Theodore: Understand our
sacrament to take place in the same manner. The priest puts the bread and wine
on the holy altar; and when he prays the sacred Eucharistic prayer, the Holy
Spirit descends on the gifts placed there. Through the fire of his divinity, he
transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, no less than the
liver transforms food into the body of a person. Or don’t you concede, my
friend, that the Holy Spirit can do what the liver can do? (“Refutations of the
Saracens by Theodore Abū Qurrah, the Bishop of Harran, As Reported by John the
Deacon,” in Theodore Abū Qurrah [trans. John C. Lamoreaux; Brigham Young
University Middle Eastern Texts Initiative; Library of the Christian East 1;
Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005], 220)
