4 - Christ our Passover: a proposal

Summary

In his work The Shape of the Liturgy, Dom Gregory Dix surveys how churches in the post-apostolic period understood the idea of eucharistic sacrifice. Although this once influential work has been subjected to searching critique, Dix's comments at this point seem sound. The writings of Clement, Justin, and Hippolytus make it possible to conclude, Dix states, that already by the last quarter of the first century, the eucharist was generally seen, in some sense, as a sacrifice. The liturgical traditions, as they can now be reconstructed, are somewhat localized, but the existing evidence points in one direction. “All we can say,” writes Dix, “is that every one of these local traditions at the earliest point at which extant documents permit us to interrogate it, reveals the same general understanding of the eucharist as an ‘oblation’ (prosphora) or ‘sacrifice’ (thusia) – something offered to God; and that the substance of the sacrifice is in every case in some sense the bread and the cup.” Though variations exist within it, the sacrificial idea of the eucharist was the rule. “There is no exception whatever,” states Dix, “in any Christian tradition in the second century and no hint of an alternative understanding anywhere.”

“Just how early the idea of sacrifice was applied to Christian worship, specifically to the eucharist, is the subject of controversy,” notes Jaroslav Pelikan.