TDB 10 The Conversion of Marcus Grodi part 5 (The Eucharist part 3)

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And this is very significant. Not one, not even one of those Eastern bishops disputed or questioned the

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Pope's authority. I mean, the

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Eucharistic, let's just say this, the Eucharistic abuses are abuses to Jesus' DNA, his body and blood.

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As I continued to study my early church father, older brothers and sisters, I started to realize that God had a plan for me that was bigger than any plan that I'd ever had for myself.

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And before you know it, it turned to the Catholic Church. When I made that decision to become

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Catholic, everything began to fit. It was like a puzzle with the four sides that I put together, with the papacy and the

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Blessed Mother and tradition in the Eucharist. Let's say there's a person watching this program right now from where you were.

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Why should they make the same journey home that you made? I would say investigate the history for yourself because the famous line from Cardinal Newman is to be deep in history is to cease to be

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Protestant. And that's pretty much what happened to me. So I would say take the Catholic Church's claims, investigate them, and as my father always told me, go wherever Jesus leads you and maybe it would end up in the

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Catholic Church. Hello to everyone.

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We are back with a new episode of The Diving Board where we dive deep into history. It has been almost three months since our last episode, which

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I did not anticipate when I was recording the last episode, but we have not been idle. Life has a way of going by without waiting for me to catch up.

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We've got a lot of good material for you today and it is going to take a long time to go through. The show notes will be extensive as usual.

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By way of reminder, The Diving Board podcast focuses on the conversion testimonies of Protestants who convert to Roman Catholicism thinking that to be deep in history is to cease to be a

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Protestant. But getting deep in history is something a Roman Catholic cannot do because Roman Catholicism itself is a novelty 300 years removed from the

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Church of the Apostles and their followers. Its roots do not go back any further than the end of the 4th century.

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And as we continue to show in each episode, those Roman Catholics who think they are getting deep in history are actually embracing a late 4th century and medieval novelty, not realizing how ignorant of history they really are.

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This is episode 10, which is our 5th episode on Marcus Grodi, host of the Journey Home show on the

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Coming Home Network, a Roman Catholic ministry that focuses on the return of wandering Protestants back to the fold of Roman Catholicism.

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Marcus Grodi has provided citations from the early Church Fathers that influenced his decision to return to Rome and he divided his citations into four main categories.

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The Church Hierarchy, the Eucharist, which to him is the Lord's Supper and the Roman Catholic Sacrifice of the

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Mass, the Primacy of Rome, and the Unity of the Church. We are almost finished with Grodi's Misperceptions on the

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Eucharist. This is our third episode on that and it is taking so long because there is just so much history to cover and because we also need to correct the scholars, apologists, and professional theologians and to educate not only the

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Protestants, but also the Roman Catholics as well. As we noted last week, Roman Catholics do not know what the term

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Eucharist meant to the early Church and they do not even know where the term Sacrifice of the Mass came from.

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It was not until the latter part of the 4th century that the Roman Catholic Sacrifice of the

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Mass came about and in the second half of today's episode we will show you how scholars and apologists have been unable to reconcile the liturgy of the early

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Church with the liturgical novelties of the late 4th century. And so what they have done is not merely reinterpret the liturgy of the first 300 years, but actually rewrite it in order to make it consistent with the heretical novelties that originated late in the 4th century.

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The result of this campaign to rewrite the liturgy of the early centuries has been one of the most dangerous deceptions in the history of Christianity because it has led millions of souls to the destructive and heretical practice of offering

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Christ to the Father in the Lord's Supper and then worshipping that consecrated bread and wine.

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It is a heretical and abominable practice and the intentional rewriting of the early liturgy to make it look like the later heretical abominable novelty is simply unconscionable and Marcus Grodi is just one of its many, many victims.

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We will get to that later today. But for now, let us very briefly review what we covered in the first two episodes on the

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Eucharist. First, in the early Church, the Eucharist was the tithe offering, not the supper.

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Second, in the early Church, unbelievers, catechumens, backsliders, and those at variance with their brethren were dismissed prior to the offering of the tithe.

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Third, the very simple liturgy that followed the dismissal was a tithe offering, followed by an

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Amen, followed by a consecration, followed by a meal, as depicted by Paul in the

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Epistles. Fourth, in the early Church, the consecration of the elements was simply to pronounce the words of Christ, this is my body, this is my blood, over the bread and wine.

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Fifth, in the early Church, that consecration was sometimes spoken over the bread and wine after it was already distributed to the people.

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So let's cover those very briefly. First, as we showed last week, to the early Church, the

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Eucharist, the Greek word for Thanksgiving, was the tithe offering, the thank offering, which was an offering of thanks and praise and the first fruits of the harvest for the feeding of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.

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It was an expression of gratitude to God for His manifold provisions to His people.

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It was the sacrifice prophesied in Malachi 1 .11, and it was the sacrifice prescribed by the apostles, thanks, praise, sharing, caring for one another, and offering well -pleasing and acceptable to the

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Lord, according to Philippians 4 .18 and Hebrews 13 .16. Second, the term sacrifice of the mass literally means sacrifice of the dismissal, because in the early

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Church, unbelievers, catechumens, and the backslidden, or those at variance with their brethren, were dismissed prior to the

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Eucharistic tithe offering because it was considered inappropriate to offer thanks, praise, prayer, and the tithe with an unclean conscience.

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And of course, it was impossible to have a clean conscience if you were in sin or if you had not yet made a confession of Christ.

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As such, no one was allowed to remain for the offering of the tithe until they had made a confession of Christ. As recorded in Athanasius Against the

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Arians, Part 1, Chapter 2, Paragraph 28. But as soon as someone was converted, he was not only allowed to participate in the thank offering, according to Justin Martyr, First Apology, Paragraph 65, but he was also instructed to bring his own

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Eucharist with him, according to Hippolytus, Anaphora, Chapter 20, because the new believer could finally make his tithe offering with a clean conscience.

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Third, once the unbelievers and unconverted were dismissed, a very primitive liturgy ensued.

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It was the liturgy depicted in the Scriptures at the Last Supper and in Paul's epistles. There was a

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Thanksgiving tithe offering or sacrifice, that is, a Eucharist, followed by an

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Amen, according to 1 Corinthians 14, 16, after which some of the bread and wine from the tithe offering were blessed or consecrated and then called the

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Body and Blood of Christ for a meal, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 10, verses 16 -17.

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A Eucharist, an Amen, a consecration, and a meal. That was the simple liturgy of the early church, and we see that liturgy prevail for the first 300 years.

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We saw it reflected, for example, in Justin Martyr in his First Apology, Chapters 65 -67, in the mid -2nd century, in which a newly baptized person participates in the thank offering, and thanks is pronounced as the bread and wine are offered, or Eucharisted.

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Then the people say Amen, then a consecration is pronounced over the Eucharisted food after the

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Amen, and then the people eat the consecrated bread and wine, calling it the Body and Blood of Christ. That same liturgy is seen in the mid -3rd century in Dionysius of Alexandria's Epistle 4 to Sixtus II, Bishop of Rome, as he explained that he was unwilling to re -baptize someone who had been present for the

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Eucharist offering, answered Amen, and then stood at the Holy Table to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

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That was the simple liturgy of the early church, and as we abundantly demonstrated in the previous episode, that Eucharistic sacrifice took place prior to the consecration, before the elements were considered the

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Body and Blood of Christ. Fourthly, as we showed last week, the consecration in the most primitive liturgies was comprised simply of the words of Christ spoken over the bread and wine at the supper,

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This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. That was the consecration.

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We see this depicted in the liturgy of Justin Martyr, in which he says when the words of Christ are spoken over the

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Eucharisted food after the Amen, the Eucharist then becomes the Body and Blood of Christ to us. That's Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 66.

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We also saw this same consecration depicted later in the 2nd century against Heresies, book 4, chapter 17, paragraph 5, and book 5, chapter 2, paragraph 3, in which

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Christ gives thanks, that is, Eucharist, for the bread and wine, but the Eucharist does not become his

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Body and Blood until he utters the words, This is my body, this is my blood. We also saw that same consecration depicted in Tertullian against Marcion, book 4, chapter 40, in which he says,

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This is my body. That is a significant point, which will become even more important to us today.

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Namely, in the early church, the Eucharist and the consecration were different things at different parts of the liturgy.

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The Eucharistic prayer was not the consecration. And that leads us to our fifth point, which is, not only was the consecration spoken over the bread and wine after the offering, or sacrifice, or oblation was over, but also sometimes it was spoken only after the bread had already been distributed into the hands of those present, or as the wine was being administered to them.

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We saw this in the scriptural accounts of the supper when Jesus said of the bread, Take, eat, this is my body, and of the wine he gave it to them, saying,

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Drink ye all of it, for this is my blood. We also saw this in Justin Martyr, First Apology, paragraph 67, in about 155

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A .D., in which the bread and wine were distributed immediately after the thanksgiving and the apostolic Amen.

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We also saw this in Tertullian, against Marcion, Book 4, chapter 40, around 208

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A .D. Then, having taken the bread and given it to his disciples, he made it his own body, saying,

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This is my body. We saw this in Origen, about 248 A .D., in his Criticism of Celsus, as he explains that, in the liturgy, we give thanks to the

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Creator of all, and along with thanksgiving, that is, Eucharistias, 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.

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That's Origen, against Celsus, Book 8, chapter 33. We also saw this in Cornelius' complaint in 251

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A .D., that the schismatic Novatus had substituted an oath of loyalty for the consecration.

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That is from Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, in his letter to Fabian, Bishop of Antioch, around 251

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A .D., and he says, For when he has made the offerings and distributed a part to each man, as he gives it, he compels the wretched man to swear in place of the blessing.

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This is also recorded for us in Eusebius' Church History, Book 6, chapter 43, paragraph 18. In all of these cases, the consecration is spoken either as the bread and wine are being distributed, or after the bread has already been distributed into the hand of the believer.

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So, we covered these five points for a specific reason. It makes sense out of the statements of the early writers on the topic of the

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Eucharist. In the early church, the Eucharist was the tithe offering, not the supper. Unbelievers were dismissed prior to the offering of the tithe, which is why the tithe offering was called the sacrifice of the dismissal, or, in a later

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English transliteration, the sacrifice of the Mass. The liturgy that followed the dismissal was a simple tithe offering, an amen, a consecration, and a meal, as depicted by Paul in the epistles and in the earliest liturgies.

