The Physical Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

[Roymond]

Also I have to say if the Romans did make a mistake in seeking to explain the Real Change, I nonetheless empathize with them for making it.

I’m going to reject the idea that Transubstantiation was inherently a disaster or a doctrinal error on a par with the rejection of the real presence. Roman Catholics believe in Eucharistic miracles that require the Real Presence as much as anyone, so transubstantiation has clearly not adversely impacted their conceptual understanding of the mystery, even though the idea seems to be technically inadequete insofar as it relies on Aristotelian categories.*

*That said, I am sure one of our Roman Catholic friends can explain to me why the numerous Eucharistic miracles would not require transaccidentiation in addition to Transubstantiation. Perhaps my reading of Aristotelian accidents as understood in Scholastic-Thomistic theology “perceptual attributes” or “apparent sensory experience” is erroneous or a mischaracterization. This is a complex technical question of the sort that really requires someone well versed in the field of Scholastic Theology to address, which I am not.

{Weird -- the multiquote function is misbehaving; it kept giving multiple copies of the top quote and none of the bottom; I had to shut down my browser and start again to get both quotes, and now it insists on putting them in the wrong order!}

I was comparing the severity of the error, just that both occurred due to imposing human philosophy on the scriptures. The more I study church history, especially the battles over heresies, the more I recognize that every single major error that has been made has come from trying to force the scriptures to fit some human philosophy. The degree of error doesn't correlate well with the depth of the particular human philosophy that spawned it; the degree of error tends to be matched more to how much the particular human philosophy relates to and impacts the Incarnation and/or the Trinity.

Though a Russian Orthodox priest I knew (who later left that church and was installed as a Lutheran pastor/priest [not re-ordained; the Lutherans acknowledged the Orthodox ordination as valid]) insisted that transubstantiation was a form of Docetism, pointing out how the early church -- or at least many of the Fathers -- regarded denial of the Sacrament to be denial of the Incarnation (though usually the denial of the Sacrament entailed a denial of the divinity, not of the manhood). He made a long and detailed argument that to deny that the elements can and do retain their own substance in the Sacrament is a denial that God is capable of making the heavenly united with the earthly.

Anyway, that "reli[ance] on Aristotelian categories" led to other, and more substantial, errors in doctrine than transubstantiation --which i'm not even going to try to address since I only ever studied scholasticism for three weeks in a history of (Western) theology class plus I haven't picked up my text of Aristotle's works in almost a quarter century. I will just add that I think that your view of “apparent sensory experience” is accurate as far as Thomas goes; I actually heard a pious argument that of course it isn't bread we're chewing or wine we're drinking, since those would distract us from the actual substance of the Sacrament (can't recall if that was from a Benedictine or a Dominican, but it struck me as an example of pasting meaning on something more than expounding something).

Thinking of Eucharistic miracles, when receiving the Eucharist (at a Lutheran congregation) bestowed healing on a girl in my college class a discussion about the nature of the Sacrament resulted. When transubstantiation was brought up, one of the older students stated that if transubstantiation were correct, then she didn't get a real healing, only the accidents of one. It got a good laugh but it was also a point to be considered, and a question about it got asked in a theology class. The professor didn't address the substance much at all, but took the opportunity to point out how when the scripture presents a mystery, our response should not be to analyze and explain, only to rejoice and celebrate.

 

[Roymond]

My question is , "if the perceptions of bread and wine can almost be considered somewhat illusory, in what sense do they become "Body and Blood"? My answer is, "in the sense of what they mean to us." The platonic forms of some kind of transcendental yet physical substance doesn't sound practical to me.

But that's a view that just can't be found in the first millennium and two-fifths (or more) of church history. The constant theme through those centuries was that just as at Creation God commanded light into existence, and light then existed because of that command, then when God said "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" then that is what those items were. To say that the elements become Body and Blood "in the sense of what they mean to us" would have been regarded as a denial of the Incarnation because that position denies the power of the creative Word. There was also a point about the Passover, since Paul refers to Jesus as "our Passover", meaning our Passover lamb: the point of the Paschal lamb was that it was eaten, it didn't just supply blood and then sit on the table, and so if/since Jesus is the Lamb of God and thus "our Passover", then we must eat Him.

 

[Roymond]

Good digressing! One of the benefits of being in the Greek is realizing some of the things you mention, including how translators normally working in teams with a goal towards publishing for large audiences will soften things. I for one enjoy the unedited realities of seeing how God really views things and how writers like John bring out levels of thought. Also, as you note, the Hebrew background of so much in the Text is just another layer of seeing the Truth of what's there.

