History and Catholicity

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History and Catholicity

February 19, 2008 by Steven Wedgeworth

One thing that is evident from the discussion going on over at Jeffrey Steel’s blog is that authentic Calvin scholarship has not yet penetrated the collective mindset of pastor-theologians. Steel and Al Kimel both serve as good examples. Both men are well educated and articulate. Both have a clear interest in the life of the Church. However, both also suffer from a distorted, albeit not uncommon, view of what it is that they have and are rejecting in Reformed/Protestant theology.

I have never met Jeff in person, however a good many congregants at the church I attend once sat under his leadership. I know many of his old pastor friends. I believe that I understand his trajectory, if I can say such a thing, and again, I think that much of it could have been improved, dare I say prevented, by a better understanding of history.

Now I can’t lay criticisms anywhere without laying them at the Reformed’s own feet. 20th century North American Calvinism has been, for the most part, an unreliable guide in pointing out the Reformed tradition. This is not to say that it is of no value, but it is to ask it to fess up. Much of the diversity of former Calvinism was simply not present in the 20th century, the sacramental-liturgical aspect was almost wholly absent, and the pop-Calvinism of J I Packer and Banner of Truth was near duplicitous in its relaying of “Puritanism.” I remember reading one of Packer’s books where he put forth John Owen as the Puritan par excellent, right in the mainstream of things, while chiding Baxter as a “train-wreck” of a theologian. Now whatever we think of these two men, it should be noted that Owen was the independent polemicist, holding certain minority and exclusive views, whereas Baxter was the author of Catholic Theology. As I understand it, Baxter was the more popular of the two by a good bit.

Furthermore, why was there no mention of men like Davenant and Polhill among the pop-works? Why doesn’t every Presbyterian know about Edmund Calamy’s The Lord’s Supper Is a Federal Ordinance Implying a Covenant Transaction between God and Us, and Supposing a Renewal of Solemn Vows to be the Lord’s? In it Calamy writes:

Further, as the Jewish feasts were upon the flesh of the sacrifices they offered to God, so is our holy Supper a feast upon the sacrifice which Christ once offered for us. And as their feasts upon their sacrifices were federal rites and bands of federal communion between God and them, so the Lord’s Supper, which is also a feast upon a sacrifice, must be a federal feast between God and us, whereby, eating and drinking at His own table and partaking of His meat, we are taken into a sacred covenant and inviolable league of friendship with Him…

I could list more examples. Names like Zanchius, Ursinus, Pareus, Polanus, and Vermigli might raise faint notions of recognition, but few Reformed could confess having actually read them.

This is one reason why I have been drawn to Church history. Had Steel’s RTS training exposed him to these names, he might have more respect for Calvin now. He might find himself less open to Anglo-Catholicism. In fact, I bet he first came interested simply because of the liturgy or the sacraments, as if those things were unReformed.

But the sad fact is that they are, in the day-to-day Reformed community, considered unReformed. Steel’s gut-reaction isn’t wholly unjustified. He was probably taught everything he believes about the Reformed tradition from Reformed people! It ought to be our desire to alleviate this problem, though.

So Reformed teachers and pastors, do you want to keep folks from going to Rome? Do you want them to appreciate the Reformed tradition? Well then pick up the books! Talk about the actual history! Show the sacramental, liturgical, catholic theology of the Reformers! Only then will you have an effective apologetic.

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Posted in Historical | 74 Comments

74 Responses

on February 19, 2008 at 10:43 pm Paul Owen

Steven,

I really don’t think Steele or Kimel are lacking in their understanding of the Reformed perspective. They believe it is important that the Eucharist be understood in terms of an actual location of Christ’s body on the altar, so that the bread is actually identified with the flesh of Christ. They think only this can ground the Church’s historic worship practices, in which devotion to Christ is directed to the physical sign of his presence (hence the genuflecting, reserving of the sacrament, and so forth). They notice that Calvin and other Reformed divines consistently viewed it as idolatry to direct devotion toward the Eucharistic elements, and rightly perceive a real and meaningful difference on this point.

For myself, I agree with you in essence that the elements of a truly catholic view of the Eucharist are already there in Calvin, though the iconoclastic tendencies of the Reformed prevented them from implementing that theology in the liturgy of the Church. The problem is caused by the inconsistency in Calvin’s (and the other Reformed divines) own theory and practice, which Steele and Kimel highlight, and not by any serious lack of familiarity with Reformed Eucharistic theology on their part. So I would see this whole matter differently. It is precisely in the practica of liturgy that the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic traditions DO have an edge over the traditional Reformed worship models (strangled as they are by the regulative principle). Rather than pretend otherwise, we should acknowledge this and encourage the Reformed tradition to learn from brethren like Steele and Kimel or it will continue to see many of its most thoughtful pastors vacate the building for greener pastures.
on February 19, 2008 at 11:14 pm Steven W

I think they are correct on the question of eucharistic adoration, but the other remarks were well wide of the mark.

The RPW shouldn’t be an issue on the question of sacramental worship either. If some make it so, they are simply misunderstanding both the RPW and the Reformed position on the sacraments.
on February 20, 2008 at 12:48 am Peter Escalante

Paul,

By the “church’s historic worship practices”, you seem to mean a number of things which are actually late developments. But you are correct, I think, in noting that Steel and Kimel seem to be looking for a theory to rationalize favored practice. Their grasp of Reformed theology is not so clear to me as it might be to you; I made some points more than a year ago relating Andrewes’ teaching on the Eucharist to that of Pareus and the Heidelberg School, but no one engaged it. But in any case, there is certainly on their side a valorization of a certain way of conceiving presence (what I would call the fetishization of sign) as “more real”, and a deprecation of the other way, which is the Reformed tradition, which conceives of the rite, not the bread itself, as the locus of the true presence, as “less real”. But the old Reformed teaching is that the Lord is really present among the faithful alive with faith and charity, in the rite (which traces out the space of opened heaven); but representatively present, in the bread and wine. He is not more closely joined to inanimate objects than to His own members.

And with respect to catholic doctrine, as I’ve mentioned in other places, the Reformed writers (I often cite Waterland as especially useful) have a very strong account of the meaning of certain patristic usages of language which are too often read by others as suggesting a this-worldly localization of the presence of Christ, and as thus expressing some sui generis conflation of sign and signified. The Reformed reading of these usages is, obviously, strongly at variance with that given by RC, AC, and most EO. The question of what exactly is “catholic teaching” is thus a contested one.

That many might be aesthetically attracted to the engineered numinosities of certain ritual forms says little about their truth; the Scriptures show us many instances of precisely this kind of thing happening. Nevertheless, it is true that Reformed worship is generally irreverent and didactic, lacking any sense that by God lifts us up by hearts into the heavens, there to enjoy the presence of the Lord (compare many Pentecostal services, where the sense among the congregation that the Lord is present is manifest). Any number of customs might aid in remedying this, for as Hooker says, we are embodied spirits and thus do nothing spiritually without the body; without us in any way falling into the doctrinal and liturgical errors of RC or AC.

peace
Peter
on February 20, 2008 at 8:01 am Jonathan Bonomo

I have to say that I agree with Steven. While I have no reason at all to suspect Frs. Steel or Kimel of intentional misrepresentation, it seemed apparent to me that they are not entirely aquainted with Calvin’s understanding. This is not to say that they are completely ignorant of it by any means. It just seems that, while they have some basics down, other areas of their presentation of the matter could use some improvement. Fr. Kimel even admitted as much to me in the discussion, and told Steven after his presentation of the matter that if he is indeed right, then Calvin was in fact closer to Luther than he initially thought.

As for this post overall… I agree with Steven wholeheartedly. The Reformed desparately need to become better aquainted with their own history.
on February 20, 2008 at 8:07 am Jonathan Bonomo

Peter,

I’m sure I speak for all when I say that it is a joy to see your name pop up in the discussions here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, my friend.

Peace,

JB
on February 20, 2008 at 10:35 am Paul Owen

Peter,

My understanding is that while perpetual adoration is apparently a medieval development, and liturgical practices obviously developed over that time, the reservation of the blessed sacrament is attested by Justin Martyr in the second century and Basil in the fourth. The practice of reserving the sacrament attests to the very sort of practical application of the link between sign and reality which the Reformed generally were unwilling to employ (they affirmed the link but balked at its application). I would defend the adoration of the sacrament (along with many Lutherans), not on the grounds of transubstantiation, but on the grounds expressed in WCF 27.1, whereby it is deemed fitting to attribute the names and effects of the thing signified to the sign because of the spiritual relation between them.

Therefore, it is fitting to attribute the name and effects of the body of Christ to the bread, and the blood of Christ to the cup. With that in mind, and in keeping with the principle of Nicea II that “the honor which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents,” I would defend the adoration of the Eucharist in the liturgy, though it should not be mandated (since it was not instituted by Christ’s ordinance; Article 28).
on February 20, 2008 at 11:10 am Steven W

I should clarify that I don’t mean to imply either of the men I’m addressing are somehow dumb or lacking in their studies.

I simply mean that there are some core assumptions about both “Calvin” and “Calvinism,” that I think are flat wrong, and it is these assumptions that drive most of the movement away from Prot. & Reformed communities. And again, my real point is that it is the Reformed who are to blame for these wrongful assumptions.

English Calvinism itself was diverse, so much so that I often get criticism from both Anglicans and Presbyterians when I call certain English churchmen “Calvinist,” but I think given the actual parties of the day, it is as appropriate a term as any. The moderate Calvinists are a good example, as they tended to distance themselves from the more radical Puritans, while retaining claim to the larger Reformed tradition. This is best seen in their tracing the lines of continuity from the early church, middle ages, and the Continental Reformed and Lutherans- and NOT the Roman party.

If someone were to point to a specific figure in the English church of the 16th and early 17th century protesting that he shouldn’t be called a Calvinist because he embraces certain elements of patristic, medieval, and Lutheran thought and practice, I’d say, “Well, I do too.”

