The Council of Trent

That the Catholic Church did such a thing only confirmed my predilection for the Reformed tradition. The latter seemed more concerned with understanding the Bible rightly in its insistence on the importance of studying both Hebrew and Greek. This desire to understand with precision what the Bible meant was ordered to the further goal of teaching people about Christ. In employing the historico-grammatical methodology of early Humanism to critically determine and interpret the text, the Reformed offered simultaneously both a measure of clarity and realism about what the Scriptures communicate and also a check against foisting human speculation, no matter how pious-sounding, onto the Christian faithful. One needed only to crank the canon of Scripture, which is primarily known to the individual by the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit rather than through the mediate testimony of the Church,² through human reason’s ability to grasp the truth as repaired and guided by the same Holy Spirit. The prospect of learning the original languages of Hebrew and Greek also whetted my longing for intellectually challenging ways to help others and also, unfortunately, my prideful desire to appear smart and authoritative to others.³

In contrast, the Catholic Church seemed to me very stupid and ignorant. She was an ostrich thinking it could fly who nevertheless kept plunging her head into the dirt in order to avoid any talk that might upset her fantasies. The abuses in the Church that preceded the Protestant movement indicated, to me and the tradition I was growing to love, a lack of contact with God through special revelation. Instead of turning to the source of renewal, the Word of God, the Catholics inoculated their communion against the cure. Everyone knew that the Vulgate had acquired errors that provided purportedly divine authorization for the Catholic view of justification, Purgatory, the penitential system, the veneration of Mary and the saints, and spurious sacraments such as confirmation and marriage.⁴ Trent made it the official version in an astounding act of arrogance, locking her faithful up in the prison of ignorance about the Scriptures and thus about Christ. I believed this story as did several of my friends.

When my wife and I began the process of learning more about the Catholic Church, I found that several friends also had concerns about the implications of this story. Having studied Hebrew and Greek for several years, I was worried that my training would be useless in the Church. Perhaps the Church was only holding its nose at the use of the original languages. Would we not be joining a group that had rejected Scripture, if not in name, then in method by arrogantly raising up a Latin translation over the very sources of that translation? The Vulgate’s status as the “authentic version” of the Catholic Church revealed that the recent renaissance of Catholic biblical scholarship was something borrowed from genuine Protestantism, picking up some elements of liberal Protestantism as well. Many of the books I used to learn Hebrew and Greek grammar in fact were written by Catholics and published by the Vatican.⁵ Yet I thought I could say that they were really “one of us Calvinists” because it seemed that they were inconsistently studying the original languages and not following their Church’s discipline regarding the Vulgate.

The problem is that this story is a myth. It is a myth like the myth that the Catholic Church officially opposed the translation of Sacred Scripture into other vernacular languages in itself. When I was seeking Protestant sources and arguments to keep me from converting to Catholicism, I found that this misinterpretation came down to me from the very pen of John Calvin.⁶ In reading Calvin’s Antidote (1547) to the Council of Trent, I found him accusing the Council of exalting the Latin Vulgate with the intention of shutting the mouth of the true reformers such as himself. So the Frenchman writes:

John Calvin

But as the Hebrew or Greek original often serves to expose their ignorance in quoting Scripture, to check their presumption, and so keep down their thrasonic boasting, they ingeniously meet this difficulty also by determining that the Vulgate translation only is to be held authentic. Farewell, then, to those who have spent much time and labor in the study of languages, that they might search for the genuine sense of Scripture at the fountainhead! [...]

In condemning all translations except the Vulgate, as the error is more gross, so the edict is more barbarous. The sacred oracles of God were delivered by Moses and the Prophets in Hebrew, and by the Apostles in Greek. That no corner of the world might be left destitute of so great a treasure, the gift of interpretation was added. It came to pass–I know not by what means, but certainly neither by judgment nor right selection–that of the different versions, one became the favorite of the unlearned, or those at least who, not possessing any knowledge of languages, desired some kind of help to their ignorance. Those, on the other hand, who are acquainted with the languages perceive that this version teems with innumerable errors; and this they make manifest by the clearest evidence. On the other hand, the Fathers of Trent contend, that although the learned thus draw the pure liquor from the very fountain, and convict the infallible Vulgate of falsehood, they are not to be listened to. No man possessed of common sense ever presumed to deprive the Church of God of the benefit of learning. The ancients, though unacquainted with the languages, especially Hebrew, always candidly acknowledge that nothing is better than to consult the original, in order to obtain the true and genuine meaning. I will go no further. There is no man of ordinary talent who, on comparing the Vulgate version with some others, does not easily see that many things which were improperly rendered by it are in these happily restored. The Council, however, insists that we shall shut our eyes against the light that we may spontaneously go astray.

Who could have imagined they would be so senseless as thus boldly to despise the judgments of good men, and hesitate not to make themselves odious and detestable to all? Those who were aware that they had nothing useful in view, were yet persuaded that they would make some show of it to the world, and assign to some of their sworn adherents the task of executing a new version. In this instance, however, they use no deceit. They not only order us to be contented with a most defective translation, but insist on our worshipping it, just as if it had come down from heaven; and while the blemishes are conspicuous to all, they prohibit us from desiring any improvement. Behold the men on whose judgment the renovation of the Church depends!⁷

For Calvin, the Tridentine decree is a sure sign of the Catholic Church’s ignorance, imprudence, insecurity, and malice. According to Calvin, Trent swept away the need for studying Greek and Hebrew in marking the Vulgate as the authentic text of the Church. Yet Calvin has read more into the decree than the decree says. Calvin, a man with a great talent for sober and elegant writing and interpretation, here gave way to impassioned “eisegesis” of what Trent really said. Trent nowhere forbids the use of the original languages, as if St. Jerome had not used them to revise the Old Latin texts or make his own translations. One may add here that certain Reformers were perhaps overly optimistic about their Hebrew text or even about the manuscripts of the New Testament which they currently had in their possession. Modern biblical scholarship, especially after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has deemed various Greek translations of the Old Testament to more accurately preserve the Hebrew Vorlage than the Masoretic text in some books. Further, the New Testament text used by early Protestant translators as the basis for the Geneva and the King James Bibles, the so-called textus receptus, no longer has priority in critical editions of the New Testament, such as Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. Modern vernacular Bibles therefore no longer use the textus receptus as their base text. What a benefit it is to the Church to have the faith passed down both by a written mode and by the mode of Tradition, such that the faith does not depend on the vicissitudes of textual discovery! The manuscript discoveries misused by the Reformers in articulating their principle of sola scriptura do not give God’s people the faith. Rather, the valid critical study of manuscripts supports the faith but does not establish it.

The truth was surprising for me, someone who had come to share in this misinterpretation of the fourth session of Trent. The Catholic Church made the Vulgate the official version of the Church without prejudice to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. The Reformers were not the only problem on the Council’s agenda but were merely one symptom of an underlying need for reform. Trent set out to reform the Church, and all its decisions against Protestant formulations or preferences must be kept within that context. If one were to make Trent a narrow reaction against Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists, one would fail to appreciate the intent of the Fathers of the council and their enduring success in reorganizing and focusing the Catholic reform, which had started before Luther ever thought to instigate a revolt against the Church. Trent was concerned with strengthening the Church through clerical and liturgical reform in addition to clarifying the doctrine of the faith over against Protestant errors.

I learned that I had accepted a myth only after I did two important things toward learning what the Catholic Church actually teaches: 1) I talked to a faithful Catholic priest and 2) I read Trent and some other Catholic sources with an ear that was at least open to being corrected. One does not want to look in the mirror and see an ostrich, after all.

Francisco Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros

I had met my priest at a conference on economics and Christian social teaching. He was of Latin American provenance and had a wonderful combination of pastoral zeal and theological vigor. I asked him about the decree of Trent on the Vulgate. He told me that the decree was above all aimed at standardizing the Latin text of the Bible for the Church, especially the Latin Rite. The problem was not the use of Greek and Hebrew by the Reformers, as embarrassing as that was for some Catholic polemical authors. After all, scholars who remained within the Catholic Church had begun to use the original languages before Protestants started openly defying the Church’s leadership and traditions. One need look no further than the Complutensian Polyglot (1516), completed in Alcala, Spain, under Cardinal Ximenes, who dedicated the work to Pope Leo X,⁸ or the Greek edition of the New Testament edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Such scholars desired to see greater familiarity with Sacred Scripture and were no less ardent in calling for the reform of abuses than were Protestants. For example, Cardinal Ximenes wrote that one reason for printing the Complutensian Polyglot is the following.

[W]herever there is diversity in the Latin manuscripts or the suspicion of a corrupted reading (we know how frequently this occurs because of the ignorance and negligence of copyists), it is necessary to go back to the original source of Scripture, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine and other ecclesiastical writers advise us to do [...] And so that every student of Holy Scripture might have at hand the original texts themselves and be able to quench his thirst at the very fountainhead of the water that flows unto life everlasting and not have to content himself with rivulets alone, we ordered the original languages of Holy Scripture with their translations adjoined to be printed and dedicated to your Holiness.⁹

One might have expected such Humanistic words from the pen of John Calvin, aside from addressing Leo X as “your Holiness” or calling Jerome and Augustine saints. Later in the preface the Cardinal defends the usefulness of an accurate understanding of the literal sense as the foundation for spiritual exegesis, which is a point of departure with Calvin due to the latter’s rejection of spiritual exegesis.¹⁰ The spiritual sense of Scripture contains that of which “the realities and events” of the literal sense are signs. This sense emerges from the unity of God’s redemptive plan for mankind as revealed in the writings of which he is the primary author.¹¹ Recently, Pope Benedict XVI expressed himself in similar terms to Cardinal Ximenes and St. Jerome, writing:

Throughout the history of the Church, numerous saints have spoken of the need for knowledge of Scripture in order to grow in love for Christ. This is evident particularly in the Fathers of the Church. Saint Jerome, in his great love for the word of God, often wondered: “How could one live without the knowledge of Scripture, by which we come to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers?”. He knew well that the Bible is the means “by which God speaks daily to believers”. [...] Let us follow the example of this great saint who devoted his life to the study of the Bible and who gave the Church its Latin translation, the Vulgate, as well as the example of all those saints who made an encounter with Christ the center of their spiritual lives. Let us renew our efforts to understand deeply the word which God has given to his Church: thus we can aim for that “high standard of ordinary Christian living” proposed by Pope John Paul II at the beginning of the third Christian millennium, which finds constant nourishment in attentively hearing the word of God.¹²

The Holy Father here reaffirms the need to know Sacred Scripture in order to know Christ, an essentially Catholic idea.

A sample page from
the Complutensian Polyglot

Neither the Cardinal nor Erasmus confused the agenda of reform with the rejection of essential elements of the faith. They thus remained in the Church while many around them were beginning to entertain Protestant positions, to despair, or to leave.¹³ To see that Catholic biblical scholarship did not cease with the hardening of the Protestant schism but that it could attain linguistic and theological heights on the other side of Trent, one need only read the work of Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637), the great Jesuit commentator, priest, and professor of Hebrew.

In this way, the Catholic priest I met at the conference prepared me to see that the first decree of Trent’s fourth session was clarified by the second decree. The second decree shows that the primary intention of Trent was to identify one standard Latin edition of the Bible for the Latin-speaking Church to use in the liturgy and in scholastic disputation. The reluctance of the Council to ban translations of the Bible into vernacular languages opened the door for translations such as the Reims New Testament (1582) and the entire Douai-Reims Bible (1609-1610). More to the point, in the second decree of its fourth session, the Council, which otherwise had no difficulty signaling an intention to correct Protestant errors in its other decrees and canons, explained the promotion of the Vulgate in the following way.

Moreover, the same holy council considers that noticeable benefit can accrue to the church of God if, from all the Latin editions of the sacred books which are in circulation, it establishes which is to be regarded as authentic. It decides and declares that the old well known Latin Vulgate edition [ipsa vetus et vulgata editio] which has been tested in the church by long use over so many centuries should be kept as the authentic text in public readings, debates, sermons and explanations; and no one is to dare or presume on any pretext to reject it. [...T]he council decrees and determines that hereafter the sacred scriptures, particularly in this ancient Vulgate edition, shall be printed after a thorough revision [...]¹⁴

We should see three things in this decree. First, we see that the primary intention of the council was to standardize the Latin text of the Church. Remember that the context of Trent is overall reform, not merely smashing Protestantism. In this light, we see a Council eager to correct the problem of the multiplication of Latin translations and editions in Medieval Europe. The proliferation was caused by the sloppy transmission of the Latin manuscripts of Sacred Scripture as well as isolated attempts by scholars and bishops to revise the Latin texts they received, whether of the Old Latin, Jerome’s Vulgate, or some eclectic amalgamation.¹⁵

St. Jerome

Second, the council approved the Latin because Latin was the common language of the educated classes, both ecclesiastical and lay, in Europe for centuries. It was thus the “common” [vulgatus] language of the Western Church. This is the reason why St. Jerome’s translation was initially called the Vulgate, because it was in the “vulgar” tongue, much like koine Greek was the “common” or “vulgar” language of the Mediterranean world at the time of the Gospel. Due to the Church’s use of the Vulgate over the centuries in liturgy, theology, and devotion, she was eager to preserve that translation tradition. She did not want to dump the Latin altogether while she was open to using the original languages to maintain continuity with the past. Most Protestant theologians did not do away with Latin either but continued to write their theological treatises in that language for centuries, presumably for the same reasons of a common language allowing for communication both across national or ethnic lines and for keeping touch with the Latin Fathers of the Church.

