thanks are not offered through the name of the crucified Jesus. And then, as the Scriptures show, at the time when Malachi wrote this, your dispersion over all the earth, which now exists, had not taken place. (Ibid., Chapters 109-124)
IRENAEUS
Chapter 17 Proof that God did not appoint the Levitical dispensation for his own sake, or as requiring such service; for he does, in fact, need nothing from men.
5. Again, giving directions to His disciples to offer to God the first-fruits of His own, created things — not as if He stood in need of them, but that they might be themselves neither unfruitful nor ungrateful — He took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, and said, This is My body. Matthew 26:26, etc. And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, He confessed to be His blood, and taught the new oblation of the new covenant; which the Church receiving from the apostles, offers to God throughout all the world, to Him who gives us as the means of subsistence the first-fruits of His own gifts in the New Testament, concerning which Malachi, among the twelve prophets, thus spoke beforehand: I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord Omnipotent, and I will not accept sacrifice at your hands. For from the rising of the sun, unto the going down [of the same], My name is glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure sacrifice; for great is My name among the Gentiles, says the Lord Omnipotent; Malachi 1:10-11 — indicating in the plainest manner, by these words, that the former people the Jews shall indeed cease to make offerings to God, but that in every place sacrifice shall be offered to Him, and that a pure one; and His name is glorified among the Gentiles. (Against Heresies, Book IV)
37. Those who have become acquainted with the secondary (i.e., under Christ) constitutions of the apostles, are aware that the Lord instituted a new oblation in the new covenant, according to [the declaration of] Malachi the prophet. For, from the rising of the sun even to the setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice; Malachi 1:11 as John also declares in the Apocalypse: The incense is the prayers of the saints. Then again, Paul exhorts us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12:1 And again, Let us offer the sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of the lips. Hebrews 13:15 Now those oblations are not according to the law, the handwriting of which the Lord took away from the midst by cancelling it; Colossians 2:14 but they are according to the Spirit, for we must worship God in spirit and in truth. John 4:24 And therefore the oblation of the Eucharist is not a carnal one, but a spiritual; and in this respect it is pure. For we make an oblation to God of the bread and the cup of blessing, giving Him thanks in that He has commanded the earth to bring forth these fruits for our nourishment. And then, when we have perfected the oblation, we invoke the Holy Spirit, that He may exhibit this sacrifice, both the bread the body of Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ, in order that the receivers of these antitypes may obtain remission of sins and life eternal. Those persons, then, who perform these oblations in remembrance of the Lord, do not fall in with Jewish views, but, performing the service after a spiritual manner, they shall be called sons of wisdom. (Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus)
CYPRIAN
Here is an instance of a usage just becoming common to the East and West,—to give the name of priesthood to the chief ministry as distinguished from the presbyterate. So in Chrysostom passim, but notably in his treatise περὶ ἱερωσύνης. The scriptural warrant for this usage is derived, dialectically, from the universal priesthood of Christians (1 Pet. ii. 5), from the Old-Testament prophecies of the Christian ministry (Isa. lxvi. 21), and from the culmination of the sacerdotium in the chief ministry of St. Paul. Over and against the Mosaic priesthood he is supposed to assert his own priestly charisma in the Epistle to the Romans,3054 where he says, “I have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus” (i.e., the Great High Priest), “in things pertaining to God;” that is (according to the Heb. v. 1), “as a high priest taken from among men, in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” He asserts himself, therefore, as a better priest than those of the Law, “because of the grace that was given me of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering in sacrifice3055 the Gospel of God.” He then (according to this theory) adopts the language and the idea of Malachi, and adds, “that the oblation of the Gentiles might be acceptable,” etc.; i.e., the pure ninchah, or oblation of bread and wine, commemorative of the one “and only propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary.” (Cyprian: Elucidations – Orthodox Church Fathers)
16. That the ancient sacrifice should be made void, and a new one should be celebrated
In Isaiah: For what purpose to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Says the Lord: I am full; I will not have the burnt sacrifices of rams, and fat of lambs, and blood of bulls and goats. For who has required these things from your hands? Isaiah 1:11-12 Also in the forty-ninth Psalm: I will not eat the flesh of bulls, nor drink the blood of goats. Offer to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you: and you shall glorify me. In the same Psalm, moreover: The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me: therein is the way in which I will show him the salvation of God. In the fourth Psalm too: Sacrifice the sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord. Likewise in Malachi: I have no pleasure concerning you, says the Lord, and I will not have an accepted offering from your hands. Because from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name is glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place odours of incense are offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice, because great is my name among the nations, says the Lord. (Treatises, Treatise XII (Book 1))
JOHN OF DAMASCUS
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, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eats Me, shall live John 6:51-55.