Now I wouldn’t want to say that there are no areas of difference between Andrewes and Calvin, and if Steel is only arguing for the one area of eucharistic adoration, then I’d be happy to grant him some room to argue. I think he’s got a bigger dichotomy in mind though, and frankly I think Andrewes fits in best with the broader Reformed Anglican scene than he does either the Romanists of his day or the Tractarians of the 19th and 20th cents.
on February 20, 2008 at 11:26 am Peter Escalante

Paul,

Thanks much for the clarification. The history of reservation isn’t clear enough for either side to demonstrate anything conclusively from it, so I certainly grant that one might argue as you do here with some warrant.

The understanding you propose is unusual, but reasonable, if one were to grant some standing to Nicaea II, which, as you know, the Reformed tradition did not. But if one were to accept a modified version of Nicaea II (one which prescinded from its false historical arguments, and its self-assigned mandatory character), such a practice as you propose might be possible for Reformed people. I of course agree with Calvin’s assessment of the problems with any kind of iconodulia, but wouldn’t deny that your position is reasonable, and represents a possibility, although an extremely unusual one, of Reformed teaching .

Of course, the matter is complicated by the question of the way in which the bread and wine are signs, and what they are signs of. If, however, they are not signs of the Lord’s presence simply, but are rather signs of our participation in Him, then, even granting the iconodule or semi-iconodule argument, it makes much less sense to venerate the elements, because they aren’t signs of originally local presence, but rather, of participation, which is not something which lends itself to even symbolic locality, except in a very open way, as performance, not image. Wilson’s thoughts on “participial presence” are useful in this regard.

None of this to deny that writers such as Hooker and Andrewes (and yourself) make excellent points about what follows, or ought to follow, from the belief that the Lord is really present among the faithful (or rather that the faithful are really present to Him) in the holy gathering.

peace
Peter
on February 25, 2008 at 7:04 pm Matthew N. Petersen

I think what really clinched it for me was the inability to look to the bread and wine. I need to be able to look to the Bread and Wine themselves.

Also, I usually agree with Dr. Leithart’s eucharistic meditations, though I believe more than he does, but I find Pr. Wilson’s rather too weak.

As a Baptist becoming Reformed, when I learned Heidelburg and the reformed doctrine it seemed they were saying something very good and true, and very much inline with the Catholic position. But now, it is hard for me to look at Heidelburg and think of it as being sacramental at all. Yes, as surely as I eat this bread and drink this wine, I am saved; but I am told to look through this eating and drinking to the thing symbolized.

And on the point that is most crucial for me–the local presence of Christ–the Reformed deny what I must assert.

I can understand that something mediated by space is far less close than something mediated by the Spirit; but that objection doesn’t cut it psychologically. St. Paul says he is united to the Colossians in Spirit. But try telling your wife that though you are physically absent, you are far closer to her than you would be if you were physically present. And that is one of the cheif reasons for the Sacrament–that I be comforted and strengthened.

And also, it would make nonsense of the Incarnation to say that though the man Jesus is not God, but his humanity is an effective sign of God, communicated to us through the Spirit. We should remember that God loves us as surely as this man embraces us etc. That position, I think we both agree, is heretical. But to me, the Reformed position seems to say something similar about the Eucharist. (Though it isn’t heretical.) It just doesn’t make sense to me why the Reformed would think the Reformed and the Lutherans/Anglicans/Catholics/Orthodox are saying something that ammounts to more or less the same, for if they were, that heretical position would be essentially the same as the orthodox position.

Also, the Reformed tendency to locate the presence of Christ in the people seems problematic to me–not in itself, but as setting it off from communions that believe in the physical presence of Christ. If the Sacrament really communicates Christ, why is it an issue to say that we are united because Christ is present. (But of course, I believe Against Christianity and The Baptized Body said or seemed to say something very similar to my position.)

Anyway, I think I’m rambling, and I’m not looking for argument, just trying to show a little better why I believe what I do.

Matt
on February 25, 2008 at 9:54 pm Matthew N. Petersen

When handing another the bread and cup, one can say “the body of Christ” the way one might say “the realm” when setting the crown upon the head of an heir in a coronation rite, or the way one might say “my troth” when handing a bride the wedding ring.

I don’t mean to be antagonistic, but that is precisely what doesn’t cut it for me. Since I believe Christ is actually present, I think of the Sacrament more as nuptial embrace, and the Bread the body pressed against me, than as a wedding ceremony. When I am tempted to lust, I think of the Sacrament, where I hold in my hand one far more glorious than any woman, and where I become one flesh with Christ Himself. His flesh enters into my very heart, nourishes me, and grows into a new person inside me.

It doesn’t cut it to say that I am here given a sign and a seal of Christ. It doesn’t cut it to say “but more especially by these visible signs and pledges [He] assure[s] us, that we are as really partakers of his true body and blood by the operation of the Holy Ghost as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remembrance of him.” I say that these visible signs which are indeed Christ not only assure us of our hope, but are the objects of our hope. To eat the body and blood of Christ is not to embrace with believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin, and life eternal, nor to “become more and more united to his sacred body”; but to press between my teeth the Bread which is Christ, and to swallow the Wine which is His Blood. In the Sacrament, in the Bread of the Sacrament, we have access to the Holy of Holies. In the Sacrament, in the Wine of the Sacrament that is the Blood of one greater than bulls and goats, that is the Blood that speaks better things than the blood of Abel, that is the blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son, that we are cleansed from all sin.
on February 25, 2008 at 11:44 pm neochalcedonian

All,

Is there anything about the relation between our partaking of Christ in the Eucharist and our dying with Christ in baptism that might shed light on the subject of our discussion? The Scriptures teach that I “participate” in Christ’s death in baptism (Rom. 6) through the “washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5) and that the Eucharistic elements themselves (somehow)”participate” in Christ’s body and blood (1 Cor. 10:16). We know we *won’t* find the meaning of participation by (a) treating the relation between sign and the signified as one of mere similarity and difference or (b) by denying the fully reality of the latter in the former or (c) by asserting that the reality of either excludes the other. No, “participation” in both contexts is an ineffable identity relation. The claim that:

“The bread does not materially alter into his literal body, and the wine does not materially alter into his literal blood,”

make it necessary that the Eucharistic elements lose their fully reality or material properties in order to posit a relation of identity between the Eucharistic elements and what they signify. The bread and wine never cease to be what they are but when they are placed in my mouth and swallowed I am really and truly eating and drinking his body and blood.
on February 25, 2008 at 11:58 pm Ron Henzel

Calvin wrote:

“In his Sacred Supper he bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine…. For it is enough for us that, from the substance of his flesh Christ breathes life into our souls—indeed, pours forth his very life into us—even though Christ’s flesh itself does not enter into us.”

[Institutes 4.17.32. Emphasis mine.]
on February 26, 2008 at 12:22 am Peter Escalante

Matt and NeoC,

Matt first:

The distinctive Reformed position is precisely what did and does “cut it” for me: it is one of the chief reasons I am Reformed and no longer Roman Catholic. But I too think that I am directly and most intimately united to a mystically present Christ in the rite. I don’t see any “plus” in your account over mine, since I affirm what you wish to affirm, without any of the confusion I believe to be inherent in your account. Since Christ’s body on your account isn’t present by way of extension, it is only in a non-literal way that you can say you press it between your teeth. You press accidents “behind” which, in some metaphysical way, is Christ’s body: but your teeth do not in any ordinarily meaningful sense press it, though it is precisely the ordinarily meaningful sense you wish to cash in on. As I said, I believe that my person is brought into the most intimate possible relation with the Lord’s in the Supper, without having to credit any strange not-very-bodily coincidence of bodies. The Lord is as present to us as groom to bride: but the bread and cup stand as ring.

NeoC,

I read the passage in 1 Corinthians 10:16 as arguing that the bread and cup are *our* fellowship/participation in Christ: I don’t see that the bread and cup are anywhere said to themselves participate Christ in that passage, as if subjects. As for your reflections on where we won’t find the meaning of participation, I’m not sure what it is you’re trying to say. You seem to want an unwarranted (un-account-able) identity of one thing and another in a sui generis relation which might not even be a relation, because who knows, it might be one thing with two poles of manifestation, where the sui generis “symbolhood” gestures toward the basic unity, not the polar diversity. In any case, I don’t know what you mean to get at. The theme of methexis is an old favorite of mine, from Plato to Plotinus through the medievals up to Barfield and Voegelin now, so there’s no need to be oblique with me on this topic: spell out your principles for me.

peace
Peter
on February 26, 2008 at 1:25 am neochalcedonian

All,

I’d like to return to my silent observer status in this discussion and request engagement of comment #15.
on February 26, 2008 at 1:34 am Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

I feel like I am talking to a Mormon. I’m saying the exact opposite of you, yet whatever I say, you inisist we are saying the same thing. “I affirm what you wish to affirm”…except the part that, by my own words, is most important to me! No, as literally as I believe Mary was the mother of God, I believe I eat God and crush God with my teeth. Mary wasn’t the mother of God by spacial extension, yet she is literally the Mother of God. The bread isn’t Christ’s Body by spacial extension, yet it is literally the Body of Christ. As Mary is the mother of God, so I hold God in my hand and press Him with my teeth.

Matt
on February 26, 2008 at 1:59 am Peter Escalante

Matt,

I don’t say we affirm the same thing in every respect. I think part of your belief is a radical error, and I’ve said so. What I do say, is that I believe that we are truly united with Christ in the Supper in every meaningful way. You seemed concerned to deny that the Reformed teach a meaningful real presence: but I say we do.

