If you were
to ask a Roman Catholic (and even an Eastern Orthodox) the question, "What
is the highest, most sacred sacrifice that can be offered by Christians?"
they would answer "the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." However, this was
not the view of the earliest Christians. Athenagoras of Athens (133-190), answering
charges against the early Christians and their not offering sacrifices like
their pagan neighbours, stated that the highest sacrifice that can be offered
is the Christian’s spiritual service, showing he did not know of the concept of
the Eucharist being a propitiatory sacrifice as in modern Roman dogma:
But, as most of those who charge us with
atheism, and that because they have not even the dreamiest conception of what
God is, and are doltish and utterly unacquainted with natural and divine
things, and such as measure piety by the rule of sacrifices, charges us with
not acknowledging the same gods as the cities, be pleased to attend to the
following considerations, O emperors, on both points. And first, as to our not
sacrificing: the Framer and Father of
this universe does not need blood, nor the
odour of burnt-offerings, nor the fragrance of flowers and incense, forasmuch
as He is Himself perfect fragrance, needing nothing either within or without;
but the noblest sacrifice to Him is for us to know who stretched out and
vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a centre, who
gathered the water into seas and divided the light from the darkness, who
adorned the sky with stars and made the earth to bring forth seed of every
kind, who made animals and fashioned man. When, holding God to be this Framer
of all things, who preserves them in being and superintends them all by
knowledge and administrative skill, we "lift up holy hands" to Him,
what need has He further of a hecatomb?
"For they, when mortals have
transgress'd or fail'd To do aright, by sacrifice and pray'r, Libations and
burnt-offerings, may be soothed."
And what have I to do with holocausts, which
God does not stand in need of?--though indeed it does behove us to offer a
bloodless sacrifice and "the service of our reason." (A Plea for the Christians, chapter xiii [ANF
2:134-35]
In writing such, as the translator of this text in the ANF series, correctly noted that the "offering of Christ's natural blood, as the Latins now teach, was unknown to Athenagoras."