This is the first of a few short essays in which I try to grapple with controversial Catholic Teaching. Here I am going to examine the doctrine of Transubstantiation but I want to begin by exploring the idea of Revelation and that God communicates Himself to us.
I want to suggest that the church has always understood scripture as being (in some way) God's self disclosure; that somehow, through human history God made himself known to his people. The pages of the Old Testament witness not just to human grasping after truth but also to the fact that, through certain people at specific times, God made himself known. He communicated Himself to us.
The fullness of that self-disclosure is found in the person of Jesus Christ. The important thing about Jesus is not that he is good or that he taught wise teaching (though he was and he did). The important thing is who he is. Jesus is God's self-communication. He is God-moving-toward-us. So, for example, when we see him dying on the cross we are not (just) seeing a good man die, we are seeing God's ultimate self-disclosure. If you want to see what God is you have to look at a man dying on the cross. This is not only ultimate revelation; it is also unique revelation. (No other religion has grasped this truth about God and we couldn't have guessed it from our experience of creation.
So, on the night before he died Jesus acted out a little drama to help his disciples understand and claim for themselves this self-givingness of God in Jesus. (I know that that word has only just come into existence - but it’s a useful one).
“This is my body”, he said. “This is my blood, given for you. This is who I am: the self-giving one, the one whose blood is poured out, whose body is broken, whose life is given away. This is not only what I am doing tomorrow, this is who I have been for you from the moment of my conception through death and beyond: I am the God who gives Himself away”.
Then he says, “Do this in remembrance of me”. Where I think we get hung up is our English word has lost its meaning but originally remembrance is the opposite of dis-member. Remembrance is putting the members back together again. As a word it captures something of what is going on at the Passover meal when a good Jew is not just celebrating something that happened to his ancestors but is celebrating something that happened to him or herself. "This is the night God brought US out of Egypt". The deliverance is not a past event but a present reality for the Jew who thanks her God that she is no longer living in slavery.
The Exodus event commemorated at Passover includes, of course, that other significant moment of God's self-disclosure when he gave the Law to Moses on Sinai. The Exodus is an event in which God is revealing Himself and revealing Himself as Saviour.
“So”, says Jesus, “(from now on) do this in remembrance of me. Once upon a time, when you gathered together, you gathered to remember God's self-disclosure and saving activity in the Exodus event. From now on you are to remember God's self-disclosure and saving activity in my self-giving death on the cross. As Jews you claimed the Exodus event as your own; as my disciples you will claim this self-giving as your own. As when you celebrated Passover you were partaking in the Exodus event, so at the Eucharist you are participating in the event of my self-giving”.
Long before Thomas Aquinas invented the word "Transubstantiation" you can find countless accounts in the writings of the Fathers witnessing to the universal belief in the early church that to participate in the Eucharist was to receive this self-givingness of Jesus. So Justin Martyr (who was born in about AD 110), "We do not receive these as common bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we learned that the food over which we gave thanks ..... is the Flesh and Blood of the same incarnate Jesus".
Note that St Justin leans heavily on the notion of Incarnation to back up his teaching that the bread and wine have changed. It is the same movement of self-communication which made Jesus God-toward-us that makes the bread and wine God-toward-us: the very presence of Jesus.
I promise I could go on finding other very primitive sources in the Fathers for an equally physical understanding of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This was so much the case that one of the charges that the Roman authorities brought against Christians was cannibalism
But was this just a primitive notion that we who are more sophisticated should give up? I want to suggest that this belief is absolutely fundamental to Christianity.
