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| Chapter XXXVII
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Chapter
XXXVII.
But since the human being is a twofold creature, compounded of soul
and body, it is necessary that the saved should lay hold of2036
| 2036 ἐφάπτεσθαι. Krabinger prefers this to ἐφέπεσθαι (Paris Edit.), as more suitable to what follows. | the Author of the new life through both
their component parts. Accordingly, the soul being fused into Him
through faith derives from that the means and occasion of salvation;
for the act of union with the life implies a fellowship with the life.
But the body comes into fellowship and blending with the Author of our
salvation in another way. For as they who owing to some act of
treachery have taken poison, allay its deadly influence by means of
some other drug (for it is necessary that the antidote should enter the
human vitals in the same way as the deadly poison, in order to secure,
through them, that the effect of the remedy may be distributed through
the entire system), in like manner we, who have tasted the solvent of
our nature2037
| 2037 Gregory seems here to refer to Eve’s eating the apple, which
introduced a moral and physical poison into our nature. General
Gordon’s thoughts (“in Palestine”) took the same
direction as the whole of this passage; which Fronto Ducæus (as
quoted by Krabinger) would even regard as a proof of
transubstantiation. | , necessarily need something that may
combine what has been so dissolved, so that such an antidote entering
within us may, by its own counter-influence, undo the mischief
introduced into the body by the poison. What, then, is this remedy to
be? Nothing else than that very Body which has been shown to be
superior to death, and has been the First-fruits of our life. For, in
the manner that, as the Apostle says2038
, a little
leaven assimilates to itself the whole lump, so in like manner that
body to which immortality has been given it by God, when it is in
ours, translates and transmutes the whole into itself. For as by the
admixture of a poisonous liquid with a wholesome one the whole drought
is deprived of its deadly effect, so too the immortal Body, by being
within that which receives it, changes the whole to its own nature. Yet
in no other way can anything enter within the body but by being
transfused through the vitals by eating and drinking. It is, therefore,
incumbent on the body to admit this life-producing power in the one way
that its constitution makes possible. And since that Body only which
was the receptacle of the Deity received this grace of immortality, and
since it has been shown that in no other way was it possible for our
body to become immortal, but by participating in incorruption through
its fellowship with that immortal Body, it will be necessary to
consider how it was possible that that one Body, being for ever
portioned to so many myriads of the faithful throughout the whole
world, enters through that portion, whole into each individual, and yet
remains whole in itself. In order, therefore, that our faith, with eyes
fixed on logical probability, may harbour no doubt on the subject
before us, it is fitting to make a slight digression in our argument,
to consider the physiology of the body. Who is there that does not know
that our bodily frame, taken by itself, possesses no life in its own
proper subsistence, but that it is by the influx of a force or power
from without that it holds itself together and continues in existence,
and by a ceaseless motion that it draws to itself what it wants, and
repels what is superfluous? When a leathern bottle is full of some
liquid, and then the contents leak out at the bottom, it would not
retain the contour of its full bulk unless there entered in at the top
something else to fill up the vacuum; and thus a person, seeing the
circumference of this bottle swollen to its full size, would know that
this circumference did not really belong to the object which he sees,
but that what was being poured in, by being in it, gave shape and
roundness to the bulk. In the same way the mere framework of our body
possesses nothing belonging to itself that is cognizable by us, to hold
it together, but remains in existence owing to a force that is
introduced into it. Now this power or force both is, and is called,
nourishment. But it is not the same in all bodies that require aliment,
but to each of them has been assigned a food adapted to its condition
by Him who governs Nature. Some animals feed on roots which they dig
up. Of others grass is the food, of others different kinds of flesh,
but for man above all things bread; and, in order to continue and
preserve the moisture of his body, drink, not simply water, but water
frequently sweetened with wine, to join forces with our internal heat.
He, therefore, who thinks of these things, thinks by implication2039
of the particular bulk of our body. For
those things by being within me became my blood and flesh, the
corresponding nutriment by its power of adaptation being changed into
the form of my body. With these distinctions we must return to the
consideration of the question before us. The question was, how can that
one Body of Christ vivify the whole of mankind, all, that is, in
whomsoever there is Faith, and yet, though divided amongst all, be
itself not diminished? Perhaps, then, we are now not far from the
probable explanation. If the subsistence of every body depends on
nourishment, and this is eating and drinking, and in the case of our
eating there is bread and in the case of our drinking water sweetened
with wine, and if, as was explained at the beginning, the Word of God,
Who is both God and the Word, coalesced with man’s nature, and
when He came in a body such as ours did not innovate on man’s
physical constitution so as to make it other than it was, but secured
continuance for His own body by the customary and proper means, and
controlled its subsistence by meat and drink, the former of which was
bread,—just, then, as in the case of ourselves, as has been
repeatedly said already, if a person sees bread he also, in a kind of
way, looks on a human body, for by the bread being within it the bread
becomes it, so also, in that other case, the body into which God
entered, by partaking of the nourishment of bread, was, in a certain
measure, the same with it; that nourishment, as we have said, changing
itself into the nature of the body. For that which is peculiar to all
flesh is acknowledged also in the case of that flesh, namely, that that
Body too was maintained by bread; which Body also by the indwelling of
God the Word was transmuted to the dignity of Godhead. Rightly, then,
do we believe that now also the bread which is consecrated by the Word
of God is changed into the Body of God the Word. For that Body was
once, by implication, bread, but has been consecrated by the
inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the flesh. Therefore, from
the same cause as that by which the bread that was transformed in that
Body was changed to a Divine potency, a similar result takes place now.
