What can Protestant Evangelicals take from RC Eucharistic theology? Part Two: What we don’t really need to retrieve

But what about transubstantiation?

But now we come to the Eucharistic issue that, regrettably in my view, has tended – and still tends – to dominate discussions of this subject on both: the first issue, by Feingold’s classification, namely that of the Eucharistic ‘presence’.

Here I have to admit a certain absence of interest hitherto, a scepticism about what was to be gained theologically by the recourse to full-blown Thomist transubstantiation.  This had been somewhat reinforced by my earlier impression of what de Lubac was saying, which had seemed to imply a certain loss of comprehension on the part of the late mediaeval church in respect to a really important doctrinal element (as discussed above).  As for transubstantiation itself, it was something I could take or leave.  I couldn’t see why it should be any fundamental importance whether one understood the mode of Eucharistic presence in terms of transubstantiation or consubstantiation, as Aquinas did, or else Luther, or Calvin.  Provided one’s belief was not such as to obstruct the path to a fuller understanding of the really important elements of Eucharistic doctrine (already considered under issues 2 and 3), then there seemed little harm.  Or, at least, for its advocates.  It was just one of those largely accessory and decorative things that traditional Catholics like to believe in, like the assumption of the virgin Mary or the adoration of the host.  On the other hand, to the extent that the Church had a mission of outreach to a sceptical and alienated world, it hardly seemed wise to be imposing on would-be believers inessential doctrinal elements that placed burdens on their credulity!  Yes, no man has ever gone to hell, I presume for believing that God was an old man with a white beard sitting on the clouds.  Still, for the majority of us, accessory beliefs of this kind hardly enhance the effectiveness of our Christian testimony.  On the other hand, if we find ourselves sharing a pew with such people, we are Scripturally enjoined to take thought for their weakness!

But now two factors aroused my unease.  First, my impression on earlier reading Corpus Mysticum was that its author really did seem to believe that the late mediaeval ecclesial response to the Berengarian controversy HAD obscured really crucial elements of Eucharistic understanding.  Second, my recent reading of Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy had challenged this earlier, largely negative, impression of mine, and had, in addition, suggested the existence of an ‘upside’ to the late mediaeval developments of which de Lubac had left me with such a negative view.  So, with all this in mind, I made a really thorough re-reading of Corpus Mysticum.

De Lubac or the mainstream Catholic understanding?

What came out of it?

Well, for a start, an enormous admiration for this subtle and meticulous exploration of the texts of the early and mediaeval Christian tradition.

On the matter in hand, though, my re-reading convinced me that my earlier impression of de Lubac’s position was well-founded.  The narrative of Corpus Mysticum is totally inconsistent with that of Feingold’s mainstream Catholicism, and Ratzinger is quite wrong to suggest that there is some more encompassing narrative in which the two could be reconciled.

How so?  To explain, I’ll need to give some kind of brief outline of the early 2^nd millenium development that constituted what de Lubac sees as the turning point Western Eucharistic theology.

From Patristic times, theologians had always been accustomed to speaking of three ‘bodies’ of Christ: the historical body that was crucified, resurrected, and continues to exist, somehow or other, in Heaven; the ‘sacramental’ body which is sacrifice on the altar in the mystery of the Eucharist; the ‘body of Christ’ that is the Church. Briefly, what occurred as a result of the crucial development was the total identification of the first two bodies and a preoccupation with that identity relationship that tended (with notable exceptions, of course) to marginalize the question of the third and its relationship to the first two.  Hence Ratzinger’s response (probably Feingold’s too), which is to maintain the mediaeval understanding of the relationship between the first two bodies, while, at the same time, balancing this with a renewed emphasis on the third body and its relationship to the first two.

This sounds good, but, sadly, doesn’t work – at least not if we accept Corpus Mysticum as authoritative. Why? Because, according to de Lubac, this development brought an entirely new way of thinking the relationship of symbolizer to symbolized – a way that was fundamentally at odds with the old, Patristic way:

‘For the Fathers, the essential mainspring of thought was not identity, or analogy, but anagogy.  With its roots still in the time original to it, it nevertheless looked forwards to the future.  From creation, it reached up towards Christ, and through Christ had access as far as to the invisible things of God.  Everything sensible was a sacrament, not so much requiring organization or justification, as open to being transcended.  Touching on everything, going through everything. In the broadest sense, and according to an interpretation by St Jerome of an idea of Origen’s, it was therefore perspicacity in the contemplation of the sacraments.  Being ‘rational’ or ‘contemplative’ therefore meant fundamentally the same thing.’

