Moved here from notes/reasoning/eucharist.md in the tier migration. The per-question reasoning now lives on each doctrine’s reasoning page: S04.1 · S05.1 · S04.2.

Eucharist: reasoning steps

Verdicts: categories/eucharist.md. Weighing criteria as in justification reasoning: Scripture in context and original language; each father’s polemical setting; date and breadth of witness; explicit beats inferred; unverified texts carry no weight.

Post-750 development by tradition

Catholic

Trent XIII ch. 4 (Waterworth, verified): “a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ”. Trent XXII ch. 2 (ct22, verified): the Mass “is truly propitiatory”; “that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner”. Matches E1 and E2. E3 is sharpened with substance metaphysics, which is a later precision.

Orthodox

Dositheus Decree 17 (crivoice, verified): “the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself”, and the presence is not “by impanation … as the followers of Luther”. Matches E1 and E2. Dositheus adopts Latin terms (accidents), while Orthodox writers more widely prefer John of Damascus’s “manner unsearchable” (to verify).

Lutheran

Augsburg Confession X (bookofconcord.org, verified): “the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat”. Matches E1. Rejects a propitiatory sacrifice (AC XXIV, to verify), which departs on E2. On E3 it does not hold a change of the elements.

Presbyterian

WCF XXIX (opc.org, verified). §2: “Christ is not offered up to his Father; nor any real sacrifice made at all … but only a commemoration”. §7: “not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers”. Departs from the fathers on E1 (the realist texts) and E2; it can claim Augustine’s sign language only in part.

Presbyterian: additional cells (nine-tradition expansion)

• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a/4): WCF XXIX.6: transubstantiation ‘repugnant … to common sense’.

Oriental Orthodox

Sources: Oriental Orthodox confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 4/4; Scripture 4/4): Armenian Badarak: ’let us taste of the holy, holy and precious body and blood of our Lord … This is life, hope of resurrection, propitiation and remission of sins’ (verified).
• E2 (fathers 4/4; Scripture 2/4): Armenian Badarak: ‘Son of God, Who art sacrificed to the Father for reconciliation’; Nerses Shnorhali calls it ’the Holy Sacrifice’ (verified).
• E3 (fathers 4/4; Scripture n/a/4): Real change, mode undefined (to verify).

Anglican

Sources: Anglican confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 2/4; Scripture 3/4): Art. XXVIII: ’the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ’, ‘only after an heavenly and spiritual manner’.
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): Art. XXXI: ’the sacrifices of Masses … were blasphemous fables’.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a/4): Art. XXVIII: transubstantiation ‘repugnant to the plain words of Scripture’.

Reformed Baptist

Sources: Reformed Baptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 2/4): 1689 30.7: Christ ‘spiritually present to the faith of believers’.
• E2 (fathers 0/4; Scripture 3/4): 1689 30.2: ’nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin’, ‘only a memorial’.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a/4): 1689 30.6 rejects transubstantiation.

General Baptist

Sources: General Baptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 2/4): SC 1660 art. 13: ‘breaking of Bread’ (no doctrine of presence stated; Orthodox Creed 33 to verify).
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): No sacrifice language (SC 1660 art. 13).
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a/4): No change taught.

Anabaptist

Sources: Anabaptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 1/4): Dordrecht X: kept ‘in remembrance of Him’; Menno: ‘a living and an affecting sign’ (verified).
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): Dordrecht X: remembrance only.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a/4): No change taught.