Adolf Harnack · 16 of 19

Chapter IV. The Mysteries and Kindred Subjects. · Part 2

As regards the sacrificial aspect of the holy action, the most important development consists in the advance made in the transformation of the idea of sacrifice, for which the way had been already prepared in the third century. The offering of the elements, the memorial celebration of the sacrifice of Christ in the sacrifice of the Supper, the offering of the gifts (προσφέρειν τὰ δώρα) and the offering of the memorial of the body (προσφέρειν τὴν μνήμην τοῦ σώματος) was changed into an offering of the body, (τὸ σῶμα τροσφέρειν) a memorial sacrifice. “The sacrifice of His Son on the Cross was, as it were, put before God’s eyes and recalled to memory in order that its effects might be communicated to the Church.” Thus, owing to the influence of the mysteries and in consequence of the development of the priestly notion, the idea crept in that the body and blood of Christ were constantly offered to God afresh in order to propitiate Him. And the more uncertain men became as to God’s feelings, and the more and estranged from God they felt themselves to be, the more readily they conceived of the Supper as a real renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ and of His saving death. Christians had formerly made it their boast that the death of Christ had put an end to every sort of outward sacrifice; they had spoken of the “bloodless and rational and gentle sacrifice” (ἄναιμος καὶ λογικὴ καὶ προσηνὴς θυσία) or of the “immaterial and mental sacrifice” (θυσία ἀσώματος καὶ νοερά). These modes of expression continued to be used in the third and fourth centuries, but the desire for a sensuous expiatory sacrifice, which had been present, though in a hidden form, at an early date, became stronger and stronger, and thus “flesh and blood”—namely, the flesh and blood of Christ—were described as sacrificial offerings. Thus men had once more a bloody sacrifice, though indeed without visible blood, and what it seemed not to have certainly accomplished when offered once, was to be accomplished by a repetition of it. And thus, as the act regarded as a was connected in the closest way with the , and appeared as a mysterious, real representation of it, as something to be enjoyed by the believer, so, regarded as a sacrifice, it was now finally brought into the most intimate connection with the death of Christ, but in such a way that in it the saving sacrificial death likewise appeared to be continued, i.e., repeated. Is it possible to give the sacramental act a loftier position than this? Assuredly not! And yet it was nothing but pure Paganism which had brought this about. Since these developments took place most of the Churches of Christendom in the East and West have been fettered and enslaved by a “doctrine of the Supper” and a “ritual of the Supper”, which must be reckoned amongst the most serious hindrances which the Gospel has experienced in the course of its history. Neither the calling out of elevated feelings, nor the superabundance of intellectual force, of acuteness and “philosophy” which has been expended in connection with this, can undo the mischief which has been incalculable and which is still going on. And as in the fifth and sixth centuries the Supper was conceived of as the resultant of the system of dogma as a whole (the and the Incarnation), and was supposed to be equivalent to it, and to give a lively representation of it, so the same is still the case at the present day. The “doctrine” of the Supper has been treated in such a way as in the first place to sanction the dogma of the Incarnation, and in the second place to gather up to a point the entire confessional system of doctrine and the conception of the Church. In the whole history of religions there is probably no second example of such a transformation, extension, demoralisation and narrowing of a simple and sacred institution!

