No Longer Common Bread: Irenaeus and Eucharistic Piety

I was reading through Irenaeus' Against Heresies where I came across an interesting passage on the Eucharist. It involves a few twists of argument that defy almost all accounts of eucharistic piety and understanding of what exactly takes place. I think it helps clear up a lot of superstition and false metaphysical mechanics imported into it. Now, I want to clarify what I mean by superstition.

 Usually a slur, superstition involves an imputation of something more to an event, object, person than what actually is going on. This judgement depends upon one's framework. One's man rite is another's superstition. How can you tell the difference? One must assess a ritual's framework to see if the various actions within a given a ritual are necessary to its fulfillment according to its own inner logic (and I'm using this term broadly: brushing your teeth is a ritual). If additional actions are inexplicable within a framework then superstition is at work. But this judgement also involves some proximity to the actual ritual in question. It's not something an anonymous anthropologist can impute to some people he stares at from the outside. It's more of a judgement claim from within an intra-group rivalry. If one can deduce that there's misunderstanding of a common action, where one person or group adds more for reasons based on unjustified claims, then it ought to warrant consideration as a superstition.

Anyway, on to Irenaeus:

Then, again, how can they [the Gnostics-cal] say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the things just mentioned. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Sprit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. (Book IV, XVIII, 5)

If you don't read carefully, this passage sounds very similar to transubstantiation. But Irenaeus actually says nothing of the sort, and the whole argument depends upon the opposite premise. Earlier, Irenaeus gives another account of the Eucharist, saying

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." 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 (Book IV, XVII, 5)

Irenaeus' whole point in these two sections is to attack Gnostics who demean the creation. Irenaeus is at pains to prove that empirical reality, because it is made by the self-same God who is the Savior, is good and worthy of redemption. He compares the sacrifices of the OT to the NT, seeing in both a type for what God is actually doing. Just like the OT sacrifices, God doesn't want them if they are not offered in a spirit of truth, life, and purity. Irenaeus goes on to compare the differences with the Mosaic covenant, noting how Christians are not constrained by a tithe (they offer all freely) and they are not geographically locked to a physical temple (their temple is in Heaven). When he returns to the Eucharist, his point is that it is in flesh, and with mortal hands, that we lift up our hearts and sacrifice unto God, even as it is superior to previous sacrifices.

If Irenaeus were arguing for transubstantion, the entire argument makes absolutely no sense. It would be no refutation if Irenaeus was claiming the bread and wine ceased to be created entities and had become the divinized flesh and blood of Christ. Obviously Gnostics weren't bothered with the appearance of flesh, only that actual flesh is worthless/evil and in a dichotomous relationship with spirit. In an earlier section, Irenaeus attacks Two-Sons theology (where Christ is the Dove that lands on, and possesses, the man Jesus; this is somewhat different to later concepts). The two arguments dovetail: Irenaeus refutes any rejection of divine/created coexisting together. He rejects a Christology where the Word is separate from the man Jesus, and thus it follows he rejects any replacement of bread/wine for spiritual substances. If it were transubstantiation, I don't think Gnostics would be so scandalized.

But there's more! While it's explicitly obvious that Irenaeus believes the Eucharist is a sacrifice, it's a sacrifice of: bread and wine. It's these mundane elements that Christ lifts up and calls His body and blood. And Irenaeus explicitly drives this point home with a reference to "two realities". But what are these realities? If you follow closely, Irenaeus isn't even talking about a metaphysical transformation. Look at his analogy: just like Eucharist so too our bodies. What is he talking about? Irenaeus flatly says our bodies become incorruptible when we eat the Eucharist. However, this claim comes with an explanation: "having the hope of the resurrection to eternity." This means Irenaeus is not talking in terms of substances but in terms of figures and types revealing the future reality that appears now. He's not talking about some sort of chemical transformation that has any empirical significance. He's talking about "the real", a heavenly reality that exists at a deeper level than our senses but not opposed to them. These "two realities" hang together in the ritual of Christians.

Irenaeus even offers an account of consecreation. He says that the eucharistic bread is "no longer common bread" and, in the next subsection, this offering is "sanctifying what has been created." If the point was that the bread changes into something else, than why not say "no longer bread" and emphasize some other created substance (like flesh)? The point about "common" bread is that this isn't, after invoking Christ and the ritual words of institution/other prayers, normal bread anymore. But what this means isn't clear, though I think it can be elucidated through an analogy. A cake "changes" when it is brought out for a wedding, and it has a meaning that defies its caloric content. The cake becomes more than mere food, the product of a social phenomenon. Similarly, the ritual changes the bread/wine into the eschatological meal of our future sinless and incorruptible bodies.

This account, if correct, isn't a rejection of metaphysics, but grounding them in an awareness of a divine order not yet fully manifest. For Irenaeus, reality is the invisible things of God that are not subject to creaturely dimensions of time and space. The way we grasp them, in our world, is through types and symbols that direct us to spiritual potency. These signs are worthless if they are not only meaningless, but without a spiritual referent. Hence, Irenaeus can talk about the Christian's (literal!) body as incorruptible. The promise of God is more real than empirical data because it reveals future empirical truths. Thus the eucharist: we offer bread and wine, and in so doing offer up to God Christ's sacrifice through a memorial, receiving through participation the promises of Christ, immortality and purification from sin. If we call this approach sociological, it's because of the divine economy of things. God's promises are more real than predictive laws of nature, which work through the means He has created. It's why Irenaeus will compare the OT sacrifices to the NT eucharist: God doesn't really need created things, it's for us to repent and serve Him with a pure and joyous heart.

