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To: ealgeone; stonehouse01; Carpe Cerevisi
And you would be wrong...more catholic propaganda you've been lead to believe.

Another Catholic critic who can copy from CARM and not know that the original source has the ECF's taken badly out of context. What a shocker!

3.Augustine says . . ."

Augustine left us 40 years' worth of writing and you think his views on the Eucharist can be extracted from one snippet? Here I'll quote from two prominent church historianas:

There are certainly passages in his writings which give a superficial justification to [contrary views], but a balanced verdict must agree that he accepted the current realism. Thus, preaching on 'the sacrament of the Lord's table' to newly baptized persons, he remarked [Serm 227], 'That bread which you see on the altar, sanctified by the Word of God, is Christ's body. That cup, or rather the contents of that cup, sanctified by the Word of God, is Christ's blood. By these elements the Lord Christ willed to convey His body and blood, which He shed for us.'
'You know,' he said in another sermon [Serm 9:14], 'what you are eating and what you are drinking, or rather, whom you are eating and whom you are drinking.' Commenting on the Psalmist's bidding that we should adore the footstool of His feet, he pointed out [Enarr in Ps 98:9] that this must be the earth. But since to adore the earth would be blasphemous, he concluded that the word must mysteriously signify the flesh which Christ took from the earth and which He gave to us to eat. Thus it was the Eucharistic body which demanded adoration. Again, he explained [Enarr in Ps 33:1:10] the sentence, 'He was carried in his hands' (LXX of 1 Sam 21:13), which in the original describes David's attempt to allay Achish's suspicions, as referring to the sacrament: 'Christ was carried in his hands when he offered his very body and said "This is my body"'.
One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements with the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he shared the realism held by almost all his contemporaries and predecessors. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 446-47.

And Protestant historian Philip Schaff concurs. Speaking of Augustine, he writes:

"Yet this great church teacher at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper. He says of the martyrs: 'They have drunk the blood of Christ and have shed their own blood for Christ.' He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements." Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, p. 500.

2.Clement of Alexandria

Clement (much like Origen, fellow Alexandrian) employed an allegorical style of Biblical interpretation which complicates understanding his views on the Eucharist. But Clement compares Jesus's providing to us His flesh and blood to a mother nourishing her child:

Calling her children about her,[the Church] nourishes them with holy milk, that is, with the Infant Word...The Word is everything to a child: both Father and Mother, both Instructor and Nurse. "Eat my flesh," He says, "and drink my blood." The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutriments. He delivers over His flesh, and pours out His blood; and nothing is lacking for the growth of His children. O incredible mystery! (Instructor of Children 1:6:42,1,3).

And with Clement (like Tertullian), care needs to be taken to understand words like "symbol" and "figure" in their 3rd century sense, not the 16th century (and later) sense used by Protestants. (More on that below).

4.Eusebius (263-339) . .

In Proof of the Gospel, Book I, Eusebius states the Eucharist is a true, propitiatory sacrifice which has replaced the Hebrew sacrifices of old:

While then the better, the great and worthy and divine sacrifice was not yet available for men, it was necessary for |57 them by the offering of animals to pay a ransom for their own life, and this was fitly a life that represented their own nature. Thus did the holy men of old, anticipating by the Holy Spirit that a holy victim, dear to God and great, would one day come for men, as the offering for the sins of the world, believing that as prophets they must perform in symbol his sacrifice, and shew forth in type what was yet to be. But when that which was perfect was come, in accordance with the predictions of the prophets, the former sacrifices ceased at once because of the better and true Sacrifice.
* * *
Since then according to the witness of the prophets the great and precious ransom has been found for Jews and Greeks alike, the propitiation for the whole world, the life given for the life of all men, the pure offering for every stain and sin, the Lamb of God, the holy sheep dear to God, the Lamb that was foretold, by Whose inspired and mystic teaching all we Gentiles have procured the forgive ness of our former sins, and such Jews as hope in Him |58 are freed from the curse of Moses, daily celebrating His memorial, the remembrance of His Body and Blood, and are admitted to a greater sacrifice than that of the ancient law, we do not reckon it right to fall back upon the first beggarly elements, which are symbols and likenesses but do not contain the truth itself.
* * *
So, then, we sacrifice and offer incense: On the one hand when we celebrate the Memorial of His great Sacrifice according to the Mysteries He delivered to us, and bring to God the Eucharist for our salvation with holy hymns and prayers; while on the other we consecrate ourselves to Him alone and to the Word His High Priest, devoted to Him in body and soul.

The Eucharist, according to Eusebius, is presented "for our salvation." The salvific effect of the sacrament isn't something I hear being expressed by Protestants. Eusebius is quite Catholic in outlook.

6. Tertullian

Tertullian, like Irenaeus before him, makes the Real Presence in the Eucharist an argument against the Gnotic view that the Christ did not come in the flesh:

"Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4.)

As noted, in construing words like "figure," Protestants tend to anachronistically employ a more modernist meaning. On this point I again cite to Kelly:

Occasionally these writers use language which has been held to imply that, for all its realist sound, their use of the terms 'body' and 'blood' may after all be merely symbolical. Tertullian, for example, refers [E.g. C. Marc. 3,19; 4,40] to the bread as 'a figure' (figura) of Christ's body, and once speaks [Ibid I,14: cf. Hippolytus, apost. trad. 32,3] of 'the bread by which He represents (repraesentat) His very body.' Yet we should be cautious about interpreting such expressions in modern fashion. According to ancient modes of thought a mysterious relationship existed between the thing symbolized and its symbol, figure or type; the symbol in some sense was the thing symbolized. Again, the verb -repraesentare-, in Tertullian's vocabulary [Cf. ibid 4,22; de monog. 10], retained its original significance of 'to make present.'
* * *
"In fact, he is trying, with the aid of the concept of -figura-, to rationalize to himself the apparent contradiction between (a) the dogma that the elements are NOW Christ's body and blood, and (b) the empirical fact that for sensation they remain bread and wine." Early Christian Doctrines, page 212)

So if you're wrong on your "all inclusive" statement regarding the ECFs on the Eucharist....why should we believe anything else you say.

Well, here you're the one who's wrong. Does your "why should we believe anything else you say?" position apply to yourself as well? I eagerly await your answer . . .

476 posted on 02/23/2015 10:18:21 AM PST by CpnHook
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To: CpnHook
>And you would be wrong...more catholic propaganda you've been lead to believe.<

Another Catholic critic who can copy from CARM and not know that the original source has the ECF's taken badly out of context. What a shocker!

That's the point with the ECFs....they've been picked over like fruit in a grocery store.

They contradict themselves on a host of issues.

477 posted on 02/23/2015 10:55:36 AM PST by ealgeone
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