As we have noted in this series, for three centuries, the Eucharist—which is to say, the thanksgiving or the tithe offering—was followed by an “Amen” in accordance with 1 Corinthians 14:16, at which point bread and wine were taken from the thank offering and consecrated for the Lord’s Supper. A Eucharist. An Amen. An Epiclesis. But that order changed at the end of the 4th century, and the Eucharist was moved after the Epiclesis so that consecrated bread and wine began to be offered as a liturgical sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood. As a result, the “Amen,” instead of a corporate affirmation of gratitude to God, became an affirmation of the Consecration. The academic community could find no explanation for the shift, and so through creative editing, translation and redaction of the ancient evidence, revised the early liturgies to conform to the later novelty. That editorial revision of history created the false impression that the medieval Roman Catholic liturgical sacrifice of consecrated bread and wine had been handed down from the Apostles.

The mode of the revision was to collapse the early Eucharist into the early Epiclesis, essentially combining two distinct, ancient liturgical events into one. The effect has been to hide the evidence and give the impression that the ancient Eucharistic prayer was actually the Consecration, suggesting that the ancient tithe offering was really a liturgical sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. It was not.

Last week we analyzed the ancient liturgy as depicted in Justin Martyr (150 A.D.), Irenæus of Lyons (189 A.D.) and Hippolytus of Rome (215 A.D.) all of whom can be shown to have practiced and recorded that simple liturgy of a Eucharist followed by an Epiclesis, with an Apostolic “Amen” standing between them as a wall of separation between the sacrifice and the Supper. We continue this week with the liturgies of Tertullian of Carthage (208 A.D.), Origen of Alexandria (248 A.D.) and his disciple, Firmilian of Cæsarea (256 A.D.). What we shall find is a continued effort by the scholars to redact, edit, revise and suppress the early liturgies and to interpret and represent them in such a way as to give the impression of a Eucharistic sacrifice of consecrated bread and wine. In short, their concerted effort is intended to collapse the ancient Eucharistic thank offering into the Epiclesis.

Tertullian of Carthage (208 A.D.)

Tertullian believed the sacrifices prophesied by Malachi were fulfilled in “the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns” (Against Marcion, Book III, 22), and “simple prayer from a pure conscience” (Against Marcion, Book IV, 1). The figures and types of the Law indicated that a man “was bound to offer … a gift, even prayer and thanksgiving in the church through Christ Jesus” (Against Marcion, Book IV, 9). Tertullian therefore identified the Eucharist offering as “the prayer and thanksgiving” that preceded the consecration and the Supper as evidenced by his treatise On Prayer. Here he chides a faction of believers who were skipping the Eucharistic sacrifice and only showing up to participate in the Supper. The faction believed it was inappropriate for their solemn fast, or Station, to be ended by prayers of thanks but ought rather be broken by the reception of the body of Christ. In Tertullian, the thank offering and the reception of consecrated bread and wine were obviously two separate acts. He thus pleads with factious believers to participate in the Eucharist as well as the Supper, for the Eucharistic offering will not violate the fast, but rather make it more meaningful:

Similarly, too, touching the days of Stations, most think that they must not be present at the sacrificial prayers, on the ground that the Station must be dissolved by reception of the Lord’s Body. Does, then, the Eucharist cancel a service devoted to God, or bind it more to God? Will not your Station be more solemn if you have withal stood at God’s altar? When the Lord’s Body has been received and reserved each point is secured, both the participation of the sacrifice and the discharge of duty. (On Prayer 19)

In this passage—made remarkable by its stark contrast with the medieval liturgy—”the sacrificial prayers,” and “the sacrifice” are equated to “the Eucharist,” which is distinctly separate from, and prior to, the Consecration—otherwise the factious group could not have avoided one and arrived later for the other. “Stations,” as Tertullian highlights in his treatise, is a military term, and so he reminds his audience, in similar terms, that if the military Stations of the soldiers are not invalidated by “gladness or sadness” then neither are the Stations of Christians invalidated by participating in the offering of thanks and prayer (On Prayer 19). And so he answers his rhetorical question: “Does, then, the Eucharist cancel a service devoted to God?” Of course it does not. Rather participation in the Eucharist will “bind it more to God.” Therefore the factious group ought to attend both the Eucharistic offerings and the Supper of consecrated bread and wine.

