God's Milk: An Orthodox Confession of the Eucharist

The Odes of Solomon and early orthodox Christianity compared a believer's reception of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist to a child suckling at its mother's breast. This appears to have been connected with the wide-spread use of a cup of milk and honey in the baptismal eucharist, a visual aid to explain the Lord's nurturing presence in the sacrament. The milk analogy did not stem from symbolic uses of milk in pre-Christian religions or Gnosticism but from general beliefs about physiology coupled with Christian sacramental theology. The feminine characteristics of the milk analogy had no significant effect on orthodox beliefs about the Godhead nor did they cause the analogy to fall out of favor at a later date. Instead, as liturgical use of the cup of milk began to disappear, so did the milk analogy.