by

Augustine on the Real & Substanitial Presence

Answering Soli Deo Gloria Apologetics, who claims Augustine was a closet Protestant.

How could St. Augustine be a Bishop of the Catholic Church if he did not believe in the Real and Substantial Presence? St. Augustine took vows before many witnesses to uphold and defend the Faith which also included the Real & Substantial Presence.

Soli Deo Gloria Apologetics has published an article on his blog: https://solideogloriaapologetics.blogspot.com/2021/11/did-augustine-teach-transubstantiation.html (Part 1)
He has been refuted on asocial media platformcalled Discord: The Catholic Forum. He continues to insist that St. Augustine did not believe in the Real & Substanital Presence.

This will be a closed debate except of Timothy, myself and the other administator, Deusimperator. Below is the entire Part 1 of his 3 Part series on Augustine.

Did Augustine Teach Transubstantiation? [Part 1]

Augustine is perhaps the most influential figure in Western Christianity. He is also a favorite church father among both Catholics and Protestants. During the Reformation era, he was quoted by both sides to support their positions. John Calvin quotes him more than anyone else in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Many counter-Reformation writers also cited his writings as well against Protestantism. This pattern still continues today. Reformed Protestant apologists as well as Roman Catholic apologists still cite the great bishop of Hippo in support of their theological views. 

In this series of articles, I want to take a look at Augustine’s theology of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. The way I will do this is by addressing first the quotes used by Roman Catholic apologists to support their view of transubstantiation, and then I will analyze portions from the writings of Augustine which do not support transubstantiation, as well as the responses of Roman Catholic apologists to this material from Augustine. 

Exposition of Psalm 98

 …And fall down before His footstool: for He is holy. What are we to fall down before? His footstool. What is under the feet is called a footstool, in Greek ὑ ποπόδιον, in Latin Scabellum or Suppedaneum. But consider, brethren, what he commands us to fall down before. In another passage of the Scriptures it is said, The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Isaiah 66:1 Does he then bid us worship the earth, since in another passage it is said, that it is God’s footstool? How then shall we worship the earth, when the Scripture says openly, You shall worship the Lord your God? Deuteronomy 6:13 Yet here it says, fall down before His footstool: and, explaining to us what His footstool is, it says, The earth is My footstool. I am in doubt; I fear to worship the earth, lest He who made the heaven and the earth condemn me; again, I fear not to worship the footstool of my Lord, because the Psalm bids me, fall down before His footstool. I ask, what is His footstool? And the Scripture tells me, the earth is My footstool. In hesitation I turn unto Christ, since I am herein seeking Himself: and I discover how the earth may be worshipped without impiety, how His footstool may be worshipped without impiety. For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord’s may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping. (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801099.htm)

This is without a doubt one of the most common quotes used from Augustine by Roman Catholic apologists to support transubstantiation and in particular, eucharistic adoration and worship. However, is Augustine teaching the Roman Catholic view here?

First of all, there is an issue in translation on the phrase “no one eats it without first worshipping”. Some translations say “worshipping it”, thus implying a more clear sense of eucharistic adoration. Which is correct? Here is the original Latin phrase used here by Augustine:

“nemo autem illam carnem manducat, nisi prius adoraverit” (Patrologia Latina, Vol. 37, pg. 1263)

Here is the more accurate translation of this from two different sources:

“and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped…” (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801099.htm, [Catholic website])

“…and no one eateth that flesh, unless he hath first worshipped…” (https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf108/npnf108.ii.XCIX.html)

Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong has the same translation in one of his articles on Augustine.

So we can see that “it” is most likely an addition/mistranslation of the original Latin text of Augustine’s writings here.