Tertullian also acknowledges the “Amen” that is spoken with regard to the “sanctum protuleris,” (Migne, P.L. vol I, col 657) “the holy offering,” or literally, “the holy brought forward [thing].” Protuleris, in Latin answers to προσφορα (prosphora) in Greek, which means “a bringing to” in reference to something being brought forward for an offering, “a gift” that a man is bound to offer, as he mentioned in Against Marcion, Book IV, 9. By way of example, Clement of Rome defended presbyters who had faithfully offered, or brought forward the gifts, or the tithes (προσφενεγκοντας, prosphenegkontas (Migne, P.G. vol I, 300). In an obvious reference to the “sacrificial offerings” of prayer and the tithe, Tertullian chides those Christians who attend and participate in the gladiator shows, applauding with the same hands that are lifted in praise during the Eucharist, and cheering with the same mouths they use to pronounce the Apostolic “Amen”:

For how monstrous it is to go from God’s church to the devil’s— from the sky to the stye, as they say; to raise your hands to God, and then to weary them in the applause of an actor; out of the mouth, from which you uttered Amen over the [holy offering, sanctam protuleris], to give witness in a gladiator’s favour; to cry “forever” to any one else but God and Christ! (De Spectaculis, 25)

Finally, Tertullian also acknowledges the distribution of the eucharisted bread, followed by the words of institution when he relates the events of the Last Supper:

Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. … He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed “in His blood,” affirms the reality of His body. (Against Marcion, Book IV, 40)

Tertullian’s liturgy therefore is not difficult to reconstruct: Eucharistic sacrificial offerings with praise and thanks, an Apostolic “Amen” at the conclusion of the Eucharist, followed by a distribution and consecration of the bread for the meal. A Eucharist. An “Amen.” An Epiclesis.

But that has not prevented the scholars, historians and translators from correcting Tertullian to make his liturgy conform to the later medieval novelty. Despite Tertullian’s obvious “Amen” spoken over the Eucharistic offerings in accordance with 1 Corinthians 14:16, Anglican Sydney Thelwall, in his translation of Tertullian’s De Spectaculis, rendered “sanctum protuleris,” as “the Holy Thing,” with capital letters added gratuitously to give the appearance that Tertullian had intended to refer to the consecrated bread and wine of the Supper, the body and blood of Christ:

…out of the mouth, from which you uttered Amen over the Holy Thing … (De Spectaculis, 25)

Roman Catholic Migne, for his part, added a footnote to “sanctum protuleris,” setting aside hundreds of years of placing the “Amen” immediately after the Eucharist, and insisted rather that Tertullian must have been referring to the “Amen” spoken after the Consecration. Thus, Migne informs us, Tertullian’s “sanctum protuleris” must of necessity refer to the holy sacrament of the Body of Christ. As evidence to support the interpretation, Migne defers neither to Paul’s mention of an “Amen” spoken immediately after the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 14:16), nor to the Didache‘s reference (Didache 10), nor to Justin’s reference (First Apology, 66), but rather to Ambrose’s late 4th century and Augustine’s early 5th century references to an “Amen” spoken immediately after the Consecration (Migne, P.L. vol I, col 658 (d)).

And thus, by means of creative translations and discreet footnotes, Tertullian’s Eucharist is collapsed into his Epiclesis to give the impression that he believed the oblation of the church was an offering of consecrated bread and wine. It is by such revisions of history, and by the reinterpretation of the ancient liturgies through a late-4th century and medieval lens, that the liturgies of the early Church are edited and corrected to bring them back into conformity with the medieval novelty of a liturgical offering of the body and blood of Christ.

Origen of Alexandria (248 A.D.)

