Ignatius on the Eucharist

Taken from original article written by Sam Shamoun

In this post I will cite the words of the blessed martyr and disciple of the holy Apostles, St. Ignatius in regards to the Eucharist. He was the bishop of the church in Antioch, the place where believers were first called Christians (Cf. Acts 11: 26). His views on the Eucharist are vitally important seeing that was directly taught by the very Apostles of the risen Christ.

All emphasis is mine

Epistle to the Smyrnaeans

Chapter 7. Let us stand aloof from such heretics

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of out Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Thosem therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, butt to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils.

Chapter 8. Let nothing be done without the bishop

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the Bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, with is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

Epistle to the Romans

Chapter 7. Reason of desiring to die

The prince of this world would fain carry me away, and corrupt my disposition towards God. Let none of you, therefore, who are [in Rome] help him; rather be on my side, that is, on the side of God. Do not speak of Jesus Christ, and yet set your desires on the world. Let not envy find a dwelling-place among you; nor even should I, when present with you, exhort you to it, be persuaded to listen to me, but rather give credit to those things which I now write to you. For though I am alive while I write to you, yet I am eager to die. My love has been crucified, and there is no fire in me desiring to be fed; bu there is within me a water that lives ans speaks, saying to me inwardly, Come to the Father. I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.

Epistle to the Ephesians

Chapter 20. Promise of another letter

If Jesus Christ shall graciously permit me through you prayers, and if it be His will, I shall, in a second little work which I will write to you, make further manifest to you [the nature of] the dispensation of which I have begun [to treat], with respect to the new man, Jesus Christ, in His faith and in His love, in His suffering and in His resurrection. Especially [will I do this] if the Lord make known to me that you come together man by man in common through grace, individually, in on faith, and in Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man and the Son of God, so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.

In case a Protestant wishes to explain away Ignatius’s clear belief in the Eucharist being the actual flesh and blood of our risen Lord Jesus Christ, I will cite what two renowned Protestant scholars and historians have written in respect to this holy martyr’s eucharistic views.

All emphasis is mine

This leads us to consider the significance attached to the elements themselves in this period. From the Didache⁴ we gather that the bread and wine are ‘holy’; they are spiritual food and drink communicating immortal life. Ignatius roundly declares that ‘the eucharist is the flesh of out Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised.’ The bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup His Blood.⁶ Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes⁷ it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. Because the eucharist brings Christians into union with their Lord, it is the great bond between them;⁸ and since it mediates communion with Christ, it is a medicine which procures immortality (pharmakon athanasius), an antidote against death which enables us to live in the Lord forever.¹ Justin actually refers to the change. ‘We do not receive these,’ he writes,² ‘as common bread or common drink. But just as our Saviour Jesus Christ was made flesh through the Word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food which has been eucharistized by the word of prayer from Him (that food which by process of assimilation nourishes our flesh and blood) is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.’ So Irenaeus teaches³ that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity. Like Justin, too, he seems to postulate a change, for he remarks:⁴ ‘Just as the bread, which comes from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but eucharist, being composed of two elements, a terrestrial one and a celestial, so out bodies are no longer commonplace when they receives the eucharist, since they have the hope of resurrection to eternity.’ (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [Adam & Charles Black, London, Fourth Edition 1968], pp. 197-198)

And:

1. The Eucharist as a Sacrament

The Didache of the Apostles contains eucharistic prayer, but no theory of the eucharist. Ignatius speaks of this sacrament in two passages, only by way of allusion, but in very strong, mystical terms, calling it the flesh of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, and the consecrated bread a medicine of immortality and an antidote of spiritual death.⁴¹²¹² This view, closely connected with his high-churchly tendency in general, no doubt involves belief in the real presence, and ascribes to the holy Supper and effect on spirit and body at once, with reference to the future resurrection, but is still somewhat obscure, and rather and expression of elevated feeling than a logical definition.

The same may be said of Justin Martyr, when he compares the descent of Christ into the consecrated elements to his incarnation for our redemption.⁴¹³¹³

Irenaeus says repeatedly, in combating the Gnostic Docetism,⁴¹⁴¹⁴ that bread and wine in the sacrament become, by the presence of the Word of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the body and blood of Christ and that the receiving of there strengthens soul and body (the germ of the resurrection body) unto eternal life. Yet this would hardly warrant our ascribing either transubstantiation or consubstantiation to Irenaeus. For in another place he calls the bread and wine, after consecration, “antitypes,” implying the continued distinction of their substance from the body and blood of Christ.⁴¹⁵¹⁵ This expression in itself, indeed, might be understood as merely contrasting here the upper, as substance, with the Old Testament passover, its type; as Peter calls baptism the antitype of the saving water of the flood.⁴¹⁶¹⁶ But the connection, and the usus loquendi of the earlier Greek fathers, require us to take the term antitype, a the sense of type, or, more precisely, as the antithesis of archetype. The bread and wine represent and exhibit the body and blood of Christ as the archetype, and correspond to them, as a copy to the original. In exactly the same sense it is said in Heb. 9: 24 - comp. 8: 5 - that the earthly sanctuary is the antitype, that is the copy, of the heavenly archetype. Other Greek fathers also, down to the fifth century, and especially the author of the Apostolical Constitutions, call the consecrated elements “antitypes” (sometimes, like Theodoretus, “types”) of the body and blood of Christ.⁴¹⁷¹⁷…

We have, therefore, among the ante-Nicene fathers, three different views, an Oriental, a North-African, and an Alexandrian. The first view, that of Ignatius an Irenaeus, agrees most nearly with the mystical character of the celebration of the eucharist, and with the catholicizing features of the ages. (Philip Schaff: History of the Christian Church, Volume II)