Sure and logical as was the course of the development of the ritual and doctrine of the Supper in the Greek Church, no dogma in the strict sense of the word was set up, because there was no controversy unless about points of no importance. But just for this very reason the doctrinal pronouncements scarcely ever get beyond the stage of unfathomable contradictions and insoluble oracles. Christians felt so comfortable in the darkness of the mystery; they laid hold of this or the other extravagant form of expression without being afraid of being corrected or being forced to pay respect to a fixed form of words sanctioned by ecclesiastical usage. Anything that sounded pious and edifying, profound and mysterious, could be freely used in connection with the mystery. And since the words which were used in this connection, such as spirit (πνεῦμα), spiritually (πνευματικῶς), flesh (σάρξ), body (σῶμα) had a three-fold and a manifold meaning in ecclesiastical usage, since Scripture itself supplied various allegories in connection with this matter, using flesh of Christ as equal to the Church, flesh of Christ as equal to His words, etc., since John VI. as compared with the words of institution supplied endless scope for speculation and rhetoric, since the consequences and the terminology of the dogma of the Incarnation were on the same lines,—and in addition, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and certain ideas of the Church,—since finally the sacramental and sacrificial elements were at one time kept strictly separate and at another ran into one another, the utterances of the Greek Fathers in reference to the Supper constitute as a rule the most forbidding portions of their works. But to give a logical solution and orderly reproduction of their thoughts is not at all the historian’s business, for in attempting such a task he would constantly be in danger of missing the meaning of the Fathers. For this reason we here renounce any such attempt. It will be sufficient to note the tendency and progress of the development in the Fathers who are to be referred to in what follows. That the increasingly complex form taken by doctrine was of no advantage to real religion may be inferred from the one fact that the effects of the Supper were always described in an absolutely vague fashion. Nor did the θεώσις, that process to which was attached this high-sounding name, really mean anything, for it was impossible to understand it in any serious sense. The idea that freedom was the basis of all that was good, was in the way of this. This θεώσις, which is experienced in imagination, threatened, in the case of the Greeks themselves, to change into a mere play of fancy; for as soon as they realised that they were moral beings, they thought of nothing else save of the exalted God, of His demand that they should renounce the world and do good, and of the duty which lay upon man of living a holy life in order to die a blessed death. For this very reason they were also unable to reach any complete confidence in the promise of the forgiveness of sins given in the Supper. In place of this, however, religious materialism went to absurd lengths, while at the same time the ascetic theosoph was always free respectfully to ignore the whole transaction.

Only a few hints regarding the course taken by the development of the doctrine can fitly be given here: Origen supplies the starting-point. “In his view the eucharistic body was only the Word of God or of the Logos as being a substitute for his appearance in the flesh; the shew-bread was for him the type of the Word in the old ; for as this was placed, as it were, before the eyes of God as a propitiatory memorial object, so the Church also puts a bread before God which has a great propitiatory power—namely, the commemoration, the word regarding His passion and death with which Christ introduced and founded the Supper. But the bread of blessing was in his view the symbol only of this word, only of His eucharistic body, but not of His body offered up on the Cross, and if he does once call the latter “the typical and symbolic body”, he did this only in the sense referred to. This is just what is peculiar and characteristic in his standpoint, that whenever he speaks of the Supper or indeed in a more general sense of the eating of the flesh or of the drinking of the blood of Christ, he does this without any reference to the body which He had as man or to the blood which flowed in the veins of this body.” The body and blood of Christ are knowledge, life, and immortality, not, however, as a mere thought or as a symbol, but in inexpressible reality. In Eusebius we already note an advance, and in fact in the “Demonstratio” and in the work “de eccles. theologia” he has several new categories. In his case already the offering of the memorial of the body (μνήμην τοῦ σώματος προσφέρειν) passes over into the offering of the body (τὸ σῶμα προσφέρειν). He has the propitiatory memorial sacrifice. But from the sacramental point of view the elements are still for him symbols of the mystical body of Christ, i.e., of His word: only from the sacrificial point of view do they already possess the value of mysterious symbols of the actual body, the body which was once offered up. It is impossible to extract a doctrine from the confused statements of Athanasius, nor will it do to make him a “symbolist”. Probably, however, Athanasius comes nearer to Origen in his conception of the Supper than in any other part of his doctrine. The statement of Basil (ep. 8, c. 4) is genuinely Origenist: “We eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood in that by His Incarnation and His life which was manifest to the senses, we become partakers of the Logos and of wisdom. For he described His whole mystical appearance as flesh and blood and thereby indicated the doctrine which is based on practical, physical, and theological science, and by which the soul is nourished and is meanwhile prepared for the vision of the truly existent.” But the Cappadocians likewise had already advocated a theurgy of the most palpable kind—in all the Fathers the spiritualistic amplifications of the doctrine occur, always with reference to John VI. As regards the doctrine of the Supper, “Realism” and Real Presence of the true body of Christ (or transubstantiation) are for us at the present day equivalent. In ancient times, however, there was