However, it gets worse for Roman apologists. If we read the next few sentences of this paragraph from Augustine, we see the following:

“But does the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing.…But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him. John 6:54 Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, This is an hard saying, who can hear it? And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto them hard that He said, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you have no life in you: they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them.…But He instructed them, and says unto them, It is the Spirit that quickens, but the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63 Understand spiritually what I have said; you are not to eat this body which you see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.” (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801099.htm)

Sermon 227

“The bread which you see on the altar is, sanctified by the word of God, the body of Christ; that chalice, or rather what is contained in the chalice, is, sanctified by the word of God, the blood of Christ” (https://stanselminstitute.org/files/SERMON%20227.pdf)

This passage of Augustine has been hotly debated between Catholics and Protestants. I want to give here some reasons why I don’t think Augustine is teaching transubstantiation here.

First of all, we should note the wider context of the passage:

“The bread which you see on the altar is, sanctified by the word of God, the body of Christ; that chalice, or rather what is contained in the chalice, is, sanctified by the word of God, the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive. You see, the apostle says, We, being many, are one loaf, one body (1 Cor 10:17). That’s how he explained the sacrament of the Lord’s table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be….What you can see passes away, but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. Look, it’s received, it’s eaten, it’s consumed. Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the members of Christ consumed? Perish the thought!“(https://stanselminstitute.org/files/SERMON%20227.pdf)

Here is what three scholars have said on this issue:

“For Ratramnus, although Paschasius’s second sense is not excluded – indeed it is even mentioned explicitly – there is another aspect which is dominant. For him, the Eucharist is above all a mystical body in that it symbolizes, as Saint Augustine so often repeated, the body of Christ which we ourselves are, or should be: the ‘body of the people that believes‘, the ‘body of the people that receives‘, the ‘body of the people reborn in Christ‘, ‘the body of believers‘. (PL, 121, 167-9, 159) It is, reproduced on the altar, the mystery of ourselves” (Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, pg. 71, source)

“Augustine did not conceive of real presence in strictly ritual terms. His thinking admitted no sharp fissure between the real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and the real presence of Christ within the Christian community.” (William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, pg. 376, source)

“Here [Sermon 227] the Pauline thought of the relation of eucharistic body and ecclesial body is deepened and made the principle of the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrament. Augustine understands that the eucharistic elements, especially the bread, are images of the whole Christ: head and body. The baptized, who live by faith and love, are the body of the Christ and participate more deeply in what they are through the symbolic realities of the eucharistic sacraments. Therefore the Eucharist does not afford, precisely, an ‘encounter’ with Christ, as in the case of Ambrose’s teaching, but a deepening of one’s being in Christ. In the Eucharist we do not so much receive Christ; rather, he receives us and grafts us more deeply into his body…Later on, the early medieval interpretation of Augustine progressively downplays his eucharistic spiritual interpretation of the sacraments of the body and blood. That Augustine’s eucharistic theology could be interpreted spiritually is obvious…” (Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, pgs. 25-27, here)

Exposition of Psalm 33

” And was carried in His Own Hands: how carried in His Own Hands? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said,This is My Body. Matthew 26:26″ (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801034.htm)

To answer this, I would point to Augustine’s second exposition on the same passage:

“In the light of this, what is the meaning of he affected? It means he was full of affection. What could ever be as full of affection as is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in consideration of our infirmity accepted temporal death amid such violence and degradation, to free us from everlasting death? He drummed because a drum can be made only by stretching a skin across a wooden frame, so David’s drumming was a prediction that Christ was to be crucified. He drummed on the doors into the city; and what else are the doors into the city but our hearts, which we had shut against Christ? But from the drum of his cross he opened the hearts of us mortals. He was carried in his own hands; how was this possible? Because when he entrusted to us his very body and blood, he took into his hands what the faithful know about, and so in a sense he was carrying himself when he said, This is my body.“ (John E. Rotelle,, The Works of Saint Augustin: A Translation for the 21st Century – Expositions of the Psalms, 33-50, III/16, p. 24)

“The psalmist wants to speak openly now about the sacrament that the Lord held in his hands.” (ibid., pg. 33)

Furthermore, the refutation of the Roman Catholic claim regarding this passage from Augustine can be found in the passage itself:

” And was carried in His Own Hands: how carried in His Own Hands? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said,This is My Body. Matthew 26:26″ (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801034.htm)
Augustine says that Christ carried Himself “in a certain manner”. What was that manner? Augustine tells us: it was when Christ said “This is my body”.

