More on Communion

I asked Dr. Bates today about Augustine's position on Communion. (As he did his doctoral thesis on Augustine, he's a perfectly spiffin person to ask these things!) Augustine held that the bread and the wine are symbolic, but the symbols go with the grace which God bestows. It's not transubstantiation, where the elements turn into the body and blood and therefore bestow grace automatically. It's also not the pure symbolism view. In the words of Dr. Bates, "He's astonishingly Protestant."

That's probably an incoherent way of expressing it, but it makes sense to me...