a “realism” which had no reference whatever to that real presence, but which on the contrary regarded a spiritual mystical something as really present. Hence the controversy on the part of historians of dogma and of ecclesiastical parties regarding the doctrine of the Supper held by the Fathers. They are “Symbolists” in respect of the real presence of the true body; indeed as regards this they are in a way not even symbolists, since they had not that body in their minds at all. But they know of a mystical body of Christ which is for them absolutely real—it is spirit, life, immortality, and they transferred this as real to the celebration of the Supper. According to Macarius too, Christ gives Himself and the soul to be eaten spiritually (hom. 27, 17), but this spiritual eating is the enjoyment of something actual. Macarius, however, while he had the individual soul in view always thought of the Church; for to this noteworthy Greek mystic who, moreover, knew something of sin and , as to Methodius, the soul is the microcosm of the Church and the Church is the macrocosm of the soul. But the statements made by him and Methodius in respect to this point, were not further followed out. The influence of the sacrificial conception of the consecrated elements, as being the antitypes of the broken body of Christ, on the sacramental conception, can be traced already in Eustathius and in the Apostolical Constitutions; its presence is perfectly apparent in the mystagogic catechetics of Cyril of Jerusalem. But I suspect that in their catechetical instruction Basil and Gregory did not express themselves differently from him. Besides the many other passages having reference to the subject, Catech. V., 7 is specially important. “And next after we have ourselves (through prayer), we pray the gracious God that He will send down His Holy Spirit on the elements presented, in order that He may make the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into the blood of Christ; for' what the Holy Spirit touches is wholly sanctified and transformed (μεταβέβληται).” Here therefore we have a plain assertion of the μεταβολή which is effected by the Holy Spirit in the Supper, and Cyril in fact appeals to the miracle of Cana. At the same time “Cyril is the first church-teacher who treats of baptism, the oil, and the Eucharist, in their logical sequence, and in accordance with general principles.” The element which may be termed the symbolic, or better, the spiritual element, is nowhere wanting in his theology, and in fact it still quite clearly constitutes its basis; but we see it supplemented by that “realism” which already regards the details of the act of ritual as the special subject of instruction. The epiklesis or invocation, brings with it a dynamic change in the elements in the Supper as in all mysteries. By partaking of the holy food one becomes “a bearer of Christ”; the flesh and blood of Christ is distributed amongst the members of the body. In Cyril’s view the elements in their original form have after consecration wholly disappeared. “Since now thou art taught and convinced that the visible bread is not bread, although to the taste it appears to be such, but the body of Christ; and that the visible wine is not wine, although to taste it seems to be such, but the blood of Christ, comfort thine heart,” (Catech. V., 9). But still we might make a mistake if we were to attribute to the theologian what is said by the catechist. Extravagances of this sort still belonged at that time to the liturgical and catechetical element, but were not a part of theology. But the miracle of Cana and the multiplication of the bread now became important events for teachers, as indeed is evident from the sculpture of the Fourth Century, and even such a pronounced Origenist as Gregory of Nyssa for whom indeed σύμβολον was equivalent to ἀπόδειξις (a setting forth) and γνώρισμα (mark or token) and who laid down the principle “Christianity has its strength in the mystic symbols” (ἐν τοῖς μυστικοῖς συμβόλοις ὁ χριστιανισμὸς τὴν ἴσχον ἔχει), as catechist propounded a physiological philosophically constructed theory regarding the spiritual nourishing power of the elements which were changed into the body of the Lord, which in religious barbarity far outstrips anything put forward by the Neo-Platonic Mysteriosophs. It makes it plain to us that in the fourth century Christianity was sought after not because it supplied a worship of God in spirit and in truth, but because it offered to men a spiritual sense-enjoyment with which neither Mithras nor any other god could successfully compete. Gregory wished for a spiritual and corporal “communion and mixing” (μετουσία καὶ ἀνάκρασις) with the Redeemer. The only help against the poison which has crept into our body is the antidote of the body of Him who was stronger than death. This antidote must be introduced into the body. It accordingly transforms and alters our body (μεταποιεῖν καὶ μετατιθέναι; μετάστασις, μεταστοιχείωσις, ἀλλοίωσις). The actual body of Christ as immortal is thus the remedy against death; it must therefore, like other sorts of good, be partaken of bodily. This partaking takes place in the Supper; for through the act of consecration the bread and wine are changed into the flesh and blood of the Lord (μεταποίησις) in order that through partaking of them our body may be transformed into the body of Christ (μεταστοιχείωσις; see Justin). These transubstantiations are proved by a philosophical exposition of matter and form, potentiality and actuality; at this point Aristotle had already to be brought forward to furnish the necessary proof. The paradox was held to be not really so paradoxical. The body of the Logos, it was affirmed, itself consisted of bread; the bread was virtually (δυνάμει) the body etc. But more important than these dreadful expositions of a pharmaceutical philosophy was the close connection which Gregory formed by means of them between the Eucharist and the Incarnation. He was the first, so far as I know, to do this. The older Fathers also, indeed, while by the eucharistic body they understood the word and the life, always regarded the Incarnation as the fundamental condition, which alone made that use of it possible. But since they did not entertain the idea of the real body of Christ, the Incarnation and Eucharist—apart from some attempts by Athanasius—still remained unconnected.