I will leave it to you to closely reflect upon the analogy you’ve drawn here and see whether it actually works; I would expect that whatever liberal arts education you’re getting would suffice to enable you to do this. But in any case, Matt, you really need to know much more about the traditional arguments of your own church (I presume you are Roman Catholic) before you undertake to publicly expound them, as for instance regarding exegesis of 1 Corinthians. My advice to you, take it or leave it, would be to withdraw from this sort of apologetic discourse for a while, read deeply in someone like J-P de Caussade or Therese of Lisieux, and not worry about the beliefs of other Christians for now. You are in my prayers; but I think our conversation is at an end.

peace
Peter
on February 26, 2008 at 7:37 am Jonathan Bonomo

Ron,

Regarding your quote of Calvin: I have to ask what you meant to accomplish with it. Could you comment on it?

If you mean only to emphasize the fact that Calvin rejected the notion that the material particles of Christ’s flesh are physically digested by us and absorbed into our flesh, you are of course correct. I just hope that in emphasizing this you do not overlook the fact that the very substance of Christ’s flesh breathes life into us.

You passed over a couple paragraphs in that elipses, wherein we read in one place:

“Such is the presence of the body (I say) that the nature of the Sacrament requires a presence which we say manifests itself here with a power and effectiveness so great that it not only brings an undoubted assurance of eternal life to our minds, but also assures us of the immortality of our flesh. Indeed, it is now quickened by his immortal flesh, and partakes of his immortality.”
on February 26, 2008 at 6:14 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

I know we believe different things, and I know the Reformed actually believe we receive Christ in the Sacrament. But my two comments on this post have attempted to show why the Reformed view doesn’t work for me. I explained how I need the physical presence of Christ, not merely the presence of the physical Christ; and I went through Heidelburg saying point by point how it is insufficiently sacramental for me. Yes, it says something. But, not nearly enough for me. Yes, the Reformed teach a meaningful presence of Christ in the Sacrament, but in important, meaningful ways, an insufficient presence of Christ.

When, after two posts saying that the Reformed position is not intellectually wrong for me, but that I reject it because I particularly love the physical presence of Christ, you tell me “I believe that we are truly united with Christ in the Supper in every meaningful way” and “I affirm what you wish to affirm” you are dismissing my treasure, my heart, as meaningless.

My hope and greatest joy is to hold Christ in my hand, to compass Him with my mouth, to press His Flesh against my flesh, to physically put his blood inside me. I had rather receive the Sacrament than anything else on earth. I had rather receive the Sacrament than anything else on earth, not because I believe Christ is communicated to me–I used to hold that view–but because I desire physical contact with another human more than anything, I desire to be physically united to another person, filling her and being filled by her, and here more than anywhere else, I have physical contact with another human. The deepest part of me is a belief in the physical Christ in the Sacrament. There is nothing under the Sun, nor in heaven above, I desire more than physical communion with Christ locally present as the Bread and Wine. You are dismissing me as irrelevant.

In Christ,

Matt
on February 26, 2008 at 8:59 pm Matthew N. Petersen

But maybe I didn’t communicate too well that it is precisely the desire for physical human contact–like holding hands with someone, or snuggling with someone–my body against her body (or in the Sacrament, my female body against His body). My body desires physical contact with another human, and the Reformed view does not satisfy my body. I am my body–the Reformed view does not satisfy me.
on February 26, 2008 at 9:29 pm Tim Enloe

Matt, are you still at Trinity Reformed?
on February 26, 2008 at 9:49 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Yep.

I think just as a Baptist who think Baptism doesn’t do much, actually baptizes; so at Trinity, the Body and Blood of Christ are actually physically present, though they think otherwise.

Matt
on February 27, 2008 at 7:06 am Jonathan Bonomo

Matt,

But you do not sense the presence of that body with your *body*. Even on your account, he is only present in a physically nonsensible manner. So how does this satisfy you desires?

What I appreciate in the Reformed account is that it retains the significance placed on the physical return of Christ in the New Testament while at the same time not going so far as to take Christ completely out of the Church here and now (as he is present always by his Spirit, and made present by the Spirit in the Eucharist). In this sense, Reformed view seeks to balance the two biblical tensions of what is “already” and what is “not yet.”

As Christians, the New Testament is pretty clear in my opinion that we are *looking forward to* a physical embrace, a Wedding Feast. In light of this, to have what you call a “nuptial embrace” before the appointed time seems to me premature. The desire is good, but you seem to forget that we are brides *waiting for* our bridegroom. In the meantime, he showers us with blessings, with gifts of faith, hope, and love; with his Spirit; and with a mysterious presence in his sacraments whereby the spatial distance between us is overcome by the working of the Spirit.

We walk by faith, not by sight (or touch). To physically ambrace and to be physically embraced by him is in the “not yet” category. My desires may mandate one thing, but my reading of the New Testament must take precedent over my desires.
on February 27, 2008 at 4:03 pm Matthew N. Petersen

I think the answer to the first part is the answer to the second. Say a woman holds her child in your arms. What makes this special for her? In one sense, it is special because of the physical connection with the physical person who is physically from her. (I don’t have kids, and I’m not a woman, so I may be wrong.) But in another sense that isn’t quite true. The physical experience of holding her son is the same as the experience of holding someone else’s son. Granted she treasures certian things about her son–the way he laughs, his facial expressions etc. but she treasure these things because they are her son’s expressions. The physical connection draws her to love this and that about her son, rather than this and that drawing her to love her son.

Now say through some Shakespearean cruelty, a woman had her child taken away from before she ever saw him, and then given back to her to nurse as if he were another’s. This child is on her breast is still fully her son. Yet because she does not know he is her son, the physical exprience is fundamentally different, but the physical experience is exactly the same. Though it is the same, it is different because she has a different knowledge.

Somehow our knowledge fundamentally affects our experience of something.

And this is, in my opinion, where faith comes in. Though in heaven we shall be able to see with our eyes that our food is Christ–though even then not through spacial extension–now we only see that it is Christ through faith. As a husband knows the child in his arms is his through faith, so we know the Bread is our Lord through faith. But the knowledge from faith is real knowledge, and as a husband cherishes his son as his flesh and bone, so I cherish the Bread as Christ’s flesh and bone.

Yes there is an already-not-yet, but just as for thirty years they were already in the presence of God, already beholding God’s face, yet still they were not at the nuptial banquet, and not beholding the transfigured resurrected face of God; so we now we are partaking of the nuptial banquet (I believe 7th Nicea said this), but we do not see God’s face, and we do not see the food transfigured. And as then they saw God’s face, but only knew it was His face by faith, so we eat Christ, but only know we do so by faith.

I think we are in something of the same situation Psyche was in when Orual first visited her. We actually embrace the god of the Mountian, but only in the dark; and we are not yet goddesses ourselves.

In Christ,

Matt
on February 27, 2008 at 5:12 pm Tim Enloe

Matt, but have you answered Jonathan’s point that on your account “you do not sense the presence of that body with your *body*. Even on your account, he is only present in a physically nonsensible manner. So how does this satisfy you desires?”

I’m confused about your claims. It sounds like all you’re doing at the end of the day is describing a theory of eucharistic presence that personally appeals to you over against other theories which do not. Which is fine, of course, but if this is just your personal preference why take such offense at those who hold other theories and think that yours is wrong?

Although I mean no disrespect to you at all, your “sexualization” of the eucharist strikes me as, well, I’m sorry, weird. I see your point from Lewis about all of us being “feminine” to God, but what you are describing seems to this man, whose marriage is admittedly yet young (only 2 1/2 years), as more a desire that can be cured by getting married than by eating the eucharist. I would never have thought to say such a thing to you or to anyone else, but the rather, um, earthy nature of your own language seems to demand it.
on February 27, 2008 at 5:58 pm Steven W

I think the Eucharist is sexual, but Matt’s weird rhetoric exposes the flaws of an individualized theology of the Supper, which all the local presence theories tend towards.

I’m not the bride. Tim and Jonathan are not the bride. We are each individually sons of God.

Together (the gathered church), we are are the bride.

Thus, the true sexual is between the church corporate and her husband.

If you really want to “snuggle up” right now, then the better option would be to give your neighbor a holy kiss and bear one another’s burdens in love.
on February 27, 2008 at 6:14 pm Joseph M. Gleason

Good post, Steven.
on February 27, 2008 at 8:33 pm Peter Escalante

Steven,

Very aptly put.

peace
P
on February 27, 2008 at 8:52 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Tim

I’m not bothered when people think mine is wrong, but when they think theirs does everything mine does. Particularly when I have gone through and shown where theirs doesn’t do what I want it to do, and they tell me it does do everything I want it to.

Moreover, when people who believe Christ is physically present and they say “eucharistic presence” it is precisely this physical presence of Christ (though perhaps not so weird) that they are refering to, and that is why it is so frustrating to us all when the Reformed claim to have a Eucharistic Christ. You may believe the Eucharist conveys Christ, but you do not believe I can compass Christ in my hand. You cannot look into the chalice and say “here is my reflection where God has been” (as St. Therese did).

I don’t understand how physicalist theories of the Sacrament destroy the corporate nature of the Eucharist. Remember, I think that we being many are one body and one bread beause we partake of that one Bread. I know we are one because I know Christ is present. I’m really having difficulty with that point. The physicality of the Sacrament is what guarantees to me that the Church is one, both in theory and in prayer.

See forinstance, this post of mine:

http://colinclout12.blogspot.com/2008/02/this-is-my-body.html.

But there is other language that I could use. That language is most vivid for me, but for others other language would work better. Another language that is also vivid for me is a pregnancy understanding of the Eucharist. As Mary is united to God, mingling her blood with His, so we are united to God, mingling our blood with His. Food is equally powerful for me.

I don’t have time for more now.

Matt
on February 27, 2008 at 8:58 pm Matthew N. Petersen

I don’t want to be married to just her, but to Christ Himself. She only works if She is Christ. For me, the power and attraction of marriage flows from the Eucharist. She is bread because she partakes of that Bread. And so looking to her, I can look to Christ–like Dante looking to Beatrice. We should look to our wives as Christ, but we should do so because they physically are Christ because they physically eat the Bread.
on February 28, 2008 at 1:48 am Matthew N. Petersen

Matt, but have you answered Jonathan’s point that on your account “you do not sense the presence of that body with your *body*. Even on your account, he is only present in a physically nonsensible manner. So how does this satisfy you desires?”