A similar illustration of the phenomenon presents itself in the liturgy of Origen. To Origen, the only incense we offer to the Lord is offered on “the altar” of the heart. As with Tertullian, the incense that attends the offerings is the prayer from a pure conscience: “we regard the spirit of every good man as an altar from which arises an incense which is truly and spiritually sweet-smelling, namely, the prayers ascending from a pure conscience” (Against Celcus, Book VIII, 17). To Origen, the tithe offering consisted of first-fruits of the harvest and prayer, for “we would offer [first-fruits] to Him who said, ‘Let the earth bring forth … the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind … .’ And to Him to whom we offer first-fruits we also send up our prayers” (Against Celcus, Book VIII, 34). He is obviously referring to the thank offering of the first-fruits of the harvest. “And we have a symbol of gratitude (εὐχαριστίας) to God in the bread which we call the Eucharist (εὐχαριστία)” (Against Celcus, Book VIII, 56 (Migne, P.G. vol XI, col 1604). The context of his dissertation Against Celcus is that the heretic thought we ought to offer the Eucharistic first-fruits oblations as thanks to demons. Origen insists rather that we ought only offer our Eucharist to God. The bread of the Eucharist is “a symbol of our gratitude.” There is no mention of a consecration, or an invocation, and it is obvious from the context that the offering is unconsecrated. It is the tithe. The offertory. The first-fruits of the harvest. It is the Eucharist.

In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 7:5 Origen notes that when it is time for the meal, the consecration is performed by the invocation (έπικέκληται) of the Trinitarian name of God over the elements (Fragment 34 (Robertson, A., D.D., LL.D. and Plummer, A., M.A., D.D., The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments: First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D., ed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1911)) 135)). There is no mention of thanksgiving. It is the consecration. The invocation. It is the Epiclesis.

We have seen what Origen means by the Eucharist. We have seen what he means by the Epiclesis. We are therefore presented with no difficulty or confusion when Origen describes the entire liturgy at once. There is a Eucharist offering accompanied by the incense of prayer, followed by an Epiclesis and a meal of consecrated food:

But we give thanks to the Creator of all, and, along with thanksgiving (εὐχαριστίας) and prayer (εὐχής) for the blessings we have received, we also eat the bread presented to us; and this bread becomes by prayer (εὐχήν) a sacred body, which sanctifies those who sincerely partake of it. (Against Celcus, Book VIII, 33 (Migne, P.G. vol XI, col 1565))

When Origen says “thanksgiving (εὐχαριστίας) and prayer (εὐχής) for the blessings we have received” it is obvious from his own hand that he is referring to the Eucharist, the tithe offering of the first-fruits of the harvest, as he has abundantly described elsewhere in the same treatise. He has simply followed the same pattern that had been present in the Church for two hundred years before him. The Didache referred to the need to repent of transgressions before coming forward both for prayer and for thanksgiving “that your sacrifice may be pure” (Didache, 4, 14). Ignatius referred to heretics abstaining “from the Eucharist and from prayer” prior to the Consecration (To the Smyrnæans, 7). Justin spoke of the minister concluding the offering of “the prayers and thanksgivings” prior to the Consecration (First Apology, 65, 67). Irenæus called them “our prayers and oblations” when he described the Eucharist offering prior to the Epiclesis (Against Heresies, Book IV.18.6), and Tertullian, as noted above, called the Eucharist offerings “prayer and thanksgiving” prior to the Consecration (Against Marcion, Book IV, 9). All of these place the Eucharist offering prior to the Epiclesis. There is no mystery therefore, when Origen refers to the “thanksgiving and prayer for the blessings we have received.”

When Origen then describes the distribution of the bread which “becomes by prayer (εὐχήν) a sacred body,” it is also clear from his own commentary on 1 Corinthians 7:5 that he is referring to the Epiclesis, or the “invocation (έπικέκληται) of the name of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit” over the elements that have just been used in the Eucharist offering (Fragment 34, Robertson & Plummer, 135). Clearly the Eucharist and the Epiclesis are not the same thing. The first prayer is the prayer of “incense” that accompanies the thank offering, and the second prayer is the Epiclesis.

