Transformation of the
Elements
But how could the bread and water become the body and
blood of Christ? Shenoute here appeals to the Genesis account of the creation
of Man and argues that if God could make Man from dust, he would surely also be
able to make the bread and wine of the Eucharist into body and blood. What is
particularly interesting, however, is how he compares the creation of Man, as
recounted in Genesis 2, directly with the ritual transformation of the eucharistic
bread and wine through the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, for he explains that just
as God breathed “a breath of life” into the face of man, who subsequently
“became a living soul,” thus it is with the eucharistic elements too:
Being placed upon the holy table of the Lord and resting
upon it, bread and wine is their name, but when they are pronounced upon in
that terrible Eucharist, and when the Lord God sends down upon them his Holy
Spirit from heaven, it is not bread and it is not wine from this moment on, but
it is the body and the blood of the Lord. (Shenoute, And It Happened One Day,
AV 234)
For Shenoute, the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit upon the
elements in the celebration of the Eucharist is analogous to the inbreathing of
the spirit into Adam, and he thus makes the analogy between the creation of Man
from the earth and the transformation of the bread and wine in the Eucharist
somewhat more substantial than the simple argument that if God could create Man
from the earth, then he can of course also make the elements of the Eucharist
into real body and blood. By invoking Gen 2:7, Shenoute stresses the effect of the
liturgical epiclesis prayer that leads to the sending of the Holy Spirit to
transform the elements of the Eucharist. He also stresses the life-giving
nature of the elements in this context. For just as Adam received life through
the inbreathing of the spirit, the eucharistic elements are given an infusion
of life when the Holy Spirit comes down upon them, thus making them bearers and
transmitters of life.
Similar ideas are expressed by Theophilus. As Norman
Russell puts it, “Theophilus has a strongly realist view of the Eucharist. The
bread and wine are sanctified by the invocation of the Holy Spirit. They become
the food of life-in-itself and the drink of immortality.”
In his 17th Festal Letter of 402, we find him
describing the consecration of the Eucharist and the effects of the Eucharistic
epiclesis, again in the context of anti-Origenist polemics, stating that Origen
does not reflect that the mystical waters of baptism are
consecrated by the coming of the Holy Spirit, or that the Eucharistic bread by
which the body of the Saviour is manifested and which we break for our
sanctification, together with the sacred chalice – which are set on the
church’s altar and are certainly inanimate – are sanctified by the invocation
and coming of the Holy Spirit. (Theophilus of Alexandria, Festal Letter 17,
13)
In line with Shenoute, then – or rather the other way
around – we see Theophilus emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit and the
eucharistic epiclesis prayer.
As for Cyril, although he is adamant that the bread and
wine are truly transformed into the body and blood of Christ, he hesitates to
describe exactly how this happens, and there has been some debate whether Cyril
operates with an epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, or of the Logos. As Ezra
Gebremedhin has pointed out, Cyril does not explicitly mention the descent of
the Spirit on the elements, but instead speaks of God sending the “power of
Life” (δύναμις ζωῆς) into them which “changes them into the energy of his own
flesh” (μεθίστησιν αὐτὰ πρὸς ἐνέργειαν τῆς ἑαυτοῦ σαρκός). Cyril’s opacity on
this point is striking when we compare him with Shenoute, who, as we have seen,
unambiguously states that the bread and the wine are transformed by the Holy
Spirit coming down upon them as a result of the epiclesis prayer. When we take
into consideration the fact that Shenoute did not usually stray far from the
theology of the Alexandrian archbishops, however, the archimandrite’s
statements on this point may indicate that what he articulates with such
clarity was also Cyril’s position, which would lend support to those who would argue
that Cyril does indeed presuppose the descent of the Holy Spirit on the
elements. However, we should remember that there are indications that Shenoute
wrote And It Happened One Day, where he clearly describes the
transformation of the elements, after Cyril’s lifetime. Cyril died in 444, and
in And It Happened One Day the death of Nestorius, is mentioned. If the
reference to Nestorius’ death in this text is not a later interpolation, which
it might well be, the later date of And It Happened One Day may account
for the differences between Shenoute and Cyril on this point.
Similarly, I Am Amazed, the other writing where
Shenoute refers unambiguously to the transformation of the elements by the Holy
Spirit, which must have been written after the council of Ephesus in 431, may
also have been composed after the death of Cyril. The polemical edge against
the Origenists on display in this text makes it fit very well the situation described
by Dioscorus in a letter to Shenoute written in the mid to late 440s. In any case,
in I Am Amazed Shenoute explicitly connects the transformation of the
Eucharistic elements with the descent of the Holy Spirit: “Who will despise the
bread and the cup, and Jesus will not despise him even more? For he has even
despised the Holy Spirit, whom God sends down upon them for them to become the
body of Christ and his blood.” It is also noteworthy that Shenoute is, as we
have seen, in agreement with Cyril’s predecessor Theophilus on this point. So
if And It Happened One Day is to be dated after Cyril’s lifetime, we see
a continued correspondence in Shenoute’s eucharistic theology with that of
Theophilus continuing also after the death of Cyril. (Hugo Lundhaug, “Shenoute’s
Eucharistic Theology in Context,” in The Eucharist—Its Origins and Contexts,
ed. David Hellholm and Deiter Sänger, 3 vols. [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament 376; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017], 2:1244-45)
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