Third, the council provides a way to achieve this reform in decreeing that a “thorough revision” of the Latin Bible is to be made. The council does not deny what everyone already knew, namely, that the text of the Vulgate had been corrupted in places by transmission errors. Enshrining the Vulgate as the “authentic” edition does not mean that the Vulgate cannot be revised in light of the best Latin manuscripts or that one may never correct the Latin text using the Hebrew or Greek manuscript traditions. In this openness to humanistic textual criticism, the Tridentine Fathers order that the Vulgate be corrected after the Council such that one version attaining as closely as possible to Jerome’s original translation would find universal use. The employment of Greek and Hebrew to correct the Latin was not forbidden in any way. The revision of the Vulgate was completed under popes Sixtus V and Clement the VIII and published in 1598. The Church has again endorsed a revision of the Vulgate as the authentic version for the Latin rite in liturgical and theological use. The letter in which John Paul the Great promulgated this Nova Vulgata (“New Vulgate”) edition in 1979 can be found here. The history of these revisions are interesting but too complicated to rehearse here.¹⁶

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has understood the Tridentine reform in precisely this way. Pius XII explained in his famous encyclical on Sacred Scripture and biblical studies, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), that:

And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church¹⁷ and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which “had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church.” Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.¹⁸

Pius is therefore teaching that the Vulgate was established as the authentic version of the Church because it is the Latin Church’s family heirloom, the text which when read puts one not only into contact with Christ but also with all the Latin-speaking theologians and spiritual writers of the Church’s theological tradition. Yet Pius does not hold that the absence of dogmatic and moral errors disallows the study of Hebrew and Greek or the direct translations of vernacular Bibles from the original languages.¹⁹ He writes,

Wherefore this authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine by no means prevents – nay rather today it almost demands – either the corroboration and confirmation of this same doctrine by the original texts or the having recourse on any and every occasion to the aid of these same texts, by which the correct meaning of the Sacred Letters is everywhere daily made more clear and evident. Nor is it forbidden by the decree of the Council of Trent to make translations into the vulgar tongue, even directly from the original texts themselves, for the use and benefit of the faithful and for the better understanding of the divine word, as We know to have been already done in a laudable manner in many countries with the approval of the Ecclesiastical authority.²⁰

The myth of what Trent really did persists among many Protestants, as other myths about Protestants persist among Catholics. In this little post, I hope that I have done enough to show that the Church was not opposed to the use of the Greek and Hebrew languages in the fourth session of Trent, contrary to Calvin’s misinterpretation. The more myths of this nature are dispelled, the closer Protestants and Catholics come to reconciliation and to the healing of long-held suspicions.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word and the Revelation of your Love, we ask that you bring all into the full unity of the Church in order that we may tell of your mighty works, recorded for us in the Sacred Scriptures. Teach us your truth, that we may all attain eternal life. You sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost to empower her as she reads, contemplates, and teaches the Sacred Scriptures. Confirm us in this sure knowledge of salvation, for your glory and our good. Amen.

St. Jerome, pray for us!

1. Translation taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, SJ, 2 vol. (Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:664.
2. E.g., WCF I.v.
3. Later, I began to see the limitations of relying solely on the historico-critical method without also submitting to the Church’s reception of the canon of Scripture. I had relied on Sacred Tradition without knowing it in assuming the Protestant canon at the beginning of my criticism. I could not acknowledge this dependence without conceding the importance of Tradition, and so had to ultimately assert the canon on faith. This does not discount having good historical reasons for preferring the four Gospels and much of the Pauline corpus, but many have come to doubt the authenticity of certain Pauline writings. There was also plenty of debate about other books in the formation of the New Testament. I cannot here even begin to broach the problem of the Old Testament canon for Protestantism. For more on the deficiencies of the Reformed approach to determining the canon, see Tom Brown’s excellent article, The Canon Question. For the Reformed then, humanistic and critical study of Scripture can only happen after a fideistic determination of which books constitute the canon. So-called liberal Protestants have simply taken the critical method and set it over against the fideistic element.
4. Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (University of Chicago Press: 1984), 306-310. Cf. John Calvin, Antidote, in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68-69.
5. E.g., Paul Joüon & T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2nd ed. (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006); Maximilian Zerwick, SJ, Biblical Greek, 4th ed. adapted by Joseph Smith, SJ (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2009); ibid., A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1996).
6. Apparently Philip Melanchthon also misinterpreted Trent in the same way, but I have not found the source for this assertion.
7. John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 68, 71-72. One should note that I do not intend to take up Calvin’s other complaints against the Council, for example, his protest against the Council reserving the right of arbitrating competing interpretations of unclear passages. Notice also that Calvin arrogates to himself the “gift of interpretation” and thus presents himself as a competing Magisterium. Scholars such as Bruce Gordon have shown how Calvin saw himself as a prophet of God, called to reform the Church by his authority and scholarship. The problem for Calvin is not the need for a final ecclesiastical court of interpretation. The problem is that Trent did not recognize Calvin, and the learned divines whom Calvin recognized, as that court. Calvinists are just as committed as Catholics to retaining an interpretive class constituted by official pastors. For our purposes here we need only see that Calvin has misinterpreted the fourth session of Trent. One might also see how Calvin is perpetually dependent on having accurate manuscripts for his knowledge of the deposit of faith, as if he were not also dependent on Sacred Tradition.
8. The cardinal’s preface to the Polyglot is worth reading. A translation can be found in John C. Olin, Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563. An Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius Loyola (Fordham University Press, 1990), 61-64.
9. Ibid., 62-63.
10. Preceding Ximenes by two and half centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas also insisted that spiritual exegesis proceed from a firm foundation in the literal sense. Cf. Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 10 ad 1.
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 115-117.
12. Verbum Domini, § 72.
13. Cardinal Ximenes died in 1517, just as the Protestant movement was beginning, so it may be unfair to say what he would have done. Given the Cardinal’s loyalty to the Church and that the biblical scholarship which he oversaw had confirmed his confidence in the Church’s teaching, one doubts that he would have become a Protestant.
14. Trans. from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2:664.
15. For more information, see The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
16. Again, I refer readers to The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vulgate.”
17. I assume the Holy Father means in distinction from the Eastern Catholic Churches.
18. DAS, § 21.
19. A reader might wonder how the Church could determine whether the text lacked errors pertaining to faith and morals. The Church determined this in the same way that she partially confirmed that she was receiving the correct books from God in the canon: by comparing the contents of those books to that which had been received by the other mode of revelation’s transmission, namely, Sacred Tradition. In this way, Tradition and Scripture purify and clarify each other’s transmission of the deposit of faith. The Vulgate, even with the scribal errors, said nothing which contradicted the faith. It was an adequate translation of Scripture even if its reading of this or that verse needed updating. This is a great benefit of the Catholic teaching concerning the unity of Scripture and Tradition, such that even if one part of Scripture is unclear due to manuscript variants, we will not lose anything essential to the Faith because of the transmission of the same Faith through Tradition.
20. DAS, §22.

We will summarize the significance of each type of statement and add some light commentary where expedient. The appendix will contain a few brief responses to anticipated objections as well as some scholarly support for early Christian belief in this doctrine and suggestions for further reading.

I – Affirmation of Change During Consecration
II – Simple Identification of Consecrated Species as the Body and Blood
III – Demand of Extraordinary Reverence
IV – Appendix

Introduction

The claim that the Church fathers believed in Transubstantiation is not a claim that any particular father commanded a precise understanding of the doctrine as formulated by Trent. Any given Church father could no sooner express this doctrine precisely in its developed form than could any given ante-Nicene father express the Niceno-Constantinoplitan doctrine of the Trinity. Yet this does not mean either that they did not believe it, or even that it existed in mere “seed form.” The Nicene doctrine of the Trinity can be detected not only in the early Christian writings and in the New Testament, it is an unavoidable development. That is, anything other than the Niceno-Constantinopolitan doctrine of the Trinity would be contrary to the Tradition of the Church. Likewise, the affirmations that the fathers made about the Eucharist were not only compatible with Transubstantiation, they were incompatible with anything less.

I – Affirmation of Change

Statements that directly affirm a change in the species clearly indicate that the speaker believed in what we now call Transubstantiation. The word ‘transubstantiation’ comes from the Latin trans (across) and substantiare (substantiate). ² It simply means a change of substance. There are only two types of changes, substantial and not-substantial (i.e. accidental). That is to say, if a thing changes, it either changes into another substance (into another thing) or some non-essential feature of it changes. But if a non-essential feature of something changes, we continue to refer to it in the same way. When a man gets a hair cut, we continue calling him a man; but when a log is burnt, we begin calling it a pile of ash.

In some rare cases we do change a name for something after it undergoes an accidental change. But we only do this when the name is associated with the thing accidentally. Thus we no longer call a bachelor a bachelor after he marries (an accidental or relational change). We call him a husband. Yet the name “bachelor” is an accidental term in the first place. He is a man; he is accidentally a bachelor and later becomes accidentally a husband. Throughout the change he is referred to as a man, because that is what we call him in reference to his essence.

Now bread is not called “bread” accidentally but essentially. Therefore the only time it would be proper to call it something else is when it had changed (substantially) into something else. e.g. If we burnt it into a pile of ash, we would call it a pile of ash. We would not call it something other than bread if it only changed accidentally.

But the fathers spoke of the bread differently after the consecration. They referred to it as “the Body” which is compatible only with a substantial change. Therefore, when the fathers spoke of a change in the Eucharist, they were speaking of a substantial change. Since Transubstantiation simply means “substantial change,” they were speaking of what we now call Transubstantiation.

We will clearly see the concept of “substantial change” in the fathers below. Additionally, in AD 1079, nearly 500 years before the Reformation at the sixth council of Rome, Berengarius affirmed the following in an oath:

…the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are substantially changed into the true and proper and living flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord…³

The Fourth Lateran Council in AD 1215 also declared:

Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood…⁴

This was again confirmed by Pope Innocent III (AD 1208), the Second Council of Lyons (AD 1274), Pope Benedict XII (AD 1341), the Council of Constance (AD 1415), and the Council of Florence (AD 1439). ⁵ This shows that in denying Transubstantiation, the Protestants rejected centuries of official Church teaching. Later some Protestants claim to be rejecting only Trent’s declaration. But as we have already seen, there were official councils and documents that affirmed a substantial change in the sacrament long before Trent. Now let us examine the fathers to see whether or not they believed that the bread changed into something else during consecration or whether it remained the same.