I will finish my analysis of this quote from this smart and amusing quote from William Goode:
“But surely, even without going further, the symbolical character of what our Lord held in his hands would be sufficient to indicate a sense of the words more reasonable than that our Lord, when his body was sitting at the table with his disciples, also held his body in his hands, and multiplied it so as to give it twelve times!” (William Goode, The Nature of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist, pg. 510, source)

3 thoughts on “Augustine on the Real & Substanitial Presence”

  1. 3rd Comment on Part 1 of Soli Deo Gloria Apologetics” Did Augustine Teach Transubstantiation (Part 1)

    Soli Deo Gloria, I read and reread Exposition of Psalm 33. Wherever you think you found and prove that Augustine did not believe in the Read & Substantial Presence in Psalm 33, shows me how your mind works. You can’t use logic and reason if you cannot critically think.

    Exposition of Psalm 33

    ” And was carried in His Own Hands: how carried in His Own Hands? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said, This is My Body. Matthew 26:26″ (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801034.htm)

    To answer this, I would point to Augustine’s second exposition on the same passage:

    “In the light of this, what is the meaning of he affected? It means he was full of affection. What could ever be as full of affection as is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in consideration of our infirmity accepted temporal death amid such violence and degradation, to free us from everlasting death? He drummed because a drum can be made only by stretching a skin across a wooden frame, so David’s drumming was a prediction that Christ was to be crucified. He drummed on the doors into the city; and what else are the doors into the city but our hearts, which we had shut against Christ? But from the drum of his cross he opened the hearts of us mortals. He was carried in his own hands; how was this possible? Because when he entrusted to us his very body and blood, he took into his hands what the faithful know about, and so in a sense he was carrying himself when he said, This is my body.“ (John E. Rotelle,, The Works of Saint Augustin: A Translation for the 21st Century – Expositions of the Psalms, 33-50, III/16, p. 24)

    “The psalmist wants to speak openly now about the sacrament that the Lord held in his hands.” (ibid., pg. 33)

    Here is the quote that you claim:

    He was carried in his own hands; how was this possible? Because when he entrusted to us his very body and blood, he took into his hands what the faithful know about, and so in a sense he was carrying himself when he said, This is my body.“

    Soli Deo? Augustine is telling us how Christ held and carried Himself in His one hands, by asking how was this possible?

    Here is the answer:

    Because when he entrusted to us his very body and blood, he took into his hands what the faithful know about, and so in a sense he was carrying himself when he said, This is my body.“

    Furthermore, the refutation of the Roman Catholic claim regarding this passage from Augustine can be found in the passage itself:

    ” And was carried in His Own Hands: how carried in His Own Hands? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said,This is My Body. Matthew 26:26″ (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801034.htm)
    Augustine says that Christ carried Himself “in a certain manner”. What was that manner? Augustine tells us: it was when Christ said “This is my body”.

    I explained to you, in another post, just how could Jesus hold/carry Himself. I will once again explain this to you so that anyone read this REFUTATION of your unscholarly article can at least research this answer:

    The Catholic response involves four points to explain how Christ carried Himself as .

    First, the Catholic doctrine distinguishes between different modes of presence, such that something can be present either in the mode of accidents, or in the mode of substance. So the accidents of Christ’s physical body are present in the mode of accidents only in heaven; in the Eucharist the accidents of His body are present only in the mode of substance.

    Second, the Catholic doctrine does not claim or entail that Christ’s physical body is omnipresent, but that in the Eucharist His body is present in the mode of substance in many places at the same time. If Christ’s physical body were omnipresent, there would be nothing especially sacred about the Eucharist, because Christ would no more present there than anywhere else. So the notion that Christ’s human nature is omnipresent would be incompatible with Eucharistic adoration.