Well, I tried to, but I think I got too caught up in the joke I forgot to deliver the punch line. The most fundamental question is not what, but who. What am I touching? A hand. Who am I touching? My wife.

Similarly, what am I touching? Bread. Who am I touching? Christ. Yes, if I don’t know I’m touching Christ, I don’t get the benefit. Without knowledge of who (or even knowledge of what) we are touching, much of the horror or thrill goes out. (Think of the koan that has an exhausted traveler in the dark find a bowl of soothing water, only to find in the morning that the “bowl” was a human skull.) But with knowledge, there is something magical, or horrific.

Before Atreus told his brother what he had just dined upon, he had just eaten meat. After he learned it was his own children, then pure horror.

But this does not affect whether the thing (or the person) has an effect on us. If I am starving and eat bread, I will be nourished, even if I think I am just eating grass.
on February 28, 2008 at 1:50 am Matthew N. Petersen

but Matt’s weird rhetoric exposes the flaws of an individualized theology of the Supper, which all the local presence theories tend towards.

I think it is more likely that everyone else’s position has all the flaws of an individualized theology of the Supper. Balthasar said every Protestant lacks a real connection to the Church and is too individualistic. Schmemann said the West was too individualistic, too mechanistic. I heard a Russian Orthodox on NPR tonight say the West is individualistic, but the Orthodox–the Russians–know what communion (Sobornost) is.
on February 28, 2008 at 3:32 am Matthew N. Petersen

This is too many posts,

But looking over them again, I brought in the sexual language (in a much milder form than your reactions seem to suggest) to express the draw to the physicality of it. When Catholics say “I want the Physical Christ present” they aren’t making an abstract point about the necessity of Christ being physical, they are saying I want a physical communion with Christ. That’s why we find discussions with Reformed who point out that our union is with the whole Christ, including the Body of Christ, so frustrating. We are talking about the fact, believed by faith, that Christ is present physically before us. It’s the physicality of the Sacrament, not the physicality of Christ per se, that we are talking about. Or perhaps the physicality of the presence of Christ, not the presence of the physical Christ.

But if the sexual metaphors don’t work, use images of holding your child in your hands. St. Paul says that he is united to the Corinthians in the Spirit, though absent in the flesh. That is, he has the same sort of communion with the Corinthians as you claim to have with Christ in the Sacrament. Presumably you have an equal level of communion with everyone, and every saint with you. So…would your son be comforted one iota if you told him “daddy’s going to be gone for a month, but don’t worry, I’ll be with you in Spirit!” The Catholic (and Lutheran and Orthodox and some Anglican) view says that Christ is actually there present at our side, not gone, completely absent (physically–like you are from your son if you go out of town), but present spiritually–like you are with your son even when you are out of town. I say we get to physically hug daddy. You say we don’t. Perhaps the Catholic formulations are problematic, but they are attempts to say “we get to be with daddy.” Peter, if you appeal to St. Therese, you’d better know her. That’s why she found the Sacrament comforting. Here was her daddy. Here she could see her face reflected where papa had been.
on February 28, 2008 at 9:25 am Tim Enloe

But Matt, the point still remains that contrary to your own expressed deepest wishes, you do not sense the presence of that body with your *body*. This is basically just a theory in your mind about what you are holding in your hand, an intense belief supplemented by intense emotions. You do not PHYSICALLY sense the PHYSICAL presence of Christ in the elements. What then, is the benefit of your view over that of the Reformed view which you reject? On your own criteria, your view fails to provide that which you most passionately seek.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have that much of a problem with different views of how the presence is there. It’s enough for me to know that He is there. I really don’t care to get all metaphysical about it, but if someone else feels they must do so it is not something that greatly disturbs me – unless, that is, they combine their metaphysical speculations and private intense emotions with denigrations of my own communion with Christ.
on February 28, 2008 at 11:21 am Joseph M. Gleason

I may regret jumping into the middle of this moderately-heated fray, but here goes . . .

Just for the record, I do not believe in transubstantiation. I don’t go for Aristotle’s “accidents”/”essense” dichotomy. I don’t think human beings in the Church have to undergo transubstantiation to become the body of Christ, so I don’t think the bread/wine need to undergo such a process either.

But I am not thereby convinced that Jesus “is only present in a physically nonsensible manner” (post #30). While I agree with that statement in a limited sense, i.e. the visible head/hands/arms/feet of Jesus are currently at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55), not in churches across the world, I disagree with that statement in other senses:

A) Is the “body of Christ” (the Church) really the “body” of Christ, or not? If we really are, then physical interaction with the Church *is* physical interaction with Jesus Himself (see Steven’s post above, #33). Better yet, see Matthew 25:40.

B) If a collection of human beings (the Church) is an actualy, real, honest-to-goodness physical part of Jesus Himself, then why cannot the same be true of the bread and wine? Is the bread the “body of Christ” in some *inferior* sense to the way that the Church is the “body of Christ”? I think not.

C) Think very carefullly about 1 Corinthians 10:17 – “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” This verse draws a direct organic connection between the “body” (bread) and the “body” (Church). If I eat a peanut butter sandwich, those peanut butter molecules organically become “Joseph Gleason” molecules. Similarly, 1 Cor. 10:17 says that we ARE the body because we EAT the body. Those “body of Christ” (consecrated bread) molecules are organically turned into “Joseph Gleason” molecules, and my physical body is thereby made an organic part of the “body of Christ” (Church).

In other words, “you are what you eat.”

The consecrated bread is the body of Christ, and by eating the body of Christ, we all become the body of Christ.

But, should I therefore be tempted to bow down in homage before the elements? Not any more than I should be tempted to bow down to my brother in Christ, or to my own reflection in the mirror. After all, my brother and I are both part of the “body of Christ” too. If I am not tempted to worship Christians, then neither should I be tempted to worship the bread and wine.

Someone might counter: “If Christ’s real physical body includes all Christians and all consecrated bread/wine, then his physical body is not human, thus Christ’s very humanity is thrown into question.” But I would simply respond by pointing out interesting things about Christ’s post-resurrection body. His physical human body could walk through walls (John 20:26). But humans like you and me cannot do that. Was Jesus therefore not human? In fact, prior to the resurrection, Jesus walked on water. Peter did, too, briefly. But I am a human, and I have tried to do it, and it just never works for me. Were Jesus and Peter therefore inhuman? But if Christ’s water-walking and passing-through-walls don’t detract from his physical humanity, then his real physical presence via his Church and his Communion doesn’t detract from his physical humanity, either.

Jesus does not leave His humanity behind, and merely commune with us via His deity alone. Jesus is indivisibly deity AND humanity, so when Jesus communes with us, it is the complete God-Man who communes with us. Jesus does not show up as a disembodied spirit whenever we celebrate communion. There is no ghost in the loaf.

Is not this cup we drink a participation in the blood of Christ? Is not this bread we break a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16) And as far as I know, “blood” is a manifestly *physical* thing. I have never heard of disembodied “spiritual” blood. I think the same goes for flesh, too. I don’t buy the idea that the “body” we participate in is merely the body of Casper. No, it is physical. The Eucharist is a blessed gift from God whereby we get to physically interact with Jesus Himself.

This is the point in the discussion where Martin Luther dips his finger in his beer, and passionately uses the froth to write on the table: “HOC EST CORPUS MEUM”. Take that, Zwingli!
on February 28, 2008 at 12:24 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Joseph,

I would have thought that these various discussions on the nature of the Eucharistic presence would have made it quite clear by now that no one here is arguing in any way for a “ghost in the loaf” theory of Presence. I have myself already argued (in a number of locations) for an understanding of the presence which itself provides all the various qualifications you have placed on my statement (which statement, by the way, was a very specific response to Matt’s analogy between his embrace of Christ in the Eucharist and his embrace of a woman in sexual union).
on February 28, 2008 at 1:56 pm Joseph M. Gleason

I was specifically responding to the assertion that Jesus “is only present in a physically nonsensible manner” (post #30) in the eucharist. He IS physically “sensible” . . . I smell the wine, I taste the bread and wine, I see them, and I touch them. If that doesn’t qualify as “physical sensation” then I don’t know what does. When I partake of Christ during Communion, I do so physically. My Lord is being physically intimate with me and the rest of His Church.

I went back and re-read what you wrote above, Jonathan, and I certainly agree that the Church is awaiting a *future* wedding feast and personal intimate embrace with Her Husband, Jesus. So I can see why you don’t want to specifically link the Eucharist to sex . . . no sex before the wedding, after all!

But does that mean there is no physical contact whatsoever between a man and his betrothed bride? No gentle touches with his hand? No hugs or kisses of any sort? No tender caresses on the cheek?

I myself have used the “eucharist=sex” metaphor before. And in the context of the Church’s future wedding feast with Christ, I can see why specifically sexual imagery might feel out of place. (Though other places in Scripture do present our marriage to Christ as a present reality.) But must we therefore deny the presence of any “physical intimacy” whatsoever?

Maybe I just jumped the gun and misunderstood the thrust of what you were trying to say. If so, I apologize.
on February 28, 2008 at 4:05 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Tim,

I honestly wasn’t trying to denegrate your position. Sorry it sounded like that. I’m trying to show that there are significant differences between a Reformed position and a Catholic one, that make the Reformed position look hollow from the other perspective. At first, I was just trying to convey some of the draw to the Catholic position, but that got rejected with “well…everything you want to believe, you could believe if you were Reformed.” Which is, well, ridiculous. For someone who believes that the Bread is Christ, and the Wine is Christ, and treasures that fact, not that doctrine, but that fact, the Reformed position seems very hollow. Yes, the Reformed can say many good things about the Eucharist, and if the loyality is to the doctrine, not to the Bread, the Reformed position is very similar to the Catholic one. But what if my loyality is not to the doctrine of the real presence, but to the Bread which is Christ, and the Wine which is Christ?