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 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. Isaiah 6:6 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. But a body 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.
With bread and wine Melchisedek, the priest of the most high God, received Abraham on his return from the slaughter of the Gentiles. Genesis 14:18 That table pre-imaged this mystical table, just as that priest was a type and image of Christ, the true high-priest. Leviticus xiv For you are a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek. Of this bread the show-bread was an image. This surely is that pure and bloodless sacrifice which the Lord through the prophet said is offered to Him from the rising to the setting of the sun Malachi 1:11 .
The body and blood of Christ are making for the support of our soul and body, without being consumed or suffering corruption, not making for the draught (God forbid!) but for our being and preservation, a protection against all kinds of injury, a purging from all uncleanness: should one receive base gold, they purify it by the critical burning lest in the future we be condemned with this world. They purify from diseases and all kinds of calamities; according to the words of the divine Apostle 1 Corinthians 11:31-32, For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. This too is what he says, So that he that partakes of the body and blood of Christ unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself. Being purified by this, we are united to the body of Christ and to His Spirit and become the body of Christ. (An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, BOOK IV, Chapter 13. Concerning the holy and immaculate Mysteries of the Lord.)
EARLY LITURGIES
O Lord God, Sovereign and Almighty Father, truly it is meet and right, holy and becoming, and good for our souls, to praise, bless, and thank Thee; to make open confession to Thee by day and night with voice, lips, and heart without ceasing;
To Thee who hast made the heaven, and all that is therein; the earth, and all that is therein; The sea, fountains, rivers, lakes, and all that is therein;
To Thee who, after Thine own image and likeness, hast made man, upon whom Thou didst also bestow the joys of Paradise;
And when he trespassed against Thee, Thou didst neither neglect nor forsake him, good Lord,
But didst recall him by Thy law, instruct him by Thy prophets, restore and renew him by this awful, life-giving, and heavenly mystery.
And all this Thou hast done by Thy Wisdom and the Light of truth, Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, Through whom, thanking Thee with Him and the Holy Spirit,
We offer this reasonable and bloodless sacrifice, which all nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun, from the north and the south, present to Thee, O Lord; for great is Thy name among all peoples, and in all places are incense, sacrifice, and oblation offered to Thy holy name.4188 (The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, The Disciple of the Holy Peter.)
AUGUSTINE
Chapter 35.— Of the Prophecy of the Three Prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
There remain three minor prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who prophesied at the close of the captivity. Of these Haggai more openly prophesies of Christ and the Church thus briefly: Thus says the Lord of hosts, Yet one little while, and I will shake the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will move all nations, and the desired of all nations shall come. Haggai 2:6 The fulfillment of this prophecy is in part already seen, and in part hoped for in the end. For He moved the heaven by the testimony of the angels and the stars, when Christ became incarnate. He moved the earth by the great miracle of His birth of the virgin. He moved the sea and the dry land, when Christ was proclaimed both in the isles and in the whole world. So we see all nations moved to the faith; and the fulfillment of what follows, And the desired of all nations shall come, is looked for at His last coming. For ere men can desire and and wait for Him, they must believe and love Him.
Zechariah says of Christ and the Church, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout joyfully, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your King shall come unto you, just and the Saviour; Himself poor, and mounting an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass: and His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. Zechariah 9:9-10 How this was done, when the Lord Christ on His journey used a beast of burden of this kind, we read in the Gospel, where, also, as much of this prophecy is quoted as appears sufficient for the context. In another place, speaking in the Spirit of prophecy to Christ Himself of the remission of sins through His blood, he says, You also, by the blood of Your testament, have sent forth Your prisoners from the lake wherein is no water. Zechariah 9:11 Different opinions may be held, consistently with right belief, as to what he meant by this lake. Yet it seems to me that no meaning suits better than that of the depth of human misery, which is, as it were, dry and barren, where there are no streams of righteousness, but only the mire of iniquity. For it is said of it in the Psalms, And He led me forth out of the lake of misery, and from the miry clay.