    Third, those limitations that are essential to human nature should not be confused with those limitations that are proper accidents of human nature. Failing to make this distinction can lead to mistaking the removal of limitations non-essential to human nature for Eutychianism. Being present in the mode of substance in only one place is not essential to human nature, and for this reason Christ’s human nature remains intact when He is present simultaneously in many places in the mode of substance.

    Fourth, Christ’s presence in the mode of substance in the Eucharist is a miracle, not a natural power or property of His human nature. Similarly, His passing through closed doors (Jn 20:19,26) and His face shining like the sun (Mt. 17), and His Ascension into heaven (see comment #19 in the Terrence Malick thread), were not natural powers of his human nature; they were miracles. But miracles removing limitations non-essential to human nature do not destroy the integrity of Christ’s human nature. And in this way the miracle by which Christ’s body and blood are present in the mode of substance simultaneously in many different places in the Eucharist does not destroy the integrity of His human nature, and thus does not conflate His human nature with His divine nature. For this reason, the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence does not entail Eutychianism.
    Adapted from Dr. Bryan Cross:(https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/church-fathers-on-transubstantiation/#footnote_20_6725 SEE COMMENT 185)

    Your analysis of that quote shows how utterly brainswashed you are to even think Augustine didn’t believe in the Real & Substantial Presence.

    I will finish my analysis of this quote from this smart and amusing quote from William Goode:
    “But surely, even without going further, the symbolical character of what our Lord held in his hands would be sufficient to indicate a sense of the words more reasonable than that our Lord, when his body was sitting at the table with his disciples, also held his body in his hands, and multiplied it so as to give it twelve times!” (William Goode, The Nature of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist, pg. 510, source)

    William Goode’s God is NOT God, since he doesn’t understand the concept of the “ONE LOAF.” I can take just a piece of the bread and it would still be the whole Christ: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

    Part 1 is done and we can honestly say that Augustine did believe/preached/taught the Real Presence & Substantial Presence.

    Blessings,

    Ryan Zell

    Like

  2. 2nd Comment on Part 1 of Soli Deo Gloria Apologetics” Did Augustine Teach Transubstantiation (Part 1)

    Augustine: Sermon 227

    Here is exactly what Augustine writes in Sermon 227:

    That bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the
    word of God, is the body of Christ.†2 That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the
    word of God, is the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished
    to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If
    you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive. You see, the apostle says, We, being
    many, are one loaf, one body (1 Cor 10:17). That’s how he explained the sacrament of the Lord’s
    table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be.

    RIGHT HERE you skipped 6 paragraphs. Again, why are you trying to confuse your readers. What did you skip that you don't want anybody to read?

    Here you state this: “This passage of Augustine has been hotly debated between Catholics and Protestants. I want to give here some reasons why I don’t think Augustine is teaching transubstantiation here.

    That bread that all of us in the Apostolic Churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic and Assyrian) see on the altar is sanctified by the “word of God” and according to Augustine “is the Body of Christ.” And Augustine goes on in the very next sentence to state: “That cup, or rather what is in the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ.” ITS AS if CHRIST JESUS IS SAYING THIS VERY WORDS at the LAST SUPPER. This is My Body…..this is My Blood. And both are SANCTIFIED by the WORD of GOD? Does that sound like Augustine believes these most precious elements are mere symbols? NO it doesn’t.

    Augustine is also showing that Paul understood the bread and the blood of Christ as a unity (2nd paragraph) between all of those who believe the Red Letter Words of Christ: Take, eat, this is My Body….. this is My Blood. We are One Loaf in that One Body (1 Cor 10:17).

    Augustine calls it a sacrament (1 st, 2nd and 4th paragraphs)? Soli Deo Gloria… do you believe that the Holy Eucharist is a Sacrament? Many of the Heterodox deny this and thus, they really cannot prove that Augustine was a closet Protestant. God forbid.

    Now you skipped 6 paragraphs. In those 5 paragraphs, Augustine is describing the Liturgical sequence which is still celebrated today and everyday as a pure and acceptable sacrifice which all the members of the One Church, One Body, One Loaf enter into.