For as in that case, too, the grace of the Word used to make holy the
Body, the substance of which came of the bread, and in a manner was
itself bread, so also in this case the bread, as says the Apostle2040
, “is sanctified by the Word of God and
prayer”; not that it advances by the process of eating2041
| 2041 by
the process of eating, διὰ
βρώσεως.
There is very little authority for καὶ πόσεως
which follows in some Codd. If Krabinger’s text
is here correct, Gregory distinctly teaches a transmutation of the
elements very like the later transubstantiation: he also distinctly
teaches that the words of consecration effect the change. There seems
no reason to doubt that the text is correct. The three Latin
interpretations, “a verbo transmutatus,” “statim a
verbo transmutatus,” “per verbum mutatus,” of
Hervetus, Morell, and Zinus, all point to their having found
πρὸς τὸ
σῶμα διὰ τοῦ
λόγου
μεταποιούμενος
in the text: and this is the reading of Cod. Reg. (the
other reading is πρὸς τὸ σῶμα
τοῦ λόγου). A passage from Justin Mart., Apol. ii. p. 77, also
supports Krabinger’s text. Justin says, “so we are taught
that that food which has been blessed by the pronouncing of the word
that came from Him, which food by changing nourishes our blood and
flesh, is the flesh and blood of that Incarnate Jesus.” As to the
nature of the change (πρὸς τὸ σῶμα
μεταποιούμενος), another passage in Gregory (In Baptism. Christi,
370 A) should be compared: “The bread again, was for a while
common bread, but when the mystic word shall have consecrated it
(ἱερουργήσῃ), it is called, and moreover is, the body of
Christ.” He says also at the end of this chapter, “He gives
these gifts by virtue of the benediction through which He
transelements (μεταστοιχειώσας) the natural quality (φύσιν) of these
visible things to that immortal thing.” Harnack does not attempt
to weaken the force of these and other passages, but only points out
that the idea of this change does not exactly correspond (how could
it?) with the mediæval scholastically-philosophical
“transubstantiation.” Gregory’s belief is that, just
as the Word, when Christ was here in the flesh, rendered holy His body
that assimilated bread, which still in a manner remained bread,
so now the bread is sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer.
“The idea,” says Neander, “of the repetition of the
consecration of the Λόγος had taken
hold of his mind.” The construction is προϊ& 241·ν
(ὥστε)
γενέσθαι εἰς
τὸ σῶμα τοῦ
λόγου, “eo
progrediens, ut verbi corpus evadat.” | to the stage of passing into
the body of the Word, but it is at once changed into the body by means
of the Word, as the Word itself said, “This is My Body.”
Seeing, too, that all flesh is nourished by what is moist (for without
this combination our earthly part would not continue to live), just as
we support by food which is firm and solid the solid part of our body,
in like manner we supplement the moist part from the kindred element;
and this, when within us, by its faculty of being transmitted, is
changed to blood, and especially if through the wine it receives the
faculty of being transmuted into heat. Since, then, that God-containing
flesh partook for its substance and support of this particular
nourishment also, and since the God who was manifested infused Himself
into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that by this communion
with Deity mankind might at the same time be deified, for this end it
is that, by dispensation of His grace, He disseminates Himself in every
believer through that flesh, whose substance comes from bread and wine,
blending Himself with the bodies of believers, to secure that, by this
union with the immortal, man, too, may be a sharer in incorruption. He
gives these gifts by virtue of the benediction through which He
transelements2042
| 2042 μεταστοιχειώσας. Suicer labours, without success, to show that the word is
not equivalent to transelementare or μετουσιοῦν, but only to substantiam convertere, i.e. to change
by an addition of grace into another mode or use. In the
passages from Epiphanius which Suicer adduces for “figure,”
“mode,” as a meaning of στοιχεῖον
itself, that word means a sign of the zodiac (as in
our Gregory’s De Animâ et Resurr., it means the
moon), only because the heavenly bodies are the elements or first
principles as it were of the celestial alphabet. The other meaning
of μεταστοιχειοῦν
which he gives, i.e. to unteach, with a view to
obscure the literal meaning here, is quite inapplicable. Gregory
defines more clearly than Chrysostom (μεταρρυθμίζεσθαι), Theophylact (μεταποιεῖσθαι), and John Damascene (μεταβάλλεσθαι), the change that takes place: but all go beyond
Theodoret’s (Dial. ii), “not changing nature, but
adding grace to the nature,” which Suicer endeavours to read into
this word of Gregory’s. It is to be noticed, too, that in Philo
the word is used of Xerxes changing in his march one element into
another, i.e. earth into water, not the mere use of the one into
the use of the other. | the natural quality
of these visible things to that immortal thing.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