Malachi, foretelling the Church which we now behold propagated through Christ, says most openly to the Jews, in the person of God, I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept a gift at your hand. For from the rising even to the going down of the sun, my name is great among the nations; and in every place sacrifice shall be made, and a pure oblation shall be offered unto my name: for my name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord. Malachi 1:10-11 Since we can already see this sacrifice offered to God in every place, from the rising of the sun to his going down, through Christ’s priesthood after the order of Melchisedec, while the Jews, to whom it was said, I have no pleasure in you, neither will I accept a gift at your hand, cannot deny that their sacrifice has ceased, why do they still look for another Christ, when they read this in the prophecy, and see it fulfilled, which could not be fulfilled except through Him? And a little after he says of Him, in the person of God, My covenant was with Him of life and peace: and I gave to Him that He might fear me with fear, and be afraid before my name. The law of truth was in His mouth: directing in peace He has walked with me, and has turned many away from iniquity. For the Priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at His mouth: for He is the Angel of the Lord Almighty. Malachi 2:5-7
Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the Angel of the Almighty God. For just as He is called a servant on account of the form of a servant in which He came to men, so He is called an angel on account of the evangel which He proclaimed to men. For if we interpret these Greek words, evangel is good news, and angel is messenger. Again he says of Him, Behold I will send mine angel, and He will look out the way before my face: and the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament, whom you desire. Behold, He comes, says the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing? Malachi 3:1-2
In this place he has foretold both the first and second advent of Christ: the first, to wit, of which he says, And He shall come suddenly into His temple; that is, into His flesh, of which He said in the Gospel, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again. John 2:19 And of the second advent he says, Behold, He comes, says the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing? But what he says, The Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the testament whom you desire, just means that even the Jews, according to the Scriptures which they read, shall seek and desire Christ. But many of them did not acknowledge that He whom they sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts, which were preoccupied with their own merits. Now what he here calls the testament, either above, where he says, My testament had been with Him, or here, where he has called Him the Angel of the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to take to be the new testament, in which the things promised are eternal, and not the old, in which they are only temporal. Yet many who are weak are troubled when they see the wicked abound in such temporal things, because they value them greatly, and serve the true God to be rewarded with them. On this account, to distinguish the eternal blessedness of the new testament, which shall be given only to the good, from the earthly felicity of the old, which for the most part is given to the bad as well, the same prophet says, You have made your words burdensome to me: yet you have said, In what have we spoken ill of You? You have said, Foolish is every one who serves God; and what profit is it that we have kept His observances, and that we have walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call the aliens blessed; yea, all that do wicked things are built up again; yea, they are opposed to God and are saved. They that feared the Lord uttered these reproaches every one to his neighbor: and the Lord hearkened and heard; and He wrote a book of remembrance before Him, for them that fear the Lord and that revere His name. Malachi 3:13-16
By that book is meant the New Testament. Finally, let us hear what follows: And they shall be an acquisition for me, says the Lord Almighty, in the day which I make; and I will choose them as a man chooses his son that serves him. And you shall return, and shall discern between the just and the unjust, and between him that serves God and him that serves Him not. For, behold, the day comes burning as an oven, and it shall burn them up; and all the aliens and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that shall come will set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty, and shall leave neither root nor branch. And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, and health shall be in His wings; and you shall go forth, and exult as calves let loose from bonds. And you shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet, in the day in which I shall do [this], says the Lord Almighty. This day is the day of judgment, of which, if God will, we shall speak more fully in its own place. (City of God, Book 18 Augustine traces the parallel courses of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world; and alludes to the oracles regarding Christ, both those uttered by the Sibyls, and those of the sacred prophets who wrote after the foundation of Rome, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and their successors.)
TERTULLIAN
Chapter 5. Of Sacrifices.