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The consecration itself was simply to pronounce the words of Christ, this is my body broken for you, this is my blood shed for you, over the bread and wine taken from the

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Eucharistic offering, and that consecration was sometimes spoken after the elements had already been distributed into the hands of the recipient.

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Now, frankly, that sounds like a Protestant liturgy, and it is important to keep it in mind because it serves as a simple backdrop to the statements of Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr in reference to the

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Eucharist. When Ignatius of Antioch says the heretics abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess the

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Eucharist to be the flesh of Jesus Christ, he means simply that, like unbelievers, catechumens, and backsliders, the heretics don't participate in the tithe offering.

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And further, they don't agree with the words of consecration that are spoken over Eucharist and bread and wine when they are distributed for the supper.

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And when Justin Martyr says we call this food the Eucharist and nobody is allowed to partake of it but those who believe as we do and who are living in accordance with Christ's teachings, it makes perfect sense because those who do not confess

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Christ or who are backslidden in sin are not allowed to remain for the Eucharist, the thank offering.

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It is actually very simple. And this simple liturgy prevailed for 300 years after the apostles until the late 4th century when people began to believe that the

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Eucharist was the offering of consecrated bread and wine to the Father, that is, the offering of Christ's body and blood.

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And that leads us to the last point we wanted to make about the Eucharist in the early church. Marcus Grodi made the mistake of thinking that the

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Eucharist in the early church referred to the Lord's Supper after the consecration. But as we have shown, the

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Eucharist referred to the tithe offering prior to the consecration. Marcus Grodi said the bread and wine became the

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Eucharist at the consecration. But according to the early church writers, the bread and wine became the

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Eucharist when they were set aside as a tithe offering and then the Eucharist became the body and blood of Christ at the consecration.

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Following the simple liturgy of the early church, the bread and wine were already the Eucharist prior to the consecration.

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And thus it makes little sense for Marcus Grodi to say the early church believed unanimously in the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist. What he means is that the early church believed unanimously in the real presence of Christ in the

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Supper. But for the sake of argument, we'll let Marcus Grodi state his position on this. Again, this emphasizes the unanimous belief in the early church in the belief in the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the

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Eucharist. As we stated in our previous episode, this idea of the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist leads Roman Catholics to believe that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are literally the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.

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As you hear in the intro audio to each episode, Roman Catholic apologist Timothy Gordon reminds us that Roman Catholics really believe that the bread and wine contain the actual

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DNA of the second person of the Trinity. And the obvious logical conclusion, if it were true, is that the bread and wine should be worshipped.

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Okay, let's find out if the early church really believed that. The scripture says nothing of the practice, but did the early church unanimously confess the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the

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Lord's Supper? Let's take a look. There is not much we can get from the

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Didache and Clement of Rome, both of which are from the period between the 50s and 90s A .D.,

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since they do not mention the consecration of the elements as part of the liturgy. We have evaluated

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Ignatius of Antioch from early in the 2nd century in his letter to the Smyrnaeans in 107 A .D.,

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and his reference to heretics not confessing the Eucharist to be the flesh and blood of Christ is not about transubstantiation, but about the heretics being unwilling to pronounce the words of consecration over the bread and wine that had been taken from the

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Eucharistic tithe oblation for the Supper. Thus, Ignatius statements that the heretics do not participate in the tithe and do not take the bread of the tithe and confess it to be the body of Christ can hardly be taken as evidence of belief in the real presence of Christ in the

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Supper. Additionally, while Ignatius is known to say things like I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and I desire the drink of God, namely his blood, which is the incorruptible love and eternal life, that is, to the

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Romans, paragraph 7, such statements are not made in regard to the Supper and rather comport with Jesus' words in John 6 in which eating

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Christ's flesh and drinking his blood are used as metaphors for coming to Christ and believing in him.

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As it says in John 6, 35, And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

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Besides, Ignatius liked to use flowery metaphorical language, saying things like, Wherefore clothing yourselves with meekness, be renewed in faith, that is, the flesh of the

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Lord, and in love, that is, the blood of Jesus Christ. That's Ignatius of Antioch to the

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Trallians, paragraph 8. It is very difficult to get a plain affirmation of the reality of Christ's flesh and blood in the

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Supper if Ignatius also believed that faith is the flesh of Jesus and love is the blood of Jesus.

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Even his statements from his letter to the Philadelphians, paragraph 4, that is, Take heed, then, to have but one

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Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to the unity of his blood, are easily understood in the context of the primitive liturgy in which there was a

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Eucharistic tithe offering and then bread was taken from that Eucharist to be consecrated in accordance with Paul's instructions in 1

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Corinthians 10, 15. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?

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The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? If the early church offered a

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Eucharistic tithe of unconsecrated bread and then took bread and wine from the tithe and consecrated it,

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Ignatius' words make sense in their historical context. There should be only one Eucharist. They hardly attest to a primitive conviction in the reality of Christ's presence, body, blood, soul, and divinity, in the

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Supper. And what did we find in Justin Martyr in the 2nd century except an acknowledgment of the

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Eucharistic tithe offering followed by the apostolic Amen and the use of the bread and the cup in a memorial meal after the consecration in which the bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ.

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We read of this in his First Apology, chapters 65 -67. Protestants actually do the same thing and we are taught that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ to us who believe.

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Our liturgy is pretty much the same as Justin's. A thank offering, followed by everyone agreeing that God has provided abundant blessings for His people, followed by a memorial meal in which bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ, and then eaten.

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Other citations from Justin Martyr bear this same character when the liturgy of the early church is understood, especially with the knowledge that the

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Eucharist was the tithe, the thank offering. For example, in his dialogue with Tripho, after reciting

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Isaiah 33, verses 13 -19, which says, He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly, bread shall be given to him.

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Justin continued, saying that this prophecy foretold the time when believers would be given bread to remind them of Christ's incarnation.

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Now citing Justin Martyr, dialogue with Tripho, chapter 70. Now it is evident that in this prophecy, allusion is made to the bread which

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Christ gave to us to eat, in remembrance of His being made flesh for the sake of His believers, for whom

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He suffered, and to the cup which He gave us to drink, in remembrance of His own blood, with giving of thanks.

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Again, Justin Martyr, dialogue with Tripho, chapter 70. Justin's point is obviously that the prophecy of bread being given to the righteous is fulfilled in Christ giving bread to us to eat, in remembrance of His incarnation.

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And that reference to the cup is quite interesting. Justin says, the cup which He gave us to drink, in remembrance of His own blood.

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He gave us bread to eat to remind us of His incarnation. He gave us the wine in remembrance of His own blood.

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That's not something you would say. At least, that is not the way you would say it. If you really believed

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Jesus was giving us His actual flesh to eat, and His own blood was actually in the cup, you'd say,

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He gave us His own incarnated flesh to eat, and His own blood to drink. Instead of, He gave us bread to help us remember that He had a real body, and He gave us the wine in remembrance of His own blood.

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Frankly, Justin Martyr's language is the language of Protestants today. Justin makes a similar connection in chapter 117 of his dialogue with Tripho, which we cited in our analysis of the

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Eucharist two episodes ago, referring to Malachi 111 and the prophecy that the Gentiles would offer acceptable sacrifices to the

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Lord. To Justin Martyr, that prophecy was fulfilled in the Eucharist, that is, in the tithe offering and the offering of prayers.

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Listen to what Justin Martyr says in this chapter. The Lord is pleased with the prayers and calls their prayers sacrifices, prayers and giving of thanks when offered by worthy men are the only perfect and well -pleasing sacrifices to God in the remembrance effected by their solid and liquid food, whereby the suffering of the

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Son of God which He endured is brought to mind. That is not what you would say if you believed the bread and wine were the flesh and blood of Christ and offered as the sacrifice.

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So we really don't find anything compelling about the real presence of Christ in the supper, in Justin Martyr's representation of the early liturgy.

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And what about Irenaeus in the late 2nd century? All we have seen in his works against heresies is language consistent with the primitive liturgy of the early church, that is, bread and wine take on twin realities, both earthly and heavenly, when they are set aside as a tithe, as he noted in Against Heresies, Book 4,

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Chapter 18, Paragraph 5. What we offer in the Eucharist is no longer common bread, but the

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Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly. And then bread and wine are taken from that Eucharistic tithe offering and are consecrated by the recitation of Christ's words,

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This is my body, this is my blood, at which point the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ to us.

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But there is nothing to suggest that Irenaeus thought the change in the bread at the consecration was literal. In fact, the primary evidence

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Roman Catholics use from Irenaeus to prove the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist from Irenaeus is a known intentional mistranslation in Book 4,

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Chapter 18, in which Irenaeus is made to say that the bread takes on two realities, earthly and heavenly, at the moment of consecration.

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The only problem is that Irenaeus did not write that, as we will show a little later today. That is intentionally mistranslated by scholars and apologists, precisely because they are unable to reconcile the late 4th century liturgy of Roman Catholicism with the liturgy of the early

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Church. So the evidence is forged and hammered on the anvil of tradition until it finally comports with the presumptuous novelty of the apologists.

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Additionally, in one of the fragments of his works called Fragment 37, he recites a similar liturgy when he describes the

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Eucharistic tithe offering as the fulfillment of the Malachi prophecy. Listen as he describes the tithe offering of firstfruits as the

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Eucharist, which is then followed by an invocation of the Holy Spirit to make the bread and wine into the

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Body and Blood of Christ. And even after the consecration, the bread and wine are still antitypical.

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That is, symbolic, in the same way the earthly temple, according to Hebrews 9 .24,

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is antitypical of the real temple in heaven. Now citing from Irenaeus, Fragment 37,

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And therefore the oblation of the Eucharist is not a carnal one, but a spiritual. And in this respect it is pure, for we make an oblation to God of the bread and the cup of blessing, giving

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Him thanks, in that He has commanded the earth to bring forth these fruits for our nourishment. And then, when we have perfected the oblation, we invoke the

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Holy Spirit, that He may exhibit this sacrifice, both the bread, the Body of Christ, and the cup, the

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Blood of Christ, in order that the receivers of these antitypes may obtain remission of sins and life eternal.