I don't want to dwell on Aquinas because I don't think he is that important. That is to say, I think he is merely one more witness to the church’s universal belief in the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I think he was expressing in his doctrine of Transubstatiation something which the church had always believed. What is different in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas is his (very revolutionary) use of the language of Aristotle to communicate the Christian Gospel. Lesser men that Aquinas had been condemned as heretics for trying to marry Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity and Aquinas was tried for heresy. (This was the time when the really interesting thinking was being done by Islamic scholars and Christianity was struggling to keep up. It was a fascinating era in philosophy and theology). But I digress. The point is that Aquinas wanted to hold onto this key Christian belief: that the self-communicating God, the God who became incarnate (flesh and blood) really does communicate Himself, becomes REAL in the Eucharist. The incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Lord makes himself present to us, he does what he does best: He gives Himself. So what is there on the Altar? It looks like (form) bread and wine; but the inner-reality has become nothing less than the very presence of the crucified, risen and ascended Jesus. The substance (reality) has changed
even though the outward form remains that of bread and wine.
Now the Reformers (especially Calvin and Zwingli) wanted to deny what I think the church had ALWAYS believed up to that point. They wanted to say that the bread and wine merely symbolised the presence of Jesus or even that the bread and wine "remind" us that Jesus once (a long long time ago) gave himself. They did say that if we received "worthily" we would receive Jesus spiritually. The emphasis shifts from the Consecration to the eating and drinking.
My problem with this is that this idea of "spiritual" giving is not faithful to the scriptures. The scriptures witness to a God who does NOT communicate spiritually - even in the Old Testament. Our God is a God who communicates very much through the messy flesh and blood events in human history. Our religion is NOT a "spiritual" religion it is a very physical one. Jesus didn't give spiritual healing he gave physical healing, he didn't spiritually give himself away he physically suffered and died. I would very much want to add that he didn't "spiritually" rise from the dead but he actually physically rose again (though in a very different dimension to our own flat world). No. Christianity is not a "spiritual religion" and God's self-giving at the Eucharist is NOT spiritual but physical. At the Eucharist God does what he does best. He gives Himself to us and he is physically present as Word made flesh.
(I'm glad to say, by the way, that Mrs Wesley's two boys are on my side. So in Charles Wesley's hymn, Victim Divine, we end by singing:
We need not now go up to heaven
To bring the long-sort Saviour down;
Thou art to all already given,
Thou dost e'en now thy banquet crown:
To every faithful soul appear,
And show thy real presence here.
I want to suggest that the church has always understood scripture as being (in some way) God's self disclosure; that somehow, through human history God made himself known to his people. The pages of the Old Testament witness not just to human grasping after truth but also to the fact that, through certain people at specific times, God made himself known. He communicated Himself to us.
The fullness of that self-disclosure is found in the person of Jesus Christ. The important thing about Jesus is not that he is good or that he taught wise teaching (though he was and he did). The important thing is who he is. Jesus is God's self-communication. He is God-moving-toward-us. So, for example, when we see him dying on the cross we are not (just) seeing a good man die, we are seeing God's ultimate self-disclosure. If you want to see what God is you have to look at a man dying on the cross. This is not only ultimate revelation; it is also unique revelation. (No other religion has grasped this truth about God and we couldn't have guessed it from our experience of creation.
So, on the night before he died Jesus acted out a little drama to help his disciples understand and claim for themselves this self-givingness of God in Jesus. (I know that that word has only just come into existence - but it’s a useful one).
“This is my body”, he said. “This is my blood, given for you. This is who I am: the self-giving one, the one whose blood is poured out, whose body is broken, whose life is given away. This is not only what I am doing tomorrow, this is who I have been for you from the moment of my conception through death and beyond: I am the God who gives Himself away”.
Then he says, “Do this in remembrance of me”. Where I think we get hung up is our English word has lost its meaning but originally remembrance is the opposite of dis-member. Remembrance is putting the members back together again. As a word it captures something of what is going on at the Passover meal when a good Jew is not just celebrating something that happened to his ancestors but is celebrating something that happened to him or herself. "This is the night God brought US out of Egypt". The deliverance is not a past event but a present reality for the Jew who thanks her God that she is no longer living in slavery.
The Exodus event commemorated at Passover includes, of course, that other significant moment of God's self-disclosure when he gave the Law to Moses on Sinai. The Exodus is an event in which God is revealing Himself and revealing Himself as Saviour.