    Augustine is in harmony with Paul by quoting 1 Cor 11:27. So in the last paragraph you are again caught leaving important sentences out of your quotation of Sermon 227. Here is what you put from the after you skipped the 6th paragraphs.

    The last 1/2 of the 7th paragraph:

    What you can see passes away, but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. Look, it’s received, it’s eaten, it’s consumed. Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the members of Christ consumed? Perish the thought!“ (https://stanselminstitute.org/files/SERMON%20227.pdf)

    Here is the full 7th paragraph which is very important to providing proof that Augustine believed in the Real & Substantial Presence: The Bold lettering is what you left out.

    So they are great sacraments and signs, really serious and important sacraments. Do you want to know how their seriousness is impressed on us? The apostle says, Whoever eats the body of
    Christ or drinks the blood of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord (1
    Cor 11:27). What is receiving unworthily? Receiving with contempt, receiving with derision.
    Don’t let yourselves think that what you can see is of no account.     What you can see passes away,
    but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. Look, it’s received, it’s eaten,
    it’s consumed. Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the
    members of Christ consumed?†9 Perish the thought!     Here they are being purified, there they will
    be crowned with the victor’s laurels. So what is signified will remain eternally, although the thing
    that signifies it seems to pass away. So receive the sacrament in such a way that you think about
    yourselves, that you retain unity in your hearts, that you always fix your hearts up above. Don’t
    let your hope be placed on earth, but in heaven. Let your faith be firm in God, let it be acceptable
    to God. Because what you don’t see now, but believe, you are going to see there, where you will
    have joy without end.

    Lets now unpack the missing pieces to the puzzle you conveniently didn’t think was applicable.

    The great, serious and important sacraments. Augustine quotes the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:27 to show the seriousness of eating and drinking in an unworthy manner.

    1 Corinthians 11:27-30

    27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.
    28 Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
    29 For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.
    30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died

    I ask you Soli Deo Gloria, if Augustine did not believe in the Real & Substantial Presence, would he use “great, serious, important and then quote the Apostle on one being guilty if they ate the sacrament in an unworthy manner? NO way. But please look very closely at the above 4 passages and tell me if you think Paul thought the Holy Eucharist was symbolic, or figurative.

    Augustine is showing that the bread and wine on the altar, after consumed passes through us, but what that the “Invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. What is he talking about? Answer: GRACE received.

    Augustine states:

    Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the
    members of Christ consumed?

    What is meant there? In fact there is a great footnote explaining, and I will quote it in full:

    †9. Notice how his thought does not linger on the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic
    elements, but passes straight to the ultimate meaning of the eucharist, the ultimate grace signified
    by Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament, namely the unity of the body of Christ which is the
    Church, and our living incorporation into it.     He doesn’t deny the real presence, as was later
    thought by, for example, some of the Protestant reformers. But he knows that it is only, so to say,
    the middle stage of the sacrament, what Saint Thomas Aquinas calls the res et sacramentum, the
    thing signified by the visible celebration, which is itself also the sacrament, that is the sign, of a
    further thing. It is this further thing, what Saint Thomas calls the res tantum, the ultimate thing or
    grace signified, that always interests Augustine. And the grace of the eucharist is the unity of the
    body of Christ and our participation in it. The real presence of Christ under the appearances of
    bread and wine has the same place in this sacrament as the baptismal character has in baptism: a
    kind of half-way stage, or middle level, in the sacramental mystery of grace.

    You were caught like a rat. Do you really think that the Red Letter Words of Christ at both the Bread of Life Discourse, which are revealed at the Last Supper, were meaningless? That Augustine, a Bishop of the Church, who received Holy Orders, and understood the error and heresies of the Gnostic/Dualists, was a closet Protestant? God forbid.