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Again, that is Irenaeus, Fragment 37, on the fulfillment of Malachi 1 .11.

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Several things we should notice here. First, Irenaeus clearly identifies the oblation of the

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Eucharist as an offering of the first fruits of the harvest that occurs prior to the consecration, in this case, prior to the invocation of the

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Holy Spirit. Second, we notice that the invocation of the Holy Spirit to consecrate the elements does not take place until after the oblation of the

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Eucharist has been perfected, which is literally telasantes in Greek, or completed, finished.

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Third, each time the tithe, that is, the Eucharist, is mentioned, it is called by the

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Greek word prosphora, or offering in English, and when the Holy Spirit is invoked to exhibit this sacrifice, the

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Greek word thousian is used, and thus the Eucharistic tithe of gratitude is called an offering, and then after the consecration the

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Holy Spirit is invoked not to exhibit this sacrifice, as the English renders it, but rather to exhibit the sacrifice, which is to say, after the offering of the

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Eucharistic tithe is over, the Holy Spirit is invoked so that the bread and wine may show forth the death of Christ, in accordance with 1

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Corinthians 11 .26. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the

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Lord's death till he come. And in fact, the word that is rendered exhibit here, as in, we invoke the

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Holy Spirit that he may exhibit the sacrifice, is epiphany, from which we get the modern term for the cognitive disorder, apophenia, which is the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things, such as objects or ideas.

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So, in sum, we have in Fragment 37 what is essentially a Protestant liturgy, in which there is a tithe offering, followed by a consecration in which the

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Holy Spirit is asked to form in our minds a cognitive connection between the bread and wine set before us and the sacrifice

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Christ himself offered for us on the cross, which is to say, the bread, symbolizing his body, broken for us, and the wine, symbolizing his blood, poured out for us.

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Oh, and even after the consecration of the bread and wine, please note that they are still called antitypes by Irenaeus, which is to say, symbols of Christ's body and blood.

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Anyone who wants to check the Greek on that can go to Migne, series on the Greek fathers, volume 7, column 1253, and do notice that it is listed as Fragment 38 in Migne.

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We'll come back to Fragment 37 later, but for now we wish to highlight simply that it is consistent with everything else we have seen from Irenaeus and the other early

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Christian writers. So there is nothing in Irenaeus to suggest a literal change in the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, which is to say, there is nothing in Irenaeus to suggest the real presence of Christ in the

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Lord's Supper. And in fact, the crux of the argument for transubstantiation in Irenaeus is an intentional mistranslation in which the

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Greek word epikleson, or invocation, is deceptively substituted for his original ekklesion, or summons.

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And that brings us to Clement of Alexandria in 202 AD. Listen to what he says about Jesus' command to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

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Now citing from Clement of Alexandria, the instructor, Book 1, Chapter 6. Elsewhere, the

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Lord in the Gospel, according to John, brought this out by symbols when he said, eat my flesh and drink my blood, describing distinctly by metaphor, that is, allegories in Greek, the drinkable properties of faith.

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That's Clement of Alexandria, the instructor, Book 1, Chapter 6. And anyone who wants to see the

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Greek on that can see Meunier, Series on the Greek Fathers, Volume 8, Column 296.

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Yes, Jesus brought this out by symbols, describing distinctly by metaphor, or allegories, the drinkable properties of faith, and the promise.

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That's not something you'd say if you believe that we are literally to eat the flesh of Christ in the Lord's Supper and literally to drink his blood.

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They are symbols, allegories, metaphors, and not really what they are said to be. So that brings us to Tertullian in 208

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AD, and you'll recall from our previous episode that he said after the consecration, the bread and wine are figures of Christ's body and blood.

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Remember that. We're going to come back to Tertullian momentarily. He wrote in Against Marcion, Book 4,

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Paragraph 40, Then, having taken the bread and given it to his disciples, he made it his own body, saying,

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This is my body, that is, the figure of my body. So that gets us to the anaphora of Hippolytus in 215

30:18

AD. We will note that Hippolytus was a disciple of Irenaeus, and he uses the same word

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Irenaeus did to refer to the consecrated elements. The listener may recall from our previous episode the words of Hippolytus in Chapter 38 of the

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Anaphora. Having blessed the cup in the name of God, you received it as the antitype of the blood of Christ.

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And that brings us to Origen in 248 AD. Roman Catholics loved to cite his homily on numbers to prove that the early church believed in the real presence of Christ in the supper.

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Here is the typical citation. Now citing from Origen, Homilies on Numbers, Homily 7,

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Paragraph 2. At that time, the manna was food in an enigma, but now in reality, the flesh of the word of God is true food, just as he himself says,

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My flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink. Again, that's Origen, Homilies on Numbers, Homily 7,

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Paragraph 2. This is taken as evidence of the reality of Christ's flesh for food, and you can find this cited on page after page of Roman Catholic websites, attempting to prove that Origen and the whole early church believed in the presence of Christ in the supper.

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And yet, if you read Origen's Homily 7, and you don't really even have to read the whole homily, just the paragraph from which this is cited, you'll find that Origen believed that the preached word of God was the true food of the flesh of the word of God.

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You'll find the same thing in Homily 23, in which he states emphatically that Jesus' words in John 6 about eating his flesh really means that we consume the scriptures and the preached word of God.

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He says doctrinal and solid words that are brought forth in a way that is filled with faith in the Trinity.

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All these things are the flesh of the word of God. Again, that's Origen, Homilies on Numbers, Homily 23,

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Paragraph 6. That is not exactly what you would say if you believed that the way we now literally eat the flesh of the word of God is by consuming the transubstantiated bread of the

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Lord's Supper. Another citation Roman Catholics use from Origen is his 13th

32:24

Homily on Exodus, where he says that his listeners should be attentive to the preaching of the scriptures, just as they are careful not to drop the consecrated bread of the

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Supper. Now, citing Origen, Homily 13 on Exodus. Again, that's

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Origen, 13th Homily on Exodus. Wow, that sure sounds like they were super careful with the consecrated elements of the

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Supper back in the day, right? Yet, this can hardly prove a belief in the real presence of Christ in the bread.

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Remember, Hippolytus said that we should be careful not to drop the bread or spill the wine because it is the antitypical body and blood of Christ.

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That's Hippolytus, Anaphora, Paragraphs 37 and 38. Thus, being careful not to spill the elements is not in itself evidence of a belief in the real presence.

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It is a reluctance to let it touch the ground because of what it represents, not because of what it is. What is more, we also have

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Tertullian saying in the Chaplet, Paragraph 3, that believers in the 3rd century treated even unconsecrated bread and wine with reverence for the sheer fact that Christ had used them at His last meal.

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He wrote, We feel pained, should any wine or bread, even though our own, be cast upon the ground.

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So here, being cautious with bread and wine, even unconsecrated bread and wine, shows that it is possible to be careful with bread and wine solely because of what it symbolizes, not because you think it is what it symbolizes.

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Just keep in mind, Tertullian in 208 A .D., Hippolytus in 215

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A .D., and Origen in 248 A .D. were contemporaries, and if not all writing at the same time, were at least writing in the same era.

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Clearly, based on Origen's own views on John 6 and his contemporaries' views on being careful with bread and wine, even unconsecrated bread and wine, we can conclude that Origen provides no evidence of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the supper.

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And that brings us to Cyprian of Carthage sometime between 254 and 257 A .D. The listener will recall from the last two episodes that Cyprian of Carthage is used by Roman Catholics to support an early belief in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and thus as early evidence of the

35:04

Roman Catholic sacrifice of Christ's body and blood in the supper. But as we have shown, Cyprian used the term to offer someone in the sacrifices to mean to commemorate that person in the sacrifices, as in this example from his epistle 57, in which he says those who are being persecuted ought to be offered in the sacrifices as an encouragement to the faithful.

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We express the faithful inclination of our love here also in our sacrifices and our prayers, for the victim which affords an example to the brotherhood, both of courage and of faith, ought to be offered up when the brethren are present.

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Again, Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 57, paragraph 4. Clearly in this context, the victim is really a martyr, and being offered up in the sacrifices is in reality simply being commemorated in the offerings, just as Christ is commemorated in the liturgy, not by offering

35:55

Him up, but by remembering Him, which is really Cyprian's point. We recall as well that Cyprian also said the sacrifice the church offers is thanks and praise and fulfillment of Malachi 111, making no mention of the offering of the body and blood of Christ as a sacrifice.

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We should also point out Cyprian's observation in epistle 62, in which he says that Jesus could not have given

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His disciples His blood to drink unless He had first been trampled and pressed at the cross, now citing

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Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 62, paragraph 7. The treading also and the pressure of the wine press is repeatedly dwelt on, because just as the drinking of wine cannot be attained to unless the bunch of grapes is first trodden and pressed, so neither could we drink the blood of Christ unless He had first been trampled upon and pressed, and had first drunk the cup of which

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He should also give believers to drink. Again, that's Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 62, paragraph 7.

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Neither could we drink the blood of Christ unless Christ had first been trampled upon and pressed at the cross?

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That's not exactly something you would say if you believed that Jesus had literally given His disciples

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His own blood to drink at the Last Supper on the night before He died. Oh, and one more thing about Cyprian.

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Since Cyprian learned about the liturgy from Tertullian, who believed the elements of the Supper were figures of Christ's flesh and blood and not literally

37:27

Christ's flesh and blood, it makes sense that Cyprian, too, believed the elements of the Supper were figures of Christ's body and blood.

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Even the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that Cyprian appears to have had no Christian writings available to him except the scriptures and the writings of Tertullian, now citing from the

37:45

Catholic Encyclopedia on Cyprian of Carthage. We have always to remember that his experience as a

37:52

Christian was of short duration, that he became a bishop soon after he was converted, and that he had no

37:57

Christian writings besides Holy Scripture to study, besides those of Tertullian. That's, again,

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Catholic Encyclopedia, Cyprian of Carthage. Yes, that's right. Cyprian had to rely on the scriptures and on Tertullian, and we all know what

38:13

Tertullian thought about the real presence of Christ in the Supper. He wrote that the consecrated bread and wine were figures of Christ's body and blood.

