Not exactly generational, since the doctrine of the Real Presence was not a controversy in the Early Church - nearly everything else was, including iconoclasm, Nestorianism, Arianism, Monothelitism, and more obscure errors such as Apthartodocetism (which is not the same as Docetism or even really related to it but was rather an anti-Theopaschite movement embraced by Emperor Justinian after he stopped pursuing reunification with the Oriental Orthodox and instead unleashed a massive persecution of them), and many other issues. Indeed of the ancient sects the only one to deny the real presence was the Messalians, whose views on worship were similar to those of the early Quakers, albeit more extreme.
Rather, the rejection of the Real Presence among otherwise liturgical Christians began during the Reformation, among Calvinists and Zwinglians, but not the Lutherans, or many Anglicans of the High Church variety (including all of the non-juring Scottish Episcopalians, who removed the Black Rubric and inserted the Epiclesis from the Divine Liturgy of St. James) but amusingly enough, even the Calvinists believed in the Real Presence in a spiritual way, just not in a physical way, and Calvinists, Anglicans and even Zwinglians believed the Eucharist was essential for salvation, they simply denied the real presence.
The idea of baptism and the Eucharist as not being a means of grace but as mere ordinances, or worse, as optional, emerged first among the Radical Reformation such as the Anabaptists, and later among the Quakers with their semi-Messalianism and among related movements, and then became more widely believe due to the growth of Restoratoinist churches such as the Adventists and the New Thought movement (Christian Science), the latter rejecting the sacraments altogether.
You are correct that the inability of Christians to come to an agreement about the Eucharist is tragic, but your timeline is wrong, since the Twelve Apostles were not in error in interpreting it literally, and nothing in the Scriptural sense suggests they were; the idea that they are is frankly scandalous, and it also contradicts the texts of the Institution Narrative. Christ our God did not say “this symbolizes my body” or “This is a memorial of my body” or even in the case of Receptionists “this will become my body when you put it in your mouth” but rather “This is my Body”, which is why Martin Luther to his credit carved that in a table at the Marburg Colloquy, as my Lutheran friends
@MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis and
@Ain't Zwinglian will confirm.
”Do this in remembrance of me” is further misunderstood by those unacquainted with the original Greek. The Greek word translated as remembrance, anamnesis, has the sense of recapitulation; literally it means something akin to “Put yourself in this moment.” What it signifies is that in the Eucharist, we participate in the Last Supper with Christ and His Disciples, which is why the sacrament is called Holy Communion, because we are in communion with the entire church Triumphant and Militant through that action.
Thus, the minority of Christians who have rejected the Eucharist and Baptism since the 16th century are in error, which is tragic; their beliefs are not those of the early church (as is attested by all liturgical texts and commentaries on the Eucharist going back to the Didache and St. Justin Martyr, and including the various ancient anaphoras such as that of Addai and Mari, and of the Church in Alexandria, with second century attestation, the Anaphora of the Apostoles, included by St. Hippolytus of Rome in his Apostolic Tradition, which in various forms has always been used in Antioch and Ethiopia, being the basis for the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and under the belief, probably inaccurate, that it was once used in Rome (it seems probable that St. Hippolytus included it because then, as now, the Antiochian liturgy was the most common in general, since what we now call the Roman Canon if related to any anaphora was related to that of Alexandria, but is very possibly an isolate, and was clearly in use in the fourth century and probably the third based on other evidence, and the Roman church back then was extremely conservative, usually being the last church to adopt any new liturgical practice, so the idea that they would switch Eucharistic prayers is not credible, but this did not stop Annibale Bugnini from including a modified version of the abbreviated form of the anaphora in the Novus Ordo Missae of 1969 which in turn was copied by several liberal mainline Protestant churches in the disastrous liturgical reforms of the 1970s and 80s, but that is another matter.
My point is that all ancient liturgical texts, and all church fathers, from St. John Chrysostom and his friend Theodore of Mopsuestia (who is sometimes claimed to have not believed in the real presence, but he did, he just had a strange idea about how the consecration occurred*.
The belief is also adhered to by nearly all Lutherans and by most High Church Anglicans (indeed many would say a belief in the Real Presence is a key indicator of the altitude of one’s Anglican churchmanship) such as my friends
@Jipsah and
@Shane R.
Nor, even among those Protestants who reject a belief in the Real Presence is the belief that the Eucharist is not salvific universal - many Reformed theologians regard it as a means of grace and believe Christ is spiritually present, if not physically present.
But if one finds oneself lamenting that the twelve disciples remained loyal to our Lord because they interpreted what He said in John 6 literally - that should be a red flag that one’s beliefs are extreme even by the standards of Baptists and other non-sacramental Christians.
* For the benefit of other members reading this post who have a genuine interest in the liturgy such as my Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox friends
@ViaCrucis @MarkRohfrietsch @Jipsah @Shane R @prodromos @FenderTL5 @jas3 @Ain't Zwinglian @chevyontheriver @Michie and
@fhansen - what Theodore of Mopsuestia believed might amuse you or bemuse you on some level. Specifically he believed that the Prothesis, the Liturgy of Preparation, which is a major part of the Eastern liturgy, where the Lamb (the bread to be consecrated), whether leavened or in the case of the Armenians, unleavened, is prepared, which is publicly a part of the Coptic liturgy but happens before the public celebration in the Byzantine Rite, but is nonetheless accessible in various ways for those who want to see it and not some kind of secret, had the effect of transforming the bread into the crucified body of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, and then the Epiclesis, which is again a major part of the Eastern Eucharist but a very minor part of most Western liturgies, aside from those of Scottish Episcopal heritage (which would in theory include the Episcopal Church USA, since they have in all official American editions of the Book of Common Prayer honored the promise made to the Non-Juring Episcopalians who ordained Bishop Seabury to always include the Epiclesis, which the Non Jurors obtained through translating a Greek manuscript of the Divine Liturgy of St. James), had the effect of changing the crucified body and blood of our Lord into His resurrected Body and Blood. Needless to say this is a very unusual belief, and is not the official doctrine even in the churches most influenced by Theodore of Mopsuestia, the East Syriac churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church and certain of the Mar Thoma churches.