It was otherwise with Gregory. For him the transformation of the consecrated bread into the body of Christ was the continuation of the process of the Incarnation. “If the existence of the whole body depends on nourishment while this consists of food and drink; if, further, bread serves for food, and water mixed with wine for drink, and if the Logos of God, as has been already proved, is united (συνανεκράθη) in his character as God and Logos with human nature, and, having entered our body, produced no different or new constitution for human nature, but rather sustained his body by the usual and fitting means and supported life by food and drink, the food being bread; then, just as in our case, he who sees the bread to some extent perceives the human body therein, because when the bread enters the latter it becomes part of it, so in that case the body which conceals God within it, and which received the bread is to a certain extent identical with the bread . . . for what is characteristic of all was also admitted regarding the flesh of Christ, namely, that it was also supported by bread, but the body was by the residence in it of the Divine Logos transformed (μετεποιήθη) to a divine sublimity and dignity. We accordingly are now also in believing that the bread consecrated by the word of God is transformed into the body of the God-Logos. For that body was also virtually bread, but was consecrated by the residence in it of the Logos, who dwelt in the flesh. Accordingly as the bread transformed in that body was invested with divine energy we have the same thing happening here. For in the former case the grace of the Word sanctified the body which owed its existence to, and to a certain extent was, bread, and similarly, in the present instance, the bread, as the apostle says, is made holy by God’s Word (Logos) and command; not that it is first changed into the body of the Logos by being eaten, but that it is at once transformed into his body by the Logos (by its consecration) in accordance with the saying of the Logos, ‘This is my body’.” Gregory argues similarly as regards the wine and blood, and then continues: “Since then that flesh which received God also received this portion (wine, blood) into its substance, and God made manifest by that means interfused himself in the perishable nature of men, in order that by communion with deity the human might be deified; therefore he implants himself in all who have believed in the dispensation of grace, by means of the flesh whose substance consists of both wine and bread, condemning himself to the bodies of believers, so that by union with that which is immortal man also might become a participator in immortality. And these things he grants to the power of the blessing, having therefore transformed the nature of the phenomena (Ἐπεὶ οὖν καὶ τοῦτο τὸ μέρος [wine, blood] ἡ θεοδόχος ἐκείνη σὰρξ πρὸς τὴη σύστασιν ἑαυτῆς παρεδέξατο, ὁ δε φανερωθεὶς Θεὸς διὰ τοῦτο κατέμιξεν ἑαυτὸν τῇ ἐπικήρῳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων φύσει, ἱνα τῇ τῆς θεότητος κοινωνίᾳ συναποθεωθῇ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον, τούτου χάριν πᾶσι τοῖς πεπιστευκόσι τῇ οἰκονομίᾳ τῆς χάριτος ἑαυτὸν ἐνσπείρει διὰ τῆς σαρκός ἧς ἡ σύστασις ἐξ οἴνου τε καὶ ἄρτου ἐστὶ, τοῖς σώμασι τῶν πεπιστευκότων κατακρινάμενος, ὡς ἂν τῇ πρὸς τὸ ἀθάνατον ἑνώσει καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀθανασίας μέτοχος γένοιτο. Ταῦτα δὲ δίδωσι τῇ τῆς εὐλογίας δυνάμει πρὸς ἐκεῖνο μεταστοιχειώσας τῶν φαινομένων τὴν φύσιν). It was henceforth impossible for any other theory to outbid this one, which followed the practice. It is the foundation for all farther developments, especially the liturgical, and is responsible for nominally Christian heathenism. It sprang from Gregory the “spiritualist”, the disciple of Origen! It explains why all purer science necessarily ceased. No independent theology could long hold its ground side by side with such an intoxicating speculation. For the rest, Gregory did not teach transubstantiation in the later Western sense. According to him only the form (εἶδος)of the elements, not the substance, was changed. His theory is therefore rightly described as one of transformation. Nor was he quite clear about the relation of the eucharistic to the real—transfigured—body. He did not entertain the idea of a complete identity, but only of a qualitative unity. The consecrated elements were qualitatively identical with the body, which the Logos had employed as his organ.