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Okay, that gets us to Aphrahat of Persia in the mid -4th century. In his 12th demonstration, paragraph 6, he wrote that Christ gave to his disciples the sign of the true

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Passover sacrifice, and in paragraph 8 of the same demonstration, he said that the Jewish Passover was on the 14th of Nisan, but the real sacrifice took place at the cross on the 15th of Nisan.

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What Jesus gave to his disciples was a sign of the true Passover sacrifice, but the real

38:46

Passover sacrifice was the next day. That's not exactly something you'd say if you believed that the

38:51

Last Supper was the real Passover sacrifice for our sins. But as it stands, Aphrahat believed the

38:57

Last Supper simply signified Christ's body and blood, but was not literally his body and blood.

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And that leads us to Cyril of Jerusalem around 350 AD, who, as we noted in our previous episode, said that even after the consecration of the elements, the bread and wine were still antitypical of Christ's body and blood, and not the real thing.

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That's Cyril of Jerusalem, catechetical lecture 23, paragraph 20. And that's not exactly what you'd say if you believed the consecrated bread and wine were the literal body and blood of the second person of the

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Trinity. And what is more, Cyril instructed new believers to make sure they touch the bread and wine to their faces, ears, nostrils, eyes, and foreheads before consuming it, in order to reflect on the solid and liquid nature of the bread and wine before consuming it.

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Which is totally something you would do if you believed the bread and wine were literally changed into the divinity of Christ.

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Right? Am I right? Because that is what the Eucharistic adoration is all about. Rubbing Jesus all over your face?

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I jest, of course. Cyril's recommendation is consistent not with the belief in the real presence of Christ in the supper, but rather with the early conviction that the bread and wine were symbols intended to remind us of the reality of Christ's incarnation.

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And that brings us to Gregor of Nazianzen, who said in 361 AD that before the consecration, the bread and wine of the

40:20

Eucharist were the antitypes of the great mysteries. That's from Oration 2, paragraph 95.

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And in 381 AD, even after the consecration, the Passover feast was still typical, though plainer than the old one.

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That's Oration 45, paragraph 23. So, before the consecration, the bread and wine are antitypical, and after the consecration, the bread and wine are still typical, but plainer than the old one.

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That is not exactly what you would say if you believed the consecrated bread and wine were literally the body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.

40:57

And we'll conclude with Macarius the Elder, who died in 390 AD. We will cite from his 27th homily, at least it is attributed to him, and modern scholarship acknowledges that it was written before 534

41:09

AD. In it, he says the church offers bread and wine, the symbols of Christ's flesh and blood.

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In the church, bread and wine should be offered, the symbol, or antitupon, of his flesh and blood, and that those who partake in the visible bread eat spiritually the flesh of the

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Lord, and the apostles and Christians receive the paraclete, and are endued with power from on high, and are filled with the

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Godhead, and their souls mingled with the Holy Ghost. Again, that's Macarius the Elder, homily 27, paragraph 17.

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And anyone who wants to check my Greek on that can see Menier's series on the Greek Fathers, volume 34, column 705.

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Notably, Macarius the Elder has the offering taking place after the epiclesis, consistent with our explanation that the

41:58

Roman Catholic offering of Christ's body and blood could not have occurred unless the offering was moved after the epiclesis, and that did not happen until the late 4th century.

42:07

But in any case, the offering was still just the symbol of Christ's flesh and blood. That is not exactly what you would say if you believed in the real presence of Christ in the

42:16

Lord's Supper. So, let's review this evidence. Justin Martyr said Jesus gave us bread to eat to remind us of His incarnation, and He gave us wine to drink in remembrance of His own blood.

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And Irenaeus didn't say there was a real change in the bread and wine when it was consecrated, but rather there was a real change in the bread when it was set aside as a tie.

42:36

And besides, in fragment 37, Irenaeus says the bread and wine of the supper are just antitypes, symbols of Christ's flesh and blood, even after the consecration.

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As we have pointed out, the author of Hebrews says the earthly temple is the antitype of the real temple in heaven.

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That's Hebrews 9 .24. Clement of Alexandria said Jesus' words, eat my flesh and drink my blood, are to be taken symbolically, allegorically, metaphorically.

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Tertullian said the bread and wine were figures of Christ's body and blood, and Hippolytus, the disciple of Irenaeus, said the consecrated bread and wine were antitypes of Christ's body and blood.

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Cyprian of Carthage said Jesus could not have given His disciples His own blood to drink before He died on the cross.

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And Aphrahet of Persia said that what Christ gave His disciples the night before He died was but a sign of the true

43:22

Passover. Cyril of Jerusalem said the bread and wine were antitypes of Christ's body and blood, and should be touched to your ears, nostrils, fingers, eyes, and forehead, before being placed in your mouth, as you contemplate the solid and liquid nature of the food you are consuming.

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Gregory of Nazianzen said the bread and wine were antitypes of Christ's body and blood before the consecration, and after the consecration they are just typical, but not the real thing.

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And Macarius the Egyptian said that the church offers the symbol of His flesh and blood, a statement that is evidence that even late in the fourth century, as the

43:58

Eucharistic offering was moving to the right of the Epiclesis, the belief in the real presence of Christ in the consecrated elements had still not come to the full and was not yet believed or taught by all.

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And these are the words of the early writers. The consecrated bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are antitypical, figurative, symbolic, allegorical, metaphorical, typical significations of Christ's body and blood, but they are not the real thing.

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Marcus Grodi's statement about the unanimous belief in the real presence is thus shown to be a flat -out lie.

44:29

But there is something more to keep in mind. Our listeners will recall episode 4 of The Diving Board, in which we analyzed the conversion testimony of Jeff Cavins.

44:38

He said he converted back to Roman Catholicism because it gave him the freedom to kneel before the real presence of Christ in the

44:44

Eucharist. As we showed in that episode, kneeling was prohibited in the Sunday Liturgy until about the 11th century.

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So, for a thousand years, kneeling was prohibited on the one day of the week Christians got together to consecrate bread and wine.

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And we see this in the 20th Canon of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and in the writing of the early

45:04

Christians and in the statements of the church councils and popes until the 11th century. If they really believed in the real presence of Christ in the

45:11

Eucharist, shouldn't kneeling have been required on that day instead of prohibited? You find this same conundrum in Roman Catholic writings on similar topics related to the

45:21

Eucharist and the Lord's Supper, like taking communion in the hand instead of on the tongue, or the practice of reservation of the

45:27

Eucharist, that is, taking some of the bread home for later. These early practices spoke loudly against a belief in the real presence of Christ, but the

45:36

Roman Catholic excuse is always the same. The church prohibited kneeling during the liturgy in the early church, but kneeling was added when there was an increase in the awareness of the presence of Christ in the supper.

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Communion in the hand was allowed, but with the growing awareness of the real presence of Christ in the

45:52

Eucharist, communion in the hand went out of style and people began taking it on the tongue. The practice of reservation was common, even among laypeople in the early church, but with the growing awareness of Christ's real presence in the

46:04

Lord's Supper, eventually reservation was limited to priests. I will provide extensive references to these arguments in the show notes.

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But just do the math. If communion in the hand was practiced through the 4th century, until there was a growing awareness of the real presence of Christ in the supper, and if reservation of the

46:22

Eucharist was practiced by laypeople through the 4th century, until there was a growing awareness of the real presence of Christ in the supper, and if kneeling was forbidden for the first 10 centuries, until there was a growing awareness of the real presence of Christ in the supper, what does that tell us about the awareness of the real presence of Christ in the supper in the early centuries?

46:43

Exactly. They weren't aware of the real presence of Christ in the supper. But listen to Marcus Grodi repeating the lie, speaking so confidently as if he was deep, deep, very deep in history.

47:00

Again, this emphasizes the unanimous, the unanimous, the unanimous, the unanimous, the unanimous belief in the early church, in the belief in the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the

47:12

Eucharist. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the voice of ignorance. It is not the voice of wisdom, knowledge, and instruction in the

47:20

Scriptures. It is the voice of intellectual poverty, a deep, abiding intellectual poverty from which

47:26

Marcus Grodi cannot extract himself. Marcus Grodi is the victim of a systematic, orchestrated campaign of ignorance intended to have just the effect it has had on him.

47:37

He has returned to the Roman Catholic religion thinking that he is now deep in history, when in fact he has simply demonstrated his cavernous ignorance of history, the early church and the

47:47

Scriptures, even as he remains only ankle deep in the history with which he professes to be so familiar.

47:53

So now it is time to answer the big question. How did this happen to poor Marcus Grodi?

47:59

Well, it happened because scholars and apologists did not understand what had happened when the liturgy of Christ was corrupted three centuries after the

48:07

Apostolic Era. It created a conundrum, a mystery, an enigma that they could not unravel.

48:14

Unable to reconcile the early church's Eucharistic tithe offering of bread and wine prior to the consecration with a late 4th century

48:21

Eucharistic sacrifice of bread and wine after the consecration, and an even later development of Eucharistic adoration late in the 11th century, scholars and apologists have engaged in an intentionally misleading campaign, not only to reinterpret the early texts, but actually to rewrite them.

48:40

As we have noted repeatedly, the early church offered a Eucharistic tithe offering to God prior to the consecration, and then after the consecration, nothing was offered to God.

48:50

Remember our illustration of the liturgy when we asked you to hold your hands out in front of you with your thumbs touching?

48:56

We asked you to imagine that the point at which your thumbs are touching is the moment of consecration, and the

49:01

Eucharistic offering was completely on the left hand, and the Lord's Supper was completely on the right. The thank offering and the tithe of the first fruits was to the left of the consecration, and the meal was to the right of it.

49:13

But by the end of the 4th century, the liturgical offering had moved to the right of the consecration, and the

49:19

Roman Catholic sacrifice of the consecrated bread and wine was born. So, what did the scholars and apologists do?