So, again, we show that sacrifices of earthly oblations and of spiritual sacrifices were predicted; and, moreover, that from the beginning the earthly were foreshown, in the person of Cain, to be those of the elder son, that is, of Israel; and the opposite sacrifices demonstrated to be those of the younger son, Abel, that is, of our people. For the elder, Cain, offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth; but the younger son, Abel, from the fruit of his ewes. God had respect unto Abel, and unto his gifts; but unto Cain and unto his gifts He had not respect. And God said to Cain, Why is your countenance fallen? Have you not — if you offer indeed aright, but do not divide aright — sinned? Hold your peace. For unto you shall your conversion be and he shall lord it over you. And then Cain said to Abel his brother, Let us go into the field: and he went away with him there, and he slew him. And then God said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper? To whom God said, The voice of the blood of your brother cries forth unto me from the earth. Wherefore cursed is the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive the blood of your brother. Groaning and trembling shall you be upon the earth, and every one who shall have found you shall slay you. From this proceeding we gather that the twofold sacrifices of the peoples were even from the very beginning foreshown. In short, when the sacerdotal law was being drawn up, through Moses, in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise; which the Lord God was about to give to the people Israel and to their brethren, in order that, on Israel’s introduction there, there should there be celebrated sacrifices and holocausts, as well for sins as for souls; and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why, accordingly, does the Spirit afterwards predict, through the prophets, that it should come to pass that in every place and in every land there should be offered sacrifices to God? As He says through the angel Malachi, one of the twelve prophets: I will not receive sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising sun unto the setting my Name has been made famous among all the nations, says the Lord Almighty: and in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name. Again, in the Psalms, David says: Bring to God, you countries of the nations — undoubtedly because unto every land the preaching of the apostles had to go out — bring to God fame and honour; bring to God the sacrifices of His name: take up victims and enter into His courts. For that it is not by earthly sacrifices, but by spiritual, that offering is to be made to God, we thus read, as it is written, An heart contribulate and humbled is a victim for God; and elsewhere, Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the Highest your vows. Thus, accordingly, the spiritual sacrifices of praise are pointed to, and an heart contribulate is demonstrated an acceptable sacrifice to God. And thus, as carnal sacrifices are understood to be reprobated — of which Isaiah withal speaks, saying, To what end is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? Says the Lord Isaiah 1:11 — so spiritual sacrifices are predicted as accepted, as the prophets announce. For, even if you shall have brought me, He says, the finest wheat flour, it is a vain supplicatory gift: a thing execrable to me; and again He says, Your holocausts and sacrifices, and the fat of goats, and blood of bulls, I will not, not even if you come to be seen by me: for who has required these things from your hands? for from the rising sun unto the setting, my Name has been made famous among all the nations, says the Lord. But of the spiritual sacrifices He adds, saying, And in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name, says the Lord. (An Answer to the Jews)
Chapter 22. The Success of the Apostles, and Their Sufferings in the Cause of the Gospel, Foretold.
You have the work of the apostles also predicted: How beautiful are the feet of them which preach the gospel of peace, which bring good tidings of good, not of war nor evil tidings. In response to which is the psalm, Their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world; that is, the words of them who carry round about the law that proceeded from Sion and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem, in order that that might come to pass which was written: They who were far from my righteousness, have come near to my righteousness and truth. When the apostles girded their loins for this business, they renounced the elders and rulers and priests of the Jews. Well, says he, but was it not above all things that they might preach the other god? Rather (that they might preach) that very self-same God, whose scripture they were with all their might fulfilling! Depart, depart, exclaims Isaiah; go out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing, that is blasphemy against Christ; Go out of the midst of her, even of the synagogue. Be separate who bear the vessels of the Lord. Isaiah 52:11 For already had the Lord, according to the preceding words (of the prophet), revealed His Holy One with His arm, that is to say, Christ by His mighty power, in the eyes of the nations, so that all the nations and the utmost parts of the earth have seen the salvation, which was from God. By thus departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the obligations and burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were fulfilling the psalm, Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us; and this indeed (they did) after that the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain devices; after that the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took their counsel together against the Lord, and against His Christ. What did the apostles thereupon suffer? You answer: Every sort of iniquitous persecutions, from men that belonged indeed to that Creator who was the adversary of Him whom they were preaching. Then why does the Creator, if an adversary of Christ, not only predict that the apostles should incur this suffering, but even express His displeasure thereat? For He ought neither to predict the course of the other god, whom, as you contend, He knew not, nor to have expressed displeasure at that which He had taken care to bring about. See how the righteous perishes, and no man lays it to heart; and how merciful men are taken away, and no man considers. For the righteous man has been removed from the evil person. Isaiah 57:1 Who is this but Christ? Come, say they, let us take away the righteous, because He is not for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to our doings). Wisdom 2:12 Premising, therefore, and likewise subjoining the fact that Christ suffered, He foretold that His just ones should suffer equally with Him — both the apostles and all the faithful in succession; and He signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spoke: The Lord said to me, Go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark Tau upon the foreheads of the men. Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic Jerusalem, in which, according to the twenty-first Psalm, the brethren of Christ or children of God would ascribe glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself addressing His Father; I will declare Your name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise unto You. For that which had to come to pass in our day in His name, and by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would be of Him. And a little afterwards He says: My praise shall be of You in the great congregation. In the sixty-seventh Psalm He says again: In the congregations bless the Lord God. So that with this agrees also the prophecy of Malachi: I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord; neither will I accept your offerings: for from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place sacrifice shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering Malachi 1:10-11 — such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns. Now, inasmuch as all these things are also found among you, and the sign upon the forehead, and the sacraments of the church, and the offerings of the pure sacrifice, you ought now to burst forth, and declare that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ. (Against Marcion, Book III)
Chapter 1. Examination of the Antitheses of Marcion, Bringing Them to the Test of Marcion’s Own Gospel. Certain True Antitheses in the Dispensations of the Old and the New Testaments. These Variations Quite Compatible with One and the Same God, Who Ordered Them.