For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change (transmutation) of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus. – St. Justin Martyr First Apology 66

Notice that St. Justin does not merely affirm that the food (bread) has been changed, but that it had been changed specifically by the Eucharistic prayer. The change in species is related to the host independently of the communicant. There is no hint here, or elsewhere in the fathers, that it depended on anything but the power of the Holy Spirit working in the consecration. This rules out the heresy of receptionism.⁶

When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receives the Word of God and becomes the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life—flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is in fact a member of him? – St. Irenaeus Against Heresies 5:3

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. – Ibid. 4.18.5

We give thanks to the Creator of all, and, along with thanksgiving and prayer for the blessings we have received, we also eat the bread presented to us; and this bread becomes by prayer a sacred body, which sanctifies those who sincerely partake of it. – Origen Against Celsus 8:33

The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ. – St. Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 19:7

He once in Cana of Galilee, turned the water into wine, akin to blood, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood? – Ibid. 22.2

St. Cyril goes on to explicitly profess what the Church is doing in the consecration, or rather, what God is doing in the consecration:

Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual Hymns, we beseech the merciful God to send forth His Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him; that He may make the Bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Ghost has touched, is surely sanctified and changed. Ibid. 23.7

Now we, as often as we receive the Sacramental Elements, which by the mysterious efficacy of holy prayer are transformed into the Flesh and the Blood, ‘do show the Lord’s Death.’ – St. Ambrose On the Christian Faith 4, 10:125

We ought . . . not regard [the elements] merely as bread and cup, but as the body and blood of the Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit. – Theodore of Mopsuestia Catechetical Homilies 5:1

He did not say, ‘This is the symbol of My Body, and this, of My Blood,’ but, what is set before us, but that it is transformed by means of the Eucharistic action into Flesh and Blood.” – Theodore of Mopsuestia Commentary on Matthew 26:26

Rightly then do we believe that the bread consecrated by the word of God has been changed [Gr., metapoieisthai] into the Body of God the Word. For that Body was bread in power, but it has been sanctified by the dwelling there of the Word, who pitched his tent in the flesh. The change that elevated to divine power the bread that had been transformed into that Body causes something similar now. In that case, the grace of the Word sanctified that Body whose material being came from bread and was, in a certain sense, bread itself. In this case, the bread “is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer”⁷, as the Apostle says, not becoming the Body of the Word through our eating but by being transformed [Gr., metapoiumenos] immediately into the body by means of the word, as the Word himself said, ‘This is my Body.’ …He shares himself with every believer through the Flesh whose material being [Gr., sustais] comes from bread and wine . . . in order to bring it about that, by communion with the Immortal, man may share in incorruption. He gives these things through the power of the blessing by which he transelements [Gr., metastoikeiosas] the nature of the visible things [to that of the Immortal]. – St. Gregory of Nyssa The Great Catechism 37

He [Jesus] disseminates Himself in every believer through that flesh, whose substance comes from bread and wine, blending Himself with the bodies of believers, to secure that, by this union with the immortal, man, too, may be a sharer in incorruption. – Ibid.

The bread again is at first common bread; but when the mystery sanctifies it, it is called and actually becomes the Body of Christ – St. Gregory of Nyssa Sermon on the Day of Lights or on The Baptism of Christ

You ought to know what you have received, what you are going to receive, and what you ought to receive daily. That Bread which you see on the altar, consecrated by the word of God, is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what the chalice holds, consecrated by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. Through those accidents the Lord wished to entrust to us His Body and the Blood which He poured out for the remission of sins. – St. Augustine Sermons 227

St. Augustine here anticipates the developed form of the doctrine of Transubstantiation with surprising clarity. According to St. Thomas Aquinas many years later, the accidents of the bread and wine remain after Transubstantiation without a subject. (Summa 3.77.1) ⁸ It is through these “accidents” that the Lord’s Body and Blood are revealed to us. That is why we say that the Body and Blood are contained under the species of bread and wine. The bread and wine, as substances, no longer exist as they have been wholly converted into the precious Body and Blood. ⁹

The Lord Jesus wanted those whose eyes were held lest they should recognize him, to recognize Him in the breaking of the bread¹⁰. The faithful know what I am saying. They know Christ in the breaking of the bread. For not all bread, but only that which receives the blessing of Christ, becomes Christ’s Body.” – St. Augustine Sermons 234:2

It is not man that causes the things offered to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but he who was crucified for us, Christ himself. The priest, in the role of Christ, pronounces these words, but their power and grace are God’s. ‘This is my body,’ he says. This word transforms the things offered. – St. John Chrysostom Against the Judaizers 1.6

St. John Chrysostom explains that it is not the priest that effects the change; rather it is Christ Himself. This is why the claim that it amounts to a magician’s trick (or ‘monkey trick’ in the words of John Calvin) is false. It is not a trick but a miracle.

Far be it from me to censure the successors of the apostles, who with holy words consecrate the body of Christ, and who make us Christians. – St. Jerome Letter to Heliodorus

You will see the Levites bringing the loaves and a cup of wine, and placing them on the table. So long as the prayers and invocations have not yet been made, it is mere bread and a mere cup. But when the great and wonderous prayers have been recited, then the bread becomes the body and the cup the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ….When the great prayers and holy supplications are sent up, the Word descends on the bread and the cup, and it becomes His body. – St. Athanasius Sermon to the Newly Baptized

St. Athanasius, the great champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy, could not be any more explicit in affirming that a substantial change occurs at the consecration.

The following is a dialogue from Theodoret’s Eranistes on the subject of the miracle of consecration and the ‘change in nature’ it effects:

Eran.–You have opportunely introduced the subject of the divine mysteries for from it I shall be able to show you the change of the Lord’s body into another nature. Answer now to my questions.
Orth.–I will answer.
Eran.–What do you call the gift which is offered before the priestly invocation?
Orth.–It were wrong to say openly; perhaps some uninitiated are present.
Eran.–Let your answer be put enigmatically.
Orth.–Food of grain of such a sort.
Eran.–And how name we the other symbol?
Orth.–This name too is common, signifying species of drink.
Eran.–And after the consecration how do you name these?
Orth.–Christ’s body and Christ’s blood.
Eran.–And do yon believe that you partake of Christ’s body and blood?
Orth.–I do.”
- Theodoret of Cyrus Eranistes 2

Christ said indicating (the bread and wine): ‘This is My Body,’ and ‘This is My Blood,’ in order that you might not judge what you see to be a mere figure. The offerings, by the hidden power of God Almighty, are changed into Christ’s Body and Blood, and by receiving these we come to share in the life-giving and sanctifying efficacy of Christ. – St. Cyril of Alexandria Commentary on Matthew 26, 27

The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine are changed into God’s body and blood. But if you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord took on Himself flesh that subsisted in Him and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energises and is omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched out. But one can put it well thus, that just as in nature the bread by the eating and the wine and the water by the drinking are changed into the body and blood of the eater and drinker, and do not become a different body from the former one, so the bread of the table and the wine and water are supernaturally changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body and blood of Christ, and are not two but one and the same. – St. John of Damascus Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4:13

St. John Damascene explains that Christ does not “come down” and hide Himself among the host as is often caricatured. The bread is assumed into His Body, that is, it is lifted up to His heavenly Body by a miracle which is analogically compared to the process by which ordinary food is assumed into the higher unity of a human being upon its consumption. In fact, non-miraculous transubstantiation (change of substance) occurs anytime we eat anything. Food is transformed into human beings by consumption and analogically, the bread is transformed into the Body of Christ by the miracle of the Eucharistic consecration.

II – Simple Identification of the Species

On the topic of the Eucharist, the Council of Trent declared:

If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema. – Session 13, Canon I

The following quotations will show that the early fathers would not have been anathematized by this canon. At the same time, those modern Christians who deny Transubstantiation are, by their rejection of Christ’s substantial presence, at odds with this canon of the Catholic Church. As argued above, it is not enough to profess a belief in Christ’s presence in the reception of the Eucharist, even if it is professed to be a substantial presence. The Church fathers made little or no mention of the communion process in describing the Real Presence as we will see below. Christ’s presence does not depend on our reception or our faith. The significance of the simple identification statements is that they do not merely say Christ is present alongside the host, or within the host, or that He is present with us in receiving this sacrament. They explicitly affirm that this host is the Body of Christ.

The fathers affirmed that His presence was contained in the Body and Blood and such simple identification is consistent only with a host that had been substantially changed, i.e. a consecrated host. If the fathers were speaking (merely) in a symbolic manner, they would be able to call the bread the Body even before the consecration. That is, if nothing actually changed about the bread itself during the consecration, then it would not be wrong to call it the Body before the consecration. But we saw above that the fathers did change how they referred to the host after the consecration. Further, we will see below that the fathers consistently referred to the consecrated host as the Body and to the unconsecrated host as bread. This is not only consistent with Transubstantiation–it doesn’t make sense unless we affirm the doctrine. Finally, some fathers even explicitly denied that the term “Body” was a merely symbolic reference.

I take no pleasure in corruptible food or in the delights of this life. I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who is the seed of David; and for drink I want his Blood which is incorruptible love. -St. Ignatius to the Romans 7:3

They [those with heterodox opinions] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. – St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 7:1

The Docetists denied that Christ had a physical Body. Naturally, they denied His metaphysical presence in the Eucharist. St. Ignatius is condemning their heresy. ¹¹

If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood? – St. Irenaeus Against Heresies 4:33–32

If Christ was speaking metaphorically, there would be no difficulty in explaining what St. Irenaeus was attempting to explain. Either St. Irenaeus had not considered the idea that Christ might be referring to the bread as His Body metaphorically, or he (Irenaeus) was taking it for granted that Jesus spoke literally. Since St. Irenaeus refrained from explaining the matter, it is clear that he was asking the question rhetorically and was taking it for granted that Christ spoke literally and that his readers would have already known this.

He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. – Ibid. 5:2

‘And she [Wisdom] has furnished her table’¹² refers to his [Christ’s] honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-memorable table of the spiritual divine supper – St. Hippolytus Fragment from Commentary on Proverbs

It is not bread and wine that are offered as a memorial, but the actual Body and Blood.

Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food; now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the flesh of the Word of God, as he himself says: ‘My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.’¹³ – Origen Homilies on Numbers 7:2

Among the early fathers, Origen and the Alexandrian tradition in general favored allegorical interpretations and leaned heavily in that direction. On several other occasions, Origen referred to the Eucharist as a symbol, as did his predecessor, St. Clement of Alexandria. Yet he also referred to it as the “true Body,” associating the Eucharist with John 6 where Jesus Himself explicitly affirmed the same.

After having spoken thus [at the Last Supper], the Lord rose up from the place where he had made the Passover and had given his body as food and his blood as drink, and he went with his disciples to the place where he was to be arrested. But he ate of his own body and drank of his own blood, while he was pondering on the dead. With his own hands the Lord presented his own body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood as drink. – Aphraahat the Persian Sage Treatises 12:6

We speak in an absurd and godless manner about the divinity of Christ’s nature in us — unless we have learned it from Him. He Himself declares: ‘For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him’¹⁴. It is no longer permitted us to raise doubts about the true nature of the body and the blood, for, according to the statement of the Lord Himself as well as our faith, this is indeed flesh and blood. And these things that we receive bring it about that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Is this not the truth? Those who deny that Jesus Christ is the true God are welcome to regard these words as false. He Himself, therefore, is in us through His flesh, and we are in Him, while that which we are with Him is in God. – St. Hilary of Poitiers The Trinity 8.14

It would not make sense to bring up the possibility of doubting the veracity of the Eucharist, were it only a symbol. It is not feasible to think that anyone ever doubted that the bread represented Christ’s Body. St. Hilary’s quotation is only intelligible if we assume He was speaking of the possibility of doubting that the consecrated bread is actually the Body. Furthermore, his addition of the word “indeed” so as to match our Lord’s words, would be intentionally deceitful and misleading were he not intending to convey the actual and simple identification of the consecrated host as Christ’s Body. No one adds “indeed” to something meant to be understood metaphorically.

Since then He Himself declared and said of the bread, ‘This is My Body,’ who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has Himself affirmed and said, ‘This is My Blood,’ who shall ever hesitate, saying, that it is not His Blood? – St. Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures 22.1

Unfortunately there are many Christians today who dare to doubt it; and what’s worse, many of them profess to be in harmony with the early Church fathers on this issue.

Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the body and blood of Christ. . . . [Since you are] fully convinced that the apparent bread is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and that the apparent wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so, . . . partake of that bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul” – Ibid. 22:6,9

Notice that St. Cyril does not merely state that the true Body is present among the bread in some mystical sense but that the apparent bread is actually not bread. The introduction of the sense experience into the question of identification clearly shows that he is meaning to identify the host with the Body.

Perhaps you may be saying, ‘I see something else; how can you assure me that I am receiving the body of Christ?’ It but remains for us to prove it. And how many are the examples we might use! . . . Christ is in that sacrament, because it is the body of Christ. – St. Ambrose The Mysteries 9:50, 58

Notice the order of the last sentence. According to St. Ambrose, we do not say it is Christ’s Body because Christ is in the sacrament; rather Christ is in the sacrament because it is Christ’s Body.

When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but, ‘This is my body.’ In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but, ‘This is my blood’; for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their nature, but receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord. – Theodore of Mopsuestia Catechetical Homilies 5:1

Here Theodore explicitly rejected a merely symbolic view of the Eucharist.

Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body.’¹⁵ For he carried that body in his hands. – St. Augustine Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. – St. Augustine Sermons 272

It does not require faith to understand something as a symbol. It does require faith to assert that what appears to be bread is actually the Body of Christ. It would not have made sense for St. Augustine to demand that men believe (against their senses) that something was a symbol. If one wanted to object that perhaps St. Augustine was simply exhorting men to believe that Jesus was actually present along with the bread, he (the objector) would have to use another text as proof because here St. Augustine said explicitly that the bread is the Body, not that the Body is present along with the bread or in the ceremony.