49:26

They could not find the sacrifice of the Lord's Supper in the early writings because it wasn't there. The early church offered the

49:32

Eucharist prior to the Epiclesis, and the medieval Roman Catholic religion offered the Eucharist after the

49:37

Epiclesis. There was only one thing to do. Rewrite the early texts in such a way as to collapse the

49:44

Eucharistic tithe offering into the Epiclesis, to make it look like the tithe offering of the early church was actually the consecrated bread and wine of the

49:52

Supper, instead of the unconsecrated bread and wine of the tithe. So, let's evaluate the evidence, but first, let's let the scholars acknowledge that they really don't know what the early liturgy was, and that they intentionally, knowingly, reinterpret the early writings in the light of the late 4th century, which, in fact, is the darkness of the late 4th century.

50:16

Roman Catholic Cardinal Newman, for example, in his 19th century essay on the development of Christian doctrine, assumed that the acts of the 4th century may be fairly taken to interpret for us the dim, though definite outlines traced in the preceding centuries.

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That's from John Cardinal Newman on the development of Christian doctrine, chapter 4, paragraph 15.

50:39

Such an assumption was necessary to explain, as Newman described it, the want of accord between the early and late aspects of Christianity.

50:48

That's from the introduction, paragraph 20. Notice how easily he slips into the assumption that whatever was happening at the end of the 4th century was sufficient to explain whatever was happening in the preceding centuries.

51:02

Let's listen to another late 19th century apologist and Roman Catholic priest, John Brand Morris.

51:08

He said that whatever Roman Catholics believe now may not have been easy or obvious to find in the early centuries and may even be invisible to the naked eye.

51:17

But nevertheless, whatever limited form of devotion that existed in the early centuries, he wrote, may be assumed to have been intended by God to lead to what was practiced in the later centuries.

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That's from his 1851 book, Jesus, the Son of Mary, pages 25 to 33.

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And it's not just Roman Catholics who have argued this way. Philip Schaff, also from the late 19th century, compiled an extensive and helpful library of English translations of the early writers, the

51:48

Antinacian, Nacian, and Postnacian Fathers. When it came to the early liturgies, he acknowledged that he had to rely on the writings of Gregory of Nicaea in the late 4th century in order to understand the liturgy of Irenaeus in the 2nd.

52:00

He wrote, In Gregory of Nicaea we have the full explanation of what Irenaeus meant when he said that the elements, by receiving the word of God, become the

52:08

Eucharist. That's from his Introduction to the Works of Saral of Jerusalem, chapter 7,

52:14

Eucharistic Doctrine. Now, I'm sorry to tell you, Gregory of Nicaea had developed a novel, heretical, abominable understanding of the

52:23

Lord's Supper at the end of the 4th century, and we may not use Nicaea's understanding of the Supper at the end of the 4th century to interpret

52:30

Irenaeus' writings late in the 2nd. Or consider

52:35

William Wigan Harvey of the Church of England from the late 19th century as he tries to understand Justin Martyr's plain language from the mid -2nd century that the

52:44

Eucharist is simply the offering of prayer of thanks over the bread and wine. That's from his

52:49

First Apology, paragraph 65. But that the consecration is the words of Christ from the

52:54

Scripture spoken over the bread and wine after the Eucharist and, in fact, after the Apostolic Amen.

53:00

That's from his First Apology, paragraph 66. Again, keep in mind the consecration is the simple words of Scripture, the words of Christ, as reported in the

53:11

Gospels. Instead of taking Justin Martyr's plain language that the bread and wine is first Eucharisted, after which the people say

53:18

Amen, paragraph 65, and then that Eucharist and bread and wine are consecrated with the words, this is my body, this is my blood, paragraph 66,

53:28

Harvey collapsed Justin Martyr's Eucharist into his Epiclesis, claiming that the Eucharistic prayer of thanks was itself the consecration.

53:36

To do that, he had to ignore what Justin Martyr wrote and reinterpret it on the authority of Basil of Caesarea from the late 4th century, now citing

53:44

William Wiggin Harvey from his work on Irenaeus. The prayer of consecration is mentioned by Justin Martyr in his

53:53

First Apology, paragraph 65, and stated expressly by St. Basil to be something more than the simple words of Scripture.

54:01

That's from Harvey's work on Irenaeus, volume 2, from 1857, page 205 in the notes.

54:10

That is a remarkable claim considering that Justin Martyr only says that the food is Eucharisted, paragraph 65, and in paragraph 66 that the

54:19

Eucharisted food is then consecrated by reciting the simple words of Scripture. But on the authority of late 4th century

54:25

Basil, Harvey collapsed a mid -2nd century Eucharist into the consecration, overturning the plain words of Justin Martyr to make it appear that the

54:33

Eucharistic prayer was itself the consecration, something Justin Martyr had not written. What I want the listener to understand first and foremost is that the scholars and apologists freely acknowledge that they do not fully understand the first centuries of Christianity, and in particular, the liturgy of the early centuries, so they have to reinterpret the first three through the novel, heretical, abominable developments of the late 4th.

54:58

In their ignorance, they could not possibly fathom the magnitude of that error, and yet they proceeded with the assumption that nothing could make the early centuries more clear than the errors of the late 4th century, and the rewriting of history began.

55:12

And what we'll notice is the propensity to collapse the Eucharistic tithe offering into the consecration so that it appears that what the early church offered was consecrated bread and wine.

55:22

Just think about the significance of this. If the early church offered the Eucharist as a tithe offering, and then after the offering consecrated the bread and wine for the meal, then the offering of the early church preceded the

55:34

Epiclesis, the consecration, and they did not offer Christ's body and blood to the Father in the liturgy, either really or symbolically.

55:43

But in the late 4th century, the offering drifted to the other side of the Epiclesis, and they began to offer consecrated bread and wine as the oblation.

55:51

The only way to reconcile that later novelty with the early liturgy is to try to recast the early

55:57

Eucharistic prayers and oblations as the consecration itself, so that it will appear that the early church's offering was consecrated bread.

56:06

And I do not exaggerate when I say that this is the sorry state of liturgical studies on the early church. And you can just imagine what errors await us if we take the late 4th century liturgy as our starting point to understand the first three centuries of Christianity.

56:20

Yes, the errors that would await us are those errors that found Marcus Grodi and led him away from the truth and into error.

56:27

The rest of today's episode is an explanation of how the scholars and apologists pulled it off. Let's take for our first example

56:36

Clement of Rome. We cited paragraph 44 in our first episode on the Eucharist.

56:41

In that paragraph, Clement criticizes the Corinthians for dismissing presbyters unjustly, and he writes,

56:55

Here, I am citing from Philip Schaaf's series on the Antonisian Fathers. There is a footnote provided in it which says that the phrase, is said literally to be presented the offerings.

57:08

The Roman Catholic ministry, Catholic Answers, in its tract called Is the Mass a Sacrifice? quotes it like this,

57:15

Our sin will not be small if we eject from the Episcopate those who blamelessly and holily have offered its sacrifices.

57:23

Just think about these three different translations. For our sin will not be small if we eject from the

57:28

Episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties, those who blamelessly and holily have offered its sacrifices, those who have blamelessly and holily presented the offerings.

57:40

You can see why Roman Catholics would use this from Clement of Rome to prove the early origin of their sacrifice of Christ's body and blood in the

57:47

Lord's Supper. If you just assume that the Eucharist refers to the consecrated bread and wine of the Supper, and the

57:53

Supper is a sacrifice, then it is obvious at least to the Roman Catholic that Clement here is referring to the

57:59

Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, especially with Schaaf's footnotes indicating that the literal rendering is presented the offerings.

58:07

All of these translations originate from scholars and apologists who believe that in some way, either really or symbolically,

58:14

Christ's flesh and blood are offered to the Father during the liturgy. And yet, all of these translations obscure the fact that the

58:20

Greek word here is Dora, which simply means gifts. The same word

58:27

Luke uses to describe people casting their tithes into the Temple treasury in Luke 21.

58:32

None of these translations reflect that fact. And yet, when we see the history of the

58:38

Eucharist in which the offering consists of the first fruits of the harvest, which are set aside for the care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor, and the early church's interpretation of Malachi 111 as the offering of gifts for the poor, and the emphasis on offering thy gift at the altar with a clear conscience, and how

58:56

Canon 5 of Nicaea refers to the offering as a gift in the Greek, and Cyril of Jerusalem refers to the offering as philanthropies, and Gregory of Nazianzen referred to the offering of the gifts, why not just translate the word according to its actual meaning?

59:13

That is, gifts. If you want to check my Greek on that, you can see Meunier's series on the

59:18

Greek Fathers, Volume 1, Column 300. The reason they can't translate the word

59:23

Dora as gifts is because these scholars and apologists do not know what to do with an early church in which the offering of the church was gratitude, and the first fruits of the harvest, and not

59:34

Christ's body and blood. This example from Clement is relatively tame, but the propensity of the academic community intentionally to obscure the truth that the

59:42

Eucharist of the early church was thanks, praise, and an offering of the first fruits of the harvest as a tithe, is remarkable, and just as dangerous as it is remarkable, as we will see.

59:54

So, let's move on to Justin Martyr. Now, before we get very far into Justin, remember how significant the

01:00:01

Epiclesis is in the liturgy. The Epiclesis, or literally the invocation, or the calling down upon, refers to the point in the liturgy when we ask the

01:00:10

Lord's blessing to make the bread and wine a spiritual meal to us. Invocation is a very precise word with a very precise meaning in the liturgy with a very precise

01:00:19

Greek equivalent, Epiclesis. The Eucharist offering in the early church was always to the left of the

01:00:25

Epiclesis, that is, prior to the invocation, prior to the consecration, before the elements were called

01:00:30

Christ's body and blood. And after the Epiclesis, the elements were called to Christ's body and blood, but were not offered.

01:00:37

Just remember that. Let's all remember what the invocation is, what the consecration is, and when it occurred in the early liturgy.

01:00:44

Now, in his dialogue with Trifo, Justin Martyr attempted to explain how the Christian church fulfills the prophecy of Malachi 111, namely, that the

01:00:52

Gentiles would offer acceptable sacrifices to the Lord. As he wrote, Now, that prayers and giving of thanks when offered by worthy men are the only perfect and well -pleasing sacrifices to God, I also admit.

01:01:06

That's Justin Martyr, dialogue with Trifo, chapter 117. The word he uses here for giving of thanks is eucharistiae, the same word

01:01:16

Paul used in 1 Corinthians 14 -16, which says that the people say amen at the thanksgiving.