Every opinion and the whole scheme of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now bring to the test of that very Gospel which, by his process of interpolation, he has made his own. To encourage a belief of this Gospel he has actually devised for it a sort of dower, in a work composed of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled Antitheses, and compiled with a view to such a severance of the law from the gospel as should divide the Deity into two, nay, diverse, gods — one for each Instrument, or Testament as it is more usual to call it; that by such means he might also patronize belief in the Gospel according to the Antitheses. These, however, I would have attacked in special combat, hand to hand; that is to say, I would have encountered singly the several devices of the Pontic heretic, if it were not much more convenient to refute them in and with that very gospel to which they contribute their support. Although it is so easy to meet them at once with a peremptory demurrer, yet, in order that I may both make them admissible in argument, and account them valid expressions of opinion, and even contend that they make for our side, that so there may be all the redder shame for the blindness of their author, we have now drawn out some antitheses of our own in opposition to Marcion. And indeed I do allow that one order did run its course in the old dispensation under the Creator, and that another is on its way in the new under Christ. I do not deny that there is a difference in the language of their documents, in their precepts of virtue, and in their teachings of the law; but yet all this diversity is consistent with one and the same God, even Him by whom it was arranged and also foretold. Long ago did Isaiah declare that out of Sion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem Isaiah 2:3 — some other law, that is, and another word. In short, says he, He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; Isaiah 2:4 meaning not those of the Jewish people only, but of the nations which are judged by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles, and are among themselves rebuked of their old error as soon as they have believed. And as the result of this, they beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears (which are a kind of hunting instruments) into pruning-hooks; Isaiah 2:4 that is to say, minds, which once were fierce and cruel, are changed by them into good dispositions productive of good fruit. And again: Hearken unto me, hearken unto me, my people, and you kings, give ear unto me; for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment for a light to the nations; wherefore He had determined and decreed that the nations also were to be enlightened by the law and the word of the gospel. This will be that law which (according to David also) is unblameable, because perfect, converting the soul from idols unto God. This likewise will be the word concerning which the same Isaiah says, For the Lord will make a decisive word in the land. Because the New Testament is compendiously short, and freed from the minute and perplexing burdens of the law. But why enlarge, when the Creator by the same prophet foretells the renovation more manifestly and clearly than the light itself? Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old (the old things have passed away, and new things are arising). Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring forth. Isaiah 43:18-19 So by Jeremiah: Break up for yourselves new pastures, and sow not among thorns, and circumcise yourselves in the foreskin of your heart. And in another passage: Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Jacob, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I arrested their dispensation, in order to bring them out of the land of Egypt. He thus shows that the ancient covenant is temporary only, when He indicates its change; also when He promises that it shall be followed by an eternal one. For by Isaiah He says: Hear me, and you shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, adding the sure mercies of David, Isaiah 55:3 in order that He might show that that covenant was to run its course in Christ. That He was of the family of David, according to the genealogy of Mary, He declared in a figurative way even by the rod which was to proceed out of the stem of Jesse. Isaiah 11:1 Forasmuch then as he said, that from the Creator there would come other laws, and other words, and new dispensations of covenants, indicating also that the very sacrifices were to receive higher offices, and that among all nations, by Malachi when he says: I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord, neither will I accept your sacrifices at your hands. For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place a sacrifice is offered unto my name, even a pure offering Malachi 1:10-11 — meaning simple prayer from a pure conscience — it is of necessity that every change which comes as the result of innovation, introduces a diversity in those things of which the change is made, from which diversity arises also a contrariety. For as there is nothing, after it has undergone a change, which does not become different, so there is nothing different which is not contrary. Of that very thing, therefore, there will be predicated a contrariety in consequence of its diversity, to which there accrued a change of condition after an innovation. He who brought about the change, the same instituted the diversity also; He who foretold the innovation, the same announced beforehand the contrariety likewise. Why, in your interpretation, do you impute a difference in the state of things to a difference of powers? Why do you wrest to the Creator’s prejudice those examples from which you draw your antitheses, when you may recognise them all in His sensations and affections? I will wound, He says, and I will heal; I will kill, He says again, and I will make alive Deuteronomy 32:39 — even the same who creates evil and makes peace; Isaiah 45:7 from which you are used even to censure Him with the imputation of fickleness and inconstancy, as if He forbade what He commanded, and commanded what He forbade. Why, then, have you not reckoned up the Antitheses also which occur in the natural works of the Creator, who is for ever contrary to Himself? You have not been able, unless I am misinformed, to recognise the fact, that the world, at all events, even among your people of Pontus, is made up of a diversity of elements which are hostile to one another. It was therefore your bounden duty first to have determined that the god of the light was one being, and the god of darkness was another, in such wise that you might have been able to have distinctly asserted one of them to be the god of the law and the other the god of the gospel. It is, however, the settled conviction already of my mind from manifest proofs, that, as His works and plans exist in the way of Antitheses, so also by the same rule exist the mysteries of His religion. (Ibid., Book IV)
