Dunkin' the early church in more revisionism

By Eric Giunta

As a law student, I'm fairly used to debating my peers on a whole host of issues legal, political, moral, and spiritual. And it's always frustrating when my opponent refuses to engage my position for what it is, and feels he must score cheap shots to an audience who largely sympathizes with him, by refuting a straw man, a caricature which is so obviously fallacious as to be indefensible.

And so it is with Mr. Tim Dunkin's latest attempt at early Christian revisionism. There's actually quite a bit of common ground between Dunkin and myself, though one wouldn't know it by reading his piece, which completely misstates the positions I articulated in my rebuttal to his earlier article. I never claimed that the early Church subscribed precisely to the doctrine of transubstantiation — a term which Mr. Dunkin and other Fundamentalist polemicists take delight in fetishizing, evoking in the minds of their sola scriptura co-religionists all sorts of fantasies rooted in conspiracy theories of an ignorant Christian flock goaded by Machiavellian, pagan-sympathizing pastors "straying further and further away from Biblical truths, as the centuries went by." This is precisely the narrative put forward by Dan Brown, Michael Baigent, and the folks at the Jesus Seminar, except that they at least take this mythology to its logical conclusion, assuming that the Apostles themselves were the first to suffer from a sort of "Great Apostasy," forgetting and then manipulating the true teachings of the historical Jesus. When Protestant apologists set out to refute these historical narratives, they are pulling the weeds they themselves have sowed for half a millennium.

At least the secularist narrative is a little more internally coherent! The Protestant Fundamentalist would have us believe that succeeding generations of Christians from the Apostles drifted further and further away from Biblical truth, when in fact the Christian Bible itself is a product of centuries of post-apostolic doctrinal development. I don't know what year Mr.Dunkin assigns to the early Church's having gone completely off-the-rails, but the New Testament did not achieve anything like a definitive composition until some time after the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity as its official creed. If one regards the early centuries of the Church as one of gradual apostasy, then one ought to at least be consistent and regard the New Testament itself as a product of an apostate Church. [1]

Dunkin objects to my comparing doctrinal development on the Eucharist with that of the Trinity, insisting as he does that "[t]he Bible itself provided the knowledge of this doctrine [i.e., the Trinity] to these early Christians. Councils were largely superfluous for anything other than providing a precisely defined creedal statement about the doctrine." Far be it from me to try to convince my readers that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is unscriptural, but to claim that the substance (no pun intended) of this teaching was delivered ready-made by the Apostles, and that the Christological councils of the 4th and 5th centuries did nothing more than dress them up with fancy terminology betrays, in my opinion, a gross bias regarding a teaching that is by no means perspicuous when the Scriptures are approached without any theological preconceptions. [2] The tendency of "Biblical Unitarianism" to rear its ugly head in Protestant (and other) circles testifies to this inconvenient fact. The Scriptures are paradoxical in their teaching on the subject, and it is by no means self-evident how apparently conflicting proof-texts are to be reconciled. Catholic Christianity won the day in the Christological debates (a triumph I happen to believe was providential), and most Christians today stand on the shoulders of the giants who navigated these complex rivers for us.

Christian teaching on the Eucharist parallels almost exactly Trinitarian doctrinal development. The great bulk of the Christian world does trace the doctrine of the Real Presence (or, if you would, "transubstantiation") to the Bible. It goes without saying that Mr Dunkin does not subscribe to the traditional exegesis.

I see no need to take up more space in RenewAmerica's server rehashing the points I've made earlier in this debate. I believe I have demonstrated a sufficiently nuanced understanding of early Christian teaching on the Eucharist, and that I can survive unscathed any and all accusations that I have anachronistically imputed a "transubstantionist" doctrine onto the early Fathers.

It is precisely this nuance which Mr. Dunkin lacks, but which is not wanting in the great majority of Protestant historians of the early Church. To accuse these staunch sons of the Reformation of having sold out to a "traditional account" concocted by Catholic apologists is ridiculous on its face, and completely ignores the fact that the doctrine of the Real Presence is subscribed to by every Christian church which predates the Protestant Reformation, churches which have never fallen under the cultural ambit of the Roman Patriarchate and the Western Church. Dunkin's narrative would leave us to believe it was just a coincidence that every pre-Reformed church in the world shares virtually every article of doctrine in common, or that this theological hegemony was otherwise orchestrated by a conniving Papacy, something which the historical facts simply do not bear out. Unfortunately, it's difficult to convincingly present this history in the same of an editorial; I have done my best to trace elements of it in the course of this exchange, either in the main text of these pieces, or in hyperlinks and footnotes.

Dunkin is correct that the Fathers were a diverse group of men, who differed (sometimes considerably) on finer (and sometimes more substantive) points of doctrine. And he is correct that Catholic polemicists often understate these differences, just as Protestants tend to understate the imperspicuity of Sacred Scripture.

