The Presence and the Christological Question: Resource Needed

Greetings! This is genuinely a request for resource recommendations and not for a debate as I honestly don't know enough about this issue.

It is well-known that the continental Reformation had a major conflict over the Lord's presence in the eucharist that bled over into Christology. The Lutherans charged the Reformed with Nestorianism as a consequence of their view, and the Reformed counter-charged the Lutherans with Eutychianism. I don't have a question about that; it's well-documented and I've got plenty of resources relating to it.

My question is about how Catholic theology addresses the Christological issue; I've never really come across it in my studies. Has the Catholic view of the presence ever been charged with leading to Eutychianism? If so, how is that question handled?

Can anyone recommend any resources that discuss this, preferably one included in one of the packages in my sig Stick out tongue ? Old and/or technical is fine. Barring that, what would be a good way of searching my library for this question that would yield useful results?

Much, much thanks in advance to any who can help me out here.

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Stephen Terlizzi

My best resource on the Eucharist is The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist by Fr. James O'Connor - https://www.logos.com/product/29609/the-hidden-manna-a-theology-of-the-eucharist. I would start there.

I do not recall any argument that the Catholic view leads to Eutychianism. Catholics firmly believe that Jesus is one divine person with two natures - fully man and fully God. In the Eucharist, He is fully presence - the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.

I hope this helps.

Agape,

Steve

Deacon Steve

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790538#Comment_790538

The book Steve mentions is excellent.

Also, you would benefits from studying the Church Councils from Nicea (325) through Chalcedon (451). The individuals involved in those would give you insight into various Christological frameworks and the final definition of what the Catholic Church applies to Jesus Christ - fully God and fully man. A study of the two theological centers, Alexandra (Logos-Sarx) and Antioch (Logos-Anthropos), during this time period would also help.

There are some good summaries in Wikipedia and a number of other resources in Logos that speak to these topics.

The aforementioned councils and theology of the time will get you into the use of the terms but the application of those to the subject of the Eucharist would be slightly different material. I am not familiar with how the various points of view were used during the reformation and beyond. The book Steve mentions is at least one that covers at least some of that.

Hope that helps a little.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790870#Comment_790870

Also, you would benefits from studying the Church Councils from Nicea (325) through Chalcedon (451). The individuals involved in those would give you insight into various Christological frameworks and the final definition of what the Catholic Church applies to Jesus Christ - fully God and fully man. A study of the two theological centers, Alexandra (Logos-Sarx) and Antioch (Logos-Anthropos), during this time period would also help.

I'm familiar with the Councils and their decisions. My question is a rather specific one. My assumption is that the Catholic doctrine of the presence was formed prior to and without reference to the intra-mural Reformation conflict. Yet, at some point I'm sure there have been Catholic theologians who have examined the Christological issues it raised and interacted with them. That is something I'd like to read more about to get a more well-rounded understanding on the presence in the Eucharist. So, I'm looking for theological discussions of the topic from the late 16C onwards.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Ken McGuire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790971#Comment_790971

My assumption is that the Catholic doctrine of the presence was formed prior to and without reference to the intra-mural Reformation conflict.

Rome certainly has quite extensive roots in her thinking before any reformation conflicts. That said, they did define things a bit (eg. Trent) in response to the Reformation. Of course, it is a debated question how much Trent really understood and truly condemned the Reformers, but that is a different ecumenical debate.

An interesting essay on the history of the doctrine of the Eucharist is "The Doctrine of Transubstantiantion from Berengar through the Council of Trent" by James McCue. My copy of it is in volume 3 of the US Lutheran/Roman Catholic dialogues (starts on pg. 89, by the way). As a Lutheran, I found his argument that Lateran 4's definition of "transubstantiation" need not, and was not at the time, taken as saying only the Aristotelian concepts are valid...

That said, I am not aware of how exactly Rome handles the Christological issues you are interested in.

Deacon Steve

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790971#Comment_790971

... at some point I'm sure there have been Catholic theologians who have examined the Christological issues it raised and interacted with them. That is something I'd like to read more about to get a more well-rounded understanding on the presence in the Eucharist. So, I'm looking for theological discussions of the topic from the late 16C onwards.

That is a specific and interesting question for sure. Clearly you have more insight into the Christological issues it has raised already within the Protestant communities. I am not familiar with those that you mention above and would like to learn more. Equally, I've not heard of definitions of the Eucharist being put forward as a Christological concern from a Catholic perspective. I'm also not an expert on complex searches that might get to the point.