ADDENDUM
Some Christian authors and/or apologists, particularly protestants that reject the real Presence of Christ in the eucharist, misinterpret the statements of certain early church writers as evidence that these individuals held to a merely symbolical view of the eucharistic elements. For instance, certain protestant apologists quote Tertullian’s statements that the bread and the cup are figures of Christ’s body and blood to show that this African apologist didn’t hold to the elements becoming the actual flesh and blood of the risen Lord.
This ignores the fact that these particular Christians were not using these expressions in the manner that modern folks do. By calling the eucharistic elements of bread and wine symbols, signs, figures etc., or in describing the eucharist as a spiritual sacrifice, they were not claiming that these were merely symbols or figures, or that the eucharist wasn’t an actual physical sacrifice. They meant by these terms that the figures or signs of the bread and cup signify their realities, what they actually are, namely, the flesh and blood of Christ. And by spiritual sacrifice, they meant that the eucharist is made to be the physical body and blood of Christ by a miraculous act of the Holy Spirit, without whom the elements would remain merely bread and wine.
The late protestant church historian Philip Schaff made this very point in respect to Tertullian’s use of the expression figure, even as he attempted to explain away or tone done the church’s view of the eucharist as Christ’s physical sacrifice:
1. THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRAMENT.
The Didache of the Apostles contains eucharistic prayers, but no theory of the eucharist. Ignatius speaks of this sacrament in two passages, only by way of allusion, but in very strong, mystical terms, calling it the flesh of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, and the consecrated bread a medicine of immortality and an antidote of spiritual death.412 This view, closely connected with his high-churchly tendency in general, no doubt involves belief in the real presence, and ascribes to the holy Supper an effect on spirit and body at once, with reference to the future resurrection, but is still somewhat obscure, and rather an expression of elevated feeling than a logical definition.
The same may be said of Justin Martyr, when he compares the descent of Christ into the consecrated elements to his incarnation for our redemption. 413
Irenaeus says repeatedly, in combating the Gnostic Docetism,414 that bread and wine in the sacrament become, by the presence of the Word of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the body and blood of Christ and that the receiving of them strengthens soul and body (the germ of the resurrection body) unto eternal life. Yet this would hardly warrant our ascribing either transubstantiation or consubstantiation to Irenaeus. For in another place he calls the bread and wine, after consecration, “antitypes,” implying the continued distinction of their substance from the body and blood of Christ.415 This expression in itself, indeed, might be understood as merely contrasting here the upper, as the substance, with the Old Testament passover, its type; as Peter calls baptism the antitype of the saving water of the flood.416 But the connection, and the usus loquendi of the earlier Greek fathers, require us to take the term antitype, a the sense of type, or, more precisely, as the antithesis of archetype. The bread and wine represent and exhibit the body and blood of Christ as the archetype, and correspond to them, as a copy to the original. In exactly the same sense it is said in Heb. 9:24—comp. 8:5—that the earthly sanctuary is the antitype, that is the copy, of the heavenly archetype. Other Greek fathers also, down to the fifth century, and especially the author of the Apostolical Constitutions, call the consecrated elements “antitypes” (sometimes, like Theodoretus, “types”) of the body and blood of Christ.417
A different view, approaching nearer the Calvinistic or Reformed, we meet with among the African fathers. Tertullian makes the words of institution: Hoc est corpus meum, equivalent to: figura corporis mei, to prove, in opposition to Marcion’s docetism, the reality of the body of Jesus—a mere phantom being capable of no emblematic representation418 This involves, at all events, an essential distinction between the consecrated elements and the body and blood of Christ in the Supper. Yet Tertullian MUST NOT be understood as teaching A MERELY symbolical presence of Christ; for in other places he speaks, according to his general realistic turn, in almost materialistic language of an eating of the body of Christ, and extends the participation even to the body of the receiver.419 Cyprian likewise appears to favor a symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, yet not so clearly. The idea of the real presence would have much better suited his sacerdotal conception of the ministry. In the customary mixing of the wine with water he sees a type of the union of Christ with his church,420 and, on the authority of John 6:53, holds the communion of the Supper indispensable to salvation. The idea of a sacrifice comes out very boldly in Cyprian.
