Recently, the Catholic apologist Erick Ybarra briefly mentioned a text from Saint Augustine which he considers to support belief in transubstantiation on the part of that Church Father. Since I have already published on this passage in French, and although this website usually publishes exclusively in that language, I wished to translate my article into English in order to facilitate discussion with this apologist. Without further delay, here is the quotation in question:

Christ carried His own body in His hands when He said: This is My body¹.

An unconvincing expression

First of all, it should be recalled that to speak of Christ’s “own body” in relation to the Supper is not sufficient to presume that an author adheres to transubstantiation. Thus, for example, the Reformer John Calvin says:

Thus the bread is the body of Christ, since it assures us with certainty of the exhibition of that which it represents, or rather because the Lord, in giving us this visible symbol, also gives us along with it His own body; for Christ is not a juggler mocking us with empty appearances. Therefore, it is beyond all doubt that the reality is joined to the sign; in other words, as regards spiritual efficacy, we truly partake of the body of Christ when we eat the bread².

Figurative language

But, beyond the fact that such language is not decisive, are there elements which invite us to conclude that Saint Augustine was here using analogical language? Yes, first because, in the discourse which follows on the same Psalm, Augustine clarifies his language in this sense:

« He carried Himself in His hands. » How did He carry Himself in His hands? When He commended to us His own body and His blood, He took in His hands what the faithful know; He was in a certain manner carrying Himself, when He said: « This is My body³. »

The addition of “in a certain manner” (quodam modo) invites caution before concluding that Augustine was not here using analogical language, based on the resemblance between the body and the sacrament. The rest of Augustine’s writings allow us to affirm more clearly that the language is indeed analogical:

If the sacraments did not in some way resemble the things of which they are the signs, they would not be sacraments. It is by this resemblance that they often receive the names of the very things themselves. Thus, just as the sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, in a certain way, and the sacrament of the blood of Christ is the blood of Christ, so the sacrament of faith is faith⁴.

Interestingly, in this latter quotation, the Latin words translated as “in a certain way” (quemdam modum) are the same as those translated in the previous passage by “in a certain manner” (quodam modo); they are simply declined differently.

Other quotations make it possible to establish that Augustine had a figurative sense in view; consider, for example, what he says about John chapter 6:

An expression is not figurative when it contains a precept forbidding intemperance or injustice, or commanding usefulness or beneficence. On the contrary, it is figurative when it seems to command evil or forbid good. “Except ye eat,” says the Saviour, “the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” Does this not, in appearance, command a crime? It is therefore a figure which enjoins us to participate in the passion of the Saviour, and to preserve the sweet and salutary remembrance of His flesh wounded for us and fastened to the cross⁵.

The wicked do not eat the body of Christ

Moreover, as I recently recalled, one consequence of transubstantiation is that to eat the consecrated bread and drink the consecrated wine, even without faith, is to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. Imagine that someone enters a church, sees a consecrated host, and decides to eat it though he is not a believer at all. A Roman Catholic must believe that this person eats the body and blood of Christ. Yet Augustine did not believe this.

Thus, without any doubt, when one does not abide in Christ and does not serve Him as a dwelling place, one does not eat His flesh nor drink His blood, although one materially and visibly bites under one’s teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of the Saviour; indeed, in receiving the visible sign of so precious a thing, he eats and drinks it to his condemnation, because he has not feared to approach the sacraments of Christ with a defiled soul⁶.

Thus, one could very simply say:

1. To believe in transubstantiation implies believing that the wicked receive Christ when they eat the bread;
2. Augustine believed that if one does not abide in Christ, one does not eat His flesh nor drink His blood;
3. Therefore Augustine did not believe in transubstantiation (by 1 and 2).

Christ is locally present in only one place

Augustine also believed that Christ is bodily present in only one place: in heaven.

The Saviour is in heaven, but in truth He is always among us. The risen body of the Saviour must necessarily be in one place; but His truth is spread everywhere⁷.

It is not according to this bodily form that Christ is everywhere present; one must not establish His divinity at the expense of the very truth of His body. […] For in Jesus Christ, God and man are one single person and one single Jesus Christ: as God, He is everywhere; as man, He is in heaven. But as for our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, equal to His Father, and at the same time the Son of man, which makes His Father greater than He, believe that, as God, He is wholly present everywhere, that He dwells in those in whom God dwells as in His temple; also believe that His body, a true body, is in some place in heaven⁸.