When you see the Lord immolated and lying upon the altar, and the priest bent over that sacrifice praying, and all the people empurpled [made purple in coloring] by that precious blood, can you think that you are still among men and on earth? Or are you lifted up to heaven? – St. John Chrysostom On the Priesthood 3.4.177

According to St. John Chrysostom, Christ is literally present on the altar.

‘Because the Bread is one, we, the many, are in one Body’¹⁶. ‘Why do I say communion?’ he says; ‘for we are that very Body.’ What is the Bread? The Body of Christ! What do they become who are partakers therein? The Body of Christ! Not many bodies, but one Body. For just as the bread, consisting of many grains, is made one, and the grains are no longer evident, but still exist, though their distinction is not apparent in their conjunction; so too are we conjoined to each other and to Christ. For you are not nourished by one Body while someone else is nourished by another Body; rather, all are nourished by the same Body. – St. John Chrysostom Homily on the First Epistle to the Corinthians 24.2.4

When you see [the Body of Christ] lying on the altar, say to yourself, ‘Because of this Body I am no longer earth and ash, no longer a prisoner, but free. Because of this Body I hope for heaven, and I hope to receive the good things that are in heaven, immortal life, the lot of the angels, familiar conversation with Christ. This body, scourged and crucified, has not been fetched by death . . . . This is that Body which was blood-stained, which was pierced by a lance, and from which gushed forth those saving fountains, one of blood and the other of water [symbolizing the sacraments of Communion or the Eucharist and Baptism] , for the world.’ . . . This is the Body which He gave us, both to hold in reserve [for worship] and to eat, which was appropriate to intense love; for those whom we kiss with abandon we often even bite with our teeth. – Ibid. 24.4.7

Let us therefore in all respects put our faith in God and contradict Him in nothing, even if what is said seems to be contrary to our reasonings and to what we see. Let His word be of superior authority to reason and sight. This too be our practice in respect of the Mysteries [Sacrament of Eucharist or Communion], not looking upon what is laid before us, but taking heed also of His words. For words cannot deceive; but our senses are easily cheated. His word has never failed; our senses err most of the time.
When the word says, ‘This is my Body,’ be convinced of it and believe it, and look at it with the eyes of the mind. For Christ did not give us something tangible, but even in His tangible things all is intellectual. So too with Baptism: the gift is bestowed through what is a tangible thing, water, but what is accomplished is intellectually perceived: the birth and the renewal. If you were incorporeal He would have given you those incorporeal gifts naked; but since the soul is intertwined with the body, He hands over to you in tangible things, that which is perceived intellectually. How many now say, ‘I wish I could see His shape [Gr. ton tupon], His appearance, His garments, His scandals.’ Only look! You see Him! You touch Him. You eat Him. He had given to those who desire Him, not only to see Him and fix their teeth in His flesh, and to embrace Him and satisfy all their love. St. John Chrysostom Homily on Matthew 82.4

And not as common flesh do we receive it [the Eucharist]; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. – Council of Ephesus, Session 1, Letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius

Notice that the third ecumenical council directly rejects the idea that the divine presence of Christ merely “indwells” in the Eucharist; rather the Eucharist “truly” is the “very flesh of the Word Himself.” This is incompatible with Reformed doctrine even while many Reformed Christians claim to accept the first four ecumenical councils. Notice, in case one would object that the context is reception, that St. Cyril is not talking about the act of reception, nor is there any reference to the reception as a cause of the Real Presence. His claim regards what is received rather than what happens when we receive. Objectively, what is received is the consecrated host, and this host is received as the true Body.

After the disciples had eaten the new and holy Bread, and when they understood by faith that they had eaten of Christ’s body, Christ went on to explain and to give them the whole Sacrament. He took and mixed a cup of wine. Then He blessed it, and signed it, and made it holy, declaring that it was His own Blood, which was about to be poured out . . . Christ commanded them to drink, and He explained to them that the cup which they were drinking was His own Blood: ‘This is truly My Blood, which is shed for all of you. Take, all of you, drink of this, because it is a new covenant in My Blood. As you have seen Me do, do you also in My memory. Whenever you are gathered together in My name in Churches everywhere, do what I have done, in memory of Me. Eat My Body, and drink My Blood, a covenant new and old. – St. Ephraim Homilies 4,4

According to St. Ephraim, the Eucharist was explained directly to the disciples by Christ Himself at the Last Supper. This is why the early Christians did not need to rely exclusively on the Scriptures to discern the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Indeed, the earliest Christians did not have access to the New Testament. This is the source of the Apostolic doctrine of Transubstantiation. The Church has always confessed the Eucharist to be the true Body because Christ had explained this to the Apostles, and the Apostles explained it to the Churches.

The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, ‘This is My body,’ not, this is a figure of My body: and ‘My blood,’ not, a figure of My blood. And on a previous occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eateth Me, shall live. – St. John of Damascus Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4:13

Again, St. John Damascene rejected a merely figurative view of the Eucharistic species. Notice that he was not only rejecting memorialism. He was referring to the very bread and wine (that is, the species of bread and wine) when he said that they “are not merely figures.” He insisted, as we have seen consistently from the fathers, in identifying the consecrated hosts themselves as the Body and Blood. He also associated the Eucharist with John 6.

III – Extraordinary Reverence

A third type of statement shows that the Church fathers believed that extraordinary reverence, even adoration, should be given to the species itself. Of course, many Protestants who do not believe in Transubstantiation exhibit significant reverence for the act of communion but not for the species itself. The quotations below show that the early Church went beyond a mere respect for the communion rite. They hallowed and revered the consecrated host. Respect for the host would also be consistent with Consubstantiation but Consubstantiation is not consistent with adoration of the consecrated host.

In the context of the Eucharist, Tertullian explains the Tradition of the Church:

We take anxious care lest something of our Cup or Bread should fall upon the ground. – Tertullian The Crown 3:3-4

Similarly, Origen wrote:

You are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall, and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish… how is it that you think neglecting the word of God a lesser crime than neglecting His body? – Origen Homilies on Exodus 13:3

And St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote:

He [Paul] threatens, moreover, the stubborn and forward, and denounces them, saying, ‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’¹⁷. All these warnings being scorned and contemned—[lapsed Christians will often take Communion] before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, [and so] violence is done to his body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord. – St. Cyprian of Carthage On the Lapsed 15–16

Finally, St. Augustine wrote:

He walked here in the same flesh, and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless he first adores it; and thus it is discovered how such a footstool of the Lord’s feet is adored; and not only do we not sin by adoring, we do sin by not adoring. – St. Augustine Commentary on Psalms 98:9

St. Augustine affirmed that the Flesh we eat in the Eucharist is the same Flesh as when Christ walked the earth. Consequently, it is proper and right to adore it (the Eucharist). In fact, it is a sin not to adore it according to St. Augustine. But if the Eucharist had not actually been changed into the Flesh of Christ, it would be idolatry to adore it. Thus, either St. Augustine was advocating idolatry or he believed in Transubstantiation.

Approaching [the Eucharist] therefore, do not come forward with the palms of the hands outstretched nor with the fingers apart, but making the left [hand] a throne for the right since this hand is about to receive the King. Making the palm hollow, receive the Body of Christ, adding ‘Amen’. Then. carefully sanctifying the eyes by touching them with the holy Body, partake of it, ensuring that you do not mislay any of it. For if you mislay any, you would clearly suffer a loss, as it were, from one of your own limbs. Tell me, if anyone gave you gold-dust, would you not take hold of it with every possible care, ensuring that you do not mislay any of it or sustain any loss? So will you not be much more cautious to ensure that not a crumb falls away from that which is more precious than gold or precious stones?
Then, after you have partaken of the Body of Christ, come forward only for the cup of the Blood. Do not stretch out your hands but bow low as if making an act of obeisance and a profound act of veneration. Say ‘Amen’. and sanctify yourself by partaking of Christ’s Blood also. While the moisture is still on your lips, touch them with your hands and sanctify your eyes, your forehead, and all your other sensory organs. Finally, wait for the prayer and give thanks to God, who has deemed you worthy of such mysteries.- St. Cyril of Jerusalem Catechesis Mystagogica V, 11-22

Notice that St. Cyril demanded that the faithful approach with great reverence. This would be unfitting if they did not believe that the bread and wine had actually become the Body and Blood of the Lord. He, like St. Augustine, also exhorted adoration of the sacrament.

Additionally, the well known practice of the ante-Nicene Christians carrying the consecrated Eucharist to the sick and shut-in only makes sense given that the bread had become the Body. If not, it would suffice to eat any bread so long as one believed that he was consuming Christ. Rather, the early Christians even risked their lives to transport the Eucharist. This is consistent only with Transubstantiation. St. Hippolytus also warned those Christians who did reserve consecrated hosts to be careful lest it should be consumed by an unbeliever or even a mouse. ¹⁸

Finally, on a slightly different note, St. Ignatius of Antioch explains that only an ordained presbyter or bishop can consecrate the Eucharist.

Let that Eucharist be held valid which is offered by the bishop or by one to whom the bishop has committed this charge. – St. Ignatius of Antioch Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8:1

If the Eucharist were a mere symbol, it would not make any sense whatsoever to talk about a “valid” Eucharist or an “invalid” Eucharist. It could still make sense to speak of an illicit Eucharist, but not of an invalid Eucharist. If the bread and wine only symbolized, and did not actually become the Body and Blood, then anyone anywhere could achieve the same thing (symbolize Christ’s Body) whether or not they were ordained. It might be the case that they were wrong in doing so, since they should have done it in the context of the Church, but nevertheless it would not be invalid. This is additional evidence that Transubstantiation was believed by the Church from her earliest days.

IV – Appendix

i – Objections

1. Is the doctrine of Transubstantiation dependent on Aristotlean metaphysics?

On the contrary, (then) Lutheran scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

The victory of orthodox Christian doctrine over classical thought was to some extent a Pyrrhic victory, for the theology that triumphed over Greek philosophy has continued to be shaped ever since by the language and the thought of classical metaphysics. For example, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that “in the sacrament of the altar… the bread is transubstantiated into the body [of Christ],and the wine into [his] blood,” and the Council of Trent declared in 1551 that the use of the term “transubstantiation” was “proper and appropriate.” Most of the theological expositions of the term “transubstantiation,” beginning already with those of the thirteenth century, have interpreted “substance” on the basis of the meaning given to this term by such classical discussions as that in the fifth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics; transubstantiation, then, would appear to be tied to the acceptance of Aristotelian metaphysics or even of Aristotelian physics.

Yet the application of the term “substance” to the discussion of the Eucharistic presence antedates the rediscovery of Aristotle. In the ninth century, Ratramnus spoke of “substances visible but invisible,” and his opponent Radbertus declared that “out of the substance of bread and wine the same body and blood of Christ is mystically consecrated.” Even “transubstantiation” was used during the twelfth century in a nontechnical sense. Such evidence lends credence to the argument that the doctrine of transubstantiation, as codified by the decrees of the Fourth Lateran and Tridentine councils, did not canonize Aristotelian philosophy as indispensable to Christian doctrine.¹⁹

2. Does patristic reference to Eucharistic symbolism indicate disbelief in an actual change?

On the contrary, Catholics affirm that the Eucharist is also symbolic. Protestant historian Adolf Harnack helps explain the ancient mind on the topic of symbolism:

What we nowadays understand by “symbol” is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time [antiquity] “symbol” denoted a thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies.²⁰

The Fathers clearly teach the Real Presence of Christ, that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Harnack’s explanation of the ancient understanding of what it means to be a symbol explains how the Fathers could believe that the Eucharist was truly the Body and Blood of Christ and also a symbol. However, the Eucharist is real in a way that other “symbolic” things are not (this is understood now and in antiquity). This shows the weakness of the argument that denies the reality of the sacrifice of the Eucharist by relegating the mystery to symbolism. Since the modern mind apprehends ‘symbolism’ to mean that something is not real, whereas the ancient mind did not, this argument is weak. That is, the patristic use of the word ‘symbol’ in reference to the Sacrament does not connote what the modern use of the term ‘symbol’ connotes to us. And because of this, the patristic use of the term ‘symbol’ to refer to the Eucharist does not imply that the Fathers thought of the Eucharist as “merely symbolic” à la Zwingli.