The ‘three level’ account of Eucharistic symbolism exemplified for Feingold by Peter Lombard and Pope Innocent III introduces a fundamental distinction into this Patristic world of anagogical relationships. Feingold characterizes the latter as a two-level account involving a single type of (anagogical) relationship – that of the sacrament (i.e. the thing that acts as figure, be it bread or ‘historical body’) to the reality (i.e. the thing that is figured, in other words, the Church as eschatological  ‘body of Christ’).  The three-level account which Feingold extolls as more ‘adequate’ than ‘the two levels that Augustine has discerned’ divides the anagogical into relationships of identity, on the one hand, and those of figure, on the other.  To Augustine’s twin levels of sacrament and reality (now revealingly spoken of as ‘sacrament only’ and ‘reality only’), the new theology adds a level of sacrament & reality to which is uniquely assigned the historical body of Christ.  The relationship of the bread to the historical body can now be classified as one of both identity and figure whereas that of the historical body to the body of Christ is one just of figure.  One cannot but sense the inevitable decline suffered in the ontological status of figure, where the old anagogical regime is succeeded by one of mere analogy.  It is perhaps no coincidence that the eschatological ‘body of Christ’ figured by the Eucharistic body becomes, on Feingold’s analysis, ‘grace and charity’, or again ‘the unity of the church’.

The change in the relationship of ‘the rational’ to ‘the contemplative’ alluded to in the above passage (and the corresponding shift in the meaning of the terms themselves) brings us to a broader issue.  Fundamental to the specific issue discussed in the previous paragraph, lies a complete re-orientation in the Christian understanding of the role of theological enquiry and the relationship that it presupposes between mystery and reason, a fundamental change of epistemic ‘key’ that pervades the whole atmosphere of theological debate.

Of the earlier period, de Lubac writes:

‘Our Augustinians would repeat it ad nauseam.  For them, mystical facts are full of sense, full of divine intentions, as opposed to fortuitous events. …  In the Eucharist as in Scripture, they thought that everything was full of mystery, that is to say that everything is full of reason.  The two words are generally offered as synonyms. … The mind needs to enter into this mysterious reason as one enters into a sanctuary, to penetrate it and press on ever further – that is to say, to seek and obtain an ever-greater understanding of them.’

What happens with the mediaeval transformation is that:

‘the mystery to be understood gave way before the miracle to be believed, because the very idea of what ‘understand’ means had changed.  Faith does not open up a path to contemplative understanding: it is an obstacle, set up by God himself, to cut across the appetite for rational speculation.  There was therefore no longer any question of raising oneself from faith to understanding: from an understanding that had become dialectic, it was clear that on the contrary, we should say: ‘understanding transcends faith’.

For the author of Corpus Mysticum, the damage inflicted by this new rationalism is evidently most to be felt in the declining awareness of ‘the corporate character (the sense of ‘we’) of the eucharistic faith’ (Ratzinger).  Recent developments in the Catholic church, partly indebted to de Lubac himself, may have done something to remedy this – even if nothing that the likes of Feingold or Ratzinger have to contribute on this theme, can compare with the intuitions of a Patristic understanding glimpsed through the pages of de Lubac.

The Real reason why the issue of Eucharistic symbolism is important for Evangelicals

But I do not think that a diminished awareness of the relationship of Eucharist and Church is, for Protestant Evangelicals at least, the only or even necessarily the most serious issue that hangs on a right understanding of Patristic symbolism – though, of course, it has its importance.  An altogether more fundamental issue, for us, concerns the relationship of the sacramental body to the eschatological ‘body of Christ’ (the second and third bodies, in other words).  For the likes of most Protestants the relationship of our Eucharist to the Kingdom to come, the eschatological body of Christ is one of mere ‘promise’ (to adopt John Colewell’s term).  Our present worship stands as a mere ‘signpost’ of the glory that is to come.  As Colewell puts it, we are not called to BE the body of Christ but merely to point to it – as it were ‘through a glass darkly’.