By his body, man is in one place, and leaves it; and when he has entered another, he is no longer in the one he was before. As for God, He fills all places; He is wholly everywhere; He is enclosed nowhere, in any space whatever. As man, our Lord Jesus Christ was on earth; but by His infinite and invisible majesty, He was both on earth and in heaven⁹.

Moreover, Augustine also believed that locality was a property of the substance of bodies; he could therefore not imagine a substantial presence that was non-local:

Remove from bodies their space, and they will be nowhere, and because they will be nowhere, they will no longer exist. Remove from the qualities of bodies those bodies themselves, and there will be no place for them, and thus necessarily they will no longer be⁸.

Augustine thought that God did not deceive our senses by His miracles

For Augustine, to say that one would see the appearance of bread without bread being present would be to make God a liar. Consider what Augustine says concerning the dove that appeared at Christ’s baptism:

We do not say that Jesus Christ alone truly took on a body, while the Holy Spirit showed Himself to men under false appearances; we affirm that we believe in both bodies, that both bodies are true. If the Son of God was not to deceive men, neither could the Holy Spirit mislead them. But for God, who brought all creation out of nothing, it was no more difficult to form outside the laws of nature a true body of a dove than to create a body in the womb of Mary without the cooperation of man. In the womb of the woman to form man, as in heaven itself to create a dove, did not nature obey the sovereign will of the Lord?¹⁰.

Augustine believed that the Supper was of a nature comparable to the precedents of the Old Testament

Finally, Augustine thought that we are nourished with Christ in the Supper as the Jews were in the Old Testament types:

The Apostle adds: “And they all drank the same spiritual drink.” To them one drink, to us another: drinks differing in appearance, but representing the same thing by their mysterious power. But how was it “the same drink”? Because they drank from the water of the mystical rock, water that followed them: and this rock “was Christ”¹¹.

The Red Sea is the emblem of baptism: Moses, who led the Israelites through the Red Sea, represents Christ; the people who crossed it are the faithful; the death of the Egyptians signifies the remission of sins. The signs are different, the faith is the same. The diversity of signs is like the diversity of words; words are pronounced differently according to the time they signify, and truly they are nothing but signs. They are words only insofar as they have meaning; remove meaning from a word, and there remains only an empty sound. Thus all things have been represented by a sign. Those who transmitted these signs to us, and who foretold by prophecies what we believe today—did they not have the same faith as we? Indeed, they believed as we do, with this only difference, that the future was the object of their faith, and the past is the object of ours. That is why the Apostle said: “They all drank the same spiritual drink”; the same spiritual drink, for that which refreshed their bodies was different. What did they drink spiritually? “They drank from the water of the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” Take note, then: although faith was always the same, the signs have changed. For our fathers, Christ was the rock; for us, Christ is placed upon the altar. By a great and mysterious allusion to the same Christ, they drank the water which flowed from the rock; what we ourselves drink, the faithful know. If you stop at appearances, you will see a real difference; but if you penetrate the hidden meaning, you will be convinced that they drank the same spiritual drink¹².

Conclusion

In short, this text is far from establishing that Saint Augustine believed in transubstantiation when considered in the context of his works. If you wish to study the question more seriously, here is our dossier on the Fathers and the Eucharist. It is in French but you might have access to autodubbing:

1. Augustine, Discourses on the Psalms, XXXIII, I, 10.[↩]
2. John Calvin, Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper.[↩]
3. The Latin reads: Et ferebatur in manibus suis: quomodo ferebatur in manibus suis? Quia cum commendaret ipsum corpus suum et sanguinem suum, accepit in manus suas quod norunt fideles; et ipse se portabat quodam modo, cum diceret: Hoc est corpus meum; Augustine, Discourses on the Psalms, XXXIII, II, 2.[↩]
4. Augustine, Letter XCVIII, 9.[↩]
5. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, III, XVI.[↩]
6. Augustine, Tractates on John, XXVI, 18.[↩]
7. Augustine, Tractates on John, XXX.[↩]
8. Augustine, Epistle 187 to Dardanus.[↩][↩]
9. Augustine, Tractates on John, XXXI, 9.[↩]
10. Augustine, De Agone Christiano, XXII, 24.[↩]
11. Augustine, Tractates on John, XXVI, 12.[↩]
12. Augustine, Tractates on John, XLV, 9.[↩]