3. Do some patristic statements indicate that a particular father disbelieved in substantial change?

Even if it were shown that a Church father disbelieved in Transubstantiation, it would only prove that that particular father was in error on this point. As shown above, the Church authoritatively defined it as dogma on several occasions including no less than four ecumenical councils. Here are some example quotations that are sometimes used in an attempt to justify one’s disbelief in Transubstantiation:

And extending His hand, He gave them the bread which His right hand had made holy: ‘Take, all of you eat this, which My word has made holy. Do not regard as bread that which I have given you; but take, eat this Bread, and do not scatter the crumbs; for what I have called my Body, that it is indeed. One particle from its crumbs is able to sanctify thousands and thousands, and is sufficient to afford life to those who eat of it. Take, eat, because this is my Body, and whoever eats it in belief, entertaining no doubt of faith, because this is My Body, and whoever eats it in belief eats it in Fire and Spirit. But if any doubters eat of it, for him it will be only bread. And whoever eats in belief the Bread made holy in My name, if he be pure, he will be preserved in his purity; and if he be a sinner, he will be forgiven.’ But if anyone despise it or reject it or treat it with ignominy, it may be taken as a certainty that he treats with ignominy the Son, who called it and actually made it to be His Body. – St. Ephraim Homilies 4,4

One way to read the bolded phrase above is to claim that St. Ephraim believed that the consecrated host was really bread but that if you had faith, you could receive Christ. Thus, the doubters only receive bread because they do not have the faith to receive the Body. The problem with this way of reading the phrase is that he explicitly states in this same passage that it is the Body. Above, we quoted from this same passage showing that St. Ephraim went into great detail and used explicit language to affirm his belief that the bread truly becomes the Body. Since he clearly affirmed a substantial change, either we must conclude that he contradicted himself, or “for him it will be only bread” must be read in another way.

In fact, there is another feasible way to read this phrase. The phrase should be understood as referring to the effect of the sacrament rather than the sacrament itself. A believer receives the Body unto salvation, but the doubter does not receive any benefit; for him it has the same effect as would normal bread. Since this way is fully compatible with the rest of what St. Ephraim said and the other way is a contradiction, this is the more probable way of interpreting his statement.

Another one sometimes used is this quotation from St. Augustine:

They said therefore unto Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” For He had said to them, “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto eternal life.” “What shall we do?” they ask; by observing what, shall we be able to fulfill this precept? “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent.” This is then to eat the meat, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life. To what purpose dost thou make ready teeth and stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten already.²¹

We have seen above that St. Augustine affirmed that the bread become the Body and that the communicants must adore it before receiving. So how is this quotation compatible with his other statements? St. Augustine is not denying Transubstantiation by affirming that we can receive Christ by faith. As St. Thomas Aquinas explained, there are two ways to receive Christ: spiritually and sacramentally. ²² To receive Him by faith is to receive Him spiritually, and to receive Him by consumption of the Eucharistic species is to receive Him sacramentally. Ideally, one would receive Christ in both ways at each communion. But in the case of the doubter above, he receives only sacramentally and does not receive spiritually because he lacks faith. St. Augustine in this passage is referring to the spiritual reception of Christ’s Body which is not opposed to the sacramental reception and far less does it disprove his belief in a substantial change in the Eucharist.

Two other quotations often used to argue against the historicity of Transubstantiation are from Pope Gelasius and Theodoret:

Surely the sacrament we take of the Lord´s body and blood is a divine thing, on account of which, and by the same we are made partakers of the divine nature; and yet the substance of the bread and wine does not cease to be. And certainly the image and similitude of Christ´s body and blood are celebrated in the action of the mysteries. – Pope Gelasius Tractatus de duabus naturis 14

You are caught in the net you have woven yourself. For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they are become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be. Compare then the image with the archetype, and you will see the likeness, for the type must be like the reality. For that body preserves its former form, figure, and limitation and in a word the substance of the body; but after the resurrection it has become immortal and superior to corruption; it has become worthy of a seat on the right hand; it is adored by every creature as being called the natural body of the Lord. – Theodoret, Dialogue II

On the contrary, W.R. Carson writes:

…it is assumed wrongly that by the words “nature” and “substance” the Fathers cited, writing centuries before heresies had made accurate definition and precise terminology necessary, intended to mean what the Tridentine Fathers meant by them. This is demonstrably untrue. The words ‘substance’ and ‘nature’ are synonymous with what at Trent were called the ‘species’ or ‘accidents.’ This is surely evident (a) from the context of the various passages, where a conversion (metabolen), to use Theodoret’s word, of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, is mentioned; (b) from the fact that they constantly and uniformly speak of such ‘nature’ and ‘substance’ as symbols; (c) from Leibnitz’ (a Protestant authority) well-known observation that the Fathers do not use these terms to express metaphysical notions.(53) (d) As regards Theodoret, from the confession of the Lutherans of Madgeburg that he is opposed to their doctrine and cannot be read with safety.(54) It should be added that the passages attributed to Theodoret and St. Gelasius occur in works that are considered spurious by many competent critics.²³

This list is not an exhaustive; more could be cited for and against the doctrine but this is representative and contains the majority of the strongest objections from patristic sources.

4. Does Transubstantiation undermine the true corporeality of Christ’s Body?

John Calvin erroneously claimed that the ubiquity of Christ’s presence on Catholic altars was impossible because it would undermine the true corporeal nature of Christ’s risen Body.

On the contrary, this is false because Christ is not present in the sacrament as a thing is present in a place. St. Thomas explained that here. ²⁴ That is, Christ is present metaphysically (or “after the manner of a substance”). It could also be said that He is present ‘supernaturally’ as opposed to ‘naturally.’ His Body is not subjected to physical laws and cannot be said to be present physically, insofar as ‘physically’ denotes that the thing belongs to the physical order in the way that ordinary physical objects do. ²⁵ Therefore, Transubstantiation is consistent with the true corporeality of Christ’s risen Body. ²⁶

5. Do the Eastern Orthodox reject Transubstantiation?

On the contrary, the Catholic Church affirms that the Eastern Churches have a valid Eucharist and that they have correct doctrine in respect to the Eucharist.²⁷ This is evidenced by the fact that there is an open invitation (on the side of the Catholic Church) for Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters to receive Catholic communion. This would be impossible were the Church to understand them as rejecting the essential elements of Transubstantiation.

6. Is Transubstantiation tantamount to cannibalism?

On the contrary, this objection assumes the error of reducing the Eucharistic reception to a purely physical process. In the Eucharist Christ is not received physically, but spiritually and sacramentally as explained above. Also see this post on the Real Presence and Cannibalism.

ii – Additional Reading

Council of Trent on the Eucharist

Fr. Al Kimel on Transubstantiation (Long but well worth the read.)

W. R. Carson – The Antiquity of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation

Books:

Eucharist, by Louis Bouyer
A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, by Abbot Vonier, Peter Kreeft, and Aidan Nichols
The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist, by James T. O’Connor

Finally, Protestant historian J. N. D. Kelly writes:

Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood.²⁸

Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares, ‘do violence to his body and blood, a sin more heinous against the Lord with their hands and mouths than when they denied him.’ Later he expatiates on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the Real Presence literally. ²⁹

In Conclusion, it is clear that the doctrine of Transubstantiation extends in concept to the earliest days of the Church, was upheld and affirmed by several popes and ecumenical councils, and was then rejected by Protestants in the sixteenth century. The patristic support is heavily on the side of the Catholic dogma.

1. Such a defense will be written in the future on Called to Communion.
2. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=transubstantiation&searchmode=none
3. As quoted by Denzinger Sources of Catholic Dogma, 355
4. Ibid., 430
5. Ibid., 424, 465, 544, 581, 698
6. See also Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon IV: “If any one saith, that, after the consecration is completed, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not in the admirable sacrament of the Eucharist, but (are there) only during the use, whilst it is being taken, and not either before or after; and that, in the hosts, or consecrated particles, which are reserved or which remain after communion, the true Body of the Lord remaineth not; let him be anathema.”
7. 1 Tim 4:5
8. There are strong reasons to believe this particular metaphysical nuance of the doctrine but the council of Trent did not directly canonize this Thomistic idea. In other words, there is some room for speculation on these grounds. One can accept Trent without affirming strict Aristotlean metaphysics. It should also be stated that Aristotle, for this very reason, would have rejected Transubstantiation as an impossibility since accidents cannot, according to him, exist without a subject. Ordinarily, St. Thomas would agree, but he considers this a uniquely miraculous event.
9. Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon II
10. Luke 24:16,30-35
11. See also Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 197-198
12. Proverbs 9:2
13. John 6:55
14. John 6:56-57
15. Matthew 26:26
16. 1 Cor 10:17
17. 1 Corinthians 11:27
18. For more, see Chadwick, Henry The Early Church, pp. 262, 266
19. Pelikan, Jaroslav The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, p. 44; emphasis added.
20. Harnack, Adolf History of Dogma 1888, I. p. 397
21. NPNF1: Vol. VII, Tractates on John, Tractate 25, 12.
22. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 3.80.1
23. Carson, W. R. The Antiquity of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation which can be read online here.
24. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 3.76.5
25. Unfortunately, the modern mind often uses the word “physical” to denote that something is “actual” as if “physical” were the opposite of “imaginary” or “untrue.” This is due in large part to the influence of materialism on the modern way of thinking. But the term “physical” means that the aspect described is relegated to the physical world, i.e. to matter. This is clearly not true of the Real Presence of Christ; hence we say metaphysical rather than physical, supernatural rather than natural.
26. See also St. Gregory of Nyssa The Great Catechism, 37 in which he anticipated and explained the answer to Calvin’s objection.
27. This is not to say that there aren’t Eastern Orthodox Christians who deny the dogma.
28. Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines p. 440
29. Ibid., pp. 211-212

Temptation, Fall, and Expulsion
Brothers Limbourg (1411-1416)

When a Catholic monk named Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in October of 1517, he initiated a controversy that eventually led not only to his excommunication on January 3, 1521, but to the subsequent separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church. During the following two decades the Church attempted to effect a reconciliation with Protestants. These efforts culminated in Pope Paul III convoking an ecumenical council in 1542, the nineteenth ecumenical council in the history of the Church.² This council met in the city of Trent, and had its first session in 1545. The purpose of the Council was two-fold: to extirpate various heresies that had arisen, and to reform the morals among the clergy and the lay faithful.³

The First Session formally opened the Council. The Second Session set forward the manner in which the bishops should conduct themselves during the Council. The Third Session expressed the Creed of the Church. The Fourth Session addressed the canon of Scripture. The Fifth Session addressed the doctrine of original sin. And the Sixth Session addressed the doctrine of justification.

It was not by accident that the Council addressed the doctrine of original sin before taking up the doctrine of justification. The doctrine of justification depends in part on the doctrine of original sin, as I shall show below. So in order rightly to understand the Council’s teaching on justification, one must first understand its teaching on original sin. In previous posts in this series, I presented and explained St. Thomas’s theology of original sin. (See “Aquinas and Trent: Part 2,” in which I explain the essence of original sin, according to St. Thomas, and “Aquinas and Trent: Part 3,” in which I explain the effect of original sin, according to St. Thomas.) I will not repeat here what I have said there; and what I say here presupposes that the reader has read at least those two posts in this series.

Why is the Council of Trent relevant to the reconciliation of Protestants and Catholics? Shouldn’t we just put the past behind us, and move forward? The reason why the Council of Trent remains relevant is that the canons of the Council of Trent are infallible, so the Church has no authority to overturn them. Whatever was declared heretical at Trent will remain heretical until Christ returns in the clouds in glory. The authority of the canons does not depend on whether those claims were in fact affirmed by any person. Nor does it depend on the bishops’ degree of understanding of the Protestants’ theological positions. But the canons condemn only the claims stated in the canons; they do not condemn unstated positions that may have been held by Protestants. Doesn’t the infallibility of the canons of Trent make ecumenical dialogue pointless? Not at all. To understand why, see my post titled “Two Ecumenicisms.” Protestants and Catholics can be reconciled only by coming to the truth concerning their separation in the sixteenth century. And that requires coming to terms with the Council of Trent. Protestants can no more reject the Council of Trent on the basis of their own interpretation of Scripture than any other heresy in the history of the Church could justifiably reject the teaching of an ecumenical council on the basis of its own interpretation of Scripture.

