John Jewel on the Fathers Against Transubstantiation

Much like Bishop Ridley, Bishop Jewel includes a quick run through the Church Fathers to show that it was not possible for transubstantiation to have been the ancient doctrine.  Though the quotations are short, Jewel believes he’s providing the essential core by which the rest of their writings should be understood.  Jewel writes:

For what an be said more plainly than that which Ambrose saith, “Bread and wine remain still the same they were before, and yet are changed into another thing”?  or that which Gelasius saith, “The substance of the bread or the nature of the wine, ceaseth not so to be”? or that which Theodoret saith, “After the consecration the mystical signs do not cast off their own proper nature; for they remain still in their former substance, form, and kind”? or that which Augustine saith, “That which ye see is the bread and cup, and so our eyes tell us; but that which your faith requireth to be taught is this: The bread is the body of Christ, and the cup is his blood”? or that which Origen saith, “Bread which is sanctified by the word of God, as touching the material substance thereof, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy”? or that which Christ himself said, not only after the blessing of the cup, but after he had ministered the Communion: “I will drink no more of this fruit of the vine”?  It is well known that the fruit of the vine is wine, and not blood.

~ An Apologie of the Church of England part 2, in The Library of Christian Classics Vol. 26 pg. 28-29

Faith Alone

One of the more interesting things that I am discovering in my study of the Reformers and the post-Reformation scholastics and orthodox is that the earlier Reformers speak more freely about sacramental grace, while at the same time speaking much less of the role of works in justification. The exact opposite occurs in the later Reformed doctors. They qualify the sacraments greatly, yet also speak much more often of the necessity of good works in our salvation, even positing double justifications and evangelical law-righteousness by which we will be judged.

Neither of these is wholly wrong, but I do find it interesting that those who spoke most broadly about faith alone also spoke most freely of sacramental grace. The Sacraments were not for them “works,” but rather free gospel. It is as folks began to be more concerned with the finer details of the ordo salutis that the ordinary role of the sacraments seems to be diminished.

Beer Is a Health Food

In the Washington Post, George F. Will writes about beer’s role in promoting the human race and advancing technology and world history.  If it weren’t for alcohol, he surmises, we’d all be goners.

Will writes:

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer.

Also:

[H]istorians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town. To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had — what Johnson describes as the body’s ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone.

Will concludes with this fun statement:

Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food.