Ironically, for all the quite frankly mendacious posting from Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and various others, about classical Reformed sacramentology, Irenaeus' view is not far from it. It's not the same as the Reformed, though it's pretty close to Calvin*. Perhaps the closest one gets to it is something like High Church Anglican ideas about the Supper. However it's far from transubstantiation and yet it has a sacrificial component that deviates from most Protestant views. Irenaeus quite clearly believes the eucharist is an oblation and sacrifice, and yet the emphasis is upon the fact that what is offered is bread and wine (but not simply bread and wine). The emphasis is upon typological significance, rooted in the human heart, which brings about salvation.

None of this means Irenaeus is right. However it's worth considering later changes. Traditions that pretend to some timeless changelessness will be embarrassed to find accounts that simply have to be edged into, quite frankly, foreign paradigms. While all of the church fathers have a very high view of the eucharist as a quintessential element for Christian worship, and even that it's an oblation of sorts, it's far from the materialistic suppositions that undergird Roman view of eucharistic science. It's from these superstructures imposed onto the act that justify, and allow to blossom, superstitious practices (like ocular veneration).  While Irenaeus may consider that to eat in such a manner where you spill crumbs all over the floor is disreputable and dishonorable, I doubt he'd advise one to go hunt down a mouse who ran off with a piece.

Another passage further on confirms this reading. Excoriating the "so-called gnostics" for denying the entire dispensation of man's redemption, Irenaeus connects the eucharist to the incarnation. If the flesh doesn't find salvation then:

"neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body." (Book V, II, 2)

Again, this sounds very close to transubstantiation and high doctrines of substance change. But then Irenaeus further explains his meaning:

"He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body, from which he gives increase to our bodies."

Irenaeus here reverses the entire logic of transubstantiation: it's not the bread that becomes flesh but Christ made His flesh bread! The same goes for the wine, with Christ identifying His body with life-giving food and identifying the blood in His veins with the sweet and vivifying cup of wine. It's this that fuels the following passage:

 "When, therefore, the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist of the blood and the body of Christ is made, from which things the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they affirm that the flesh is incapable of receiving the gift of God, which is life eternal, which [flesh] is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord, and is a member of Him?"(Book V, II, 3)

 It's easy to misread this passage. Irenaeus still has a consecrationist account, where the elements become something with a ritual invocation. But his understanding is not the materialist science of the Middle Ages, but more like the concept of praying a blessing before eating. You are, quite literally, setting your food apart when you ask God to bless it. And of course the eucharistic blessing is different than this ritual invocation, but the principle is the same. Nothing transforms except in what this thing does in relation to other things. Before, bread simply nourished; now, with the invocation of Christ's words and promise, the bread now brings the grace of eternal life. Irenaeus makes this analogy explicit when he compares the life of wheat/grapes to the life of the believer:

"And just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season, or as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of God"

Again, the point is not a change of substance from bread/wine to body/blood. Rather, Christ assumed the natural properties of bread and wine and identifies them as His body and blood. When consecrated and eaten, the Christian's body is marked with the Word of God, who will raise them bodily on the Last Day. Just like man takes "dead" wheat and "decayed" grapes and makes them, through a rational mind (think logos), into life giving and sustaining goods, so too will God raise up our dead and decayed flesh into men fully alive in the Spirit. Thus, the emphasis on the eucharist is not on God appearing on earth, but the curtain between heaven and earth being split. Earthly goods (just like our bodies in paradise) have been assumed by the Word and now radiate life. Thus, a simple loaf and simple cup offer eternal life through the word of Christ. 

The more I read the more I'm exhausted with the historical debates. You find out that most arguments are built on castles of sand, and most scholars involved in these fields (even from confessional loyalties) admit as much (Newman's Development of Doctrine paradigm does a lot of legwork to save the present from the past). I'm not writing to convince anyone of anything. Most people who are remotely interested in this kind of topic have already made up their minds anyway. You work through a passage like this and they accuse you of everything under the sun. I'm tired of this nonsense. Rather, I Irenaeus' account of the eucharist not only more simple and sensible, but avoids the metaphysical traps of substances.

*Irenaeus in the next passage talks about corporate worship in terms that involve spiritualized spatio-location. He says

"we, too, should offer a gift at the altar, frequently and without intermission. The altar, then is in heaven (for towards that place are our prayers and oblations directed); the temple likewise, as John says in the Apocalypse, "And the temple of God was opened:" the tabernacle also: "For, behold," He says, "the tabernacle of God, in which He will dwell with men."

This is not unlike how Calvin saw the whole ritual act of worship, particularly the eucharist, as a translocation into the heavenliness where we feast with Christ. I don't know enough to really say how close they are, but to call Calvin, or most of the Reformed who were his contemporaries, some kind of barebones symbolist (i.e. it's all an intellectual act of connecting dots) is not a little dishonest. I don't really like Calvin's attempt to explain the whole procedure, but it's not because he doesn't have a rich and deep view of the sacraments.