What Did the Early Church Fathers Believe About the Eucharist?

Part 5 of The Eucharist Debate: Two Readings of the Patristic Evidence

In our last article, we closed with a question that has been hovering over this whole series: what did the early Church Fathers believe? Historians agree on the source texts, and following the writings of the apostles, Christians spoke of the bread and wine becoming Christ's body and blood. Where they disagree is what that shared language actually meant. Some scholars hold that there was one belief from the start, and later generations simply defined it more clearly. Others hold that Christians held a range of views at first, and that the Church later settled on one official teaching that was not the only possible outcome. Both sides are reading the same texts, so we shall examine each source through both lenses in turn.

The Early Witnesses

Ignatius of Antioch condemned Docetists who denied that the Eucharist was “the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.”[1] Justin Martyr went further, teaching that the elements are not common bread and common drink, but the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.[2] Irenaeus described bread as receiving the divine invocation and becoming “the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly.”[3] Traditionally, this is read as realism from the beginning, with the centuries that followed adding vocabulary and precision rather than substance.[4] Each of these writers, in his own words and against his own opponents, treated the bread and wine as genuinely becoming Christ's body and blood, not merely symbolizing it. So, the centuries that follow don't introduce a new belief; they just explain that same belief more precisely

Critically, the patristics scholar Everett Ferguson argues that Ignatius's real concern is defending Christ's true humanity against the Docetists who denied it. On this reading, the elements serve as evidence of that real flesh, rather than as a claim that the elements themselves change.[5] Regarding Justin, he concludes that the change in question is consecration (setting the bread and wine apart as a memorial of Christ's body and blood), not a change in their substance.[6] Ferguson also challenges the traditional reading of Irenaeus, noting that he “has the realist terminology but not the realist thought,” since his argument for the resurrection of the body depends on the bread remaining bread; it is sanctified and joined to something heavenly, but not materially changed.[7]

The Later Witnesses

By the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem taught that the elements become Christ's body and blood, comparing it to Jesus changing water into wine at Cana.[8] Ambrose argued that the Word which created the world from nothing could also change what already exists;[9] Gregory of Nyssa spoke of the bread “changed” into the body so that partakers receive the whole Christ;[10] Chrysostom wrote, “You see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him.”[11] Traditionally, this is understood as affirming what the Church already believed, not inventing something new. The fact that writers in both the East and West, with little direct contact, made the same claim independently is seen as evidence of a shared inherited faith rather than four independent conclusions.

Critically, J. H. Srawley points out that the language Ambrose employs regarding the bread and wine changing represented a real turning point in Western teaching. Since no earlier Western writer had spoken this way, Ambrose may have introduced something new rather than simply repeating what Christians already believed.[12] The scholar John David Penniman points out that when Gregory of Nyssa said the bread was changed, he was using language consistent with that used in ancient medicine, not laying groundwork for later doctrine.[13] Chrysostom's famous line fits a pattern the scholars Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer have documented across his sermons, since Chrysostom loved dramatic, larger-than-life language and often told his listeners not to take his most extreme statements word for word.[14] Lastly, there's a question hanging over Cyril of Jerusalem's sermons themselves, since the question of who wrote them has divided scholars for decades. Some old manuscripts credit his successor, John II, which would place the text a generation later than usually assumed.[15]

 Augustine returned to the Eucharist often, in different contexts and with different emphases. In his commentary on John 6, he explains what Jesus meant when he told his followers they must eat his flesh and drink his blood: “He meant those that eat His flesh and drink His blood to be understood, from the fact of their abiding in Him and He in them.”[16] True eating isn't just physical, since someone could receive the sacrament and still miss the point, if they don't also abide in Christ through love and faith. Yet he also wrote, “Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said, ‘This is My Body.’”[17] Augustine also referred to the Eucharist as

“‘We, the many, are one body in Christ.’ This is the Sacrifice, as the faithful understand, which the Church continues to celebrate in the sacrament of the altar, in which it is clear to the Church that she herself is offered in the very offering she makes to God.”[18] 

Traditionally, this is read as evidence that Augustine held to a real, objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and that later councils only stated this more precisely in philosophical terms. Critically, Jaroslav Pelikan argues that Augustine never fully settled the question. He seems to have spoken both ways, which is why later Christians on opposite sides of the debate could each point back to him and claim him as their own.[19]