“So”, says Jesus, “(from now on) do this in remembrance of me. Once upon a time, when you gathered together, you gathered to remember God's self-disclosure and saving activity in the Exodus event. From now on you are to remember God's self-disclosure and saving activity in my self-giving death on the cross. As Jews you claimed the Exodus event as your own; as my disciples you will claim this self-giving as your own. As when you celebrated Passover you were partaking in the Exodus event, so at the Eucharist you are participating in the event of my self-giving”.
Long before Thomas Aquinas invented the word "Transubstantiation" you can find countless accounts in the writings of the Fathers witnessing to the universal belief in the early church that to participate in the Eucharist was to receive this self-givingness of Jesus. So Justin Martyr (who was born in about AD 110), "We do not receive these as common bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we learned that the food over which we gave thanks ..... is the Flesh and Blood of the same incarnate Jesus".
Note that St Justin leans heavily on the notion of Incarnation to back up his teaching that the bread and wine have changed. It is the same movement of self-communication which made Jesus God-toward-us that makes the bread and wine God-toward-us: the very presence of Jesus.
I promise I could go on finding other very primitive sources in the Fathers for an equally physical understanding of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This was so much the case that one of the charges that the Roman authorities brought against Christians was cannibalism
But was this just a primitive notion that we who are more sophisticated should give up? I want to suggest that this belief is absolutely fundamental to Christianity.
I don't want to dwell on Aquinas because I don't think he is that important. That is to say, I think he is merely one more witness to the church’s universal belief in the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I think he was expressing in his doctrine of Transubstatiation something which the church had always believed. What is different in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas is his (very revolutionary) use of the language of Aristotle to communicate the Christian Gospel. Lesser men that Aquinas had been condemned as heretics for trying to marry Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity and Aquinas was tried for heresy. (This was the time when the really interesting thinking was being done by Islamic scholars and Christianity was struggling to keep up. It was a fascinating era in philosophy and theology). But I digress. The point is that Aquinas wanted to hold onto this key Christian belief: that the self-communicating God, the God who became incarnate (flesh and blood) really does communicate Himself, becomes REAL in the Eucharist. The incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Lord makes himself present to us, he does what he does best: He gives Himself. So what is there on the Altar? It looks like (form) bread and wine; but the inner-reality has become nothing less than the very presence of the crucified, risen and ascended Jesus. The substance (reality) has changed
even though the outward form remains that of bread and wine.
Now the Reformers (especially Calvin and Zwingli) wanted to deny what I think the church had ALWAYS believed up to that point. They wanted to say that the bread and wine merely symbolised the presence of Jesus or even that the bread and wine "remind" us that Jesus once (a long long time ago) gave himself. They did say that if we received "worthily" we would receive Jesus spiritually. The emphasis shifts from the Consecration to the eating and drinking.
My problem with this is that this idea of "spiritual" giving is not faithful to the scriptures. The scriptures witness to a God who does NOT communicate spiritually - even in the Old Testament. Our God is a God who communicates very much through the messy flesh and blood events in human history. Our religion is NOT a "spiritual" religion it is a very physical one. Jesus didn't give spiritual healing he gave physical healing, he didn't spiritually give himself away he physically suffered and died. I would very much want to add that he didn't "spiritually" rise from the dead but he actually physically rose again (though in a very different dimension to our own flat world). No. Christianity is not a "spiritual religion" and God's self-giving at the Eucharist is NOT spiritual but physical. At the Eucharist God does what he does best. He gives Himself to us and he is physically present as Word made flesh.
(I'm glad to say, by the way, that Mrs Wesley's two boys are on my side. So in Charles Wesley's hymn, Victim Divine, we end by singing:
We need not now go up to heaven
To bring the long-sort Saviour down;
Thou art to all already given,
Thou dost e'en now thy banquet crown:
To every faithful soul appear,
And show thy real presence here.
© Peter Bolton
