Histria da doutrina eucarstica anterior a 1517.

Citaes de pelo
menos oito eruditos protestantes que apiam a argumentao de que
havia uma unanimidade virtual da crena na Presena Real durante
todo aquele perodo:

1) Otto W. Heick, A History of Christian Thought, vol.1,

Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, 221-222:

Os Pais Ps-Apostlicos e . . . quase todos os Pais da antiga

Igreja . . . impressionam com seu natural e despreocupado
realismo. Para eles a Eucaristia era de alguma forma o corpo e
sangue de Cristo.
2) Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed.,
rev. by Robert T. Handy, NY: Scribners, 1970, 90-91:

Em meados do segundo sculo, a concepo de uma presena

real de Cristo na Ceia estava amplamente difundida. . . Os
princpios bsicos do ponto de vista catlico j estavam
estabelecidos em 253.
3) Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, v.3, A.D. 311-
600, rev. 5th ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rep. 1974, orig.
1910, 492, 500, 507:

A doutrina do sacramento da Eucaristia no era questo de

controvrsia teolgica. . . . at a poca de Pascsio Radberto,
no 9 sculo . . .

Em geral, este perodo, . . . j estava fortemente inclinado

rumo a doutrina da transubstanciao, bem assim rumo a um
sacrifcio greco-romano da missa que so inseparveis na
medida em que um sacrifcio real requer a presena real da
vtima......

[Agostinho] ao mesmo tempo holds fast the real presence of

Christ in the Supper . . . He was also inclined, with the Oriental
fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.

Note: Schaff had just for two pages (pp.498-500) shown how St.
Augustine spoke of symbolism in the Eucharist as well, but he
honestly admits that the great Father accepted the Real Presence "at
the same time." This is precisely what I would argue. Catholics have
a reasonable explanation for the "symbolic" utterances, which are
able to be harmonized with the Real Presence, but Protestants, who
maintain that Augustine was a Calvinist or Zwingian in his Eucharistic
views must ignore the numerous references to an explicit Real
Presence in Augustine, and of course this is objectionable scholarship.

Augustine . . . on the other hand, he calls the celebration of the

 communion 'verissimum sacrificium' of the body of Christ. The
church, he says, offers ('immolat') to God the sacrifice of
thanks in the body of Christ. [City of God, 10,20]
4) J.D. Douglas, ed., The New International Dictionary of the
Christian Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, rev. ed., 1978,
245 [a VERY hostile source!]:

The Fathers . . . [believed] that the union with Christ given and
confirmed in the Supper was as real as that which took place in
the incarnation of the Word in human flesh.
5) F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary
of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd ed., 1983,
475-476, 1221:

That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood
of Christ was universally accepted from the first . . . Even
where the elements were spoken of as 'symbols' or 'antitypes'
there was no intention of denying the reality of the Presence in
the gifts . . . In the Patristic period there was remarkably little
in the way of controversy on the subject . . . The first
controversies on the nature of the Eucharistic Presence date
from the earlier Middle Ages. In the 9th century Paschasius
Radbertus raised doubts as to the identity of Christ's Eucharistic
Body with His Body in heaven, but won practically no support.
Considerably greater stir was provoked in the 11th century by
the teaching of Berengar, who opposed the doctrine of the Real
Presence. He retracted his opinion, however, before his death in
1088 . . .

It was also widely held from the first that the Eucharist is in
some sense a sacrifice, though here again definition was
gradual. The suggestion of sacrifice is contained in much of the
NT language . . . the words of institution, 'covenant,'
'memorial,' 'poured out,' all have sacrificial associations. In
early post-NT times the constant repudiation of carnal sacrifice
and emphasis on life and prayer at Christian worship did not
hinder the Eucharist from being described as a sacrifice from
the first . . .

From early times the Eucharistic offering was called a sacrifice

in virtue of its immediate relation to the sacrifice of Christ.