Good stuff! Thanks!

Layers of truth....

I had a professor of New Testament Studies who got his PhD studying the word καί in the first half of the Gospel of John (and then studied the same word in Mark's Gospel in post-doc work). He used to regularly remind us that to think of καί as just being a substitute for "and" blinded us to a lot of meaning, saying that if we only read it as "and" without trying to consider its own actual range of meaning instead of breaking it down into potential English words we would miss more than one layer of meaning....

And that's just a 'simple' conjunction!

 

[GDL]

Layers of truth....

I had a professor of New Testament Studies who got his PhD studying the word καί in the first half of the Gospel of John (and then studied the same word in Mark's Gospel in post-doc work). He used to regularly remind us that to think of καί as just being a substitute for "and" blinded us to a lot of meaning, saying that if we only read it as "and" without trying to consider its own actual range of meaning instead of breaking it down into potential English words we would miss more than one layer of meaning....

And that's just a 'simple' conjunction!

Agreed. I've continued to work with the ascensive use of kai for instance and it creates some connections and explanations of concepts that open up these layers and meanings we're discussing which in turn create new and expanded connections. It's quite the treasure we've been given to search out.

 

[The Liturgist]

He made a long and detailed argument that to deny that the elements can and do retain their own substance in the Sacrament is a denial that God is capable of making the heavenly united with the earthly.

That’s hugely problematic because it rests on a psuedo-Nestorian separation of the divine and human natures, which everyone (including the Oriental Orthodox, excluding Nestorians) agrees are hypostatically united without change, confusion, separation or division, because you have to divide the human from the divine nature for transubstantiation to be considered docetic.

Indeed, used in a purely anti-Nestorian capacity the term transubstantiation might be entirely correct without the hypothetical objection that I raised earlier that it is inadequate as it fails to explain miraculous instances when people have perceived the true nature of the elements. Of course, discarding a sacramental theology because it cannot explain the functioning of a miracle risks making me almost hyper-Scholastic, an irony which is not lost on me.

 

[The Liturgist]

My question is , "if the perceptions of bread and wine can almost be considered somewhat illusory, in what sense do they become "Body and Blood"? My answer is, "in the sense of what they mean to us." The platonic forms of some kind of transcendental yet physical substance doesn't sound practical to me.

Indeed.

My own conviction is that at the moment of consecration, the bread and wine have ceased to exist and been replaced by the Body and Blood of our Lord, which retain the former perceptual attributes as a mercy to us, analogous to the cloud of incense the High Priest is commanded to burn when entering the Holy of Holies lest he be destroyed, in Leviticus, or indeed a number of other Old Testament theophanies.

 

[The Liturgist]

But that's a view that just can't be found in the first millennium and two-fifths (or more) of church history. The constant theme through those centuries was that just as at Creation God commanded light into existence, and light then existed because of that command, then when God said "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" then that is what those items were. To say that the elements become Body and Blood "in the sense of what they mean to us"would have been regarded as a denial of the Incarnation because that position denies the power of the creative Word. There was also a point about the Passover, since Paul refers to Jesus as "our Passover", meaning our Passover lamb: the point of the Paschal lamb was that it was eaten, it didn't just supply blood and then sit on the table, and so if/since Jesus is the Lamb of God and thus "our Passover", then we must eat Him.

That’s true, but that being said since the practice of Eucharistic reservation for use in Lent appears to date to the fifth century and might well have originated with St. Severus of Antioch, who I greatly admire but many incorrectly identify as a monophysite (which is an erroneous mischaracterization of Oriental Orthodox theology, confusing them with the followers of Eutyches, who they excommunicated), I find it difficult to accept the Protestant-era argument that the Eucharist must be immediately consumed.

 

[The Liturgist]

Thinking of Eucharistic miracles, when receiving the Eucharist (at a Lutheran congregation) bestowed healing on a girl in my college class a discussion about the nature of the Sacrament resulted. When transubstantiation was brought up, one of the older students stated that if transubstantiation were correct, then she didn't get a real healing, only the accidents of one.

Oh that cracked me up.

 

[The Liturgist]

I will just add that I think that your view of “apparent sensory experience” is accurate as far as Thomas goes; I actually heard a pious argument that of course it isn't bread we're chewing or wine we're drinking, since those would distract us from the actual substance of the Sacrament (can't recall if that was from a Benedictine or a Dominican, but it struck me as an example of pasting meaning on something more than expounding something).