01:01:22

And if you want to check my Greek on that, see Menier's series on the Greek Fathers, volume 6, column 745. As we established in the first episode on this topic, that apostolic amen is between the eucharist and the consecration.

01:01:35

It is only after the amen that the consecration is spoken. The eucharist is, therefore, prior to the invocation.

01:01:42

That's pretty straightforward, but the translators have attempted to collapse the eucharist into the invocation to make it appear that Justin was using consecrated bread in his offerings.

01:01:51

So, we pick up with Justin Martyr in his first apology, paragraph 13, and he is describing exactly the same point in the liturgy when the eucharist is being offered.

01:02:00

And it is obvious that he is referring to giving thanks for unconsecrated food that is set aside for the poor.

01:02:06

He writes, Him we praise to the utmost of our power by the exercise of prayer and thanksgiving, or eucharistias, for all the things wherewith we are supplied, as we have been taught that the only honor that is worthy of him is not to consume by fire what he has brought into being for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and those who need.

01:02:27

Again, that's Justin Martyr, first apology, paragraph 13, and it's pretty straightforward.

01:02:33

He is obviously talking about the tithe offering of unconsecrated food and the fact that it is set aside for the poor.

01:02:40

Now, the next thing Justin Martyr says here has caused some confusion among the scholars. They are not entirely sure what he said.

01:02:47

After writing that the best way to honor the Lord is to use the harvest for ourselves and for those who are in need, he wrote, and with gratitude to him to offer thanks, and I'm going to say this literally here, by word of processions and to send forth hymns for our creation and for all the means of health and for the various qualities of the different kinds of things and for the changes of the seasons.

01:03:10

That's still paragraph 13 of Justin's first apology. Now, clearly we're still talking about the first fruits of the tithe offerings, as in for all the means of health, for the different kinds of things, for the changes of the seasons.

01:03:23

It's a harvest. This representation of an offering is consistent with what we know about the early liturgy.

01:03:29

But what did he mean by word of processions and to send forth hymns? Remember, there was no passing of the collection plate in the early church.

01:03:38

The tithe offering was with gratitude for the first fruits of the harvest and the livestock. Oil, grapes, cheese, olives, wine, corn, barley, bread, eggs, meats, and so forth.

01:03:48

This is not something that you can put in an offering plate. It has to be brought forward, and there is no simple way to do that except for people lining up to bring it.

01:03:57

As we saw in our previous episode, in the anaphora of Hippolytus, new Christians were instructed to bring their own

01:04:03

Eucharist with them. And the only vessel they were allowed to bring with them that day was whatever they needed to carry their

01:04:09

Eucharist. And they were all instructed to bring their Eucharist at the same time. In that case, there is no way to get around a line of people bringing things as an offering.

01:04:19

It is a procession, which is consistent with what we know of the early liturgy. So, what did the English translators settle on?

01:04:26

Unable to determine the meaning of the phrase, DIA LOGO POMPOS CAE UM NOS PEMPEIN, Protestant translators

01:04:34

Marcus Dodds and George Wraith in the late 19th century settled on what is the worst possible translation of all, and assumed

01:04:41

Justin must have been referring to the Epiclesis, the point in the liturgy when the bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ, that is, the invocation.

01:04:50

And thus, against all evidence, and without any support for it in Justin's original Greek, and certainly lacking the actual

01:04:56

Greek word for invocation, and without so much as a hint in the Latin translation, the

01:05:01

English translators collapsed the Eucharist into the Epiclesis and rendered it with gratitude to him to offer thanks by invocations and hymns, thus making it appear that the

01:05:11

Eucharistic thank offering was an offering of consecrated bread and wine to the Father. That is how scholars and apologists have collapsed the early

01:05:19

Eucharist into the Epiclesis to force Justin Martyr to appear to offer the Roman Catholic mass sacrifice in the early liturgy.

01:05:27

Okay. One more example from Justin Martyr, and this time from his first apology, paragraph 66, which we addressed briefly at the conclusion of the first episode on the

01:05:37

Eucharist. Here, Justin Martyr is explaining how the consecration is performed and what happens to the bread and wine when they are consecrated.

01:05:45

He uses the word transmutation here, which Roman Catholics take to refer to transubstantiation, but the

01:05:52

Greek word is simply metabolin, which refers to the metabolic process by which our body is nourished by the consecrated bread.

01:05:59

It is a reference to the change that takes place when the consecrated bread and wine nourishes our body in the process of digestion, not a reference to the change that takes place when the consecration is spoken.

01:06:09

But that is not my focus this time. My focus is on Justin's actual Greek words when the words of consecration are spoken.

01:06:15

As we have noted repeatedly in this series, the early church's words of consecration were simply the recitation of Christ's words at the

01:06:22

Last Supper, which is to say, this is my body, this is my blood. Justin refers to that as the prayer of his word, and he explicitly notes that Jesus first gave thanks for, or Eucharist -ed the bread, and then by his word pronounced it to be his body, and then gave thanks for, or Eucharist -ed the wine, and then by his word pronounced it to be his blood.

01:06:46

Here is Justin's exact language from chapter 66 of his first apology. Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said,

01:06:54

This do in remembrance of me, this is my body. And that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, he said,

01:07:03

This is my blood. That is a simple representation of the Lord's Supper, in which there is a

01:07:09

Eucharist followed by a consecration. In this case, the consecration is this is my body, or this is my blood.

01:07:17

And in fact, when Justin Martyr, in the same paragraph, describes the consecration as the prayer of his word, he states explicitly that the prayer of his word is spoken over food that has already been

01:07:26

Eucharist -ed, just like it is represented in the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. In fact,

01:07:31

Justin says plainly that by the prayer of his word, the Eucharist -ed food becomes the flesh and blood of Jesus.

01:07:38

This effectively separates the Eucharist from the consecration, and shows that the consecration itself is not the

01:07:45

Eucharistic prayer. Anyone who wants to check my Greek on that can look it up in Mignie's series on the

01:07:50

Greek Fathers, volume 6, columns 428 and 429. The consecration is spoken over Eucharist -ed food.

01:08:00

Now, why does this matter? Because the English translations all subvert that fact and collapse the

01:08:05

Eucharist into the consecration, so that the bread and wine are made into the body and blood by the Eucharistic prayer.

01:08:11

Philip Schaff, in his late 19th century introduction to Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of Nazianzen, personally translated

01:08:18

Justin Martyr to read, So we have been taught that the food over which thanksgiving has been made by the prayer in the word received from him is the flesh and blood of him, the incarnate

01:08:28

Jesus. Notice that Schaff has here collapsed the Eucharistic prayer into the consecration to make it sound like the bread and wine are consecrated by the thanksgiving prayer, which collapses the

01:08:40

Eucharist into the Epiclesis, which is absolutely not what Justin Martyr wrote. And Anglican translators

01:08:46

Marcus Dodds and George Wright, also from the late 19th century, translate it similarly. So, likewise, have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who has made flesh?

01:09:00

Notice here that Dodds and Wright have changed the word Eucharisted into blessed and combined it with the prayer of his word, which suppresses the fact that the food that is consecrated has already been

01:09:11

Eucharisted. And finally, the translation that Marcus Grodi himself cited is the worst of all, and he says,

01:09:18

The food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated

01:09:26

Jesus. I have not yet found the academic source of that translation. It is everywhere on the internet, but I cannot find an actual scholarly translation that renders it that way.

01:09:37

But the important point is to notice that Justin Martyr's original Greek says, The Eucharisted food is changed into Christ's body and blood by the consecration.

01:09:45

But this translation says that the food is made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer. This, of course, has the effect of collapsing the

01:09:53

Eucharist into the Epiclesis and making Justin Martyr say that the offering of the early church was consecrated food, which is something he certainly did not say, and something you can't get out of the original

01:10:03

Greek. Okay, the same holds true with Irenaeus. Remember in Against Heresies, Book 1,

01:10:09

Chapter 13, Paragraph 2, Irenaeus criticized the Gnostic heretic Marcus, because Marcus was deceiving people by imitating the

01:10:17

Christian liturgy. And he would, according to Irenaeus, pretend to Eucharist, that is

01:10:24

Eucharistain, cups mixed with wine, and then protract to great length the

01:10:29

Epiclesis. That is what Irenaeus wrote about the heretic Marcus imitating the

01:10:35

Christian liturgy. It is what the Greek actually says, and you can check that in Meunier's series on the

01:10:40

Greek Fathers, Volume 7, Column 580. There was a Eucharistic offering, followed by a consecration, or an

01:10:47

Epiclesis. Those are the actual Greek words of Irenaeus, and they are consistent with what we know of the liturgy of the early

01:10:54

Church. A Eucharist, an Amen, a consecration, and a meal. But remarkably, in Philipschaf's series on the

01:11:02

Antonicene Fathers, translators Alexander Roberts and William Rambelt decided to render the word

01:11:08

Eucharistain as consecrate, resulting in a translation that collapses the Eucharist into the

01:11:14

Epiclesis. Thus, instead of having Marcus pretend to Eucharist cups mixed with wine, followed by a lengthy

01:11:21

Epiclesis, as the Greek actually says, the translation has Marcus pretend to consecrate cups mixed with wine, followed by a lengthy invocation.

01:11:32

This intentional mistranslation obscures the fact that in Irenaeus's liturgy, and indeed in the liturgy of the early

01:11:37

Church, the Eucharist preceded the Epiclesis. Again, this is how the scholars and apologists have engaged in an intentional effort to collapse the

01:11:46

Eucharist into the Epiclesis to make it appear that it was normative in the early Church to offer consecrated bread and wine in the supper.

01:11:54

Another example from Irenaeus, this time from Against Heresies, Book 4, Chapter 18,

01:12:00

Paragraph 5. For, as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the summons, or Ecclesion of God, is no longer common bread, but the

01:12:09

Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, that's Against Heresies, Book 4,

01:12:15

Chapter 18, Paragraph 5, and anyone who wants to see the original Greek on that, in which

01:12:20

Irenaeus uses the word Ecclesion, or summons, can see Menier's series on the Greek Fathers, Volume 7,

01:12:26

Column 1028. When Irenaeus speaks of the earthly bread becoming the Eucharist when it is summoned, when it is set aside as a tithe, taking on a heavenly reality to be used for heavenly purposes, he is still talking about the unconsecrated bread of the tithe, and that tithe offering is made, as he says, in a pure mind and in faith without hypocrisy.