So obvious are Origen’s two separate liturgical acts —”thanksgiving and prayer” as the Eucharist, and a “prayer” as the Epiclesis—that the Latin translator (Roman Catholic Basilios Bessarion, d. 1472) rendered the first reference to “prayer” as “precibus,” or “supplication,” and the second reference to “prayer” as “orationem,” as in “spoken words” (Migne, P.G. vol XI, col 1666). Likewise, Dr. Franz Weiland (1906), in his Mensa und Confessio: Studies on the Altar of the Early Christian Liturgy stated plainly that Origen “precisely distinguishes between ‘offering’ and ‘consecration’,” which is to say, between the Eucharist and the Epiclesis. (Weiland, Mensa und Confessio (Munich: Verlag der J. J. Lentner’schen Buchhandlung (1906) 56). Thus, there is clearly an offering of bread as a “symbol of our gratitude,” offered along with the incense of prayers and supplications, followed by a distribution of the bread, and an invocation (έπικέκληται) of “the name of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit” to consecrate the bread. This is obvious to anyone who is familiar with the Biblical Eucharist, the Pauline “Amen,” and the simple liturgy of the Early Church.

But that has not stopped the translators, who have been especially interested in proving that Origen’s Eucharist was in fact Consecratory. Maurice De La Taille, S.J., in his Mystery of Faith: Regarding The Most August Sacrament And Sacrifice Of The Body And Blood Of Christ, lacking any evidence at all from Origen, simply insists, “even if Origen never affirmed it, that is no reason for saying that he denied that thanksgiving is contained in the consecrative prayer.” Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J., of Weston College School of Theology, likewise insisted that “Origen … views the prayer of thanksgiving as the occasion for the consecration of the elements,” and adds this footnote as evidence: “[In Fragment 34] Origen speaks of the ‘loaves over which is invoked the name of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.’ He probably refers to the prayer as a whole.” (Theological Studies, “Sacrificium Laudis: Content and Function of Early Eucharistic Prayers,” Volume: 35 issue: 2, page(s): 268-287 (May 1, 1974), emphasis added).

Yes, that is the sorry state of affairs with the study of the ancient liturgy. “Just because Origen never said so does not mean he did not believe his thanksgiving was consecratory. Because it probably was.” It is by such creative “scholarship” as de la Taille’s and Kilmartin’s that Origen’s Eucharist is collapsed into his Epiclesis, so desperate are the translators, apologists and scholars to prove the ancient origins of their novel liturgical sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood.

But it gets worse.

Firmilian of Cæsarea (256 A.D.)

Firmilian of Cæsarea left very little information to us about his view on the liturgy, and what little he left is found in a single sentence in a letter he wrote to Cyprian of Carthage on the topic of baptism. From 254 to 258 A.D., a controversy arose between Stephen, Bishop of Rome, and three bishops from Asia and Africa: Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea, and Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria. Stephen had “judged the baptism of all heretics to be just and lawful” and thus “forbade one coming from any heresy to be [re]baptized in the Church” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73, paragraph 2). If someone had already been baptized by a heretic in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and then converted to the true faith, the original baptism should be considered valid. It was not only unnecessary but unlawful to rebaptize heretics. This, Stephen claimed, is what had been handed down from the Apostles:

If any one, therefore, come to you from any heresy whatever, let nothing be innovated which has not been handed down, to wit, that hands be imposed on him for repentance; since the heretics themselves, in their own proper character, do not baptize such as come to them from one another, but only admit them to communion. (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73, paragraph 1).

Cyprian, Firmilian and Dionysius were aghast. “Whence is that tradition?” Cyprian demanded. “Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles?” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73, paragraph 2).

“[T]hey who are at Rome … vainly pretend the authority of the apostles,” Firmilian objected. “[Heretics] who do not hold the true Lord the Father cannot hold the truth either of the Son or of the Holy Spirit; … they … can have neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit … . (to Cyprian of Carthage, from Firmilian, Epistle 74, paragraphs 6-7)

Dionysius of Alexandria, too, was beside himself. Stephen thought to transform heretics into Christians by fiat, making them “friends of God and prophets”:

What one custom ever included these? … If then it was from the apostles … that this custom took its beginning, we must adjust ourselves thereto, [but] as to things which were written afterwards and which are until now still found, they are ignored by us; and let them be ignored, no matter what they are. How can these comply with the customs of the ancients?” (Dionysius of Alexandria, to Stephen of Rome)

Stephen believed that as long as the heretical baptism had employed the correct formula—”In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”—then the baptism ought to be recognized, irrespective of the faith of the person administering it, or the person receiving it. It was a formula, and the formula mattered. Cyprian, Firmilian and Dionysius disagreed vehemently. It was a controversy that spanned three continents.