Consider the heretical position (and though I’m comparing the Reformed doctrine to a heresy, its not because I’m saying the Reformed are heretical, but to draw out how empty it seems to your opponents) that Christ is not God, but that he conveys God to us. God has given me this symbol of his love, that though the man is not God, as surely as the man embraces me, so God embraces me. In this man’s embrace, I receive God’s embrace. (I’m not using embrace sexually, but more as a reference to a strong arm in time of grief.)

For someone who holds that position, or even to someone orthodox who is devoted to the doctrine of Christ, that position and the orthodox position would sound nearly the same. Yeah, here I receive God’s love, there I do too. But for the Theotokos there would be a significant difference between the two. The second tells her that this child of hers, this son she loves, actually is the God of Israel. The other tells her this child she loves isn’t the God of Israel, but communicates Him to her. For her, the difference between the two doctrines is night and day.

This sort of confusion is, in my opinion, something of what happens here regarding Sacraments. the Reformed may be correct, but they don’t realize how deep a loyality to the Bread itself they going up against. You don’t seem to realize how strong an affection for the Bread itself, and not merely for the communication of Christ, Catholics (and Lutherans and Orthodox) feel. You don’t seem to see how deep a loyality to Christ as bread the Catholics and Lutherans and Orthodox feel. Maybe we are mistaken, but there is a world of difference, from a Sacramental position, between the Reformed and the Catholic view. The Reformed view in significant, life changing ways, comes short of the Catholic Orthdox and Lutheran doctrine of the Presence of Christ. Yes, you say good things, and you say considerably more than Evangelicals. But an honest appraisal that even if you are orthodox, your Sacramentology comes up short of the Catholic Orthodox Lutheran doctrine; or rather–lex credendi lex orandi–your Eucharistic devotion comes us very short of the Orthodox Catholic and Lutheran position. If the Reformed are correct, the lex orandi is significantly different than it is if the Catholics or the Lutherans or the Orthodox are correct, and therefore the thing believed is also significantly different.

On don’t you have an attachment to your daughter as your flesh and bone? But this connection is not something you can see and feel, like it is for your wife, but is based on your trust of your wife and your understanding of reproductive biology. Now both of those are well grounded, but if faith in your wife is grounded, faith in the Church is more so. If your faith in your wife is enough to create a devotion to your flesh and blood in your child, than shouldn’t faith in Christ be enough to create devotion to Christ’s flesh and blood in the Sacrament?

In Christ,

Matt
on February 28, 2008 at 4:39 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Joseph,

Yes, but what you touch and sense is still bread and wine, not a human being. The human being, though present, is still himself not *sensed* with our physical senses, but by faith.

Even if the elements remain only in the form of accidents, they are still what is sensed by us physically. This is all I meant. Whether the Christ *who is* physically present is contained within the elements, or only within the rite but communicated through the elements by the Holy Ghost, the elements are still the things that are physically sensed by us. I don’t see how there is any getting around this on any account.

For a bit of clarification on my own position, you can check out the very brief post I wrote on “Some Basics of Calvinist Sacramentology.” Also, I’ve been active in discussions on the topic here in various threads.
on February 28, 2008 at 5:14 pm Joseph M. Gleason

Jonathan,

Ok, I think I better understand where you are coming from. And I don’t think we are differing all that much. I am thankful to hear, for example, that you do believe Christ is physically/humanly present. Amen!

But I still do quibble at one point. You said, “what you touch and sense is still bread and wine, not a human being”.

I don’t think I would quite go that far.

Actually, what you touch and sense is *consecrated* bread and wine. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Consider the other major sacrament – baptism:
* Water put on you makes you wet.
-but-
* Water put on you, in the name of the Trinity, objectively and automatically makes you a member of the body of Christ.

Thus, consecrated water is an entirely different animal from un-consecrated water. The invocation of God’s Name changes things.

Since the Eucharist is food and drink, let’s return to an earlier analogy I made regarding food. When I eat a peanut butter sandwich, those peanut butter molecules are transformed into “Joseph Gleason” molecules. They did not start out human, but they did end up human. Suppose my body turns those peanut oils into oils on my skin. Suppose my body turns those peanut proteins into the flesh on my hand. Well, when you and I shake hands, are you going to say, “I am just sensing peanuts. I only sense the presence of Joseph by faith.” Of course not! They may be essentially the same oil and protein molecules, but whereas they used to be non-human, now they are human. And incidently, when my body excretes or sheds those molecules, they will again cease to be human.

In short:
Those oil and protein molecules are not intrinsically “human” or “non-human” molecules. Their “human-ness” is determined by whether they are a part of my body or not.

When you shake my hand, you aren’t just shaking peanuts.

Similarly, when you partake of the Eucharist, you aren’t just eating bread. You are eating the body of the Lord. And you are drinking His blood.

As those peanuts became a part of me when I ate them, that bread became a part of Christ’s body when He consecrated it.

So, no, it’s not “just” bread or “just” wine. It is *consecrated* bread and wine which we physically touch and taste. It is *Christ* which we physically touch and taste. When bread and wine are used in the celebration of the Eucharist, they are part of His body and blood, and by eating/drinking, we are made His body.

You are what you eat — and we are not bread and wine — we are the body of Christ.

And none of this requires transubstantiation or the 2nd coming of Christ.
on February 28, 2008 at 5:54 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Jonathan, like Joseph, I think I’d qualify your statement that a human being isn’t touched by faith. The human being is sensed, physically. But we know that we are sensing a human by faith.
on February 28, 2008 at 6:02 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Joseph,

Honestly, I find this entire discussion rather unbeneficial. As if I don’t know that what we are talking about here is consecrated bread and wine. Seriously. Do I now have to use the adjective “consecrated” every time I speak of the sacramental elements?

But that aside, I don’t see how any of what you have said has anything to do with the point I was making. You have not demonstrated that I physically sense the body of Jesus in the Eucharist in the same way I sense my wife when I hold her in my arms. This is because you cannot demonstrate this. And you cannot demonstrate this because it is untrue. The fact is agreed upon by all sides.

Unless you can demonstrate to me that in the Eucharist you physically sense Jesus in the same way I sense my wife when I hold her in my arms, everything you say will be quite besides the point. We are not addressing here whether Christ is truly present. We are not addressing his relation to the sacramental signs. We are addressing whether we sense him in the same way we sense another human being. When I kiss my wife, it just simply is not like taking a sip of wine. When we embrace, it is entirely different than eating a piece of bread.

Even so, I think the communion we have with Jesus in the Eucharist is more deep, more intimate, than what I have with my wife. To contest this was not and is not my point. My point to Matthew was simply that the Eucharist is of a different order than being intimate with my wife.
on February 28, 2008 at 8:39 pm Matthew N. Petersen

I should also probably say that when I said “I don’t mean to be antagonistic but that is preciely what doesn’t cut it” I didn’t mean “let me be antagonistic with a disclaimer” but “I don’t mean this as a personal affront, but your statement perfectly illustrates what is lacking in the Reformed account.” And after that statement I probably put in too little of what I wanted, and too much of how the Reformed position came short.

Sorry

Matt
on February 28, 2008 at 10:57 pm Tim Enloe

Matt, I didn’t take offense personally; that’s not what I meant at the end of #41. I was talking generally, not specifically.

At any rate, I suppose I only engaged you on this because I know who you are, took a class with you, heard you ask numerous questions at Disputatios, saw you around Trinity many times, etc. I never got to know you at all when I was in Moscow, and I don’t fancy I can get to know you over the Internet. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder because of the way you are talking here, online, what’s going on with you. You say you’re still at Trinity, which seems to imply you’re still Reformed, but in almost every other way you talk as if you’ve converted to Catholicism. The only other people I’ve ever heard talk as passionately about “having Jesus inside my body” were Catholic converts.

I don’t imagine, mind you, that you’ve apostatized from the faith or even necessarily gotten yourself in grave spiritual danger if you’ve become Catholic. I just wonder about your rhetoric, that’s all.
on February 28, 2008 at 11:16 pm Peter Escalante

Joseph,

Let’s look a little closer at the principles of your argument.

First, you say “we are what we eat.” This is now a nostrum, I know; but it it is actually the reverse of the truth, as you yourself admit. What we eat becomes us and loses its substance, not the other way around. Thus this maxim can only lead to confused conclusions if seriously deployed as a premise in your argument.

I think it must be clear to you that nothing actually follows in #47 above. You beg the question at every point: the question being, whether the Lord is really or representatively present in the bred and cup. You presume that He is really present, and use it as a premise; but this is exactly the thing that you have to prove. Further, to sense the breadness and wineness is not to literally sense the Lord: and no one, not even Roman Catholics, claim such a thing. Aquinas expressly says that the senses fail to discern the Lord in the elements. His presence even on that account is discerned by faith, not sensed.

And earlier, you presume as correct a certain very contestable reading of 1 Cor 10:17; yet this passage has been debated in this very discussion. Too, you say you cannot imagine what “spiritual” blood might mean: try “metonymy for effects of His death”, a possibility well within the range of Hebraic and more broadly Semitic figural use, and see what happens.

It would be very helpful if you followed the canons of argument in trying to make your points.

peace
Peter
on February 28, 2008 at 11:39 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Tim,

I am most grateful to Trinity Reformed. But I’m not at Trinity because I agree with Westminster, but because I’m a member of Trinity. I’m at Trinity because even if I disagree with some of her theology, she still feeds me the Body and Blood of Christ, beause at Trinity I eat with the other members of Trinity. Church isn’t about doctrines, but about eating with people. Yes, the Bread is most precious to me. Yes, the Wine is most precious to me. But what I get in Church is Bread, Wine, and Other People who are Bread; not “doctrine about how the bread gives me Christ…doctrines about how the wine gives me Christ…doctrines about how people are Christ.”