The Fifth Session: The Decree Concerning Original Sin

The Decree of the Fifth Session begins with an introductory paragraph:

That our Catholic faith, without which it is impossible to please God,⁴ may, after the destruction of errors, remain integral and spotless in its purity, and that the Christian people may not be carried about with every wind of doctrine,⁵ since that old serpent,⁶ the everlasting enemy of the human race, has, among the many evils with which the Church of God is in our times disturbed, stirred up also not only new but also old dissensions concerning original sin and its remedy, the holy, ecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding, wishing now to reclaim the erring and to strengthen the wavering, and following the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, of the holy Fathers, of the most approved councils, as well as the judgment and unanimity of the Church herself, ordains, confesses and declares these things concerning original sin:

Here the Tridentine Fathers affirm that the Church’s faith, without which it is impossible to please God, includes things concerning original sin and its remedy.  In other words, the gospel includes a teaching on original sin. The bishops explain that they are addressing this subject in response to what they believe to be the work of the devil in stirring up dissensions new and old concerning the doctrine of original sin and its remedy. They state again that they are assembled as a “general and ecumenical” council, in accordance with the laws of the Church, and presided over by legates of the Apostolic See (i.e. Rome). For this reason they are assured of the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church into all truth (John 16:13), most assuredly when her bishops are assembled in ecumenical council.⁷ The Council states its intention to bring back those sheep that are erring, and to strengthen those sheep that are wavering. Lastly, the bishops affirm that what they are teaching regarding original sin follows both the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, and that of the unanimity of the Church, not only at that time but throughout the 1500 year history of the Church preceding the Council.

Next the Council in five paragraphs addresses five errors pertaining to original sin. I will examine each of these five paragraphs in turn.

I. The Error of Denying Original Sin

In the first paragraph the Council declares:

1. If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of that prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and thus death with which God had previously threatened him,⁸ and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil,⁹ and that the entire Adam through that offense of prevarication was changed in body and soul for the worse,¹⁰ let him be anathema.

In this first paragraph, the Council is condemning the error of denying that Adam, by his sin, lost the original holiness and righteous that God had given him. According to the Council, when Adam transgressed God’s commandment, the following five things happened: (1) he lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, (2) he incurred the wrath and indignation of God, (3) he incurred the death with which God had previously threatened him, (4) he incurred captivity under the power of the devil who from that time on had the empire of death, and (5) he was changed for the worse both in body and soul. The statement about the change in “body and soul” is a reaffirmation of the first canon of the Second Council of Orange (529 AD), which canon was intended to refute the error of those who taught that not the soul but only the body was damaged by Adam’s sin.

The loss of the original holiness and justice in which man had been constituted refers to the loss of what St. Thomas treats as the third good of human nature, explained here and here in previous posts in this series. There too I laid out his explanation for death as the result of sin, and what it means to be “changed for the worse” both in body and in soul. The wrath and indignation of God I discussed in my post on St. Thomas’s doctrine on the Passion of Christ. St. Thomas discusses man’s captivity under the power of the devil in Summa Theologica III Q.49 a.2.

The most important thing to understand in this first paragraph, with respect to reconciling Protestants and the Catholic Church, is what the Council is saying when it teaches that by his sin Adam lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted. The holiness and justice to which the Council refers are due to the presence of sanctifying grace and agape in Adam’s soul. Adam was holy because he had sanctifying grace in his soul, that is, he was a participant in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and enjoyed the indwelling of the Trinity.¹¹ And he was just (or righteous) because he had agape, i.e. love for God as Father. This original holiness and justice was not something Adam produced by his own nature. Nor were they part of the essence of his human nature; otherwise, in losing them he would have ceased to be human.

Why is this important for Protestant-Catholic reconciliation? Many Protestants believe that grace is only for the forgiveness of sins, and hence only something Adam and Eve received after they sinned. For this reason they tend to treat salvation prior to the Fall as by human-works-apart-from-grace, and salvation after the Fall as by grace-apart-from-human-works. But the notion that Adam and Eve, apart from grace, could have merited the Beatific Vision, is a form of Pelagianism.¹² Only God has His [divine] inner life and the perfect happiness of seeing God, by His very nature. Man could have the Beatific Vision by his nature without grace only if he were God. But man is not God; man is a creature. Therefore, in order to attain the Beatific Vision, which is supernatural end [i.e. an end above the reach of man's nature as such], man needs grace. In order for man to enter into heaven, i.e. into the perfect beatitude of the inner Life of the Trinity, God must give to man a participation in this inner Life; man must receive the gift of grace from God.

The Second Council of Orange (AD 529), which was primarily responding to Pelagianism, declared:

“Even if human nature remained in that integrity in which it was formed, it would in no way save itself without the help of its Creator.” (Can. 19)

Notice that “save” is not only from punishment, because human nature would remain in that integrity in which it was formed, only if Adam had not sinned. And where there is no sin, there is no punishment. But yet, according to Orange contra the Pelagians, even a sinless Adam and Eve would have needed divine help in order to be “saved.” In other words, they would have needed grace, to attain heaven, even if they had not sinned. St. Thomas concurs, writing:

But man’s perfect Happiness, as stated above (Question 3, Article 8), consists in the vision of the Divine Essence. Now the vision of God’s Essence surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature, as was shown in the I, 12, 4. For the natural knowledge of every creature is in keeping with the mode of his substance: thus it is said of the intelligence (De Causis; Prop. viii) that “it knows things that are above it, and things that are below it, according to the mode of its substance.” But every knowledge that is according to the mode of created substance, falls short of the vision of the Divine Essence, which infinitely surpasses all created substance. Consequently neither man, nor any creature, can attain final Happiness by his natural powers.¹³

And that is why, in Catholic theology, Adam and Eve were given grace by God, prior to their Fall. It was by grace that they were able to walk with God in the cool of the day. No one can have friendship with God apart from grace, because no one can have friendship with God without agape, and no one can have agape without grace. Agape is supernatural;¹⁴ it is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.¹⁵ Man does not cease to be man if he loses agape. Hence, agape is not an essential component of our human essence or human nature. If agape were had by nature, then man without agape would be a contradiction in terms. God did not have to walk with Adam in the cool of the day. He did not have to form a friendship with man. He did this gratuitously, as a gift. This divine friendship with man as Father to son was a superadded gift of grace, not something man has by his nature as man.¹⁶

Yet, when we recognize that grace was necessary prior to the Fall, in order for Adam and Eve to have merited the Beatific Vision, then we no longer have a principled basis for excluding works done in grace from being meritorious toward the Beatific Vision under the New Covenant. And the role of works under grace is explicitly one of the points of disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church. It is also addressed in the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent. So here we see that rightly understanding the reasons for a doctrine taught in the Sixth Session requires understanding what was taught in the Fifth Session.

II. The Error of Denying that Adam’s Sin Deprived His Posterity of Original Holiness and Justice

In this second paragraph, the Council declares:

2. If anyone asserts that the transgression of Adam injured him alone and not his posterity,¹⁷ and that the holiness and justice which he received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has transfused only death and the pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema, since he contradicts the Apostle who says: By one man sin entered into the world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.¹⁸

In this second paragraph, the Council is condemning the error of denying that Adam’s sin deprived his posterity of original holiness and justice. The Council here affirms three things: (1) Adam’s transgression did not only injure himself, but also his posterity, (2) Adam’s transgression lost not only for himself but also for us his posterity the original holiness and justice that he had been given by God, (3) Adam’s transgression transfused to us not only bodily pains and bodily death, but also transfused sin, which is the death of the soul, into the whole human race. Adam was supposed to be propagate sanctifying grace to his offspring. In this way, the sexual act would have been a means of grace for the child conceived. But, by his sin, Adam passed on to his offspring the privation of sanctifying grace and agape, and hence the privation of holiness, righteousness. And that is precisely what original sin is, the privation of original righteousness. That is what it means for the soul to be dead, not for it to lack natural life, but for it to lack divine life, i.e. sanctifying grace and agape.

In addition,  because Adam lost the original righteous he had been given, he also lost the preternatural gifts (integrity of powers of the soul, infused knowledge, impassibility, and immortality)  he had enjoyed, and therefore he passed on concupiscence, ignorance, suffering, and death to his offspring. Those who claim that grace is only needed for forgiveness of sin, falsely conclude from the fact that the infant has committed no actual sin that the infant does not yet need grace for salvation, and therefore does not yet need baptism. This again, is Pelagianism, because it denies that sanctifying grace is absolutely needed to attain to heaven.  Similarly, those who mistake concupiscence (i.e. disordered appetites) for original sin find that such disordered appetites remain after baptism, and falsely conclude that baptism is not the remedy for original sin. But the fundamental problem of man, is not that he has disordered lower appetites, but that he lacks sanctifying grace, and hence lacks agape.  That’s what original sin is; the privation of sanctifying grace and agape. And for that, the remedy is baptism, as we will see in the next paragraph.

III. Errors Regarding the Remedy for Original Sin

3. If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and by propagation, not by imitation, transfused into all, which is in each one as something that is his own, is taken away either by the forces of human nature or by a remedy other than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ,¹⁹ who has reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification and redemption;²⁰ or if he denies that that merit of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church, let him be anathema; for there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.²¹ Whence that declaration: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world;²² and that other: As many of you as have been baptized, have put on Christ.²³

In this third paragraph, the Council condemns two errors. The first error is to claim that the remedy for original sin is something other than the merit of Jesus Christ, the Second Adam. The second error is to deny that adults and children receive Christ’s merit through the sacrament of baptism. Positively, in this paragraph the Council is teaching three things: (1) the sin of Adam that is transfused into all his posterity by propagation, not by imitation, is in each of us as something that is our own, (2) this sin [of Adam] in each of us is not taken away either by the forces of human nature or by any remedy other than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has reconciled us to God in His own blood, and (3) the grace that Christ merited in His Passion, by which the sin [of Adam] in us is removed, is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church.²⁴

This paragraph is relevant to the reconciliation of Protestants with the Catholic Church because many Protestants deny that baptism is anything more than a sign or symbol, not recognizing baptism as the sacrament Christ established as the means through which we receive the sanctifying grace He merited for us in His Passion. For these Protestants, to be forgiven only requires believing the message about Christ and trusting in Him; baptism is something one does subsequently in obedience to Christ’s command. But the Church has always believed and taught that it is in baptism that we are joined to Christ, and receive the grace He merited for us in His Passion. This is what we say in the Creed: “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” And the efficacy of baptism as the sacrament of salvation is taught unanimously by the Church Fathers.²⁵ Of course faith does come by hearing. But in Catholic doctrine the sanctifying grace through which we have the virtues of faith, hope and agape, comes to us through the sacrament of baptism. We first come to believe the good news, and have love for Christ, by hearing the gospel.²⁶ But in the sacrament of baptism, faith, hope and agape are deepened; they are made to be firmly planted dispositions in our soul. In baptism they become theological virtues.²⁷ In baptism we are ingrafted into Christ (cf. Rom 6), and by becoming firmly rooted dispositions faith, hope, and agape become part of who we are, not just acts we do.²⁸

IV. The Error of Denying that Infants Need Baptism as a Remedy for Original Sin

4. If anyone denies that infants, newly born from their mothers’ wombs, are to be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins,²⁹ but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned,³⁰ is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it.

For in virtue of this rule of faith handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that in them what they contracted by generation may be washed away by regeneration.³¹ For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.³²

In this fourth paragraph the Council condemns two errors. The first is the error of denying that infants are to be baptized. The second is the error of denying that infants should be baptized for the remission of original sin. Positively, the Council here teaches four things: (1) Newly born infants are to be baptized, even if born of baptized parents, (2) Newly born infants are to be baptized for the expiation of original sin from Adam for the attainment of eternal life, (3) The words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12 should not be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood them, and (4) According to this rule of faith [i.e. how Romans 5:12 has everywhere and always been understood by the Church] handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are (like adults) truly baptized for the remission of sins in order that what they contracted by generation [i.e. original sin] may be washed away by regeneration.

The primary problem for the newborn infant, prior to baptism, is not that he is not yet a member of the covenant family by a public sign or seal. The primary problem for the newborn infant is that he does not have sanctifying grace and agape, and thus does not have original righteousness or holiness, and thus is not in friendship with God. And that problem infinitely outweighs all other problems because what is at stake is eternal life and eternal separation from God. Doing a baby-dedication is a pious act, but Christ never instituted ‘dedication’ as a means by which anyone would receive grace; He instituted baptism. We know, of course, that God is capable of acting in extraordinary ways to give grace to whomever He wills at whatever times He wills. It is surely not beyond His power to do so. But we must not treat the possibility of the extraordinary as an excuse not to pursue with all our effort the ordinary means God has established through Christ by which adults, children, and infants are given the grace that translates them from death to life, from enemies of God to His friends.

