of the Filioque, it affects the Easterns too for all their additions. And there is nothing in the mixed symbol that we now all use to make it specially inviolable or to forbid the addition to it of any number of clauses, so long as they are correct and not heretical.[1]
4. Transubstantiation.
Some Orthodox theologians now seem to deny that their Church believes Transubstantiation. But there does not appear to be a real difference between us on this point. They certainly all believe in a quite definite, objective Real Presence; they all say that the Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ, they understand this quite literally and simply; they adore the Blessed Sacrament and vehemently reject any explanation of a typical or subjective presence, or of a presence of which the mean is faith.[2] And until lately they both defined Transubstantiation and used the word. The Synod of Jerusalem defines: "the bread and wine at the consecration are changed, transubstantiated, converted and transformed,[3] the bread is changed into the very Body of the Lord that was born at Bethlehem from the Ever-Virgin, baptized in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, sits at the right hand of God the Father, and will come again in the clouds of heaven, and the wine is converted and transubstantiated[4] into the very Blood of the Lord that he shed on the cross for the life of the world. And after the consecration we believe that the substance of neither bread nor wine remains, but the very Body
(
Greek characters)
3 μεταβάλλεσθαι, μετουσιούσθαι, μεταποιείσθαι, μεταρρυθμίζεσθαι.
4 μεταποιείσθαι και μετουσιώύσθαι.
- ↑ Mgr. Duchesne (pp. 80-81) here notices that the Roman Church did not accept this Creed at all till very late (at the time of Justinian, 527-565). The form that we call the Apostles' Creed is really the old baptismal symbol of the Roman Church. Had she kept to her own traditional form alone Photius would not have discovered his famous grievance, and we should have been spared all this quarrel. But, of course, no one could foresee that, and if there had been no Filioque he would have thought of Azyme bread or bishops' rings, or something.
- ↑ Cf. Mogilas's Confession, i. qu. 106, 107. Syn. Jerus. Dositheus: decr. 17, &c.
- ↑ 3
- ↑ 4