To make his point, Cyprian correctly observed that heretics deny that the Father is the Creator (Epistle 73, paragraph 2), and Firmilian likewise observed that the heretics do not believe in the same Son and the same Spirit: “if we ask what Christ they announce (praedicent),” Firmilian noted, “they will reply that they preach (praedicare) Him who sent the Spirit that speaks by Montanus and Prisca” (to Cyprian of Carthage, from Firmilian, Epistle 74, paragraphs 6-7). Even if the formula was correct, the substance was not. Their “father,” their “son,” and their “spirit” were utterly alien to the Father, Son and Spirit of the Scriptures. Both the invocation (invocatione) and the profession (praedicationis) mattered. The invocation (invocatione) of the Trinity could be exactly right, but if the profession (praedicationis) did not match, then the invocation did not matter:

Who in the Church is perfect and wise who can either defend or believe this, that this bare invocation (invocatio) of names is sufficient to the remission of sins and the sanctification of baptism; since these things are only then of advantage, when both he who baptizes has the Holy Spirit, and the baptism itself also is not ordained without the Spirit? (To Cyprian, from Firmilian, Epistle 74, paragraph 9; for the original Latin, see the Perseus Digital Library, here).

Firmilian’s concern focused entirely on the invocation (invocatione) and profession (praedicationis) of the Trinity in baptism. Many heretics who denied the truth—who had denied the Father, Son and Spirit of the Scriptures, and in fact denied faith in Christ at all—were baptized in the names of Person’s in Whom they did not believe, by persons who also did not believe. How could such a baptism be valid based solely on the “bare invocation” (invocatio nuda) of the Trinity if the people who recieved the baptism, when asked “which Christ they announce (praedicent),” confess that they “preach (praedicare)” a different Christ? A valid invocation (invocatione) meant nothing if not accompanied by a valid profession (praedicationis).

But there was something more. Firmilian not only protested the validity of a properly worded invocation by and upon an unbelieving heretic. He also denied that such a person could baptize others or perform any other function for which baptism was a prerequisite:

For as a heretic may not lawfully ordain nor lay on hands, so neither may he baptize, nor do anything holily or spiritually, since he is an alien from spiritual and deifying sanctity. (To Cyprian, from Firmilian, Epistle 74, paragraph 9)

Since the earliest days of the Church, only a validly baptized person who believed the truth of the Scriptures could participate in the Eucharist (Didache 9; Justin Martyr First Apology 65; Hippolytus, Anaphora 20). That is why there was a Dismissal before the offertory. As such, a baptized person with no profession (praedicationis) of Christ could not offer the Eucharist, even if his baptismal invocation (invocatione) had been perfectly lawful.

Firmilian’s rationale was simple and clear, and it bears repeating: even if the invocation (invocatione) used in baptism was perfectly lawful, if there was no accompanying profession (praedicationis), then the baptized person could neither participate in the Eucharist nor baptize others. The baptismal invocation, even if spoken correctly, was not enough. The invocation (invocatione) and the profession (praedicationis) had to match. Stephen’s acceptance of heretical baptisms was not only wrong, but dangerous.