Matt

Peter,

When you say “Aquinas expressly says that the senses fail to discern the Lord in the elements. His presence even on that account is discerned by faith, not sensed.” You do not seem to be quite understanding Aquinas. Just as the presence of God as Christ is discerned by faith, not the senses, yet people see God, smell God, hear God, feel God, perhaps even taste God (like when his mother kissed him); so the presence of Christ is apprehended by faith, yet we see Christ, smell Christ, touch Christ, and taste Christ.

Matt
on February 28, 2008 at 11:47 pm Matthew N. Petersen

What is difficult for me in this discussion isn’t that people say “I hold this doctrine” but that saying “Christ isn’t present like that” they are saying “Don’t value the Bread” “Don’t value the Wine” and “though on my theory you cannot be with the Wine you love, you can be just as close with Christ (who I love as Wine).” I believe you have more communion with Christ than you think you do, I’m not trying to denegrate how much communion you have with Christ, my frustration with the Reformed position is that it does not allow me to treasure my treasure.

On a different note, my good friend in Louisville Kentucky really liked your book on conciliarism, and said you really helped open the Middle Ages up to her.

Matt
on February 29, 2008 at 12:15 am Peter Escalante

Matt,

I feel quite confident that I am not the one misunderstanding Aquinas; it might be worth it for you to remember that I was once a Roman Catholic, received a traditional Thomistic philosophical formation, and would still consider myself at least something of a Thomist. I don’t say this to pull rank, only to help you understand what you can presume of me when you discuss these things with me. So- can you give me any passages in which Aquinas asserts what you assert, that one senses Christ with the senses in the Eucharist?

And look closely at your argument. For the parallel to have the force you wish it to, you would have to be a believer in impanation. Can you see that?

peace
Peter
on February 29, 2008 at 1:48 am Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

You have your quote backwards. He says “It seems that the body of Christ…can be seen by the eye, at least by a glorified one.” :-)

But I think what he is saying in this section is something more like we cannot perceive that it is Christ. I think this for a couple of reasons. First, the objections do not deal with the conversion of the Bread into the Body of Christ, but with the ability of our eyes (or glorified eyes, or the eyes of Christ, or the eyes of angels) to understand that the thing seen is Christ’s body.

And I think I could adapy my earlier statements to more directly Thomistic language to fill out seeing Christ when we see the Bread, and seeing the Bread as Christ.

But my thoughts are expansions on “Adoro te devote”, and I think his poetry and liturgical offices are more Aquinas than the Summa.

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

In cruce latebat sola Deitas,
At hic latet simul et Humanitas,
Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,
Peto quod petivit latro pœnitens.

Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor:
Deum tamen meum te confiteor.
Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
In te spem habere, te diligere.

O memoriale mortis Domini!
Panis vivus, vitam præstans homini!
Præsta meæ menti de te vívere,
Et te illi semper dulce sapere.

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,
Me immundum munda tuo sanguine:
Cujus una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio:
Ut te revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim beátus tuæ gloriæ. Amen

Notice that memorial of the dying Lord is set in apposition to living bread, and that the bread, that is the memorial, the Sacrament itself, is the object of his prayer, and of his supplication for salvation.

Second, he says directly that he sees Jesus “Jesus, quem velatum nunc aspicio.”

Third, note that my comparison between veiled godhead and veiled manhood comes from this quote from Aquinas:

“Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

In cruce latebat sola Deitas,
At hic latet simul et Humanitas,
Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,
Peto quod petivit latro pœnitens.”

Finally, remember that even in the Summa he says that the Sacrament does not move by local motion. Though the priest holds in his hand is veiled by the species of bread and wine so we cannot see that it is the Body and Blood of Christ, yet by conversion of the substance of Bread and Wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, it is Christ’s Body and Blood.

But I suppose you could argue the other side regarding Aquinas. But in my opinion, that just means that Aquinas’ understanding is incomplete.

I don’t believe in impanation, but I do believe in the ubiquity of the Body. Or if that doesn’t work, I am partial to Bonhoeffer’s statement (in Christ the Center) that as we must say “the man Jesus Christ is God”, but cannot go further without idolatry, so we must say “the Bread is the Body of Christ” but cannot go further without idolatry.

In Christ,

Matt
on February 29, 2008 at 2:21 am Peter Escalante

Matt,

I hadn’t quoted Aquinas directly, so I couldn’t have quoted him backward.

“Whom I now see veiled” means that the poet sees the veil, and knows there is a Whom behind it. It does not in any way mean that Christ as supposedly really present in the bread and cup is perceived with any of the five senses: our poet has expressly denied it earlier in the song.

You may take it upon yourself to blithely judge the completeness of Aquinas’ views on weighty topics, but you would do better to spend some years studying him first. I don’t mean to slight you, Matt, but these things aren’t a game to be entered into lightly. You have made a number of impassioned statements here, but no coherent argument; and when one of your claims is refuted, you simply move on to reassert your view rather than acknowledge that your argument failed. For instance, when I pointed out just above that your parallel only works the way you wanted it to if you were to credit impanation, you simply leave that refutation of the parallel unaddressed, and tell me you don’t believe in impanation. But I know (or rather hope) you don’t, otherwise my reductio wouldn’t have been one.

Please try to stay on topic. The point being made in all this is that your deep desire to *feel* physical union with Jesus isn’t something which can be satisfied in the Eucharist on anyone’s account. You even admit as much when you say above:

“Though the priest holds in his hand is veiled by the species of bread and wine so we cannot see that it is the Body and Blood of Christ…”

and yet, you don’t seem to even notice that you are speaking at cross-purposes with yourself here. So, can I take it that you concede there is no sense experience of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and cup, on anyone’s account? And yet, without that sense experience, you are experientially in exactly the same place as the Reformed; but you claim that extra *experience* of bodily contact (which has been established as non-occurring) is what the Reformed account “lacks”. Do you see the problem?

peace
Peter
on February 29, 2008 at 11:54 am Peter Escalante

Matt,

One more thing: I see earlier that you mistook my reference to Therese as having something to do with the Eucharist. It was nothing of the sort, as I thought would have been clear by by mentioning her alongside J-P de Caussade. I was rather suggesting her “little way” to you as something you might wish to practice in quiet while learning to not need to define yourself through polemic against the beliefs of other Christians.

peace
Peter
on February 29, 2008 at 3:27 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

I don’t have much time, but regarding my quote of Aquinas, you missed the joke. Notice the form: “It seems that…” Other similar expressions from Aquinas: “It would seem that it was not necessary for Christ to rise again.” “It seems that water is not the proper matter of Baptism.” “It seems that God does not exist.” “It seems that God is not one.”

Matt
on February 29, 2008 at 6:10 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Second,

I think it is telling that when I quote Luther and Bonhoeffer I am saying something more physical more Local Presence of Christ than when you read Aquinas. We have a tendence to think Lutheran sacramentology is Reformed-lite. But of the two (and of our perceptions of the two) the Catholic one is Reformed-lite. You can say “I affirm what on my reading Aquinas wishes to affirm, without any of the confusion I believe to be inherent in his account.” But Luther and Bonhoeffer assert something positive, and knowlingly, that you wish to reject. There is something that Luther and Bonhoeffer wish to affirm that you do not, and will not.

Moreover, as I said above, you are making Aquinas the last word on the Catholic persepctive. But if your reading of Aquinas’ explinatioin of the Sacrament is the Catholic one, St. Therese could not have been delighted to see her reflection where her papa, Jesus Christ, had been. Or at least, that would be one of the things about St. Therese that bothers people, not that delights them.

Regarding Aquinas, I believe you are fundamentally confusing formal and material causes. In the sense that we don’t ever see a person, but only colors, and our intellect informs the image we produce in our imagination with “man”, and names a particular man so imaged, so we don’t see the Body of Christ, but only colors which look like bread.

That is complicated a little in that while we cannot but help seeing a person as a person–that is our intellect can’t but inform the image of the person with the form man–we can’t help seeing the Host as bread.

But Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. As merely res credita we could debate the usefulness of belief in the Physical Presence. But as res orata. it is of great significance. Hence the significance for Aquinas of the festival of Corpus Christi. Here is the celebration where we will celebrate the Physically Present Christ, and through our senses and the reverence we show and enact and give to the Host, we teach ourselves to reverence this object, as Christ.

And this is where the appeal to the Incarnation comes in. If we say “though we cannot help seeing Christ as just a man–that is our intellect does not (and indeed cannot) inform the image of Jesus with both the form God and man” yet still we think it proper to delight in Christmas as “God with us”; by logical necessity, we must say “though we cannot help seeing the Host as mere bread–that is our intellect does not inform the image of the Bread with the form of Jesus Christ, nevertheless we should reverence the Bread as God, and thus delight in the presence of God as the Host before us here, encompased by our hand, united physically to our body.”

Moreover, just as the solution to understanding the Hypostatic Union is not to analyze it as some third thing, for that is to put the incomprehensible mystery before our eyes as something less than us, subject to our scrutiny; so the solution to understanding the Sacramental union is not to analyze it as some third thing, for that is to put the incomprehensible mystery before our eyes as something less than us, subject to our scrutiny. And as the solution to understanding the Hypostatic Union is to recognize that we stand in the light of It, and adore the Incarnate One; so the solution to understanding the Sacramental Union is to recognize that we stand in the light of It, and adore the One before us as the Host.

And that is also the answer to your objection that the true Local presence implies impanation–aside from the one I alluded to when I quoted Bonhoeffer that we cannot comprehend the Sacrament for that would be to comprehend the incomprehensible mystery of Christ, and so we must acknowledge its truth, and work from it–we ought to worry ourselves with acknowledging with our prayers that Christ is physically present before us, and not put the Lex Credendi ahead of the Lex Orandi. More fully, your seeing Transsubstantiation as attempting to affirm only what Calvin does, as well as your objection to impanation, arise because you place the analyze the lex credendi, not the lex orandi. You attempt to understand Aquinas, without understanding the celebration of Corpus Christi.