    Now you go on to quote three scholars who are in error, but because they cannot allow the

    Here is what three scholars have said on this issue:

    “For Ratramnus, although Paschasius’s second sense is not excluded – indeed it is even mentioned explicitly – there is another aspect which is dominant. For him, the Eucharist is above all a mystical body in that it symbolizes, as Saint Augustine so often repeated, the body of Christ which we ourselves are, or should be: the ‘body of the people that believes‘, the ‘body of the people that receives‘, the ‘body of the people reborn in Christ‘, ‘the body of believers‘. (PL, 121, 167-9, 159) It is, reproduced on the altar, the mystery of ourselves” (Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, pg. 71, source)

    This is false. Henri de Lubac is not refuting the Real and Substantial Presence in this book. He is explaining the History of the Eucharist in the Middle Ages. And yes Augustine shows several aspects of the Eucharist, one of which I touched upon, that we are a Loaf (2nd paragraph), and that this loaf isn’t made from a single grain, but from many grains and it is joined together with water and then fire to make this one loaf. Its unity.

    In the 4rd paragraph, Augustine states:

    “….after the prayer, you are urged to lift up your hearts, that’s only right for members of Christ. After all, if you have become members of Christ, where is your head?” Where is the head? in heaven. Unity, of the body of Christ is of paramount importance to Augustine.

    “Augustine did not conceive of real presence in strictly ritual terms. His thinking admitted no sharp fissure between the real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and the real presence of Christ within the Christian community.” (William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, pg. 376, source)

    Wow, what a quote since in Sermon 227, Augustine specifically states in the very first paragraph:

    You ought to know what you have received, what you are about to receive,
    what you ought to receive every day. That bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the
    word of God, is the body of Christ. That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the
    word of God, is the blood of Christ.

    And what is the setting for Augustine’s sermon 227? These chatechumens will not be ready to receive the Divine Holy Eucharist at the Mass in this Church. In paragraph 3, “When you assemble in Church…..” Augustine calls this a sacrament as well.

    And here:

    “Here [Sermon 227] the Pauline thought of the relation of eucharistic body and ecclesial body is deepened and made the principle of the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrament. Augustine understands that the eucharistic elements, especially the bread, are images of the whole Christ: head and body. The baptized, who live by faith and love, are the body of the Christ and participate more deeply in what they are through the symbolic realities of the eucharistic sacraments. Therefore the Eucharist does not afford, precisely, an ‘encounter’ with Christ, as in the case of Ambrose’s teaching, but a deepening of one’s being in Christ. In the Eucharist we do not so much receive Christ; rather, he receives us and grafts us more deeply into his body…Later on, the early medieval interpretation of Augustine progressively downplays his eucharistic spiritual interpretation of the sacraments of the body and blood. That Augustine’s eucharistic theology could be interpreted spiritually is obvious…” (Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, pgs. 25-27, here)

    I would not say that Augustine understands the eucharistic elements as images of the whole Christ: head and body. Augustine understood the elements to be the Body and Blood as Christ states at both the Bread of Life Discourse and the Last Supper. Everything I have posted shows that Augustine believed in the Real & Substantial Presence, just as his predecessors did.

    Symbolic realities? This person Edward J. Kilmartin is just begging the question. If this guy is a scholar, he has failed miserably.

    I will finish this up with my next and last reply and refutation of Part 1.
    May I also suggest reading the entire sermons before typing one single word.

    Blessings,

    Ryan Zell.

    Like

  3. Hi Soli Deo Gloria Apologetics,
    I read the article. Why did you choose the title: “Did Augustine Teach Transubstantiation” instead of the Real Presence? Do you not realize that attempts to explain the Real Presence in terms of Aristotle’s concept of matter took place hundreds of years later. You are obviously trying to confuse your readers, instead of giving an honest analysis of the subject to your readers.
    Lets take a close look at your first quote where you want to argue about an accurate translation of the word “worship” while ignoring the preceding line “and gave that VERY FLESH FOR US TO EAT FOR OUR SALVATION. Your first Major Blunder.