To illustrate the absurdity and the danger of Stephen’s position, Firmilian had a ready example from recent memory. A Montanist woman who had retained her belief in the heretical godhead of Montanus and Prisca, was nevertheless baptized with the standard invocation (invocatione). What is more, she offered the Eucharist and baptized others, all without a valid profession (praedicationis) of faith. It was a debacle of enormous proportions, and Stephen had not thought through the consequences:

I wish to relate to you some facts concerning a circumstance which occurred among us, pertaining to this very matter. About two-and-twenty years ago … there arose among us on a sudden a certain woman, who in a state of ecstasy announced herself as a prophetess, and acted as if filled with the Holy Ghost. … [T]hat woman, … among other things by which she had deceived many, also had frequently dared this: with a valid invocation (ut et invocatione non contemptibili) she sanctified bread and celebrated the Eucharist, and pretended (simularet) to offer sacrifice to the Lord, without the usual sacred profession (sine sacramento solitae praedicationis); and also to baptize many, making use of the usual and lawful words of interrogation, that nothing might seem to be different from the ecclesiastical rule. (To Cyprian, from Firmilian, Epistle 74, paragraph 9; for the original Latin, see the Perseus Digital Library, here)

It is not at all difficult to understand Firmilian’s concern. The heretic woman had been baptized with the correct invocation (invocatione), but without the accompanying profession (praedicationis), and had deceived many by imitating the Christian Eucharist offering, and baptizing others with “the usual and lawful words of interrogation,” giving the impression that everything was being done in proper order. But it was not done properly at all. Even though she had been baptized with a lawful invocation (invocatione non contemptibili), there had been no accompanying profession (praedicationis) of Christ. She had made a mockery of the faith and to Firmilian’s horror, Stephen appeared to have no problem with that.

We have walked through this simple recollection from Firmilian to illustrate just how obvious it is—from start to finish—that Firmilian was concerned with the error of holding to a lawful baptismal invocation (invocatione) without an accompanying baptismal profession (praedicationis), something that had been required since the days of the Apostles. That is the context of Firmilian’s letter. The invocatione refers to the baptismal invocation, and the praedicationis refers to the baptismal profession.

If the reader is wondering why we have repeatedly emphasized the link between the invocation (invocatione) and the consistent profession (praedicationis), it is because Firmilian himself made that connection as the foundation of his argument against Stephen. It is the basis of his entire objection. If one does not first understand Firmilian’s concern, the example he offers will not make sense either.

But the presence of the word “invocation” in such close proximity to the word “Eucharist” has tempted the medieval apologist beyond what he can bear. By decontextualizing Firmilian’s letter, and through some very creative editing, Firmilian is made to describe the consecration (invocation) of the Elements prior to the Eucharistic offering. According to that reading, both the lawful invocation (invocatione non contemptibili) in reference to the baptismal invocation, and the missing sacred profession (sacramento solitae praedicationis) in reference to the heretic’s missing baptismal profession, are assumed to refer to the Consecration of the Eucharist. Firmilian is thus made to read as if, in the middle of a discourse on the baptismal invocation, he changed midstream and started talking about the Consecration of the elements of the Supper:

“to pretend that with an invocation [the consecration] not to be contemned she sanctified bread and celebrated the Eucharist, and to offer sacrifice to the Lord, without the sacrament of the accustomed utterance [the consecration].”

But such a reading immediately presents a problem to the apologist. How could the heretic woman both speak a valid Consecration (i.e., “an invocation not to be contemned“) and not speak a valid Consecration (i.e., “without the sacrament of the accustomed utterance“)? Firmilian thus seems to say the woman performed a valid consecration “without” a valid consecration. That hardly makes sense, but it is clearly the result of the apologist’s attempt to interpret “invocation” and “profession” outside of Firmilian’s plainly baptismal context. The inconsistency, however, is no barrier to the apologist intent on conforming Firmilian’s liturgy to the medieval offering of Consecrated bread and wine. And so the pencils come out, and Firmilian is creatively edited to satisfy the medieval predilection of the apologist. With a discreet editorial marking, the Latin “non” is added to the text, so Firmilian is now made consistent with the decontextualized interpretation that has been forced upon him. Now his comment is made to read:

“to pretend that with an invocation not to be contemned she sanctified bread and celebrated the Eucharist, and to offer sacrifice to the Lord, not without the sacrament of the accustomed utterance” (See this rendering here)

There. That’s better. Now Firmilian is consistent with the apologist who has taken the liberty of redacting his testimony. As G. A. Michell explained in his 1954 article, Firmilian and the Eucharistic Consecration,

