Sacrifice in Early Christian Liturgy

In 1537, Martin Luther famously wrote that to conceive of the Eucharist in sacrificial terms is the “greatest and most terrible abomination” (The Smalcald Articles). Twelve years later, John Calvin concurred, writing of the “intolerable blasphemy and insult” of the sacrifice of the Mass (Institutes IV. 18). The impetus driving such characterizations cannot be casually ignored. Luther, Calvin, and many other reformers (including Zwingli), in the wake of the renaissance, sought a return ad fontes—to the sources of the nascent Church; a Church which had in their estimation been corrupted through Hellenization and medieval systemization. In their respective exegesis of the epistles of Paul and the patristic documents available, the magisterial reformers discovered far more language of “the Lord’s supper” and communal meal than of sacrifice. Thus they concluded that to conceive of the Eucharist in sacrificial terms is, in the words of Calvin, a “perverse course unknown to the purer church… all antiquity is opposed to [it], as has been demonstrated in other instances, and may be surely known by the diligent reading of the fathers” (Ibid.).

Yet one patristic source—utterly disregarded by most of the reformers as a medieval forgery—proves essential to this debate: the seven letters of Ignatius, first century bishop of Antioch. Though Calvin asserted that “Nothing can be more nauseating than the absurdities which have been published under the name of Ignatius” (Ibid.), current scholarly consensus, indebted to the work of Theodor Zahn and J.B. Lightfoot, has on the contrary affirmed the authenticity of Ignatius’ letters.

These letters, primarily known for their robust account of the episcopacy, also—and perhaps as emphatically—present a thorough Eucharistic theology as the hermeneutic of their author’s impending martyrdom. Such a hermeneutic links the Eucharistic liturgy of the early church with the sacrificial offering of the martyr in the arena. “I am your expiation” Ignatius writes in four of his seven letters, paralleling his own death with the sacrifice of Christ—not only the sacrifice of the cross, but that same sacrifice present in the Christian liturgy. In his letter to the Romans, Ignatius continues, “I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread.” Here, the wheat of God would undoubtedly stir in the minds of his readers Eucharistic parallels, as would the phrase “pure bread” which, as William Schoedel asserts, “was used in connection with sacrifices and religious meals.” Ignatius goes on to write in the same letter:

Grant me nothing more than to be poured out as a libation for God while an altar is still ready, that becoming a chorus in love you may sing to the Father in Jesus Christ because God judged the bishop of Syria worthy to be found at the [sun’s] setting having sent him from the [sun’s] rising.

Again, the language of the sun’s “setting and rising” emphatically draws the reader to the language and orientation of the early liturgy, in which turning to the west (the sun’s setting) and to the east (the rising sun) was a tradition dating back to the very beginning (Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, 75; c.f. Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition). Further, this, together with the language of altar and libation—clearly a parallel to pagan sacrifice—posits the Christian sacrifice as a “reverse mirror image of pagan cult sacrifice” (A. Brent; c.f. Brent, “Ignatius of Antioch and the Imperial Cult”). The eternal sacrifice of the former transcends and abolishes the material sacrifices of the latter.

            Ignatius further develops this relationship between the altar and the eucharist in five of his seven letters, most explicitly in his letter to the Philadelphians: “Be eager, then, to celebrate one Eucharist; for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup for union through his blood; one the altar, just as one the bishop along with the presbytery and deacons.” Here Ignatius undoubtedly draws a distinct connection between the eucharist and the altar—between liturgy and sacrifice. He must, for in order to parallel his own sacrifice with the liturgy, the liturgy must imply more than communal meal. Ignatius’ metaphors and martyrdom remain incomprehensible within a Eucharistic theology absent sacrifice. The very fact that he understands martyrdom—the offering of oneself upon the altar of sacrifice—in terms of the Eucharist demands that the Eucharist parallel such a definition. Only through the Eucharist as sacrificial offering can Ignatius say verily, “I am your expiation.” Only thus can he “attain God.”

            In the letters of Ignatius, therefore, we unmistakably have one of the earliest known testimonies to a theology of the Eucharist conceived in sacrificial terms. Yet this clearly neither settles the issue nor implies a patristic consensus. The theology of the Eucharist proved a complicated and divisive arena then as it did in the sixteenth century as it does today. One counter that undoubtedly arises is: why only Ignatius? Why do we not see this emphasis on Eucharistic sacrifice as clearly evident in other early patristic texts? Josef Jungmann confesses that while the Eucharist was in the first century as it is today a “unique but real sacrifice,“ nevertheless there exists “a noticeable tension between the two concepts of thanksgiving and sacrifice” (The Early Liturgy, 46). Jungmann plausibly proposes as an explanation the demand for Christian identity: while originally the apologists sought to distance themselves from Jewish and pagan religion through emphasizing the spiritual nature of Christianity (and therefore meal and thanksgiving over sacrifice), later they would emphatically stress the material sacramentality of Christianity in the face of the Gnostic heresies (thus emphasizing Eucharistic sacrifice in both theology and liturgical materials). Ignatius, however, took a middle path: while still emphasizing eucharistia (thanksgiving), he nevertheless actively engaged the pagan cult in the service of a Christian theology of sacrifice.

            Nevertheless, what Jungmann’s thesis and Ignatius’ letters together prove is the naiveté present in proposals of a  “purer church” of antiquity. Nascent differences and dissentions must be properly acknowledged not to validate post-structuralist skepticism, but in the service of a theory of continuity and, as Rowan Williams writes, “the recognition that some sort of conversation is possible across surprisingly wide gaps in context and understanding” (Why Study the Past, 29). Only thus can we move away from myths of a golden age and enter into a productive dialogue toward ecclesial unity. Only thus can we navigate the minefields of confessional clichés in order to rediscover the kernel behind the husk.