Now read de Lubac on Augustine, or Gregory Dix, or Alexander Schmemann, and you will find yourself entering a whole other world from that of Colewell, Cocksworth (or any Protestant that I have ever read).  For the former – and I have fully espoused their viewpoint – our Eucharists are the very presence – albeit partial in extent – of the heavenly tabernacle on earth!

‘The early Christians realized that in order to become the temple of the Holy Spirit they must ascend to heaven where Christ has ascended …  It is not ‘grace’ that comes down; it is the Church that enters into ‘grace,’ and grace means the new being, the Kingdom, the world to come.  And as the celebrant approaches the altar, the Church intones, the hymn which the angels eternally sing at the throne of God – ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal’ …’

I hear a murmur from Colewell and my fellow Evangelicals: Are we not here losing our sense of the distinction of symbol and reality? 

Actually no.  But we have to understand what the Patristics meant by symbol or image in this context – or pledge, for that matter:

‘An image, like Christ, the Eucharist is also, like the Spirit, a pledge.  He gave himself as a pledge ….  Christ, in the Eucharist, is the pledge of the body.  Objectively, the pledge is therefore not less than the matter: it is already, at least partially, that matter itself, although not yet in all its fullness.’

‘In the sacraments of the New Testament, the day of new grace began to dawn; at the end of all consumption (of sacraments) it will be midday …’ (Hugh of St Victor)

In other words, de Lubac’s conclusions regarding the nature of the symbol turn out to be wholly in line with those of Dix or Schmemann – that is to say, the Eucharist is NOT just a sign or a promise in the sense that, say, John Colewell understands it:

‘In the early tradition, and this is of paramount importance, the relationship between the sign in the symbol (A) and that which it signifies (B) is neither a merely semantic one (A means B), nor causal (A is the cause of B) nor representative (A represents B).  We called this relationship an epiphany. ‘A is B’ means that the whole of A expresses, communicates, reveals, manifests the ‘reality’ of B (although not necessarily the whole of it) without, however, losing its own ontological reality …’

‘Caution is necessary in handling the use of such terms as ‘symbol’, ‘antitype’, ‘figure’, applied to the relation of the sacrament to the Body and Blood of Christ.  As Harnack long ago observed, ‘What we nowadays understand by ‘symbol’ is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time ‘symbol’ denoted a thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies’.  The ‘symbol’ manifests the secret reality.’

There remains the question of Ratzinger’s ‘upside’ – the gain that Church to tradition has to set against the indubitable loss of which of which de Lubac speaks so powerfully.  I find little evidence of it.  The new rationalist formulations are evidently a response to the challenge of the Berengar and his followers who, in the eleventh century, questioned the reality of the Eucharistic conversion.  Clearly, the Berengarians had little feel for Augustinian anagogy: but the same seems to have been true of their orthodox adversaries.  The latter’s response to the Berengarian challenge is not without its own ingenuity, and there is a certain satisfaction in following Feingold through the twists and turns of the debate.  But, at the end of the day, to make complete sense of the Eucharistic sign/symbol requires us to recover an anagogical understanding of the world; citing screeds of Thomas Aquinas will achieve nothing to advance us on that path.

WHAT CAN PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS TAKE FROM RC EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGY? PART ONE: WHAT WE NEED TO RETRIEVE

WHAT CAN PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS TAKE FROM RC EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGY? PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS

Other relevant blog material:

HOW IS THE EUCHARIST A SACRIFICE ? PART I: EXAMINING THE TRADITIONAL RC POSITION THROUGH LAURENCE FEINGOLD, THE EUCHARIST

HOW IS THE EUCHARIST A SACRIFICE ? PART II: THE ROLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. EXAMINING THE TRADITIONAL RC POSITION THROUGH LAURENCE FEINGOLD, THE EUCHARIST

THE SPIRIT OF THE LITURGY

WRITE ME THE BOOK THAT WILL CONVERT THE WORLD