But these differences should not be overstated. Yes, the early Church was riddled with denominationalism. But no Christian communion today is descended from the Judaisers, Gnostics, Montanists, Sabellianists, Arians, Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, Nestorians, Monophysites, [3] Iconoclasts, or Cathari, and no Protestant today would want to identify with any of these! Those men regarded as the Church Fathers lived and died in the communion that went by the name Catholic (or Orthodox), at a time when doctrinal unity was considered essential, even while theological minutiae were still to be developed. The Fathers recognized themselves as being a part of the same communion, in a way that today's Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Baptists and hundreds of others simply do not.

I stand by my earlier assertions that the Fathers' teachings on the Eucharist were near-unanimously realist, even though these same Fathers struggled to explain how it is that the bread and wine were changed into Christ's Body and Blood while retaining the appearance and taste of ordinary bread and wine. It's not strained at all to realize this tension in the Fathers' Eucharistic teaching, nor am I "reading transubstantiation into" these teachings when I point out that there are very logical reasons to explain the Fathers' use of the terms symbol and memorial/remembrance when referring to the consecrated elements.

Even today's Catholics believe and profess that the sacraments are symbols! How many times do I need to repeat this before it sinks in? Don't take my word for this. Take a look at the old Catholic Encyclopedia's article on "Sacraments", and see just how often the word "symbol" is applied to the Catholic understanding. As Catholics understand it, the sacraments are a unique kind of symbol, insofar as they actually convey the graces which they signify, while the things they signify remain invisible to the senses (hence the symbolic character).

That great, sainted luminary of Anglicanism's Oxford Movement, the Rev. Edward Bouverie Pusey, wrote a major treatise on this very subject, titled The Doctrine of the Real Presence as Contained in the Fathers from the Death of St John the Evangelist to the Fourth General Council. I quote the following extract at length, in the interests of fairness: Rev. Pusey rightly takes aim at both Protestant and Catholic polemicists who overstate their cases, and his assertions are backed up with copious documentation:

The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist having two parts, an outward and an inward, and the outward part having been instituted by our Blessed Lord with a certain relation to the inward, and gifted with a certain significance of it, nothing is more natural than that the titles, type, antitype, symbol, figure, image, should be given to the outward part. S. Augustine says of Sacraments (in his well-known words), "If Sacraments had not some likeness to the things whereof they are Sacraments, they would not be Sacraments at all; but from this likeness they for the most part also receive the names of the things themselves."

There is, then, no even seeming difficulty in taking these titles, as used by the Fathers, in their natural and obvious sense. The Calvinist party inferred wrongly, that the Fathers who used these terms, thought, with themselves, that the outward or visible part was an emblem — not of the inward part or thing signified, but of an absent thing. Roman Catholic controversialists denied that there was any outward existing part, which was a symbol. The Roman controversialists assumed that a thing which itself had no real substance, and so itself had no being, was the type, or representation of another. The Calvinists assumed that, itself existing, it was a type of something absent. Both, without real foundation, and against the natural meaning of the words. But with this exception, the words of Cardinal Perron correspond with those of our [Anglican] Catechism. "The Sacrament of the altar has two natures, one outward, accidental, and visible; the other, inward, essential, invisible. According to the former, it is a sign, figure, antitype ; according to the latter, it is verity, fulness, reality." Now, if by this, it was only intended to affirm that the outward part was in itself nothing, and that of which it was the vehicle was all, there would be nothing which we could not accept. It is alike an assumption to say that the outward symbol is the figure of an absent Body of our Lord, or that itself is not. Rather, the Eucharistic elements are an outward reality, figuring to us that hidden reality, which sacramentally they convey to us. {pp. 94-95}

The traditional Christian understanding does reconcile the paradoxes in the Fathers' Eucharistic language, while that of symbolist revisionists requires one to ignore completely the Fathers' consistent realism. Eusebius of Caesarea in numerous places employs realist language concerning the Eucharist, insisting it is the Savior's true Body and Blood, [4] though one wouldn't know it reading the likes of Tim Dunkin and William Webster.

All this applies more or less to the word memorial as well. I documented, earlier in these exchanges, just how loaded the word memorial is when used in antiquity. In both Judaism and in Platonism, the event remembered is in some sense actively partaken in, and it is in this sense that Catholic and Orthodox continue to regard the Eucharist as a memorial. The Catholic Catechism repeatedly refers to the Eucharist as a memorial, though again one would not know it reading Dunkin.

One wonders why Dunkin does not expose his readers to St Justin Martyr's fuller teaching on the Eucharist:

And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood;" and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn. {Source}

The comparison with the rites of Mithras are telling, as that god's devotees believed they consumed the flesh of their god when they partook of their communal meals. St Justin rightly regards this as a diabolic imitation.

I could go on, but I don't want to beat a dead horse. The Fathers quite clearly understood that there was a sense in which the Eucharist was a symbol and more than a symbol, in which the elements changed and yet did not change, and they clearly understood that the Eucharist really made present the Thing remembered. As in the early Church, so today: Catholic Christianity is the great both/and, holding together the via media of Christian orthodoxy while confounding the simplistic tendencies of faddish sectarians to embrace one Christian truth at the expense of another. These inclinations make for bad politics, and even worse theology.

NOTES:





© Eric Giunta