01:12:48

And then he says that in the same way that the bread becomes suited for heaven before the consecration, our earthly bodies become suited for heaven when they eat the

01:12:57

Eucharist after the consecration. The bread, when it is set aside as a tithe, becomes by faith heavenly, and our bodies, when they eat

01:13:05

Christ's body by faith, become heavenly. That is all. The focus is on offering a tithe by faith, and receiving

01:13:12

Christ's body and blood by faith. And I might add, it is a very Protestant Eucharistology here.

01:13:18

What is offered is unconsecrated bread as a tithe, and there is no sense in which the bread is ever said to have been changed into two realities at the consecration.

01:13:27

There is only the sense in which it is said to have been changed into two realities when it receives the summons of God, the

01:13:33

Ecclesion of God in Greek. But scholars and apologists are confounded by this because they are accustomed to the superstitious medieval idea of transubstantiation and the late 4th century abominable practice of offering

01:13:45

Christ's body and blood during the liturgy. So, because Irenaeus' actual Greek does not comport with the later

01:13:51

Roman Catholic liturgy, the word ecclesion, or summons in the original Greek, is changed into epiclesis, or invocation, to make it look like Irenaeus had said that the bread and wine can become the

01:14:02

Eucharist at the consecration. This collapses the Eucharist into the epiclesis, which has the effect of turning

01:14:08

Irenaeus' tithe offering into an offering of consecrated bread and wine. The modern English translations therefore render

01:14:15

Book 4, Chapter 18, Paragraph 5 as follows, For we offer to him his own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and spirit.

01:14:23

For the bread which is produced from the earth when it receives the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but the

01:14:30

Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly. The effect of that intentional mistranslation is profound.

01:14:38

The clear context of the original is that we offer to the Lord his own created things. But when the translators change one word from summons to invocation, or in the

01:14:48

Greek, from eccleson to epicleson, Irenaeus is thereby made to say, we offer to the

01:14:55

Lord his own son. And thus, Irenaeus is made to say that the offering of the church is the consecrated bread and wine of the

01:15:02

Lord's Supper, when in fact all he had been saying was that we offer to him the earthly fruits of creation, which become heavenly when they are set aside as a tithe.

01:15:11

If you go to Meunier's series on the Greek Fathers, Volume 7, Column 1028, you'll see that the original word was eccleson in Greek, but Meunier added a footnote saying that even though the

01:15:21

Greek word is eccleson, or summons, the preferred reading is epicleson, or invocation.

01:15:28

And the Latin is rendered similarly in the adjacent column. Of course epicleson is the preferred reading to the

01:15:34

Roman Catholic, because without it there is no evidence of the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass in the early church. It is deceptive, it is misleading, it is dishonest, and it decontextualizes

01:15:43

Irenaeus, forcing him to suggest an offering of Christ's body and blood to the Father. Remarkably, Protestant scholars have eagerly embraced the error.

01:15:52

We provide evidence of this from William Wigand Harvey in 1857, George Trevor in 1876, and a more recent example,

01:15:58

John H. McKenna in 2009, as they swallow whole the intentional mistranslation offered by Meunier.

01:16:06

Okay, here's one last quick example from Irenaeus. This is from Book 5 of Against Heresies, in which

01:16:11

Irenaeus is explaining what happens to the bread and wine when it is consecrated in the liturgy, that is, when the bread and wine, in Irenaeus' word, receive the word of God, that is, the consecration.

01:16:23

In Book 5, Chapter 2, Paragraph 3, the English translation by Protestants Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut has

01:16:30

Irenaeus saying, When the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the word of God, the

01:16:36

Eucharist of the blood and body of Christ is made. That translation makes it sound like the bread and wine become the

01:16:43

Eucharist at the consecration. But in a footnote to the translation, there is an acknowledgement that the

01:16:49

Greek actually says something different. Now, citing the footnote to this very passage in Schaff's series on the

01:16:55

Antonicene Fathers, the Greek text, of which a considerable portion remains here, would give and the

01:17:01

Eucharist becomes the body of Christ. Yes, that is a substantially different reading that Roberts and Rambaut gave us, isn't it?

01:17:09

The correct rendering of the passage, when the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the word of God, that is, the consecration, the

01:17:18

Eucharist becomes the body of Christ. That's right. In Irenaeus, the bread and wine were already the

01:17:23

Eucharist before they were consecrated. But unable to reconcile the early liturgy of the first three centuries with that of the late fourth century, the translators have collapsed the

01:17:32

Eucharist into the Epiclesis, making it appear that the bread and wine do not become the Eucharist until they are consecrated.

01:17:38

This, of course, has the effect of making the early church offer consecrated bread and wine, when in fact all they offered was thanks and praise in the tithe, which is to say the

01:17:48

Eucharist, at which point they ended the offering and then consecrated bread and wine, at which point the

01:17:53

Eucharist became the body and blood of Christ by faith. Yes, in the early church, it was already the

01:17:59

Eucharist before the consecration. And after the consecration, there was no Eucharistic offering.

01:18:05

And that brings us to Irenaeus' most famous disciple, Hippolytus, from the early 200s AD. We have already covered the anaphora of Hippolytus, in which bread, wine, cheese, oil, and olives are offered to the

01:18:18

Lord in the Eucharistic tithe offering. This rendering of the early liturgy is so plainly contrary to the later

01:18:24

Roman Catholic novelty that scholars and apologists can hardly bear the reading of it. They hate the liturgy of Hippolytus and literally try to suppress it, modify it, and strike it from the historical record.

01:18:36

Let me give you an example of this. I will now cite from Catherine E. Harmon, assistant professor of theology at Marion University in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in theology, liturgy, and Catholic history.

01:18:52

I want you to listen to her as she shows her chronic and ignorant distaste for Hippolytus and his liturgy, precisely because it is so inconsistent with the late 4th century liturgy of the

01:19:02

Roman Catholic religion to which she subscribes. Now citing her 2015 article,

01:19:08

The So -Called Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, My undergraduate students recently read the

01:19:16

Anaphora from a source which has been referred to as the Apostolic Tradition according to St. Hippolytus of Rome.

01:19:22

Whether the students knew this lengthy title or not is unclear, as I, being a Notre Dame graduate, have taken an oath to use a heavy black marker to X out ruthlessly all references to Hippolytus in textbooks of liturgical history.

01:19:36

Again, that is Catherine E. Harmon, professor of theology at Merion University, in her article

01:19:42

The So -Called Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome. She wants

01:19:47

Hippolytus' evidence stricken from the historical record. So, what is it that made her want to strike

01:19:54

Hippolytus from the record? Well, as she continues through her article, it is clear that she does not approve of Hippolytus' offering of milk, which has been coagulated, let alone the olives, cheese, and oil, as she writes, because the

01:20:08

Eucharistic liturgy is supposed to be an offering of consecrated bread and wine, not an offering of milk, cheese, oil, and olives.

01:20:14

But, of course, all Professor Harmon has done here is reveal her gross ignorance of history and the liturgy, because in the early church there was an oblation, or tithe offering, of the first fruits of the harvest, and that would have included milk, cheese, oil, and olives, in addition to bread and wine.

01:20:31

And, of course, when the offering was complete, bread and wine were set aside from the offering and then consecrated to be used in the supper.

01:20:39

That's just the way they did it, and, importantly to our discussion today, it is not how Roman Catholicism celebrates the liturgy today.

01:20:46

And so Professor Harmon decides that the only possible response is not to question why she herself holds to a liturgy that can be found nowhere in the scriptures or in the early church, but rather to destroy the evidence that the liturgy used to be so different, a tithe offering of unconsecrated first fruits of the harvest, including bread and wine, followed by a meal of consecrated bread and wine, but not an offering of consecrated bread and wine.

01:21:09

As Professor Harmon continues, she concludes that it is not she, but Hippolytus, who must not have understood the apostolic liturgy, and that it is he, not she, who is an aberrant witness to the liturgy of the scriptures, the apostles, and the early church.

01:21:24

Now, citing again from the same article, I recognize the desire to see the celebration of the

01:21:30

Eucharist as constant and unchanging, and to set aside those aberrant witnesses which challenge our understanding of the ancient church's

01:21:37

Eucharistic theology as wrong, confused, misinterpreted, or even heretical. Again, that's

01:21:44

Catherine E. Harmon, professor of theology at Marion University, in her 2015 article, complaining that the early church did not know as much about the apostolic liturgy as she does, and doing her level best to strike the evidence from the historical record.

01:21:58

Okay, one more example from Hippolytus, this time from his commentary on Proverbs 9. The commentary exists only in a

01:22:05

Greek fragment, in which the English translation appears to describe the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, the offering of Christ's body and blood to the

01:22:12

Father in the Lord's Supper. Proverbs 9, verses 1 -2 says, Wisdom hath builded her house, and she hath hewn out her seven pillars.

01:22:21

She hath killed her beasts. She hath mingled her wine. She hath also furnished her table.

01:22:27

In his commentary on this passage, Hippolytus appears to find a reference to the Lord's table furnished with consecrated bread and wine, his own body and blood, which had been sacrificed in the liturgy.

01:22:38

Now, citing from Hippolytus, fragment on Proverbs 9, and listen carefully to what he says, because it sounds suspiciously like the

01:22:46

Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass. And she hath furnished her table.

01:22:52

That refers to his 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.

01:23:05

Again, that's the English translation of Hippolytus, fragment on Proverbs 9. Well, that certainly sounds like the

01:23:12

Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, doesn't it? The honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table.

01:23:20

What else could that be but the sacrifice of the Mass? Well, there is a problem with the translation.

01:23:27

Translators of these early writings are mystified by the stark difference between the early liturgy and the late. And as we showed earlier, they repeatedly borrow from the late 4th century liturgy to interpret that of the first three.