    For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation;

    Right here it can be proved you are totally REFUTED. But we will go on.
    You stated this:

    This is without a doubt one of the most common quotes used from Augustine by Roman Catholic apologists to support transubstantiation and in particular, eucharistic adoration and worship. However, is Augustine teaching the Roman Catholic view here?

    Why is it one of the most common quotes that Catholic apologists use to prove Augustine believed in the Real Presence? Because Augustine stated directly: “and gave that VERY FLESH FOR US TO EAT FOR OUR SALVATION.
    Now when Augustine writes “And no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped”, the natural question would be WORSHIPPED WHAT?
    The answer is: In context, the flesh which they eat and leads to salvation.
    One of the scholars suggested that Augustine teaches a different Eucharistic doctrine then Ambrose. Total nonsense Soli Deo Gloria. ((Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, pgs. 25-27,)
    Do you realize that Ambrose was Augustine’s teacher, he was the one who brought Augustine into the Catholic Church. It’s absurd to believe they were teaching a different Eucharistic doctrine. I will eventually post a long list of the Early Church Fathers on the Real Presence and ask you if you actually think Augustine disagrees with those views expressed by his fellow Bishops and Church Fathers. Later for that.
    One final point that you obviously overlooked. Augustine refers to the Eucharist as a mystery as do the other Fathers. A mystery is something we can’t understand. A purely symbolic presence is not a MYSTERY. Holding up a piece of bread and remembering what Christ did for us is not a MYSTERY.
    Now lets look at what Augustine states when he references John 6:54 and 6:63. Here you made a second Major Blunder.
    Here is Exposition of Psalm 99 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801099.htm)

    But does the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing….But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him. John 6:54 Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, This is an hard saying, who can hear it? And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto them hard that He said, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you have no life in you: they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, This is a hard saying. It was they who were hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not meek, they would have said to themselves, He says not this without reason, but there must be some latent mystery herein. They would have remained with Him, softened, not hard: and would have learned that from Him which they who remained, when the others departed, learned. For when twelve disciples had remained with Him, on their departure, these remaining followers suggested to Him, as if in grief for the death of the former, that they were offended by His words, and turned back. But He instructed them, and says unto them, It is the Spirit that quickens, but the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63 Understand spiritually what I have said; you are not to eat this body which you see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.

    This is what is known as Augustine”s “Caphranite Error.”
    Yes, this error caused the disciples walked away from Jesus over His teaching of the Bread of Life Discourse. Look at the sentence where Augustine states:

    But does the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing….But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him.

    Augustine was quoting the first part of John 6:63 and then John 6:54. What should we see here? What is Jesus teaching? Something that needs to be understood Spiritually, with the eyes of faith, because He will not reveal the meaning of His words at the Bread of Life Discourse, until the Last Supper. Read what Augustine then says:

    Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, This is an hard saying, who can hear it? And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto them hard that He said, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you have no life in you: they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, This is a hard saying. It was they who were hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not meek, they would have said to themselves, He says not this without reason, but there must be some latent mystery herein. They would have remained with Him, softened, not hard: and would have learned that from Him which they who remained, when the others departed, learned.

    Learned what? That the Bread of Life would be instituted on the night we was betrayed (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
    Augustine states:

    But He instructed them, and says unto them, It is the Spirit that quickens, but the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63

    Augustine states this to the 12 Apostles that were there, even though one of them should have left with the very first Protestors.
    Augustine then paraphrases the meaning of what Jesus said to them:

    Understand spiritually what I have said; you are not to eat this body which you see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.

    John 6:63 Is to be understood by the Apostles, that all which was said at the Bread of Life Discourse is to be understood with spiritual eyes, this mystery which Jesus has given them should be understood, FOR RIGHT NOW, spiritually.
    Don’t take this the wrong what Soli Deo, but if you were at the Bread of Life Discourse when Christ Jesus was delivering this, you would have walked away with those Protestors.
    I will get to the rest of this Article soon.
    Blessings,
    Ryan Zell

    Liked by 2 people

Leave a comment