Athenagoras of Athens and Transubstantiation

Q. Did Athenagoras advocate the Roman dogma of transubstantiation?

Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133-190 A.D.):

But if it be unlawful even to speak of this, and if for men to partake of the flesh of men is a thing most hateful and abominable, and more detestable than any other unlawful and unnatural food or act; and if what is against nature can never pass into nourishment for the limbs and parts requiring it, and what does not pass into nourishment can never become united with that which it is not adapted to nourish,—then can the bodies of men never combine with bodies like themselves, to which this nourishment would be against nature, even though it were to pass many times through their stomach…To expatiate further, however, on these topics, is not suitable; for all men are agreed in their decision respecting them,—those at least who are not half brutes. (Philip Schaff, ANF, Vol II, Athenagoras, On the Resurrection of the Dead, VIII). Here

 

Three things are alleged against us: atheism, Thyestean feasts706, Œdipodean intercourse. But if these charges are true, spare no class: proceed at once against our crimes; destroy us root and branch, with our wives and children, if any Christian is found to live like the brutes. And yet even the brutes do not touch the flesh of their own kind" (Philip Schaff, ANF, Vol II, Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, III). Here

 

Footnote 706:

[See cap. xxxi. Our Lord was “perfect man,” yet our author resents the idea of eating the flesh of one’s own kind as worse than brutal. As to the Eucharist the inference is plain.]

 

But they have further also made up stories against us of impious feasts818 and forbidden intercourse between the sexes, both that they may appear to themselves to have rational grounds of hatred, and because they think either by fear to lead us away from our way of life, or to render the rulers harsh and inexorable by the magnitude of the charges they bring. (Philip Schaff, ANF, Vol II, Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, XXXI). Here

 

Footnote 818:

[“Thyestian feasts” (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled, had they believed the material body and blood of the “man Christ Jesus,” present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.]

For we cannot eat human flesh till we have killed some one. The former charge, therefore, being false, if any one should ask them in regard to the second, whether they have seen what they assert, not one of them would be so barefaced as to say that he had. ...For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? (Philip Schaff, ANF, Vol II, Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, XXXV). Here

~ Soli Deo Gloria