Chrysostom, on the contrary, spoke of a complete identity, and did not shrink from the boldest and most repugnant expressions. “In proof of his love he has given us the body pierced with nails, that we might hold it in our hands and eat it; for we often bite those whom we love much.” “Christ permits us to glut ourselves on his flesh.” Chrysostom won't remove our horror of cannibalism by spiritualising the rite. “In order then that the disciples might not be afraid, he drank first, and thus introduced them undismayed into the Communion of his mysteries; therefore he drank his own blood.” “Reflect, that the tongue is the member with which we receive the awful sacrifice.” “Our tongue is reddened by the most awful blood.” “He has permitted us who desire it not merely to see, but to touch and eat and bury our teeth in his flesh, and to intermingle it with our own being.” The fact that at the same time the benefit contained in the is described as being perceived by the mind, a νοήτον, hardly affects the result, for of course the body, however real, of a God is a νοητόν. Like Gregory, Chrysostom speaks of a refashioning and transforming (μεταρρυθμίζειν and μετασκευάζειν) of the elements, which Christ, the , effects through the priest by means of the invocation—not of the words of institution which do not constitute the medium among the Greeks. Very instructive, moreover, is the reference to the Incarnation. “The Church sees the Lord lying in the crib wrapped in swaddling-clothes—an awful and wonderful spectacle; for the Lord’s table takes the place of the crib, and here also lies the body of the Lord, not wrapped in swaddling-clothes, but surrounded on all sides by the Holy Ghost.” Chrysostom, accordingly, went decidedly farther in this point also than Gregory, with whom he agreed in the assumption of an essentially corporeal effect of the participation.

To Dionysius, who was thoroughly Neoplatonic, the ethical central notion consists in mystical union [= θέωσις (deification) = ἀφομοίωσις (likeness) + ἕνωσις (union)]. The complicated “hierarchies” in heaven and in the Church—“purifying, illuminating, perfecting” = deacons, priests, and bishops—act as intermediaries. This they accomplish by the mysteries which likewise are graded; to the bishops is reserved the consecration of the priests, the consecration of the anointing oil and of the altar. So the Lord’s Supper, as in the case of Cyril of Jerusalem, is no longer treated apart; it has its place along with five other mysteries. Dionysius was enabled to evolve a mystical doctrine dealing with each mystery by a close examination of its ritual performance. A deeper sense is given to each little detail; it has a symbolical significance; “symbolical” is indeed not a strong enough term. There is really a mystery present; but this conception does not prevent the expert in mysteries from after all regarding everything as the covering of a single inner process: the return of the soul from multiplicity to unity, from finitude and disunion to the ocean of the divine being. The Eucharist which accompanies and completes the process contributes to that which was begun in baptism. The liturgical performance is rendered symbolical in every part. Moreover, the consecrated elements are themselves treated as symbols. The realistic view of Chrysostom is not found in Dionysius. The realism consists, so to speak, in the fixity and integrity of the liturgical performance. Otherwise it is true of the Lord’s Supper, what Dionysius says generally of all mysteries: “The majority of us do not believe in what is said regarding the divine mysteries; for we only see them through the sensible symbols attached to them. We ought to strip the symbols off and behold them by themselves when they have become naked and pure; for thus seeing them we should revere the spring of life pouring into itself, both beholding it existing by itself and being a kind of single force, simple, self-moved, self-acting, not abandoning itself, but furnishing the science of all sciences, and ever itself seen by itself.” And it is characteristic that it was precisely the consecration of the monk which constituted the highest mystery. Nothing but the tradition of the Church prevented Dionysius ranking it actually above the Eucharist. Dionysius does not discuss the Eucharistic sacrifice at all.