Interestingly that argument, regardless of whether it was made by a monk or a friar, is basically my position. The bread and wine are gone, they have been offered in the rational and bloodless sacrifice that is the Divine Liturgy, and in their place is the Body and Blood of the Lord. I reject on absolute terms Luther’s “in, with and under” argument although my respect for his etching “Hoc Est Corpus Meum” into the table when arguing with the Calvinists and Zwinglians, and for Lutherans in general whose Eucharistic piety is undiluted despite what I perceive as an accidental* denigration of the nature of the Sacrament, precludes me from referring to it as consubstantiation or impanation.

This objection aside, I greatly appreciate the epic reply you offered me and agree with many of your senitments concerning the seeming inadequecy of the Thomistic explanation. The difference is merely that my belief in the Real Presence is kind of maximalist and is arguably an extreme position, and possibly erroneous, hence I am extremely tolerant of a range of Real Presence doctrines. As long as one does not try to argue that Our Lord was not speaking literally in the Institution Narrative and that the bread and wine in some actual and non-symbolic sense are the body and blood of our Lord, I regard that as sufficient, even if I personally prefer to believe that the bread and wine have been entirely replaced.

*No pun intended, seriously, although after I wrote that sentence I realized that it might well look that way especially vis a vis my amusement at your quote of the Lutheran seminarian arguing that if transubstantiation was correct, the girl was healed in accidents.

 

[The Liturgist]

He made a long and detailed argument that to deny that the elements can and do retain their own substance in the Sacrament is a denial that God is capable of making the heavenly united with the earthly

Interestingly on reflection that argument is per se consubstantialism and may have contributed to his departure from Russian Orthodoxy. That or perhaps standing for two hours at a time every Saturday night and Sunday morning and on feast days and following the complex rubrics which often the cantor understands better than a conwertsy priest was a bit exhausting to him, which I can understand, although my own view of the liturgy is that I really like it long, the longer the better, and would not preach if I could get away with it (which I could, if I were a monastic priest since Orthodox hieromonks seldom preach except when the typikon requires them to recite, for example, the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, or its less well known Coptic equivalent attributed to St. Athanasius).

 

[Roymond]

That’s hugely problematic because it rests on a psuedo-Nestorian separation of the divine and human natures, which everyone (including the Oriental Orthodox, excluding Nestorians) agrees are hypostatically united without change, confusion, separation or division, because you have to divide the human from the divine nature for transubstantiation to be considered docetic.

I don't follow that. Transubstatiation divides the bread and wine from the Sacramental presence by saying they aren't real any more. Saying that the earthly part of the Sacrament isn't present any more is Docetic. Saying that the bread and wine aren't real any more has nothing to do with Christ's human nature because His human nature is one with the divine.

Indeed, used in a purely anti-Nestorian capacity the term transubstantiation might be entirely correct without the hypothetical objection that I raised earlier that it is inadequate as it fails to explain miraculous instances when people have perceived the true nature of the elements. Of course, discarding a sacramental theology because it cannot explain the functioning of a miracle risks making me almost hyper-Scholastic, an irony which is not lost on me.

 

[The Liturgist]

I don't follow that. Transubstatiation divides the bread and wine from the Sacramental presence by saying they aren't real any more. Saying that the earthly part of the Sacrament isn't present any more is Docetic. Saying that the bread and wine aren't real any more has nothing to do with Christ's human nature because His human nature is one with the divine.

The problem with that is that Docetism is specifically denying that our Lord is fully or even partially human and is instead entirely divine. If we look at the history of Docetism and the beliefs of the Docetae and related sects, it does not relate in any respect to the subtleties of the Real Presence.

In addition, transubtantiation does not assert the bread and wine are unreal but rather that their substance has changed while their accidents are preserved. In this respect it is extremely close to the Lutheran view which also insists the bread and wine remain and that our Lord is united with them.

So one could draw a continuum between the Lutheran view and the Catholic view and if I were more doctrinaire about it, my feeling that the bread and wine are a part of the rational and bloodless sacrifice and that once consecrated, that the Eucharist is the body and blood of our Lord, but I feel to do so would be divisive and that we should instead focus on a unitive belief linking Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans and Anglo Catholics and other high church Protestants centered around our common agreement that our Lord is truly physically present and that the Sacrament is a holy mystery.

I do understand the idea of a sentiment that the Lutheran and Orthodox views could be seen as closer to each other in a way, but the reverse argument could also be made, in that in some respects Orthodoxy and Catholicism are closer and in some respects Lutheranism and Catholicism are closer, so rather than stressing this unfortunate three-way schism, I propose that the focus should be on healing it by stressing the simple core underlying belief that closely unites all three in Eucharistic reverence.