Peace,

Matt
on February 29, 2008 at 6:38 pm Peter Escalante

Matt,

I’m sorry, but someone has to tell you this sooner rather than later.

You seem to have very little idea of what it is to make an argument, and apparently little interest in actually reading what is written to you, and you are beginning to embarrass yourself.

For instance, you say above that I implied that local presence implies impanation. But I said no such thing. I said that a parallel you attempted to draw would only have the force you wished it to if you were a believer in impanation. But you aren’t, and that was the force of my reductio. What especially troubles me is that I have already explicitly pointed this out to you above.

Regarding Lutheranism, it too has a complicated account of what it thinks occurs: I’ve spent many an hour with the relevant loci in their old dogmatic expositions; the ideas of genus maiestaticum and praesentia illocalis aren’t exactly pious, folksy declarations of real presence you can touch as such. Again, you’re not giving me any reason to think you have any idea of what you’re talking about here.

Regarding Aquinas, once again, I wish you would spend some time with him before you make rash declarations about people misunderstanding him. The proper object of the sense of sight is color, to be sure; but knowing that one sees a person doesn’t come about becomes the intellect somehow directly informs the sensible species of sight or its imaginal phantasm: rather, the sensus communis, itself a true sense, is what perceives unity of substance. Thus, the attempt to draw a parallel between seeing the bread and “knowing” that Jesus is in it, on the one hand, with seeing color patches and knowing that one is looking at a person, doesn’t work. Also, on Aquinas’ account, the intellect does not “inform” sense impressions, it rather receives- abstracts- the essence from them. There were (Augustinian-minded) medievals who, somewhat like Kant, believed that the intellect provided form to sense impressions in the generation of perception and knowledge: but Aquinas is most certainly not one of them. Your account of Aquinas’ epistemology bears no resemblance whatever to his own.

And I have no idea what to make of your reference to formal and material causes in this regard: can you tell me what on earth you meant to say?

And I have never asserted that Aquinas himself held what the Reformed do: only that, even on his account, you don’t get what you said you want, and which the Reformed account “denies” you.

Again, if this conversation is to continue, I must ask you to stick to the point. The point was that you claimed that the minus of the Reformed account was that it denied you your “treasure”, the sensation of bodily contact with the Lord in the elements; but it has been proved to you that there is phenomenologically speaking no difference between the experience of a Reformed communicant and an RC one in that regard; now you say that just knowing that Jesus is really in there is what you’re after: what happened to your “treasure?”

peace
Peter
on February 29, 2008 at 6:44 pm Pontificator

It my seem implausible, but I did not become aware of this article and thread until today. Folks may find of interest my recent article on transubstantiation. I will skim through the comments tonight/tomorrow and see if I can contribute to this interesting thread.
on February 29, 2008 at 8:11 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

First, a little more respect would be appreciated. Second, using I was using “local presence” as a way of saying “the doctrine that what we see with our eyes is indeed the body and blood of Christ.” And you did say that my understanding implies impanation. (Of course, if it does, so does St. Therese’s.) Third, your argument is silly. Your argument began with if the sense is exactly the same phenomenologically, there is nothing gained by my account. (You repeated it in your last post). I gave the counter-exaple that though we cannot sense that Christ is anything but a man, yet we can find comfort in him as God with us. But counterexamples do not depend on an exact correspondence.

When I spoke of the intellect informing the sense data in the imagination, I meant that there is a corresponding substance in the mind which has the phantasm as it’s matter, and its form the form. But the form is supplied and gathered by the intellect. The intellect does abstract the essence from the senses, but this is a secondary action. Prior to abstracting, the intellect sees things in the light of forms. That is, it assigns the formal cause to the matter of the phantasm given by the senses. Other than that point, that paragraph attacking my knowledge of Aquinas is just an aside the point niggle.

Regarding your final paragraph, let me quote this paragraph again for you:

“Moreover, just as the solution to understanding the Hypostatic Union is not to analyze it as some third thing, for that is to put the incomprehensible mystery before our eyes as something less than us, subject to our scrutiny; so the solution to understanding the Sacramental union is not to analyze it as some third thing, for that is to put the incomprehensible mystery before our eyes as something less than us, subject to our scrutiny. And as the solution to understanding the Hypostatic Union is to recognize that we stand in the light of It, and adore the Incarnate One; so the solution to understanding the Sacramental Union is to recognize that we stand in the light of It, and adore the One before us as the Host.”

I’m really confused by your claim that Aquinas account doesn’t give me what I want. Is the celebration of Corpus Christi contradicted by Aquinas’ account?

Peace,

Matt
on February 29, 2008 at 8:49 pm Peter Escalante

Matt,

I’m afraid it’s you who’ve been disrespectful from the start; but that seems to have escaped your notice too.

Have you noticed that no one has stepped in to support your argument, Matt? It’s because you aren’t even making an argument. And you still persist in missing my twice-repeated point that my mention of impanation was part of a reductio, taking the parallel you drew, and showing how it wouldn’t work unless Jesus were hypostatically united to the bread as the Word is hypostatically united to the man: for it is only by virtue of that union that one can say his mother “kissed God”. Your parallel failed, and you seem unwilling to own up to it. It is not a counterexample, it is simply a failed parallel.

And no, my point about Aquinas wasn’t a niggle: I was drawing your own inadequate reading of Aquinas to your attention, and showing, once again, how your intended example falls short. And although you might wish to say this a quibble, you are still off the mark with Aquinas: the agent intellect illuminates the forms of things, but does not provide them; the intelligible species is wholly from without the mind. Your account sounds something like Augustinian illuminationism (with the exception of your strange description of intentional being as a “substance” in the mind), but it isn’t Aquinas. You seemed to hope to be able to make a parallel between form supposedly provided by intellect to perceived color, and the perception by faith of Christ “behind” the stuff of bread and wine which otherwise suggests no such presence. But it doesn’t work, and you’re not doing yourself any favors by not admitting it.

You seem entirely unwilling to stick to your original claim. If you think that enacting a cultus which *behaves as which* Christ is really present in the elements is the same as *actually perceiving the Lord with the senses*, which was your original claim (and the supposed difference between you and the Reformed; but now your “taking comfort” “knowing” he is with us, is not significantly different from what the Reformed can claim), then this dialogue really is hopeless. Follow your sentiments if you wish; but don’t pretend that you’ve given any argument.

peace
Peter
on February 29, 2008 at 9:05 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Matt,

First, I’m amazed that you can say to Peter “a little more respect would be appreciated,” when thus far in discussion with him over the past few days you have dismissed his points with some rather smug comments. Just a few examples:

1. “You have the passage wrong”

2. “You have your quote backwards.” (when he didn’t even give a quote)

3. “you are fundamentally confusing formal and material causes”

And have now had the audacity to say “your argument is silly.”

Second, I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Peter here. It is getting tiresome to continually read your prolonged discourses on things that are quite beside the point. When did Luther and Bonhoeffer come into the picture? I too am at a loss as to what you were trying to accomplish by saying Peter is confusing material and formal causes in his reading of Aquinas. Also, you can keep talking about Lex Orandi, Corpus Christi, and teaching yourself to reverence the elements, et c., until the cows come home. But you are still evading the point, which is that you do not physically sense the body of Christ in the way you sense other human bodies in moments of embrace. You can believe that he is there. That is great. So do we. But that which is comprehended by your physical senses is (let me be careful here) *consecrated* bread and wine. And, consequently, this is precisely what is presented to our senses as well.
on February 29, 2008 at 9:07 pm Jonathan Bonomo

To all,

In my opinion, this discussion has run its course, and has now exeeded the bounds of beneficial discourse. As this is not a thread to one of my posts, I cannot close comments on it. However, I would ask the participants in this discussion to cease. If necessary, some *brief* concluding remarks are welcome. But continuing to say the same things over and over again, even if we can figure out new and creative ways to say them, will be of no benefit to anyone. And quite honestly, I’d rather be spending time with my wife than reading about implications of impantation, what is phenomenonlogically gained on whose account, abstracting essences, et c.

Good night, gentlemen.

:-)
on February 29, 2008 at 9:50 pm Joseph M. Gleason

Jonathan,

I do have a couple concluding remarks, and I think they are both important:

1) Of course I realize you know the vast difference between “bread” and “consecrated bread”. I did not intend to suggest that you were personally unaware of the difference. I should have spoken much more carefully. Please forgive me.

2) I made the error of making assumptions, and then arguing based on those assumptions. In one of your last posts, you clearly said, “that which is comprehended by your physical senses is consecrated bread and wine”, not standard human flesh. Of course you are indisputably correct. On this particular thread, I probably would have been better off waiting longer and reading more posts, before jumping into the discussion myself. Please forgive my haste and my mistaken assumptions.

Pax Christi,
Joseph Gleason
on February 29, 2008 at 11:13 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Joseph,

Thanks for the apology. It is much appreciated. I do forgive you, and ask that you forgive me if I reacted too harshly in my response to you.

Blessings,

Jonathan
on March 1, 2008 at 3:47 am Matthew N. Petersen

Jonathan

It seems you too missed the joke, though I explained it later. When I said “you have the quote wrong” I was making fun of myself because Aquinas at least seems to say the exact opposite of what I was claiming. I was making fun of myself by mock quoting the introductary “it seems that….” as if he was stating his position, rather than his opponent’s position.

I already apologized for saying “you have the passage wrong” so it is unChristian for you to bring it back up.

When I said he was confusing material and formal causes, I went and explained how, on my view, he was confusing them. And when you quoted that passage you left off the important qualifier “I believe you are fundamentally confusing formal and material causes.” Leaving that off fundamentally changes what I said, and is thus highly uncharitable.