Your question caused me to do some simple investigation into the counter-reformation, post Council of Trent. I did get a list of a number of key figures but I do not know if there was some dialogue into the question you put forward. I think an affirmation of previous teaching on the Eucharist is what would be found in the writings of Catholic theologians of the time.

Stephen Terlizzi

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/791145#Comment_791145

Below is a relevant quote from The Hidden Manna book. I hope this helps.

From this position adopted in 1520 Luther never afterward departed. Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present in the Eucharistic elements. He frequently calls this Presence a “substantial” one, using the term substantial in its traditional sense. Nonetheless, the full reality of bread and wine also remains. In his 1528 Confession concerning Christ’s Supper, Luther, faced now not only with Roman Catholic opponents but also with the symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist propounded by Zwingli and Oecolampadius, again stated his faith. It has been called by an editor of his works “the most detailed and the most profound of Luther’s treatises on the Lord’s Supper.”⁷⁰

It is not necessary … that one of the two disappear or be annihilated, but both the bread and the Body remain, and by virtue of the sacramental unity it is correct to say, “This is my Body”, designating the bread with the word “this”. For now it is no longer ordinary bread in the oven but a “Flesh-bread” or “Body-bread”, i.e., a bread that has become one sacramental substance, one with the Body of Christ.⁷¹

Therefore it is entirely correct to say, if one points to the bread, “This is Christ’s Body”, and whoever sees the bread sees Christ’s Body.… Thus also it is correct to say, “He who takes hold of this bread, takes hold of Christ’s Body; and he who eats this bread, eats Christ’s Body; he who crushes this bread with teeth or tongue, crushes with teeth or tongue the Body of Christ.” And yet it remains absolutely true that no one sees or grasps or eats or chews Christ’s Body in the way he visibly sees and chews any other flesh. What one does to the bread is rightly and properly attributed to the Body of Christ by virtue of the sacramental union.⁷²

In 1530 the Augsburg Confession, which stands today as the common profession among Lutherans, declared:

Our churches teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to those who eat in the Supper of the Lord. They disapprove of those who teach otherwise.⁷³

It can readily be seen how far removed from the positions of a Berengarius or a Wyclif were Luther’s views on the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Nevertheless he drew back from some of the practices that the Church had come to see as a consequence of this great truth. Adhering to the correct view that the Sacrament had been instituted by Christ as nourishment for the faithful but interpreting that truth in an exclusionary fashion, he rejected the practice by which the Sacrament was reserved in the tabernacle for adoration and to be brought to the sick. For Luther the sacramental elements that remained after the celebration of the liturgy were to be consumed immediately.⁷⁴

His rejection of transubstantiation left him open to the charge of Zwingli and others that he was teaching a doctrine that necessitated a multiplication of Christ’s Body such that it would be locally present wherever the Sacrament was present. To answer this difficulty, he somewhat reluctantly advanced what has been called—by others, not by Luther—the theory of “ubiquity”, a view that he defended but never intended to be taken as a matter of faith.

If God and man are one person [in Christ] and the two natures are so united that they belong together more intimately than body and soul, then Christ must also be man wherever he is God.… It was on this point that I insisted when I showed that God and man were one Person, and that Christ thereby had acquired a supernatural existence or mode of being whereby he can be everywhere.⁷⁵

In essence the theory held that wherever the Person of the Son was, his human nature (inseparable from the divinity of the Second Person since the Incarnation) was—or at least could be—present. Nevertheless, the Eucharistic Presence is unique since there Christ has bound himself to the bread and wine so that he can be eaten. The theory had confused the inseparability of the two natures with coextension. The Church had never passed a definitive judgment on the question of a local Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, but most theologians⁷⁶ held that Christ’s risen Body—like his Body before his Passion and Resurrection—could only be dimensionally or locally present in one place at a time. To hold the opposite would appear—logically, at least—to deny the true (and therefore limited) materiality of his risen Body while simultaneously falling into various philosophical difficulties. Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and others made the most of Luther’s difficulties in order to buttress their own symbolic understanding of the Eucharistic Presence of Christ.