The following period was set the task of combining the crass realism of Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom with the ritualism of Dionysius, without at the same time wholly destroying the hidden spiritual element which depreciated all rites in comparison with the inner feeling and exaltation. But from the beginning of the fifth century conceptions of the Eucharist were very decidedly influenced by the Christological differences. If the conception of the Eucharist was connected with that of the Incarnation, then it could not be a matter of indifference to the former, whether in the latter the two natures were held to be fused in one or to remain separate. Monophysites and Orthodox, however, had always been and remained of one mind regarding the Lord’s Supper. Cyril argued over and over again from the Lord’s Supper in support of the Incarnation and vice versa, and it was strictly due to him that the Church learned the connection between the two and never lost it. Even Leo I. can discuss it. Nay, the incorruptibility of the Eucharistic body was now accepted without question, while this view, when applied to the Incarnation, was called, at least in later times, Aphthartodoketism. Cyril had no fixed doctrinal formula for the Lord’s Supper; he did not go so far as Chrysostom. But since the body was to him, because of the one nature made flesh (μία φύσις σεσαρκωμένη), God’s body, it was in the full sense of the term “life-giving” (ζωοποιός). Accordingly he also maintained that it was not, as Nestorius taught, the body of a man that lay on the altar, but the body of God. When we partake of the flesh of Christ, he implants it in us; he does not thereby become man in us—this mystical inference is rejected,—but our body is transformed and becomes immortal. We do not yet find in Cyril, however, the contention that the real body of Christ is present in the eucharistic body; it is rather only an operative presence that is meant; the eucharistic body is identical in its effects with the real. It was the strict Monophysites who could bring the eucharistic and the earthly body quite closely together, because they also held the earthly body to be imperishable; while the Severians still kept the two apart. But even the strict Monophysites did not, so far as is known, advance beyond identity in operative power. The decisive step was taken in the age of the orthodox renaissance under the shield of Aristotle, accordingly by the scholastics of the sixth century. Here we have above all and first to name Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the time of Justinian. He based his view “on the conception derived from the system of Dionysius, that the cause exists by itself apart from its effects, but multiplies itself potentially in them and enters wholly into each, and proved that the ascended body complete [in substance] and undivided in itself [in heaven], and yet is received completely by each communicant in the portion of bread dispensed to him.” Eutychius teaches a real multiplication of one and the same body of Christ in its antitypes—for as such he still describes the consecrated elements; but this multiplication is not one of substance, but of power. At any rate the separate existence of the eucharistic body side by side with the real is here for the first time given up. Even before this, Isidore of Pelusium had demonstrated that the eucharistic body passed through the same stages of deification (θέωσις) as the real. “It is partaken as capable of suffering and mortal; for it is broken and is bruised by our teeth; yet it is not destroyed, but is transformed in the communicant into the immortal body.”

John of Damascus settled this question also. In the 13th chapter of Book IV. of his system of doctrine he gave a theory of the mysteries—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—based on that of Gregory of Nyssa, but at the same time he was the first to perfect the conception of the identity of the eucharistic and the real body of Christ. John begins with the corruption of humanity and the Incarnation. From the latter we obtain the and the twofold food, that we may become sons. and heirs of God. The birth and food required to be spiritual as well as corporeal, for we are both. As regards the food, he himself in the last night ate the ancient passover, and then gave the New Testament. God is all powerful and creates by word and spirit. As he sent forth the light, as his spirit formed a body from the flesh of the virgin and without seed, so the same spirit, falling like rain on the field, changes bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ; an analogy drawn from the process of nourishment as in Gregory of Nyssa. We may ask here as Mary did: How can that be? And we must once more answer: The Holy Spirit comes upon it. And in fact God has taken for his purpose the commonest things that we through the common and natural may be transplanted into the supernatural. But he now writes: “The body is truly made one with the deity, the body which came from the holy virgin, not that the body which was assumed comes down from heaven, but the very bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of God. And if you ask how this happens, it is enough for you to hear that it is by the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord also by the Holy Spirit assumed flesh for himself and in himself.” In what follows the view is expressly rejected that it is a different body of Christ that is in question: there are not two bodies, but one. Further: “The bread and wine are not types of the body and blood of Christ; not so, but the very body of the Lord deified.” The bread of the communion is not simple bread, but is united with the deity; it has accordingly two natures. The body united with the deity is, however, not one nature, but the one is that of the body, the other that of the deity combined with it, so that the two together constitute not one nature but two. Only the not yet consecrated elements, moreover, are to be called “antitypes”; in this way Basil also used the word (!). The mystery, however, is called “participation” because through it we possess a share in the deity of Jesus, but “communion” first, because we have communion with Christ, and secondly, because by the holy food we are united with one another, one body of Christ, members in his body, and therefore of one another. Therefore we have anxiously to watch lest we “participate” with heretics, or allow them to “participate” with us. Finally, it is still to be noticed that, according to John, the sacred food was not subject to the natural processes in the body.