The Alexandrians are here, as usual, decidedly spiritualistic. Clement twice expressly calls the wine a symbol or an allegory of the blood of Christ, and says, that the communicant receives not the physical, but the spiritual blood, the life, of Christ; as, indeed, the blood is the life of the body. Origen distinguishes still more definitely the earthly elements from the heavenly bread of life, and makes it the whole design of the supper to feed the soul with the divine word.421 Applying his unsound allegorical method here, he makes the bread represent the Old Testament, the wine the New, and the breaking of the bread the multiplication of the divine word! But these were rather private views for the initiated, and can hardly be taken as presenting the doctrine of the Alexandrian church.
We have, therefore, among the ante-Nicene fathers, three different views, an Oriental, a North-African, and an Alexandrian. The first view, that of Ignatius and Irenaeus, agrees most nearly with the mystical character of the celebration of the eucharist, and with the catholicizing features of the age.
2. THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRIFICE.
This point is very important in relation to the doctrine, and still more important in relation to the cultus and life, of the ancient church. The Lord’s Supper was UNIVERSALLY regarded not only as a sacrament, but also as a sacrifice,422 the true and eternal sacrifice of the new covenant, superseding all the provisional and typical sacrifices of the old; taking the place particularly of the passover, or the feast of the typical redemption from Egypt. This eucharistic sacrifice, however, the ante-Nicene fathers conceived not as an unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross, but simply as a commemoration and renewed appropriation of that atonement, and, above all, a thank-offering of the whole church for all the favors of God in creation and redemption. Hence the current name itself—eucharist; which denoted in the first place the prayer of thanksgiving, but afterwards the whole rite.423
The consecrated elements were regarded in a twofold light, as representing at once the natural and the spiritual gifts of God, which culminated in the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Hence the eucharistic prayer, like that connected with the typical passover, related at the same time to creation and redemption, which were the more closely joined in the mind of the church for their dualistic separation by the Gnostics. The earthly gifts of bread and wine were taken as types and pledges of the heavenly gifts of the same God, who has both created and redeemed the world.
Upon this followed the idea of the self-sacrifice of the worshipper himself, the sacrifice of renewed self-consecration to Christ in return for his sacrifice on the cross, and also the sacrifice of charity to the poor. Down to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the eucharistic elements were presented as a thank-offering by the members of the congregation themselves, and the remnants went to the clergy and he poor. In these gifts the people yielded themselves as a priestly race and a living thank-offering to God, to whom they owed all the blessings alike of providence and of grace. In later times the priest alone offered the sacrifice. But even the Roman Missal retains a recollection of the ancient custom in the plural form, “We offer,” and in the sentence: “All you, both brethren and sisters, pray that my sacrifice and your sacrifice, which is equally yours as well as mine, may be meat for the Lord.”
This subjective offering of the whole congregation on the ground of the objective atoning sacrifice of Christ is the real centre of the ancient Christian worship, and particularly of the communion. It thus differed both from the later Catholic mass, which has changed the thank-offering into a sin-offering, the congregational offering into a priest offering; and from the common Protestant cultus, which, in opposition to the Roman mass, has almost entirely banished the idea of sacrifice from the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, except in the customary offerings for the poor.
The writers of the second century keep strictly within the limits of the notion of a congregational thank-offering. Thus Justin says expressly, prayers and thanksgivings alone are the true and acceptable sacrifices, which the Christians offer. Irenaeus has been brought as a witness for the Roman doctrine, only on the ground of a false reading.424 The African fathers, in the third century, who elsewhere incline to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this point the later Roman Catholic idea of a sin-offering; especially Cyprian, the steadfast advocate of priesthood and of episcopal authority.425 The ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar, are intimately connected, and a Judaizing or paganizing conception of one must extend to all. (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II, CHAPTER V: CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.; bold and capital emphasis mine)
Note the contradiction in Schaff’s statements, as he attempts to explain away the eucharist as the physical sacrifice of Christ offered to God by believers in union with the Holy Spirit. He claims that the Catholic mass changed it from a thank-offering to a sin-offering but then states in the very next paragraph that this view of the eucharist being a sin-offering was already believed on and held by the African fathers including Cyprian in the third century!