Luther’s defense of the Real Presence (a term that at this period had became generally current, previous terminology speaking usually⁷⁷ of the “truth” of Christ’s Presence or of his true Presence in the Eucharist), coupled with his rejection of transubstantiation, was, in a sense, a throwback to a view that was held by a few writers in the Patristic era. Fully Catholic in his defense of the corporeal reality of the Eucharistic Presence, he had rejected the Church’s more developed awareness of the nature of the change that takes place in the elements of the bread and wine, an awareness that adopted the more widespread Patristic evidence for such change as a deeper insight into the full truth of the Mystery of Faith.

⁷⁰ Robert H. Fischer, in Luther’s Works, vol. 37, p. 158.

⁷¹ Luther, Confession concerning Christ’s Supper, in Luther’s Works, vol. 37, p. 303.

⁷² Luther, Confession, p. 300.

⁷³Augsburg Confession, 10, in Joseph A. Burgess, ed., The Role of the Augsburg Confession, p. 173.

⁷⁴ In his letter of July 20, 1543 (text in Stone, II, p. 24), he gives specific instructions on disposition of the consecrated elements at the end of the liturgy so that there would be no “bad example” or “irreverence”. Whether he believed that the change in the elements was permanent, i.e., such that Christ’s Body would remain in them even should they not be consumed at the end of the liturgical action, is disputed.

⁷⁵ Luther, Confession, p. 229. Cf. also his This Is My Body, written in 1527 (Luther’s Works, vol. 37), pp. 61ff. Luther’s theory was not novel in all respects. It is possible that some of the Fathers held views like it, and some of the twelfth-century theologians were expressing similar views. Thus Hugh of Metellus (ca. 1157) held that Christ’s Body was not subject to the ordinary laws of human nature, as was evident in the case of the Virgin Birth and in his appearing, after the Resurrection, in the Upper Room even though the doors were closed (Epistola IV; PL, 188, 1274). Like thoughts were expressed by William of St. Thierry (d. 1148) in his De Sacramento Altaris (PL, 180, 347), Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) in his De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei (PL, 176, 469), Hildebert of Lavardin (d. 1133) in his De Sacramento Altaris (PL, 171, 1149–54), and by Alger of Liège (d. ca. 1132) in his De Sacramentis Corporis et Sanguinis Dominici (PL, 180, 782). In all of them, however, it is not actual ubiquity that is being taught, rather, an appeal is made to the power of God and the glorified humanity of Christ in order to explain how the Lord’s Body can be present in heaven and also in the Eucharist. Pelikan (3, p. 194) quotes Alger as writing: “the flesh of Christ, which has been exalted by God above all creatures … is present everywhere, wherever it pleases through the omnipotence that has been given to it in heaven and on earth.” The full quotation reads: “Only the flesh of Christ, which has been exalted by God above every creature, has been given this power that is above and beyond all nature, namely, that through the omnipotence that has been given to it in heaven and on earth, it may be everywhere as it pleases, not by passing from place to place, but rather, remaining there where it is and existing in other places where it wills, it may be whole and entire and substantially present in heaven and on earth.” (Quo privilegio sola caro Christi, quae super omnem creaturam a Deo exaltata est, super omnem et praeter omnem naturam insignita est, ut per omnipotentiam, quae ei data est in coelo et in terra, quicumque, quomodocunque sibi placuerit, non de loco ad locum transeundo, sed ibi, ubi est, remanendo, et alibi ubicunque voluerit existendo, tota et integra et substantialiter sit et in coelo et in terra.)

⁷⁶ John Duns Scotus was a major exception. He held that Christ’s Body could be locally present in different places at the same time. Cf. In Sent., 17, dist. X, q. II and III, pp. 190–228.

⁷⁷ Cf., however, below, p. 197, for its earlier usage.

Source - O’Connor, J. T. (2005). The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist (Second Edition, pp. 136–139). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/791148#Comment_791148

Thank you, Stephen, that is the sort of discussion I am looking for!

Sean

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790538#Comment_790538

My best resource on the Eucharist is The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist by Fr. James O'Connor - https://www.logos.com/product/29609/the-hidden-manna-a-theology-of-the-eucharist. I would start there.

Bumping this thread because this resource is on sale this month. I'm picking it up and adding it to my reading queue. [:)]

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/820534#Comment_820534

The Commentary on the Gospel of John by St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) discusses the Real Presence very Christologically in its extensive comments on John 6 (especially on verse 22 and following, although I recommend starting from the beginning of the chapter).

In the same work, in commenting on John 1:14a at great length, Aquinas gives his Christology of the Incarnation in brief (for Aquinas) and with explicit reference to Eutychianism and other heresies.