DAY 192
CHALLENGE
“The Church Fathers sometimes used language implying the Eucharist was symbolic, so they couldn’t have believed in the Real Presence.”
DEFENSE
The concept of a symbol means something different today from what it did in the time of the early Church.
We have already seen that the Church Fathers were realists in their understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist (see Day 120). How- ever, Protestant historian J.N.D. Kelly writes: “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 to the bread as ‘a figure’ ( figura) of Christ’s body, and once speaks of ‘the bread by which he represents (repraesentat) his very body’ (Early Christian Doctrines, 212).
However, Kelly warns: “Yet we should be cautious about interpreting such expressions in a 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” (ibid.).
Thus Tertullian’s statement that the Eucharist “represents” Christ’s body must be understood in its ancient context:
Again, the verb repraesentare, in Tertullian’s vocabulary, retained its original significance of “to make present.” All that his language re- ally suggests is that, while accepting the equation of the elements with the body and blood, he remains conscious of the sacramental distinction between them. 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 (ibid.).
Given the shift in how the concept of symbol is understood, one should not take language suggesting symbolism as precluding a realist understanding in the Fathers of Christ’s presence. Indeed, the Church today uses the language of signs in connection with the Eucharist, though it firmly teaches the Real Presence. Thus the Catechism states: “The essential signs of the Eucharistic sacrament are wheat bread and grape wine, on which the blessing of the Holy Spirit is invoked and the priest pronounces the words of consecration spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper” (CCC 1412).