Historical critical scholarship has often posited a radical disjuncture between the New Testament and early catholic theological and doctrinal development. In the case of Mark and Irenaeus, such a disjunctive reading is surely unwarranted.
This paper will explore Irenaeus of Lyon’s 2nd century understanding of Eucharist in relation to a historical and theological reading of Mark’s Gospel, especially the first feeding narrative cycle (Mark 6:30-52). Irenaeus contends, most particularly in books IV and V of Adversus haeresus, that the union of divine spirit and flesh in the humanity of Jesus and its replication in the Eucharistic bread serves as primary refutation of docetic heretics. Jesus was, and his Eucharistic body is, fully a part of creation in contrast to only a spiritual entity.
A close reading of Mark 6:30-52 links Jesus’ walking on the water and stilling the storm (Mark 6:45-52) to the first ritual feeding narrative (6:30-44). Following Jesus’ walking upon the water Mark informs the reader that “they [the disciples] did not comprehend the loaves?” (6:52). The reader is therefore required to posit a connection between the appearance on the water and the Eucharist. Jesus’ divine domination of chaos (walking on water) coupled with a human climbing into a boat explains the reality of miraculously multiplying loaves and fully human eating. Indeed Mark’s gospel is replete with incidents of Jesus touching and eating most likely aimed at the refutation of a docetic Christology. Hence Mark’s understanding of Eucharist, the body of Christ divine and human (Mark 14:22), is perhaps the controlling theology of the narrative presentation of Jesus; an understanding quite similar to Irenaeus explanation of Eucharist a century later.
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