Forgive me, therefore, in that I greatly appreciate your posts and do not seek to add to the division nor to attack your own interpretation. I cannot say I agree with the sentiments of the former Russian Orthodox priest, but conversely I was greatly amused by what the seminarian said who you quoted.

What I feel is important is that we defend our common reverence for the sacrament that unites so many of us in this thread.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

As long as one does not try to argue that Our Lord was not speaking literally in the Institution Narrative and that the bread and wine in some actual and non-symbolic sense are the body and blood of our Lord, I regard that as sufficient, even if I personally prefer to believe that the bread and wine have been entirely replaced.

I submit to the teaching but it makes no sense. I guess I am a bit of a nominalist. If the bread and wine are entirely replaced, what about them is different? Are we asked to believe that the substance of bread is some transcendent essence that is different than our conception of bread?

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

I submit to the teaching but it makes no sense. I guess I am a bit of a nominalist. If the bread and wine are entirely replaced, what about them is different? Are we asked to believe that the substance of bread is some transcendent essence that is different than our conception of bread?

(2) the substance of the bread and wine cease to exist there, with their accidents remaining, and the body of Christ begins to exist under those accidents;

His (William of Okham) response to the second position, i.e., transubstantiation, is that this is the common opinion of the theologians and that he holds it on account of the determination of the Church (determinationem Ecclesiae) and not because of any argument (non propter aliquam rationem).

https://www.anselm.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Institute%20of%20SA%20Studies/Ontology,%20Theology%20and%20the%20Eucharist%20-%20Thomas%20Aquinas%20and%20William%20of%20Ockham.pdf

 

[The Liturgist]

I submit to the teaching but it makes no sense. I guess I am a bit of a nominalist. If the bread and wine are entirely replaced, what about them is different? Are we asked to believe that the substance of bread is some transcendent essence that is different than our conception of bread?

Well I need to stress my view goes way beyond transubstantiation. So the Roman Catholic doctrine has the accidents of bread and wine remaining unchanged, whereas my private personal belief is that the bread and wine are entirely replaced. So I would argue the RC doctrine addresses your concerns, and I would hate to see you confused in your practice of Catholicism, which is one of my favorite Christian denominations, and one which I would have surely joined had Pope Benedict XVI remained in office, by my own private theologoumemna (theological opinions).

 

[Roymond]

I submit to the teaching but it makes no sense. I guess I am a bit of a nominalist. If the bread and wine are entirely replaced, what about them is different? Are we asked to believe that the substance of bread is some transcendent essence that is different than our conception of bread?

This is what happens when you try to force the scriptures to fit a human system of philosophy: things not only get weird, but they are a serious distraction. The whole "substance v accidents" conceptualization seems bizarre enough in ordinary matters; when applied to theology it results all too often in silliness.

 

[Roymond]

Well I need to stress my view goes way beyond transubstantiation. So the Roman Catholic doctrine has the accidents of bread and wine remaining unchanged, whereas my private personal belief is that the bread and wine are entirely replaced. So I would argue the RC doctrine addresses your concerns, and I would hate to see you confused in your practice of Catholicism, which is one of my favorite Christian denominations, and one which I would have surely joined had Pope Benedict XVI remained in office, by my own private theologoumemna (theological opinions).

In the terms of substance/accidents, if the bread and wine were "entirely replaced" then we wouldn't be seeing or tasting bread and wine.
It seems easier to just believe that when Paul called the bread bread and called the wine wine even after the consecration he meant what he said, so that in some wonderful way similar to the Incarnation the heavenly Savior comes to us in ordinary matter. After all, the Incarnation was about a lot more than just the Cross, it was also about uniting human nature to the divine and thus making it whole, which entailed uniting the divine to the mere material!

 

[Roymond]

Well I need to stress my view goes way beyond transubstantiation. So the Roman Catholic doctrine has the accidents of bread and wine remaining unchanged, whereas my private personal belief is that the bread and wine are entirely replaced. So I would argue the RC doctrine addresses your concerns, and I would hate to see you confused in your practice of Catholicism, which is one of my favorite Christian denominations, and one which I would have surely joined had Pope Benedict XVI remained in office, by my own private theologoumemna (theological opinions).

