Did the early Church believe the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood?

Ignatius of Antioch d. c. 110 ADLetter to the Smyrnaeans 7.1

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh that suffered for our sins and that the Father raised up in his goodness.

Ignatius, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, warns against teachers who said Christ only seemed to have a body. He ties the Eucharist to the real flesh that suffered and rose.

Justin Martyr c. 100–c. 165 ADFirst Apology 66.2

We do not receive these as common bread or common drink. Just as Jesus Christ our Savior, made flesh through the word of God, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so we have been taught that the food over which thanks has been given through the word of prayer that comes from him, the food from which our blood and flesh are nourished by being changed, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

Written to the emperor to explain what Christians do on Sunday. "Changed" here refers to digestion: the food that becomes our flesh. The comparison is with the incarnation: as the Word took flesh, so this food is his flesh.

Irenaeus of Lyons c. 130–c. 202 ADAgainst Heresies 4.18.5

Bread from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but Eucharist, made of two realities, earthly and heavenly. So too our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, since they have the hope of resurrection for ever.

Irenaeus argues against the Gnostics that matter can carry God's gift. Both sides of later debates cite "two realities": Catholics for a real change, Reformed writers such as Strimesius for bread that remains.

Clement of Alexandria c. 150–c. 215 ADThe Instructor 1.6.38

Elsewhere, in the Gospel according to John, the Lord put this kind of food another way, through symbols: "Eat my flesh and drink my blood" (John 6:53). He was speaking allegorically of the clear evidence of faith and of the promise, food and drink by which the Church, like a person made of many members, is watered and grows.

Clement is reading John 6, not describing the rite. Elsewhere (Instructor 2.2) he calls the Eucharist drinking the blood of Jesus. He sees both a real gift and a spiritual meaning.

Tertullian c. 155–c. 220 ADAgainst Marcion 4.40.3

Taking bread and sharing it among his disciples, he made it his body by saying, "This is my body" (Luke 22:19), that is, the figure of my body. But there would have been no figure unless there were a true body. An empty thing, which is what a phantom is, could not have a figure.

Marcion said Christ had no real flesh. Tertullian argues that a figure needs a real body behind it. He says both that Christ "made it his body" and that it is "the figure of my body", so both sides cite this passage.

Origen of Alexandria c. 185–c. 254 ADCommentary on Matthew 11.14

The food sanctified "through the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:5), as far as its matter goes, passes into the stomach and is cast out. But through the prayer said over it, "in proportion to faith" (Romans 12:6), it becomes a benefit and a cause of clear sight to the mind that looks to what helps. It is not the matter of the bread but the word spoken over it that benefits whoever does not eat it "unworthily" (1 Corinthians 11:27). So much for the typical and symbolic body.

Origen is explaining Jesus' saying that what enters the mouth does not defile (Matthew 15:11). He goes straight on to speak of the Word himself, "who became flesh and true food". He places the benefit in the Word and in faith, not in the material bread.

Cyril of Jerusalem c. 313–386 ADMystagogical Lectures 4.9

You have learned this and been fully assured that what seems bread is not bread, though it tastes like bread, but the body of Christ; and that what seems wine is not wine, though the taste wants it so, but the blood of Christ.

The clearest early statement that the bread is no longer bread.

Gregory of Nyssa c. 335–c. 395 ADCatechetical Oration 37

So now too we rightly believe that the bread sanctified by the word of God is changed into the body of God the Word. ... The bread is sanctified through the word of God and prayer, as the apostle says (1 Timothy 4:5), not by going through eating to become the body of the Word, but by being changed at once into the body through the word, as the Word said: "This is my body."

Gregory compares this with the incarnation: bread eaten by Jesus became his body; now the bread becomes his body by the word. The verb he uses means to be made into something else.

Ambrose of Milan c. 339/340–397 ADOn the Mysteries 9.50, 9.54

Perhaps you say: "I see something else. How can you tell me that I receive the body of Christ?" ... Let us prove that this is not what nature formed but what the blessing consecrated, and that the power of the blessing is greater than the power of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed. ... The Lord Jesus himself declares: "This is my body." Before the blessing of the heavenly words it is called another thing; after the consecration it is called the body. He himself speaks of his blood. Before the consecration it is called something else; after the consecration it is named blood. And you say: Amen, that is, it is true.

Ambrose taught the newly baptized at Milan; he had baptized Augustine there in 387. He gives Old Testament miracles, such as Moses' rod turned into a snake, as proof that a blessing can change a nature.

John Chrysostom c. 349–407 ADHomilies on Matthew 82.4

Let us then believe God in everything and never contradict him, even if what he says seems contrary to our reasoning and our sight. Let his word carry more weight than reasoning and sight. So let us do with the mysteries too: not looking only at what lies before us, but holding to his words. His word cannot deceive; our senses are easily deceived. His word has never failed; our senses are mostly wrong. Since the Word says, "This is my body," let us be persuaded and believe, and see it with the eyes of the mind.

Preached at Antioch. Chrysostom goes on: Christ gave nothing merely visible; the gift comes through visible things, as in baptism through water.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus c. 393–c. 458 ADEranistes Dialogue 2

Not even after the sanctification do the mystical symbols leave their own nature. They remain in their former substance, shape and appearance, and can be seen and touched just as before. But they are understood to be what they have become, and they are believed and worshipped as being what they are believed to be.

The opponent in the dialogue argues that Christ's body changed into divinity, just as the bread changes. Theodoret's "Orthodox" speaker answers that even the bread keeps its nature. Reformed writers cite the first half; Orthodox and Catholics cite the second.

John of Damascus c. 645/675–749 ADExact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13

The bread and wine are not a figure of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself, since the Lord himself said, "This is my body": not a figure of the body, but "the body"; not a figure of the blood, but "the blood".

John's summary of Greek teaching became the standard Orthodox textbook of doctrine.

Huldrych ZwingliSixty-Seven Articles Article 18

the mass is not a sacrifice, but is a remembrance of the sacrifice and assurance of the salvation which Christ has given us.

Zwingli, at Zurich, taught that "is" in "This is my body" means "signifies". He and Luther failed to agree at Marburg in 1529.

Augsburg Confession (Lutheran)Augsburg Confession Article X

Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord

Lutherans confess a real bodily presence "in, with and under" the bread, which stays bread (Formula of Concord, 1577). They reject both transubstantiation and a merely spiritual presence.

Council of Trent (Catholic)Session 13 Canon 2

that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood, the species only of the bread and wine remaining, which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation

The word transubstantiation was already used by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Orthodox speak of a real change and leave the manner undefined.

Westminster Confession (Reformed)Westminster Confession of Faith 29.7

the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance

Calvin's view: believers truly feed on Christ, by the Spirit and through faith. The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) say the same.