V. Errors Regarding the Removal of Sin Through Baptism

5. If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or says that the whole of that which belongs to the essence of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only canceled or not imputed, let him be anathema. For in those who are born again God hates nothing, because there is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism unto death,³³ who walk not according to the flesh,³⁴ but, putting off the old man and putting on the new one who is created according to God,³⁵ are made innocent, immaculate, pure, guiltless and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, joint heirs with Christ;³⁶ so that there is nothing whatever to hinder their entrance into heaven. But this holy council perceives and confesses that in the one baptized there remains concupiscence or an inclination to sin, which, since it is left for us to wrestle with, cannot injure those who do not acquiesce but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ; indeed, he who shall have striven lawfully shall be crowned.³⁷ This concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin,³⁸ the holy council declares the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin in the sense that it is truly and properly sin in those born again, but in the sense that it is of sin and inclines to sin. But if anyone is of the contrary opinion, let him be anathema. This holy council declares, however, that it is not its intention to include in this decree, which deals with original sin, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother of God, but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV, of happy memory, are to be observed under the penalties contained in those constitutions, which it renews.³⁹

In this fifth paragraph the Council first condemns two errors. The first is the error of denying that by the grace of Christ which is conferred at baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted. The second is the error of claiming that the whole of that which belongs to the essence of sin is not taken away, but that the [debt] of sin is merely canceled or not imputed. The Council then proceeds to teach six things: (1) God hates nothing in those who are born again [i.e. those who are regenerated through the grace conferred in baptism], because by their baptism they have been buried together with Christ, put off the old man, put on the new man, made innocent, free from condemnation, immaculate, pure, guiltless, beloved of God, heirs of God, and heirs with Christ, so that nothing hinders their entrance into heaven, (2) In baptized persons there remains concupiscence, which is an inclination to sin, and which is left with us to wrestle with, (3) Concupiscence cannot injure those who do not give into it, but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ, (4) Those who have lawfully resisted concupiscence shall be crowned⁴⁰ (5) The Catholic Church has always understood concupiscence not to be sin in the sense that it is truly and properly sin in those who are born again, but to be sin in the sense that it is of sin (as an effect) and inclines to sin (as a cause), and (6) What this Council says about the universality of original sin in mankind should not be taken to apply to the blessed Virgin Mary.

Of all five paragraphs in the Fifth Session of the Council of Trent, this last one was the one most incompatible with the theology of Luther and Calvin. Luther and Calvin agreed that the grace of Christ that is conferred at baptism remits original sin. But, they denied that this grace removes the whole of that which belongs to the essence of sin. Instead, they claimed that sin remained in the baptized person, but the debt of sin was canceled, and the remaining sin was not imputed or counted. This is typically referred to as simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner), illustrated in the cartoon at right.⁴¹ Whereas in Catholic doctrine, the grace of Christ given to us through the sacrament of baptism truly removes all our sin, in Luther and Calvin’s opinion, the grace of Christ does not remove all our sin; it leaves sin in our soul, but by God’s favor on account of Christ, sin in our soul is no longer counted  against us.

Two things need to be said here. First, in Catholic doctrine, there is a sense in which that cartoon is correct, but there is also a sense in which that cartoon is heretical. In order to understand these two senses, we must distinguish between mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin removes agape from the soul; venial sin does not. That’s because in mortal sin the sinner directly chooses something else over God as his last end.  By contrast, the person committing venial sin still loves God more than himself, and still seeks God as his final end, but chooses something other than the best path by which to attain to God. Even the saints sinned venially every day (the Blessed Mother excepted). So, if the sign held by the person in the cartoon above is referring to venial sin, then it is true that the baptized person remains a sinner. But even so, it is not that Christ’s righteousness hides or covers his venial sin. God sees every venial sin. But He sees it as venial, as still coming from a heart that loves Him above all else. And so He sees it with mercy, not wrath. Yet if the sign in the cartoon is referring to mortal sin, then the cartoon is heretical, because then it is affirming the second error condemned in this fifth paragraph of the Fifth Session of Trent.

The reason why it is impossible to be simultaneously in a state of mortal sin, and justified, is because God cannot lie. God can only count as righteous that which is actually inherently righteous. That’s because the relational problem between man and God necessarily depends upon the internal condition of man. As St. Thomas said, “But the effect remains so long as the cause remains. Wherefore so long as the disturbance of the order remains the debt of punishment must needs remain also.”⁴² In other words, so long as man is turned away from God, and without agape, the debt of sin remains, because the cause of that debt remains. God does not only look at the outside of man; He looks at the heart, and is related to man according to the condition of the man’s heart.⁴³ If a man has sanctifying grace and agape in his soul, then his relation with God is one of friendship and he is justified, and the God who cannot lie cannot claim that he is unjust. But if a man does not have sanctifying grace and agape, then he is not a friend of God, and the God who cannot lie cannot say that he is just, without first making him just in his soul.

The Protestant response is to claim that God is speaking truly when He declares us just, because He performs an extrinsic relational transaction in which the merits of Christ are credited to our account, and the demerits of our sins are credited to Christ’s account. However, the problem with that position is that for a God from whom nothing is hidden, there can be no difference between what one is internally, and what is in one’s account. Necessarily, before the God of Truth, what is in one’s ‘account’ is always and only what one actually is. God cannot pretend that I am Christ or that Christ is me. God cannot pretend that my account is His, or that His account is mine. He always sees everything for exactly what it is, nothing more and nothing less. And therefore for a God of Truth, there can be no swapping of accounts. Because our ‘accounts’ are based on what we really are, the notion of account swapping presupposes that God is capable of deceiving Himself into thinking that Christ’s account is mine, and that my account is Christ’s. But a God of Truth cannot be deceived, and therefore there can be no swapping of accounts.

When Protestants think about being inherently righteous, they tend not to think about agape, but about having perfectly kept every law, and not having any wayward thoughts. And they tend to think that that is impossible, and so find forensic imputation much more plausible and attractive than this [seemingly] impossible standard of perfect legal righteousness that God expects of us. So, for example, they find vices in themselves after baptism, and take that as evidence that they are in fact unrighteous, and that provides the attraction of simul iustus et peccator. Yet in Catholic doctrine the law is fulfilled by those having agape,⁴⁴ and venial sins (by definition) do not remove agape from the soul. Our righteousness before God (as friends of God) is not determined by or effected by our venial sins. So, while at the Judgment we are judged for all that we have done in the body, yet, our justification only requires that we have agape. Not having the mortal-venial distinction makes many Protestants conceive of the Catholic life as one of losing justification many times a day. And that seems (rightly) ridiculous to them. But in Catholic doctrine it is agape by which we fulfill the law, and mortal sin (in which agape is lost) is not something we should (ordinarily) be committing on a daily basis.

The second thing that needs to be said about this fifth paragraph, concerns concupiscence (i.e. disordered appetites). The Catholic Church teaches that concupiscence is not itself a sin. Concupiscence comes from sin, and it inclines to sin. But it itself is not sin, because sin requires the use of the will.⁴⁵ , and the motions of concupiscence are not willed. We discussed this in Aquinas and Trent: Part 2. Nor is concupiscence original sin. Baptism removes original sin, by giving the person sanctifying grace. But baptism does not remove concupiscence. Christ leaves us with concupiscence so that we, by manfully resisting it, may merit a greater reward. The early Protestants, however, believed that concupiscence was itself sin. And therefore, finding concupiscence in themselves daily, even after baptism, and not recognizing  the mortal-venial distinction, they concluded that justification does not depend upon the internal condition of the sinner, but upon a forensic declaration. Because they [wrongly] believed that concupiscence was sin, and because they [rightly] believed that concupiscence remained after baptism, they concluded that after baptism there remains in us something that God hates, and for that reason were drawn toward to the notion of simul iustus et peccator.

From the Catholic point of view, the notion that we are simul iustus et peccator, where the sin in question is mortal sin, is extremely dangerous, because it leads people to think that their sin doesn’t really matter, so long as they continue to trust in God. This notion removes all motivation for pursuing the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.⁴⁶ It produces no saints. Its danger cannot be underestimated, because what is at stake is eternal life. The notion of simul iustus et peccator could lead persons who are in a state of mortal sin, and thereby at risk of dying in a state of mortal sin and remaining eternally separated from God, to think that they are right with God. Of course some Protestants think that the Catholic Church teaches a false gospel. I will address that when we discuss the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, on the doctrine of justification.

May Christ our Lord lead all Protestants and Catholics to unity in the truth, and full reconciliation. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. A fascinating summary of his life and death can be found here.
2. The Pope had originally attempted to convoke this council in the city of Mantua in 1537, but for political reasons the council was unable to meet there.
3. cf. Session Three
4. Heb 11:6
5. Eph 4:14
6. Gen 3:1ff; Apoc. 12:9; 20:2
7. Cf. Acts 15:28. In that passage we see another example of a non-monergistic way of conceiving the cooperation of men with God. The Apostles recognize that what seems good to them, in council, is what also seems good to the Holy Spirit, precisely because the Holy Spirit is directing them in council.
8. Gen 2:17
9. Heb 2:14
10. Cf. II Synod of Orange (529)
11. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23)
12. Pelagianism ultimately reduces to one of two claims: it either denies that man has a supernatural end, and thus denies that man needs grace [i.e. participation in the divine nature] to attain man’s natural end, or it denies that grace is a participation in the divine nature, and thus implies that man, by his own natural power, can attain to the supernatural end that is heaven. The former denies that God has called man to enjoy eternal participation in His inner Life. The latter essentially denies the Creator-creature distinction. It claims that man, who is infinitely below God, can by his own natural power of intellect and will ‘climb up’ into the inner Life of the eternal Trinity.
13. Summa Theologica I-II Q.5 a.5 co.

14. All virtues have as their final scope to dispose man to acts conducive to his true happiness. The happiness, however, of which man is capable is twofold, namely, natural, which is attainable by man’s natural powers, and supernatural, which exceeds the capacity of unaided human nature. Since, therefore, merely natural principles of human action are inadequate to a supernatural end, it is necessary that man be endowed with supernatural powers to enable him to attain his final destiny. Now these supernatural principles are nothing else than the theological virtues. They are called theological: (1) because they have God for their immediate and proper object; (2) because they are Divinely infused; (3) because they are known only through Divine Revelation. The theological virtues are three, viz. faith, hope, and charity [agape]. (Catholic Encyclopedia article ‘Virtue‘.)

15. Romans 5:5
16. For more on this see The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters, by Lawrence Feingold, (Sapientia Press, 2010).
17. 1 Cor. 15:21f.; II Synod of Orange, c.2
18. Rom 5:12
19. 1 Tim. 2:5
20. 1 Cor 1:30
21. Acts 4:12
22. John 1:29
23. Gal 3:27
24. By “rightly administered in the form of the Church” they mean according to the form taught by the Church, namely, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
25. We plan to post something showing this in the near future at CTC.
26. The Council acknowledges this in Session 6 Chapter 6.
27. See Session 6 Chapter 7.
28. This becomes relevant to Session 6 Canon 9, because that canon is condemning the notion that merely believing the message about Christ is entirely sufficient for justification, and that repentance (as a preparation for baptism) and baptism itself are not also necessary for the justification we receive through the sacrament of baptism, wherein belief in Christ is made to be the virtue of faith.
29. Acts 2:38
30. Rom. 5:12
31. C.153, D.IV de cons.
32. John 3:5
33. Rom. 6:4; C.13, D.IV de cons.
34. Rom. 8:1
35. Eph. 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9f.
36. Rom. 8:17
37. II Tim. 2:5.
38. Rom. 6-8; Col. 3
39. Cc. 1, 2, Extrav. comm., De reliq. et venerat. sanct., III, 12.
40. Those who castrate themselves, for example, are resisting concupiscence unlawfully.
41. This cartoon is from Michael Horton’s Putting Amazing Back Into Grace.
42. Aquinas and Trent: Part 5
43. “ God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)
44. cf. Rom 13:8, Gal 5:14, James 2:8
45. See Aquinas and Trent: Part 5
46. Hebrews 12:14

Let me begin by saying that I am honored to have received a response from N.T. Wright in Christianity Today last month. He is a giant and he has probably influenced me more than any other living theologian (yes, even more than Ratzinger/Benedict XVI).

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would like to engage some of N.T. Wright’s comments made in the context of his response to me in the recent Christianity Today article: “Not All Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Protestant debate on justification is reigniting questions about Rome.” I recounted how I began to read N.T. Wright’s books as a seminarian at Westminster Theological Seminary, and how this experience opened my eyes and heart to the Catholic Church. Wright answered that his theology does not necessarily lead to Catholicism. Trevin Wax recently published N.T. Wright’s full response here.