The word non is not in the manuscripts, but it seems to be generally agreed that the sense of the passage as a whole requires its insertion. Whatever the true reading may be, the main argument of this paper is unaffected, since Firmilian clearly regarded the sacramentum solitae praedicationis as important. (The Journal of Theological Studies, October 1954, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 2 (October 1954), pp. 215-220, emphasis added)

Yes, Firmilian believed the praedicationis” was important, as he made abundantly clear throughout his letter to Cyprian. The “praedicationis” is the profession of faith that ought to have accompanied the baptismal invocation, but had not. This much is obvious by simple inspection. Only by interpreting both the “invocatione” and the “praedicationis” to refer to the Epiclesis did a contradiction even manifest in Firmilian’s letter. No, it is not “the sense of the passage” that requires the insertion of an editorial “non“. It is the creative imagination of the apologist that requires it.

For centuries after Firmilian clearly explained that he was talking about the baptismal invocation, and the necessary consistency of the requisite baptismal profession, and the problem with offering the Eucharistic tithe offering in unbelief, apologists of every stripe have deceptively reconstructed his argument to make him say that the heretical woman’s real problem was that she had presumed to offer the Eucharist with a valid Consecration! This has the effect of collapsing Firmilian’s Eucharist into the Epiclesis, and gives the appearance that he believed in a liturgical offering of consecrated bread and wine.

With that fabricated argument in hand, the apologist then notices that Firmilian was Origen’s disciple, and recalls that the evidence for an equivalent liturgical offering of consecrated elements was lacking in Origen (as we showed above). Not to worry. Firmilian must have received his Eucharistic liturgy from Origen, and therefore, Origen, must have taught the offering of Consecrated bread and wine to Firmilian. By this means, the testimony of Firmilian, twisted beyond recognition by the advocates of a medieval liturgy, is then turned back on Origen to prove that Origen’s Eucharist offering must have been consecrated!

Recall, as we noted above, that Kilmartin, S.J., collapsed Origen’s Eucharist into his Epiclisis, claiming, “Origen … views the prayer of thanksgiving as the occasion for the consecration of the elements.” He had no proof for the statement, except that in his opinion it was “probably” true. But there was one thing more: Firmilian’s eucharistic liturgy from his letter to Cyprian, now abused and contorted by the scholars, translators and apologists, could be used to support Kilmartin’s anachronistic interpretation of Origen:

[Origen] probably refers to the prayer as a whole. The epiclesis of consecration mentioned by Firmilian, pupil of Origen, should also be interpreted in the same direction; cf. Cyprian’s correspondence … (Kilmartin, 281n (emphasis added))

But in truth Firmilian had actually mentioned no “epiclesis of consecration” in his letter to Cyprian, and therefore he cannot be used to show that Origen taught him a consecrated Eucharist offering after the epiclesis. Firmilian had been referring to the baptismal invocation, as even a cursory reading of the letter reveals. But the actual evidence is rarely an obstacle to the apologist who needs and wants to find an abominable medieval Eucharistic offering of Christ’s body and blood in the early church. The evidence works consistently against him, but the Roman apologist is indefatigable. Without evidence for his abominable sacrifice, his religion is shown to be the late-4th century novelty that it truly is.

And that is indeed the sorry state of affairs of studies into the ancient liturgy. What cannot be found to support the medieval novelty is imported into the evidence by discreet footnotes, assumptions, anachronisms, editorial license and adjustments to the data until it finally complies with the predispostion of the apologist. Such is the irresistible Delusion of the Presumption of Apostolic Continuity.

We will continue this series in our next post as we analyze the rewriting of the liturgies of Cornelius of Rome (250 A.D.), Cyprian of Carthage (253 A.D.) and Dionysius of Alexandria (256 A.D.). We will show how the translators, historians, and apologists—by footnotes, misreadings, and anachronism—have rewritten and reinterpreted the ancient writers to collapse their Eucharist into their Epiclesis, forcing upon them retroactively an alien sacrifice of consecrated bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.