Now contrast the foregoing with the statements made by this other renowned protestant scholar and church historian:
If such was the Church’s understanding of baptism, the eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century, IF NOT EARLIER. Malachi’s prediction (1, 10 f.) that the Lord would reject the Jewish sacrifices and instead would have ‘a pure offering’ made to Him by the Gentiles in every place was EARLY seized upon by Christians AS A PROPHECY OF THE EUCHARIST. The Didache indeed actually applies2 the term thusia, or sacrifice, to the eucharist, and the idea is presupposed by Clement in the parallel he discovers3 between the Church’s ministers and the Old Testament priests and levites, as in his description4 of the function of the former as the offering of gifts (cf. tous … prosenegkontas ta dora). Ignatius’s references to ‘one altar, just as there is one bishop’, reveals that he too thought in sacrificial terms. Justin speaks6 of ‘all the sacrifices in this name which Jesus appointed to be performed, viz. in the eucharist of the bread and the cup, and which are celebrated in every place by Christians’. Not only here but elsewhere7 too, he identifies ‘the bread of the eucharist, and the cup likewise of the eucharist’, with the sacrifice foretold by Malachi. For Irenaeus8 the eucharist is ‘the new oblation of the new covenant’, which the Church has received from the apostles and offers to God throughout the whole world.
It was natural for early Christians to think of the eucharist as a sacrifice. The fulfilment of prophecy demanded a solemn Christian offering, and the rite itself was wrapped in the sacrificial atmosphere with which our Lord invested the Last Supper. The words of institution, ‘Do this’ (touto poiete), must have been charged with sacrificial overtones for second century ears; Justin at any rate understood9 them to mean, ‘Offer this’. If we inquire what the sacrifice was supposed to consist in, the Didache for its part provides no clear answer. Justin, however, makes it plain10 that the bread and the wine themselves were the ‘pure offering’ foretold by Malachi. Even if he holds1 that ‘prayers and thanksgivings’ (eucharistiai) are the only God-pleasing sacrifices, we must remember that he uses2 the term ‘thanksgiving’ as technically equivalent to ‘the eucharistized bread and wine’. The bread and wine, moreover, are offered ‘for a memorial (eis anamnesin) of the passion’, a phrase which in view of his identification of them with the Lord’s body and blood implies MUCH MORE than an act of purely spiritual recollection. Altogether it would seem that, while his language is not fully explicit, Justin is feeling his way to the conception of the eucharist as the offering of the Saviour’s passion. Irenaeus’s thought3 moves along rather different lines and does not link the eucharist so closely with Christ’s atoning death. When the bread and wine are offered to God, he thinks of them primarily as first-fruits of the earth which Christ has instructed us to offer, not because the Father needs them, but that we may not be found unfruitful or ungrateful. This is ‘the oblation of the Church’, and is well-pleasing to God as the expression of a sincere and faithful disposition. But the idea of the passion pervades this approach too, for Irenaeus identifies the gifts with Christ’s body and blood and describes them, in language reminiscent of the Lord’s words at the Last Supper, as ‘the oblation of the new covenant’.
This leads us to consider the significance attached to the elements themselves in this period. From the Didache4 we gather that the bread and wine are ‘holy’; they are spiritual food and drink communicating immortal life. Ignatius roundly declares5 that ‘the eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised’. The bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup His blood.6 Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes7 it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. Because the eucharist brings Christians into union with their Lord, it is the great bond between them;8 and since it mediates communion with Christ, it is a medicine which procures immortality (pharmakon athanasias), an antidote against death which enables us to live in the Lord forever.1 Justin actually refers to the change. ‘We do not receive these’, he writes,2 ‘as common bread or common drink. But just as our Saviour Jesus Christ was made flesh through the Word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food which has been eucharistized by the word of prayer from Him (that food which by process of assimilation nourishes our flesh and blood) is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.’ So Irenaeus teaches3 that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity. Like Justin, too, he seems to postulate a change, for he remarks:4 ‘Just as the bread, which comes from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but eucharist, being composed of two elements, a terrestrial one and a celestial, so our bodies are no longer commonplace when they receive the eucharist, since they have the hope of resurrection to eternity’. (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [Adam and Charles Black, London, Fourth Edition 1968], pp. 196-198; bold and capital emphasis mine)
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