The First Real Split

In part three of this series, we introduced Paschasius Radbertus's ninth-century writings on the Eucharist. What that account left out is that Radbertus didn't get the last word, even in his own lifetime. Radbertus argued that the bread and wine truly become Christ's physical body, and Ratramnus, a fellow monk at Radbertus's own monastery of Corbie, argued the relationship between the sacramental body and Christ's historical body was spiritual and figurative.[20] Two centuries later, Berengar of Tours revived a version of Ratramnus's argument and was formally condemned for it.[21]

Traditionally, Radbertus's view is read as the seed of that later teaching, with Ratramnus and Berengar as the deviation, not the rule. Critically, the very fact that Radbertus's view needed to be argued for at all, inside his own monastery, in his own generation, is read as evidence that his position was itself a real, and relatively new, development of the ninth century, not simply a restatement of what Christians had always agreed on.

Which Reading Is Right?

Let's think about it this way: Early Christians clearly took the Eucharist seriously, for they spoke of it with awe, though the question is: what kind of seriousness are we hearing? The traditional reader hears in Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Cyril, Ambrose, Gregory, and Chrysostom the voice of a single faith growing more precise. The critical reader hears several ancient voices, each shaped by local concerns, speaking in terms their own congregations would recognize. From this perspective, the early writers sound similar but not identical, and the later medieval definition represents one way of harmonizing them, chosen centuries later under very different circumstances.

What makes this debate so difficult is also what makes it worth having, because the texts themselves are not neutral. Radbertus and Ratramnus divided the Carolingian court, but it took two more centuries before Berengar was condemned for reviving Ratramnus's argument, showing that the room for disagreement in the ninth century narrowed gradually rather than closing all at once. A choice had to be made, but the question our final article must take up is whether that choice settled the matter for all believers, or whether the earlier witnesses still leave room for faithful Christians to differ.

What Did the Early Church Fathers Believe About the Eucharist? 

Sources

[1] "Docetism," in Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, accessed September 29, 2026, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Docetism.

 Ignatius of Antioch, Ign. Smyrn. 7.1, trans. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 89.

[2] Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 66, trans. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 185.

[3] Irenaeus of Lyons, Haer. 4.18.5, trans. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 486.

[4] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 4th ed. (London: A & C Black, 1968), 440–455.

[5] Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak: Faith and Life in the First Three Centuries, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers, 2011), 105–108.

[6] Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 108–109.

[7] Ferguson, Early Christians Speak, 110.

[8] Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catechesis 4.2 (= Lecture XXII.2), trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, in S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, NPNF² 7 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 151.

[9] Ambrose, De mysteriis 9.50–52, trans. T. Thompson, in St. Ambrose: "On the Mysteries" and the Treatise "On the Sacraments," ed. J. H. Srawley, Translations of Christian Literature, Series III (London: SPCK; New York: Macmillan, 1919), 68–71.

[10] Gregory of Nyssa, Or. catech. 37, trans. William Moore, in Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, NPNF² 5 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 504.

[11] John Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 82.4, trans. George Prevost and M. B. Riddle, in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, NPNF¹ 10 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 495.

[12] J. H. Srawley, introduction to St. Ambrose: "On the Mysteries" and the Treatise "On the Sacraments," ed. J. H. Srawley, trans. T. Thompson (London: SPCK; New York: Macmillan, 1919), xxxiv.

[13] John David Penniman, "Blended with the Savior: Gregory of Nyssa's Eucharistic Pharmacology in the Catechetical Oration," Studies in Late Antiquity 2, no. 4 (2018): 531–533.

[14] Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, John Chrysostom, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 2000), 27–29.

[15] Edward Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 2000), 21–31.

[16]  Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.18, trans. John Gibb and James Innes, in St. Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, ed. Philip Schaff, NPNF¹ 7 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 177.

[17] Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms 34.1, trans. A. Cleveland Coxe, in Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed. Philip Schaff, NPNF¹ 8 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 73.

[18] Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.6, trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan, in The City of God, Books VIII–XVI, ed. Hermigild Dressler, Fathers of the Church 14 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 127.

[19] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 304–306.

[20] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 4, Mediaeval Christianity, A.D. 590–1073 (1882; repr., Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 173–174, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4/hcc4.i.xiv.xxxiii.html.

[21] Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 68–71.

Dan Field is a devoted husband to his wife, Karis, and father to his son, Toryn. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Biblical Studies at Capital Seminary, deepening his understanding of the Lord and His Word. Dan is passionate about equipping his brothers and sisters in Christ, preaching the kingdom, and being bold in the dark and wicked places of the world. 

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