Berengar is the first Christian of any prominence at all that we know

of who denied the Real Presence. In the subsequent period we have
the Cathari and Albigensian heresies who did the same, and John
Wycliffe, whose view was similar to Calvin's. Hardly notable
exceptions to the extraordinary unanimity of all the other great
Christians up to 1517!
But - I note in passing - anti-Catholics like Dave Hunt will go to the
amazing extent of embracing the Albigensians as Christian brothers,
in order to find a Christian "church" which runs counter to the
Catholic (or Orthodox) Church in this period. These heretics were
Manichaean-type dualists who believed that flesh and material
creation were evil and that "Christ was an angel with a phantom body
who, consequently, did not suffer or rise again." They rejected the
sacraments, hell, the resurrection of the body, and condemned
marriage. (Ibid., p.31) Yet Dave Hunt is ready to accept them as
Christian brothers before he will offer the right hand of fellowship and
the title of "Christian" to a Catholic like myself! A prime example of
irrational anti-Catholicism if ever there was one!

6) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition

(100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 146-147,
166-168, 170, 236-237:

By the date of the Didache [anywhere from about 60 to 160,

depending on the scholar]. . . the application of the term
'sacrifice' to the Eucharist seems to have been quite natural,
together with the identification of the Christian Eucharist as the
'pure offering' commanded in Malachi 1:11 . . .

The Christian liturgies were already using similar language

about the offering of the prayers, the gifts, and the lives of the
worshipers, and probably also about the offering of the sacrifice
of the Mass, so that the sacrificial interpretation of the death of
Christ never lacked a liturgical frame of reference . . .

. . . the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of

Christ in the Eucharist, which did not become the subject of
controversy until the ninth century. The definitive and precise
formulation of the crucial doctrinal issues concerning the
Eucharist had to await that controversy and others that
followed even later. This does not mean at all, however, that
the church did not yet have a doctrine of the Eucharist; it does
mean that the statements of its doctrine must not be sought in
polemical and dogmatic treatises devoted to sacramental
theology. It means also that the effort to cross-examine the
fathers of the second or third century about where they stood
in the controversies of the ninth or sixteenth century is both
silly and futile . . .

Yet it does seem 'express and clear' that no orthodox father of

the second or third century of whom we have record declared
the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to
be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came
close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change
 by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and
Justin came close to doing so). Within the limits of those
excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence . . .

The theologians did not have adequate concepts within which to

formulate a doctrine of the real presence that evidently was
already believed by the church even though it was not yet
taught by explicit instruction or confessed by creeds . . .

Liturgical evidence suggests an understanding of the Eucharist

as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old
testament was one of archetype to type, and whose relation to
the sacrifice of Calvary was one of 're-presentation,' just as the
bread of the Eucharist 're-presented' the body of Christ . . . the
doctrine of the person of Christ had to be clarified before there
could be concepts that could bear the weight of eucharistic
teaching . . .

Theodore [c.350-428] set forth the doctrine of the real

presence, and even a theory of sacramental transformation of
the elements, in highly explicit language . . . 'At first it is laid
upon the altar as a mere bread and wine mixed with water, but
by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into body and
blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and
immortal nourishment.' [Hom. catech. 16,36] these and similar
passages in Theodore are an indication that the twin ideas of
the transformation of the eucharistic elements and the
transformation of the communicant were so widely held and so
firmly established in the thought and language of the church
that everyone had to acknowledge them.

7) J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco:Harper

& Row, 1978, 447, provides this statement on the heels of
Augustine's Ennar 98:

One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking
for granted the traditional identification of the elements with
the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he
[Augustine] shared the realism held by almost all of his
contemporaries and predecessors.
8) Carl Volz, Faith and Practice in the Early Church,
Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983, 107:

Early Christians were convinced that in some way Christ was

actually present in the consecrated elements of bread and wine.
9) Maurice Wiles and Mark Santar, Documents in Early
Christian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1975, 173:
Finally, John Chrysostom and Augustine explore the social
connotation of participation in the Eucharist: the body of Christ
is not only what lies on the altar, it is also the body of the
faithful.