01:23:39

But if one is familiar with the early liturgy, in which there was a Eucharistic tithe offering, which is offered but not eaten, after which bread and wine are consecrated and eaten, but are not offered,

01:23:49

Hippolytus' language is simple and direct. The Greek actually reflects that same liturgy as reflected in his

01:23:54

Anaphora. The simple description of the early liturgy is that sacrifices are offered on a table, and then

01:24:00

Christ's body and blood are administered from that same table on which the sacrifices have been offered. That is a pretty simple summary of the early liturgy, a

01:24:08

Eucharist, an Amen, a consecration, and a meal. But that's a far cry from the

01:24:13

English language of the translation. Hippolytus' Greek does not actually say that Proverbs 9 -2 refers to his honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual and divine table, but rather, refers to his honored and undefiled body and blood as on the spiritual and divine table each time the sacrifices have been completed.

01:24:35

Yes, that's what the actual language of Hippolytus really says, and it has a completely different meaning than the awful

01:24:40

English rendering I provided earlier. The Greek is entirely consistent, not only with the liturgy of Justin Martyr, who had the

01:24:48

Eucharist offered first, followed by a consecration of bread and wine for the meal in his first apology, paragraph 65 -67, and consistent with the liturgy of Irenaeus, who called the tithe offering the

01:24:59

Eucharist, before the bread and wine were taken from the offerings for the consecration, at which point the Eucharist became

01:25:04

Christ's body and blood, as in Against Heresies, Book 1, Book 4, and Book 5. But it is also consistent with the liturgy of Hippolytus himself, who explained in his

01:25:13

Anaphora that bread, wine, cheese, oil, and olives are offered in the Eucharist before the bread and wine are taken and consecrated for the meal.

01:25:21

So yes, of course, in the early liturgy of the Church, Christ's honored and undefiled body and blood are on the table every day that the offerings are performed.

01:25:31

And that is exactly what Hippolytus says in this fragment on Proverbs 9. She has furnished her table, and Proverbs 9 too refers to the celebration of the

01:25:39

Lord's Supper immediately following the tithe offering. Nothing could be simpler and plainer if you understand the early liturgy.

01:25:45

But unable to reconcile this with the late 4th century liturgy, the translators have collapsed the

01:25:51

Eucharist into the Epiclesis and made Hippolytus' commentary on Proverbs say that Christ's body and blood are offered sacrificially every day on the sacred and divine table instead of saying what he clearly wrote and what he clearly meant, which is

01:26:05

Christ's body and blood are on the sacred and divine table for the edification of the believer only after the offerings have been completed.

01:26:12

We will provide the actual Greek for this passage in the show notes. Okay, that leads us to Gregory of Nazianzus and his orations written between 361 and 381

01:26:21

A .D. In Oration 18 he described how his father had been a minister offering the Eucharistic sacrifice, and, generous to a fault, was ever ready to give to the poor, and with a readiness that was often absent in others, a readiness in Gregory's words, that was a greater and more perfect thing than the mere offering itself.

01:26:39

That's from Oration 18, paragraph 20. How could anyone be more conclusively proved to be good and worthy to offer the gifts

01:26:46

Dora, to God? That's Oration 18, paragraph 25. Additionally, in his 45th oration,

01:26:54

Gregory says that the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered on a heavenly altar, quote, to Father and Word and Holy Ghost.

01:27:01

That's Oration 45, paragraph 30. So let's be clear on two things. If the minister's readiness to give to the poor is more perfect than the mere offering itself, then the offering is obviously not the body and blood of Christ.

01:27:14

Which, if truly was Christ's body and blood, would obviously be more perfect than our readiness to offer it. Additionally, if the offering is to the

01:27:22

Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, then the Son is not what is being offered in the Eucharist, for Jesus does not offer himself to himself.

01:27:29

So let's at least be clear that even though Gregory's liturgy began to drift from the earlier, purer form, he nonetheless was not offering

01:27:37

Jesus to the Father, but rather was offering gifts for the poor in the form of the tithe.

01:27:43

But the translators have a difficult time with this and cannot resist the temptation to collapse the Eucharist into the

01:27:48

Epiclesis in order to make the early liturgy consistent with the later liturgy. In Oration 18, paragraph 29,

01:27:55

Gregory again is very plainly describing his father's administration of the tithe offering and explains that on one occasion his father was so sick that after offering the

01:28:04

Thanksgiving prayers, that is, Eucharistias, he retired to his bed to recover. Now citing

01:28:10

Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration 18, paragraph 29. Then after adding the customary words of Thanksgiving, that is,

01:28:19

Eucharistias, and after blessing the people, he retired again to his bed. And anyone who wants to see the

01:28:26

Greek on that can see Menier's series on the Greek Fathers, volume 35, column 1021. That's pretty straightforward and we know exactly what he meant.

01:28:35

After offering the Thanksgiving prayers, he retired to bed to rest. The Oration goes on and says that he returned the next day to complete the thank offering.

01:28:43

But Roman Catholic Menier in his footnotes to the Greek rendering adds this clarifying note from 16th century

01:28:49

French Roman Catholic theologian Jacobus Bilius, that the customary words of Thanksgiving, which indicate that the

01:28:56

Thanksgiving is completed, can be understood to mean that the consecration is completed.

01:29:03

Yes, that's right. A plain and obvious reference to the words of Thanksgiving, tithe offering, is interpreted by the translators as the words of consecration, thus collapsing the

01:29:13

Eucharist into the Epiclesis, so that it looks like Gregory of Nazianzen is offering consecrated bread and wine in the

01:29:18

Eucharistic tithe offering. And this is what we've seen time and time again in the early writings.

01:29:25

It is what I call the Great Eucharist Conspiracy. The scriptural and apostolic liturgy of offering a

01:29:30

Eucharist prior to the consecration, which was the liturgy of the early church, is irreconcilable with the later medieval superstitious liturgy of offering the

01:29:39

Eucharist after the consecration. Unable to reconcile these two very different liturgies, the translators and apologists have not only engaged in a deceptive campaign to collapse the

01:29:49

Eucharist into the Epiclesis in order to make the early church offer consecrated bread and wine, but they have also actively suppressed other evidence that proves how wrong they are to do it.

01:29:59

It is a conspiracy for the ages, and it has endured for well over a thousand years. Many modern heretical liturgies are based on these intentional deceptions, obscurations, mistranslations, and diversions, and poor

01:30:10

Marcus Grodi is just one of the millions of victims who has fallen for it. And amazingly, that really is the state of scholarship on the

01:30:18

Antinocene and Nicaean liturgy. And I do not exaggerate when I say that it is a very sorry state of affairs.

01:30:24

Even Protestants embrace the deception and participate in the deception and advance the deception by which the

01:30:30

Eucharist is collapsed into the Epiclesis. So that Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and so on, are all made to look like they offered consecrated bread and wine to the

01:30:39

Father in the liturgy. It is a lie. It is a conspiracy. It is a damnable error.

01:30:46

We do not offer Christ to the Father in the liturgy.

01:30:51

Not even symbolically. And the early church did not do so either. And that is where we will leave off this week with the conversion testimony of Marcus Grodi.

01:31:00

Marcus believed he had to convert back to Roman Catholicism to go back to celebrating the Eucharist the way the early church did.

01:31:07

Which is to say, by offering consecrated bread and wine to the Father. And by worshipping that consecrated bread and wine that has been offered.

01:31:14

And all of this because Marcus Grodi could not refute the deep, deep history of the Roman Catholic apologists who confronted him with fabricated evidence from the early church fathers.

01:31:25

But as it turns out, not only did the early church not offer the abominable Roman Catholic sacrifice of Christ's body and blood, and not only did the early church not worship the elements of the supper, and not only did the early church not believe in the real presence of Christ in the

01:31:38

Eucharist, but also the scholars and apologists who have attempted to convince us that it did have been engaged in one of the most deceptive, destructive, abominable, and heretical campaigns in the history of the church.

01:31:49

Confounded by the lack of evidence to support the early practice of Rome's sacrifice of the Mass, the real presence of Christ in the

01:31:56

Eucharist, and the practice of Eucharistic adoration, and confounded by the stark differences between the early liturgy of the

01:32:02

Apostolic Church of Christ, and the late 4th century novelties of the Roman Catholic religion, professional theologians, scholars, and apologists have attempted to create the evidence out of whole cloth.

01:32:14

They have accomplished this by actually changing some of the original words in the Greek, by intentionally mistranslating others, by deferring to Latin translations that are known to be wrong, and by suppressing, ridiculing, and marginalizing other evidence that they could not ignore.

01:32:27

The effect of that campaign has been to collapse the early church's tithe offering of thanks and the first fruits of the harvest, that is, the

01:32:34

Eucharist, into the epiclesis, the invocation, the consecration, in order to make it appear that the early church offered consecrated bread and wine to the

01:32:42

Father and the Lord's supper, and believed that the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ were really present in the supper.

01:32:49

In short, they have so obscured and clouded the historical record that the simple, the ignorant, the gullible, and the double -minded are convinced that their only option is to return to Roman Catholicism, to offer

01:33:00

Christ's body and blood to the Father, and worship a piece of bread as if it had created the universe and saved them from their sins.

01:33:07

And the only way to convince people of that is to keep people in ignorance and darkness, which is precisely what happened to poor

01:33:14

Marcus Grodi. No, Marcus Grodi was not deep in history, quite the opposite.

01:33:21

He was shallow in it to begin with, and instead of wading deeper and deeper into it to find the actual liturgy of the early church, the scholars and apologists dragged him violently to the shoreline to keep him from discovering both the reality of the early church and the soft white underbelly of Roman Catholicism.

01:33:38

In truth, the early church was functionally Protestant, and the great unspoken secret of Roman Catholicism is that she can find no evidence of her existence prior to the latter part of the fourth century, a full three centuries removed from the apostolic era.

01:33:52

We will continue next time with our conclusion on the conversion of Marcus Grodi as we address his misperceptions and ignorance regarding the primacy of Rome and the unity of the church.

01:34:03

We certainly appreciate the patience and endurance of our listeners as we walk through the tedious details of the early writings, but it is a necessary task to overcome the cavernous ignorance of the former

01:34:13

Protestant. This is your grateful host, Timothy F. Kaufman, and you have been listening to part 5 of the conversion of Marcus Grodi, which is also part 3 of our discussion on the

01:34:23

Eucharist. And that concludes episode 10 of The Diving Board. We'll see you next time.