Just by the way, "the bread and wine are entirely replaced" is a statement that many in the early church would have considered Docetism and a denial of the Incarnation. That's something that always baffled me about the idea of transubstantiation; the early church followed Paul in continuing to call the breaad bread but they also called it the Body of Christ. It's one reason I don't regard Aquinas as much of a theologian; he was a philosopher who crammed theology into philosophical packets that had nothing to do with the scriptures and often little to do with the Fathers. In Aristotelian terms, if the bread and wine are mere appearances it is but a tiny step to maintaining that the body of Jesus was a mere appearance.

 

[The Liturgist]

Just by the way, "the bread and wine are entirely replaced" is a statement that many in the early church would have considered Docetism and a denial of the Incarnation. That's something that always baffled me about the idea of transubstantiation; the early church followed Paul in continuing to call the breaad bread but they also called it the Body of Christ. It's one reason I don't regard Aquinas as much of a theologian; he was a philosopher who crammed theology into philosophical packets that had nothing to do with the scriptures and often little to do with the Fathers. In Aristotelian terms, if the bread and wine are mere appearances it is but a tiny step to maintaining that the body of Jesus was a mere appearance.

As I said earlier, they would not have considered it docetism, because the Bread and the Wine are not analogous to the human nature of Christ, and in the Eucharist we partake of both the humanity and the divinity of our Lord.

Docetists believed, just to review, that our Lord was entirely divine, lacking a human nature. Nestorians believe that His divinity and humanity can be separated, whereas the Nicene Christology of the Oriental Orthodox and the Chalcedonians is that the humanity and divinity of our Lord are hypostatically united without change, separation, confusion or division. There is a subtle difference between the Oriental Orthodox and Chalcedonian positions but since the Oriental Orthodox position is exactly what was expressed by St. Cyril and enforced by the Council of Ephesus at which Nestorius was deposed, and since the Oriental Orthodox anathematized the Monophysite Eutyches, who taught that the humanity of our Lord dissolved into his Divinity “like a drop of water in the ocean”, which is a confusion of the divine and human natures, they cannot be accused of Monophysitism.

Moving on, if we say in Aristotelian terms, the bread and wine are only there in accidents and not substance, it is still a huge step to say that the human body of our Lord is illustory, because the two are completely unrelated.

What you are doing is connecting the bread and wine to his human nature, which is deeply problematic and is absolutely unprecedented in the theology of the Early Church. None of the ancient anaphoras (Eucharistic prayers), liturgical texts, or discussions of the theology of the Eucharist even come close to suggesting such a connection exists. Furthermore, I would argue that such a view is a departure from the norms of Lutheran theology; I know of no Lutheran text that links the bread and wine with the human body of our Lord, but rather, quite the contrary, this is why many Lutherans object to Lutheran Eucharistic theology being called consubstantiation, because they don’t wish to draw a parallel between the fact that our Lord is consubstantial with the Father and consubstantial with us, and the relationship of the bread and wine in the Eucharist to His body and blood.

Now perhaps you have read something written by an Early Church Father which I have not. For that matter, I assume you are unfamiliar with the unusual Eucharistic theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia?

Mar Theodore the Interpreter, as the Assyrians called him, advocated a view which was influential in the East, and which the Roman Catholics completely rejected (although the anathema Emperor Justinian pronounced against Theodore of Mopsuestia, later ratified at the Second Council of Constantinople, caused a schism in the Western Church known as the Three Chapters Controversy which lasted for several centuries as he was extremely popular in France, Spain and other parts of the Latin church) and was for a time the prevailing Eucharistic doctrine in the Church of the East, which is sometimes called the Nestorian church, and is probably why they call the baking of the Eucharistic bread Malka, and count it as one of the Seven Sacraments. It was his opinion that during the Prothesis, the bread and wine become the dead body and blood of our Lord, and at the Epiclesis, become the resurrected body and blood of our Lord.

This view, which is the most extreme and controversial to come from the early church, does not, like any of the other theologies of the Eucharist from the early church, actually connect the bread and wine to the human nature of our Lord specifically, although it comes closest.

 

[The Liturgist]

This is what happens when you try to force the scriptures to fit a human system of philosophy: things not only get weird, but they are a serious distraction. The whole "substance v accidents" conceptualization seems bizarre enough in ordinary matters; when applied to theology it results all too often in silliness.

That’s simply untrue because the theology of the early church depended on Plato as much as the theology of Thomas Aquinas depended on Aristotle. Furthermore, St. Gregory Palamas put Aristotle to good use in defending the Hesychasts on Mount Athos from the slander directed against them by Barlaam, who then having failed to get Hesychasm banned, left the Orthodox church for the Roman Catholic church, which ironically now also embraces Hesychasm.