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Internal Conflict Among the Orthodox Over the Terms Used for the Eucharist

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Internal Conflict Among the Orthodox Over the Terms Used for the Eucharist chapter 8 Internal Conflict among the Orthodox over the Terms Used for the Eucharist As was shown, the immediate reason for the publication of the Greek editio princeps was related to the major theological discussions among the Orthodox during the seventeenth century over the words used to define the Eucharist and as a reaction of the Orthodox to the controversies in the West over Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, in particular the transubstantiation. In Western Europe the debate on transubstantiation and, in general, on the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist started in the mid-eleventh century with the teaching of Berengar of Tours (ca. 999–1088), who denied the identity of the Eucharist with the physical body of Christ. He also proposed that the bread and wine were efficient signs of Christ’s heavenly, spiritual body, which is what they signified, but were not substantially identical with it either. Finally, he made the efficacity of the presence of Christ’s heav- enly body dependent on the personal faith of the recipients of the Eucharistic elements.1 There were two condemnations of Berengar: the first really did seek to impose a crudely physicalist understanding of the Real Presence; the second was much more subtle, and transubstantiation grows out of the latter response. But for some reason, at least in polemics (and maybe, too, in popular devo- tion) transubstantiation seems to be taken as crudely materialistic, which is precisely the opposite of what it is meant to be. In fact, the doctrine of transub- stantiation was not a refutation of Berengar, but rather a response to a problem that Berengar raised. While Berengar’s theses were repeatedly discussed and the Catholic Church subsequently adopted the dogma of transubstantion, the problem of the Real Presence and of the more restrictive concept “transubstan- tiation” re-emerged once again during the Reformation. It was the Decretum de ss. Eucharistia, Cap. 4. De Transsubstantione, promulgated in 1551 by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) that cofirmed and gave a concise definition of 1 Edward Yarnold, “Transubstantiation,” in The Eucharist in Theology and Philosophy: Issues of Doctrinal History in East and West from the Patristic Age to the Reformation, ed. István Perczel, Réka Forrai and György Geréby (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), 381–394, (Henceforth: Yarnold, “Transubstantiation”); Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West (Collegeville mn: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 97–102. Kurt Flasch, Das philosophische Denken im Mittelalter: von Augustin zu Machiavelli (Stuttgart: Reklam, 1988), 190. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004277816_012 internal conflict among the orthodox 113 transubstantiation.2 The question that this term is a novelty word not found in the Scriptures was disregarded with the argument that the term consub- stantial (homousios) is also not used in the Bible.3 However, this was rather the beginning of a new series of controversies than a definite decision on the mat- ter. During this controversy both Catholics and Protestants turned to the ancient tradition of the Orthodox Church in order to find arguments for their claims.4 In this way, after 1457 Orthodox theologians became involved in the disputes on the problem of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. One of the early contacts of the Reformed churches was established by the Protestants from Tübingen, who in 1576 initiated correspondence with Patriarch Jeremiah ii Tranos during his first term as a patriarch (May 1572 – November 1579). After a short exchange of letters already in 1581, during the second term of Patriarch Jeremiah ii (August 1580–February 1584) they were left disappointed in the prospect of reaching an agreement for union between the Orthodox and Protestants.5 With the Calvinising Confession of Faith, issued under the name of the Patri- arch of Constantinople Cyril Lukaris, the matter became an internal affair of the Orthodox Church. The Confession of Lukaris consisted of eighteen articles, fol- lowed by four questions on faith. Three of these chapters represent the Ortho- dox teaching on the Trinity (chapter 1), on the incarnation (chapter 6), and on original sin (chapter 7). Other chapters are conciliatory with the Orthodox beliefs on divine inspiration of the Scriptures, creation, providence, the saints, icons, baptism and life after death (chapters 4, 5, 8, 17, 18). The other chapters contain the principal Protestant tenets, from which two chapters—the second chapter “on the Scriptures” and the seventeenth “On the Eucharist”—contain entirely Protestant views.6 The references to the Panoplia come in relation to the Synods which condemned the Confession of Patriarch Lukaris. 2 Denz., 1642. 3 Yarnold, “Transubstantiation”, 284–387. 4 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment,”Eastern Christianity, ed. Michael Angold, vol. 5 of The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 187–209. (Hereafter: Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West”). 5 Christian Hannick and Klaus-Peter Todt, “Jérémie ii Tranos” in La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, ed. Kontouma-Conticello and Conticello, 558–560. 6 Kitromilides, “Orthodoxy and the West,” 197–198; the text of the Confession in Karmiris, Dog- matica et symbolica monumenta, 2: 565–570; for translation in English George Hadjiantoniou, ProtestantPatriarch:theLifeofCyrilLucaris(1572–1638)PatriarchofConstantinople (Richmond va: Knox, 1961), 141–145..
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