r of the Spirit of
Christ (the Logos), as the means of strengthening faith and knowledge,
as a sanctifying of the whole personality. The thought of the
forgiveness of sins fell quite into the background. This ever changing
conception, as it seems to us, of the effects of partaking of the Lord's
Supper had also a parallel in the notions as to the relation between the
visible elements and the body of Christ. So far as we are able to judge
no one felt that there was a _problem_ here, no one enquired whether
this relation was realistic or symbolical. The symbol is the mystery and
the mystery was not conceivable without a symbol. What we now-a-days
understand by "symbol" is a thing which is not that which it represents;
at that time "symbol" denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, really
is what it signifies; but, on the other hand, according to the ideas of
that period, the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the
visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly the
distinction of a symbolic and realistic conception of the Supper is
altogether to be rejected; we could more rightly distinguish between
materialistic, dyophysite, and docetic conceptions which, however, are
not to be regarded as severally exclusive in the strict sense. In the
popular idea the consecrated elements were heavenly fragments of magical
virtue (see Cypr., de laps. 25; Euseb., H. E. VI. 44). With these the
rank and file of third-century Christians already connected many
superstitious notions which the priests tolerated or shared.[294] The
antignostic Fathers acknowledged that the consecrated food consisted of
two things, an earthly (the elements) and a heavenly (the real body of
Christ). They thus saw in the sacrament a guarantee of the union between
spirit and flesh, which the Gnostics denied; and a pledge of the
resurrection of the flesh nourished by the blood of the Lord (Justin;
Iren. IV. 18. 4, 5; V. 2. 2, 3; likewise Tertullian who is erroneously
credited with a "symbolical" doctrine[295]). Clement and Origen
"spiritualise," because, like Ignatius, they assign a spiritual
significance to the flesh and blood of Christ himself (summary of
wisdom). To judge from the exceedingly confused passage in Paed. II. 2,
Clement distinguishes a spiritual and a material blood of Christ.
Finally, however, he sees in the Eucharist the union of the divine Logos
with the human spirit, recognises, like Cyprian at a later period, that
the mixt