Wright’s response left me with ten questions. I realize that it is unlikely that I will receive another response from Bishop Wright. He is a busy man, an Anglican bishop, and a world renowned theologian—so I won’t hold my breath. Meanwhile, at least others who have read Wright’s books might ponder these questions and suggest educated answers. No matter how it turns out, here are the Ten Questions:

1. Bishop Wright, in your new book Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (page 141) you write concerning 2 Cor 5:21:

“The little word genometha in 5:21b-‘that we might become God’s righteousness in him’-does not sit comfortably with the normal interpretation, according to which ‘God’s righteousness’ is ‘imputed’ or ‘reckoned’ to believers. If that is what Paul meant, with the overtones of ‘extraneous righteousness’ that normally come with that theory, the one thing that he ought not to have said is that we ‘become’ that righteousness. Surely that leans far too much towards a Roman Catholic notion of infused righteousness? How careless of Paul to leave the door open to such a notion!”

Question 1: You seem to indicate here that Saint Paul does in fact teach the “Roman Catholic notion of infused righteousness.” How would we be wrong if we were to assume that you are here denying justification by imputation and favoring “a Roman Catholic notion of infused righteousness”?

2. Also in Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (p. 164), you wrote: “what damage to genuine pastoral theology has been done by making a bogey-word out of the Pauline term synergism, “working together with God.”

Question 2: Should we conclude that you agree with Trent regarding syngergism and disagree with Luther and Calvin on monergism?

3. Bishop Wright, on p. 230 you write: “Thus when [John] Piper says (22) that ‘Wright makes startling statements to the effect that our future justification will be on the basis of works’, I want to protest: it isn’t Wright who says this, but Paul.” Your words conform nicely to the Council of Trent’s Session Six, Chapter 10: “faith co-operating with good works, increase in that justice which they have received through the grace of Christ, and are still further justified.”

Question 3: Are you not affirming with Session Six of the Council of Trent that our justification (with it’s future implications) will be on the basis of works? John Piper doesn’t want to let you off the hook on this one.

4. Bishop Wright, in What Saint Paul Really Said (page 119) you wrote that justification is about ecclesiology before soteriology. This lines up nicely with Session Six of the Council of Trent (especially Chapter Seven) which relates justification in the traditional terms of catechumens and the Church.

Question 4: How is your teaching in What Saint Paul Really Said substantially different from the Council of Trent’s formulation?

5. Bishop Wright, you note that Heinrich Schlier was a fine New Testament scholar. In fact, Schlier states that it was Sacred Scripture that lead him into the Catholic Church.

Question 5: Do you believe that Schlier was so naïve as to believe that being Bultmannian or being Catholic were the only two options available to him?

6. Bishop Wright, you state the Council of Trent provided the wrong answer regarding “nature/grace question.” As far as I can tell, Trent only touched upon this question in Session Five and even there the word “nature” only appears twice.

Question 6: Could you clarify what you mean by “Trent gave the wrong answer, at a deep level, to the nature/grace question”? To which session would I turn in the Council of Trent to find the alleged “wrong answer”?

7. Bishop Wright, you state that Trent’s “wrong answer to the nature/grace question” led to Catholic abuses in Marian doctrine and devotion.

Question 7: Are you referring to something as general as the prayers to Mary or something more specific like her bodily assumption into Heaven?

8. You indicated that the Catholic Church has sought to prevent the belief that God works through women and lay people. You wrote: “Communal, yes, but don’t let the laity (or the women) get any fancy ideas about God working new things through them.”

It is rather noteworthy that the two greatest saints of the Catholic Church are the Blessed Virgin Mary (a woman) and Saint Joseph (a layman).

Our profound love for the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the incarnation goes without mentioning. Moreover, the Catholic Church venerates three female Doctors of the Church (St Teresa of Avila, St Catherine of Sienna, and St Therese of Lisieux) who stand next to the other great Doctors of the Church like St Augustine, St Basil, St Thomas Aquinas, et al.

Question 8: Could you be more specific as to how the Catholic Church devalues the role of women and laymen?

9. You write that the Reformed, Anglican, charismatic, and emergent traditions can encompass the best of what it means to be “sacramental, transformational, communal, eschatological.” Yet, these four traditions (Reformed, Anglican, charismatic, and emergent) are in fundamental disagreement over what a sacrament is, how a human is justified and/or sanctified, what the church is, and what the eschaton is and how it will occur. Even within their own jurisdictions (e.g. Anglican Communion), there is vast disagreement over all of these issues. You say there are “bits of it” in the emergent church, but we could also say that there are “bits of it” when I pray the Our Father with my children before they fall asleep – yet “bits of it” do not entail the climax of the covenant as anticipated in Isaiah, Daniel, or the Minor Prophets.

Question 9: If what it means to be sacramental, transformational, communal, eschatological “can be found in” these four contradicting traditions, doesn’t it entail that each of these four (or even all four together) do not actualize what it means to be sacramental, transformational, communal, eschatological? In other words, “these elements can be found in their congregations” doesn’t entail “these elements constitute their congregations.”

10. Bishop Wright, you write: “Trent, and much subsequent RC theology, has had a habit of never spring-cleaning, so you just live in a house with more and more clutter building up, lots of right answers to wrong questions.”

On the contrary, since the Reformation, only the Catholic Church has continued to hold councils and examine the deposit of faith. Lutherans, Anglicans, and Calvinists still appeal to the same dusty articles of faith that they drafted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They do not hold doctrinal councils. They are unable to reform. They are what they are. So the accusation that the Catholic Church doesn’t clean house is actually more appropriately directed toward Protestant denominations.

Question 10: Is it the case that Protestant theology is clean and tidy when compared to Catholic theology?

Bishop Wright, you wrote:

I am sorry to think that there are people out there whose Protestantism has been so barren that they never found out about sacraments, transformation, community or eschatology. Clearly this person [that’s me, Taylor] needed a change. But to jump to Rome for that reason is very odd.

I would like to point out that I am not simply an isolated “this person” who “needed a change.” It’s quite ironic that Wright should says this the wake of the Pope’s announcement of the new Anglican Personal Ordinariates. I’m not the only one. Thousands and thousands of clergy and laity from his own denomination have appealed to the Pope as a result of the Anglican Communion losing its sacramental and communal nature. If Anglicanism can provide a Christianity that is “sacramental, transformational, communal, and eschatological,” then why are these Anglicans so deeply dissatisfied with Anglicanism? Would Wright also say that their “jump to Rome” is “very odd”?
Thank you for reading. As a grateful fan and reader of N.T. Wright’s books, I am continually amazed by his profound insights into Sacred Scripture. As a Catholic, I continue to enjoy his books and find myself returning to his works on a regular basis. I have the highest regard for Bishop Wright and wish him all the best.

I’d like to open up the comments and ask for responses. Would you agree that within Wright’s writings and public comments, “there are some things in them hard to understand”? What are we to make those passages that allege to be “not magisterially Protestant” but “not magisterially Catholic” either?

Please look for my new book: The Catholic Perspective on Paul (Summer 2010). It is based on the conviction that the Pauline epistles contain the primitive and pristine doctrines of the Catholic Faith (that is, the Patristic “old perspective” on Paul). In the Pauline corpus we discover a Paul who is Catholic, a theologian who is sacramental, a churchman who is hierarchical, a mystic who is orthodox.

Listen to Episode #1: RABBI SAUL BECOMES APOSTLE PAUL.

The mp3s for this lecture (and the Q&A) can be downloaded here. I’m creating a forum here for us to discuss this lecture.

Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics
Filippino Lippi (1489-91)

For that reason, dialogue aimed at reconciling Protestants with Catholics simply cannot circumvent the Council of Trent. The more I have studied the Council of Trent, the more I am convinced that it and the rationale underlying its conclusions can be rightly understood only within a broader paradigm. The canons of the sixth session are read by Protestants as if the terms mean what Protestants take the terms to mean, according to a Protestant theological method. By that light it only takes a quick glance to see that Trent anathematized the gospel. St. Paul obviously teaches that we are justified by faith and not by works (Romans 3:20, 28; 9:32, 11:6, Galatians 2:16, 3:2,5,10), and the ninth canon of the sixth session obviously anathematizes the claim that we are justified by faith alone. Therefore, for Protestants it is a very simple deduction that at Trent the Catholic Church formally apostatized. End of discussion.

Or is it?

Certainly we can all agree that the gospel of Jesus Christ is something of such tremendous importance that we should choose death rather than deny, compromise or abandon it. But for that very reason, we should also agree that it is supremely important to be as certain as possible that what we believe to be the gospel is in fact the gospel. To be warranted in separating from the visible Church over the gospel, clearly we would need to be absolutely certain both that we know what is the gospel and that the Church has in fact departed from it. So a great deal of caution is in order when concluding that Trent anathematized the gospel. Too often in my opinion, insufficient study and investigation lie behind the reasoning process by which Protestants conclude that Trent anathematized the gospel. The determination is often made in a rather facile fashion, as exemplified in the previous paragraph.

Imagine trying to map a mountain range while standing on the highest peak with a thick cloud cover at some distance below.  You see only certain peaks jutting up through the clouds. To perceive the mountain range rightly, you need to see what is underneath the clouds. In the same way, to understand rightly the meaning and basis of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent, one must understand the theological and philosophical framework within which the Tridentine bishops were working. The enormous though invisible figure presiding virtually at the Council of Trent was the great Doctor Ecclesiae, St. Thomas Aquinas. It is virtually impossible to understand Trent rightly without understanding the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Why is that? In 1879, in his encyclical Aeterni Patris (On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy), Pope Leo XIII wrote the following:

The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons [1274], Vienna [1311-1313], Florence [1439], and the Vatican [1869-1870] one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent [1545-1563] made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration. (Aeterni Patris, 22)

According to Pope Leo XIII, there were three books granted the honor of being placed on the altar at the Council of Trent. One was the Bible, one was the Decretals, and the other was Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. This does not mean that they believed the Summa to be equivalent in authority to Scripture, or that it was to be blindly received as an infallible commentary upon Scripture. Rather, it indicates how much respect the bishops at Trent had for the Summa as summarizing the Church’s organic tradition through which Scripture was to be understood. Keep in mind also that there were no less than twenty-three Dominican bishops in attendance at the Council of Trent, and they also contributed to Aquinas’s role at the Council, because Aquinas was a Dominican. When we read the sixth session of Trent with an understanding of what Aquinas has to say about justification, we see clearly that the bishops at Trent were using Aquinas’s position and arguments in order to formulate and define their own position on this subject. The great Church historian, Philip Hughes, wrote, “Where is the doctrinal definition of this council [i.e. Trent], for comment on which the theological lecturer will not turn for guidance to St. Thomas …?” (The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870, p. 324)

Protestants tend to understand a term such as ‘justification’ primarily through an inference from its use in Scripture and in pagan literature contemporary to the authors of Scripture. Protestants also tend to be unfamiliar with Aquinas’s theology and philosophy. The bishops of Trent, by contrast, approached the issue of justification by looking at the Scripture through the eyes of St. Thomas. So, in effect, Protestants approach the issue of justification already in a different theological and philosophical paradigm than were the bishops at the Council of Trent. And when two groups of persons approach the same evidence, each group having its own paradigm, the typical result is disagreement due to misunderstanding.

Since we should not reject what we do not understand, Protestants should reserve judgment about the orthodoxy of Trent until they understand this Thomistic framework. That is because the burden of proof rests on those who would depart from the visible Church; otherwise there is no visible Church. In other words, we cannot just leave the Church and start our own sect whenever we, for any reason, happen to disagree with her theology. We would have to be absolutely certain that the Church has abandoned the gospel. Determining that a Protestant interpretation is more favorable or superior is insufficient; the Catholic position must be shown to be certainly contrary to Scripture. Therefore, if Catholic soteriology is compatible with Scripture, then Protestants should return to the Catholic Church. And every Protestant who knows his history should be the first to acknowledge this. But perceiving the compatibility of Catholic doctrine with Scripture requires first understanding the Thomistic theological and philosophical framework within which the Catholic soteriology promulgated at Trent is situated. So one essential goal of the Protestant-Catholic dialogue aimed at reconciliation and reunion is coming to understand the Thomistic paradigm within which the bishops at the Council of Trent were writing.

With an eye to that end, this is the first of a series of posts, Deo volente, examining the fifth and sixth sessions of the Council of Trent. What I intend to do in this series is present and explain the Thomistic paradigm that lies behind the Council’s teaching in these two sessions. Why am I including the fifth session? Because I believe that in order to understand the sixth session, on justification, we need first to consider and understand the fifth session, on original sin. And since today, March 7, is the day St. Thomas died (and hence is his feast day in the old calendar), this seems to be an appropriate day to begin such a series.

God our merciful Father, grant us the grace and wisdom to be reconciled with one another in full and visible communion. St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us, that we may see the light that illuminated your mind and guided your pen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Part 2 in this series can be found here.