Ishtar-Sunday was a pagan festival in honor of the Sun god. Nisan the 14th came from the Biblical OT practice, and was carried over by many Jewish believers, and perhaps some gentiles who fellowshipped with them. Ultimately; Paul said not to judge over these days; but if you want to talk about "apostolic tradition"; it would lean in favor of the Jewish practice! Such observances were annual; where does it ever say to copy the day of the week for an annual festival?
Also; wasn't Irenaeus further along in the second century than Polycarp? In any case; it is recognized that both Rome as well as Alexandria were the leaders in breaking away from the Biblical Hebrew preactices and substituting gentile ones. Perhaps this comes from them being centers of paganism and pagan philosophy, respectively.
Obviously, Satan counterfeited God's plans, as knowledge of God in the world was buried by idols and rituals. Man knew deep down inside that he needed a dying savior; and only God could clearly reveal (restore) the whole truth of that.
But that's still assuming that they spiritual metaphors they (incl. the earliest fathers as I showed) used were references to some "Real presense" in the elements themselves (when the real presence was really in the body of believers; in us!
The point is; they weren't "proto-Zwinglians"; as if that was a developed theology. Like the Trinity and others you cite; it becomes developed in reaction to error. With all the other issues in the Church; it took time for there to be a complete sweeping clean of all these teachings that had come to be long accepted.
The Gospel was the good news of salvation by Christ. This was maintained to some extent; but became buried beneath all of these other trappings. The fact that the Gospel still existed int he Bible was the reason that small groups could discover it and break away from the big church.
You are taking a technical dictionary definition of "mystical". So OK, anything "spiritual" is "mystical" in that sense. But, as you show, it has taken on a negative sense in the modern skeptical world that believes that only what you can see and touch is "real". But believers in God's spiritual truths see them as "real", so "mysticism" to us has taken on a meaning of such spiritual truths that are not apart of God's truths, and are often done under false religion, with the invisibility of them used to deceive because you can't prove/disprove it. Of course; this can be leveled at Christianity; but the misuse of it does not mean there is no right use of it, and a right use of it does not prove that any claim to it is therefore allowable. The Bible has to be the final auhority there. (And ironically enough; many of those same skeptics in science and pop culture are now accepting non-Christian notions of "spirituality"!)
Once again; the difference here is that the true "spiritual presence" in Communion is in us, the spiritual Body of Christ; just like the true salvific power of baptism is immersion into the spiritual Boby of Christ. To put such a focus on the physical elements used, is to miss the true spiritual reality, and just create more idols, as idolatry came about because man could not deal with a spiritual God, and had to deal with things they could see and touch. Once again; this is not to put down the physical (as the opposite extreme in paganism--gnosticism, often did); but it must be put in its proper perspective. To give it power in itself is to make gods out of it.
I did give scriptural, contextual proof of it (a meal by which one could be gluttonous). Look even at the biblical name "communion", which means gathering or fellowshipping together, which is what Christians do whenever they meet. And that has nothing to do with the 16th century interpretation, as even that makes a special ceremony with special food when this theory says that communion is a common meal.
then, once again, these councils and creeds should be canonized as apart of scared scripture; meaning apart of any/every "Bible" you pick up. But we do not. Why the separation, then? Could this be from a retrospective attempt to justify the terms and traditions when they are accused of deviating from scripture? And once again; you have to deal with the question of when the Holy Spirit stopped inspiring? 4th century? fifth century? Whenever the last council was? The split in 1054? Or only the 16th century when rationalism took over?
The issue is this "from/by" and "in time" distinction. If you look at the the Godhead as a whole, then the Spirit is proceeding from the whole Godhead; which includes the Son. So He can say that He is the one who sends the Spirit. From our perspective; the Spirit is coming from the Son as much as from the Father. This parallels the problem in the West I discuss on my page on the Trinity: http://members.aol.com/etb700/triune.html
"Where the East, following the Cappadocian Fathers, started from the threeness, thinking of each hypostasis as the whole (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration, 40:41), the West, following Augustine, started from the divine unity (the mysterious "substance") and then was left trying to figure out how the Three hypostases fit in. THIS is precisely the root of the problem in the West. Looking through history, we see that the West is where all of the later problems with it arose, with dissenters like Servetus, the Socinians, the Unitarians, and now the 'kingdom of the cults'. The East never experienced all of this dissent over the doctrine. And the Eastern fathers, while regarding Augustine as a great father, were still mistrustful of his Trinitarian theology. It too, like Arianism, was seen as making God seem too rational and anthropomorphic."
So you could see why the East would emphasize the Father only; while the West would lump both together and say Father and Son. And I acknowledge there that the East has a point over the West in that. Still; using traditions and the creedal definitions; the West could still justify its addition. It is basically a matter of perspective, but the symmetrical nature of the creeds (three equal coeternal hypostases) compared with the less symmetrical expression of the earlier fathers (Which emphasized the Father as source, with Son and Spirit proceeding from them in time; --only the non-incarnate Word proceeding eternally) is what gave the West its interpretation. It was the same line of reasoning you are using here. God must have inspired it through His church leadership; despite other parts of the Church not recognizing it. How can you pick and choose what you believe God inspired?
