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gtsecc said:RCC, Anglican, and Orthodox make up about 75% to 80% of all Christians in the world and hold that Christ is really present in the Eucharist.
Rilian said:gtsecc, unfortunately for Anglicans (and I speak from experience), that is not uniformly true.
Xpycoctomos said:Rilian... why is it illogical to believe that the Eucharist is fully the body and blood of Christ while still believing that it holds onto its original properties of bread and wine?
gtsecc said:Wow, that is a Real Problem. Without getting too far off the subject, I just want to say that while maybe some don't believe it, the official Anglican position is we believe Christ is really present in the Eucharist. My point is not to promulgate Anglican doctrine though, it is to let the OP know that if you add up all confessions - Lutheran, Anglican, RCC, and Orthodox you get 80% of all Christians or more, and while they might use different language they all hold that Christ is present in the Eucharist and that it is not symbolic.
Xpycoctomos said:Rilian... why is it illogical to believe that the Eucharist is fully the body and blood of Christ while still believing that it holds onto its original properties of bread and wine?
Rilian said:What would you call adoration or veneration of the unconsecrated elements? The answer is in the answer to that question.
The Eucharist is not a mere symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Eucharist is not a mere "spiritual presence" in bread and wine. It is not bread + wine + Christ.
Eucharist Terminology: Transubstantiation
"Transubstantiation" is a term coined by the scholastic theological tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. Owing to the contacts with the West, Orthodoxy sometimes picked up on such terminology and used it to express the Orthodox understanding of what the Holy Trinity does during the DIvine LIturgy to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This was especially true of the Kyivan Baroque period where St Peter Mohyla, Metropolitan of Kyiv, tended to use borrowed western phraseology in his Catechism and elsewhere. This is why Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko used the term "Transubstantiation." Ohienko was a great scholar of Orthodox history and antiquity and was well acquainted with the theological terminology of the Baroque period.
Transubstantiation is weak terminology because of its rationalist underpinnings. Transustantiation says that the "substance" of the bread and wine are changed, but that the "accidents" i.e. the physical appearance of the bread and wine remain. There is already a problem here with separating, in theoria, the substance and the accidents, or, to put it another way, to began talking about the two as separate entities. There is a real pit-fall in that when we talk about the accidents, the physical qualities of bread that remain after the Eucharistic Change occurs, there is the seemingly unavoidable suggestion made that the bread itself remains. How else can we identify the bread if not through its qualities? And if the qualities remain unchanged, then the substance of bread must somehow also remain -- now we are really in deep trouble and have fallen into the heresy of "consubstantiation" the idea that the Body and Blood of Christ "co-exist" with the bread and the wine. Martin Luther believed in consubstantiation as a possible explanation, but he didn't condemn transubstantiation either which is why either position is acceptable in Lutheranism today. I think that there is a sense in which transubstantiation leads one into consubstantiation which is why "transmutation" is a better term, as Fr. Brygidyr, speaking from within the best traditions of Orthodoxy, states.
Transmutation doesn't get us into the unnecessary and rationalistic positions of neatly defined categories etc. such as accidents and substance. It simply posits that the reality of the bread and wine is changed after the last "Amen" is said following the Epiclesis and the Eucharistic Canon. It doesn't get into the "how" of the change. It is, unfortunately, very typical of the Western scholastic tradition to want to know "how" such as, for example, "how does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and remain distinct from the Son who is Only-Begotten?" The "Filioque" was therefore a rationalistic - and unscriptural - way of responding to this rationalistic question. This has led to all kinds of problems in the Roman Catholic church which it has yet to overcome, even with the Second Vatican Council (some would say "especially with").
The Eastern Orthodox Church, like the Catholic Church, teaches that the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ. (Although the four-syllable word "metabole"/"metavole" may be loosely said to be "Greek Orthodox for 'transubstantiation'", it actually means "change" or "alteration". Greek for "transubstantiation" as in "an alteration specifically of the fundamental substance or essence" in the Roman Catholic sense would be "metousiosis".) Orthodox theologians have tended to refrain from philosophical reflections such as those of the Medieval Scholastics. Rather, they prefer to refer to the Eucharist as a "mystery", with the full understanding beyond human comprehension, which is also an expression used freely among Catholics. [1] Most Orthodox theologians would prefer to say too little about the details and remain firmly within Holy Tradition, than say too much and possibly deviate from the truth.
Xpycoctomos said:I do not sanction this website as a good or bad Orthodox website. i know nothing of it. I posted it merely because Alex Roman (the author) made a good, logical point that I had a hard time putting into words.
Xpycoctomos said:who said anything about unconcecrated?
Rilian said:What's most curious is even though the site says "Ukrainian Orthodoxy", the author in question is in fact a Ukrainian Catholic.
Marjorie said:That site is written by an Eastern Catholic???
I did not know that at all...
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