Second, as I have repeatedly stated, I am very bothered by Peter’s dismissive words and condescending attitude, as well as his insults about what I hold dear. “what happened to your “treasure?””

But maybe some of the frustration is that you thought I was saying “I want the sensation of bodily contact with the Lord in the elements.” But I wasn’t. I was saying “I want bodily contact with the Lord in the elements.”

And, I have said since at least 31, that we only perceive that the Sacrament is Christ by faith. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t spend your energy trying to prove to me that we can only perceive Christ in the Sacrament by faith. It’s again, rather uncharitable.

Finally, I have repeatedly appologized, but I have never received one.

You don’t have to read this section if you don’t want to.

I could restate my arguments, let me flesh out the Bonhoeffer one. (I haven’t really stated it except by appealing to Bonhoeffer. But no one seems to have read Christ the Center, or at least no one seems to understand my argument, so let me flesh it out.)

My answer to the charge of impanation is an appeal to Bonhoeffer (Christ the Center). He says to ask how of Divine things is necessarily idolatrous, and an attempt to peer into the inner reaches of God. We must simply believe that. The man Jesus Christ is God. Full Stop. The Bread is the Body of Christ. Full Stop. The Church is the Body of Christ. Full Stop. The Scriptures are the Word of God. Full Stop. We cannot comprehend beyond the revelation given to a how, but must end with the that of revelation.

But if Bonhoeffer is correct, it is wrong to say “when I touch the Bread I am not actually touching Christ, but only a substantial form of him”, because that presupposes an understanding of how the Bread is Christ. But similarly saying “that understanding of how the Bread is Christ implies impanation” makes the exact same error. We may not ask how the Bread is the Body of Christ, we only know that it is, and I’m not offering a how. So an objection that “what you are saying implies that how the Bread is the Body of Christ is the same as how the Man Jesus Christ is God” is not a valid objection. We do not, and cannot know how the Bread is the Body of Christ, nor how the Man Jesus Christ is God, only that.

And thus my claim that Peter is putting intellect before adoration. The proper response to the fact that the Man Christ is God, or that the Bread is the Body of Christ, is adoration of the Man or the Bread respectively. And any attempt to understand how is by its very nature, a failure. Furthermore, it is only by receiving Christ, and thus being made into his image, that we can begin to see fully that. Which means it is by adoration–by prayer–not by intellectual endeavor that we come to understand the Incarnation, the Trinity, or the Sacrament.

I also answered it by pointing out that my parallel between the Sacrament and the Incarnation was to prove that we can delight and be comforted sunsually by something we cannot see with our senses. Namely, as all Christians believe, we can be comforted and delighted that we see God (as the Man Jesus). So it is not ridiculous to claim that we can be comforted and delighted by seeing holding and tasting the Sacrament if we know the Sacrament is indeed Christ. I don’t put any sort of how into the comparison (deliberatley as my discussion above of Bonhoeffer should show) and so to claim that my argument turns on a how is wrong because I put forward the hypostatic union as a counterexample to the claim that we cannot be physically comforted (in the relevant way…try and work with me here) by something we do not perceive.

You say “But you are still evading the point, which is that you do not physically sense the body of Christ in the way you sense other human bodies in moments of embrace. You can believe that he is there. That is great. So do we. But that which is comprehended by your physical senses is (let me be careful here) *consecrated* bread and wine. And, consequently, this is precisely what is presented to our senses as well.” No I’m not! We can be comforted by the fact that God is embracing you when Christ does. This inspite the fact that all your senses perceive is a man. This is a counter-example to the hinge of your arguemnt: that my physical senses must comprehend the thing that I find comfort in.

Matt
on March 1, 2008 at 8:07 am Pontificator

FYI: “Eucharistic Presence in Calvin by Dr Phillip Cary.
on March 1, 2008 at 8:53 am Jonathan Bonomo

Matt,

I asked the participants in this discussion very cordially for brief concluding remarks, not a plethora of explanations, justifications, and further arguments. I got to your third paragraph and ceased reading.

You have your own blog on which you can say your peace on this issue. I encourage you to do so there. If you persist in this, you will be placed on moderated status.
on March 1, 2008 at 1:57 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Due to edditing trouble, a post that was supposed to end with “We do not, and cannot know how the Bread is the Body of Christ, nor how the Man Jesus Christ is God, only that.” continued several more paragraphs.

Sorry

And the last section was (as I stated) not my main point, but only an attempt to flesh out my argument against Peter’s assertion that my position implies impannation.
on March 1, 2008 at 2:46 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Peter,

Can I ask you a question about Aquinas?

I know this is off topic, but I don’t know where better to ask it.

Speaking of concepts: I believe Aquinas says that the intellect does not perceive particulars, only universals. I can, using my intellect, talk about red, or blue, or man, but I cannot talk about this man. The reason for this is that the intellect perceives forms–I see a orange and know it is an orange because my intellect has perceived the form of the substance in front of me, “orange”–but it cannot perceive matter. And matter individualizes. This orange is different from that orange because of the matter.

But that does not mean that I cannot know particulars, I know particulars because my senses receive the matter (though of course not the unformed matter), and present the matter to my intellect through the phantasms. I know particulars, but knowing particulars is not the operation of merely the intellect, but of the whole person, intellect, phantasm, and sense.

Moreover, my concept of this orange, to be an accurate concept, must reflect both the substantial cause, and the material cause. That is, for me to know this orange, (as distinct from other oranges), my concept must include material causes (or at least accidents) , but to be a concept of this orange my concept must include “orange” as a formal cause (not the formal cause of the concept, for then the concept would not be a concept but the thing conceptualized, but as the formal cause of the thing conceptualized). That is, the matter of the substance concept is a material cause (supplied by the senses) united to a formal cause which orders the matter received from the senses. So wouldn’t it be correct, in some way, to say that the material cause of a concept is a substance? Isn’t this what Aristotle means when he says “The soul is in some sense all things”?

Matt
on March 1, 2008 at 2:59 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Matt,

I asked you nicely twice to cease and desist, and have also taken the time to explain some things to you personally via e-mail. But you just couldn’t resist, could you? Your obstinance is well nigh astounding.

Peter is free to respond to this if he so chooses, but any further comments you make on this thread will be deleted.

And please, do me the favor of *not* e-mailing me to complain about this. I refuse to continue getting into childish back and forths with you.

Take my advice and go have a few beers with some friends.
on March 1, 2008 at 3:40 pm Peter Escalante

Jonathan,

This really is a different line of inquiry Matt has begun with this question, and do I don’t think it was a breach of your request to close the earlier discussion about the Supper. I would therefore ask that this last post of Matt’s not put him into permanent moderation.

Matt,
Since this forum isn’t one devoted to philosophy or scholasticism, I think any involved discussion of Thomistic epistemology should be conducted by personal correspondence, which I am happy to entertain with you. You can get my email address from Jonathan. But briefly, this is a question about what scholastics call intentional being. Intentional being exists in the subsistence of the knower, and is the immaterial presence of the substantial thing known in the knower, which latter two are one in the act of knowing. But since the presence of the known in the knower is immaterial, and matter is what individuates, the thing known is therefore not substantially present in the knower, and neither is knowledge a substance. Strictly speaking, on the old account, the senses do not *receive* the matter of the thing sensed , they rather perceive the enmattered being, and receive the sensible species of it (in which the intelligible species is in some way latent). Hence, “the soul is in a way all things” (and I hasten to say that there are many other readings of this Aristotelian dictum than the Thomistic one) means for Thomas (and I speaking very loosely in what follows) that the powers of perception can receive all things proportionate to them immaterially, and that the nous pathetikos is capable of the presence of all forms proportionate to its power.

Too, there is on the old account no concept strictly speaking of “this orange”, but there is perception of “this orange”, and it would be known as an “orange” in virtue of the concept orange, but there would be no concept “this orange”. “*This* orange” would indicate a perceived being, and could also express a judgement of existence (“this orange ‘is’ “); but it is not a concept. “Orange” is.

Again, I would be happy to entertain personal correspondence on this question. But I could also point you in the direction of one of the best expositions of the general topic, which is Frederick Wilhelmsen’s “Man’s Knowledge of Reality.”

peace
Peter
on March 1, 2008 at 4:08 pm Jonathan Bonomo

Peter,

Having been confronted on this now by two brothers, I am willing to admit that I may have jumped the gun. I confess that this discussion, along with some things which have been said off the forum, has gotten me angry.

Blogging really seems ridiculous and pointless at times. And I often wonder why I spend/waste any time with it.
on March 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm Jonathan Bonomo

BTW, Matt, I just want to apologize to you publicly as I have in private for speaking to you out of anger. I was wrong, and I am sorry.
on March 1, 2008 at 4:57 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Thanks Jonathan. I really appreciate it.

And I probably said some things I shouldn’t have too.

And let me be clear at the end: I think the Reformed say many good things about the Sacrament, and I think that the Reformed actually have the physical presence of Christ physically acting on them.

I think however, that there is one significant way that their understanding of the Sacrament is insufficient: It doesn’t satisfy my body because Christ isn’t physically present. (And of course I would say numerous things about how though we do not sense the body, yet we sense the body.) But the Reformed say many good and true things.

Matt
on March 1, 2008 at 5:43 pm Tim Enloe

Matt, did you contradict yourself between the last sentence of your first paragraph and the first sentence of your second? How can the Reformed both have and not have the physical presence of Christ?

I have to say that I don’t understand what you’ve been trying to do these last few days. So much passion, so much rhetoric, so many words poured forth, but at the end of the day it all seems like it’s all for just a theory in your head that happens to meet a particular emotional need with which you are struggling, and that you came around to fight about things that nobody was really interested in fighting about in the first place.
on March 1, 2008 at 6:37 pm Matthew N. Petersen

Tim,

The key to transitioning between the first and second paragraph is that I move from talking about what I think is objectively true in the first, and what I would believe in the second. But since we enjoy other people as people because we know they are people, (or know they are the people we care about), the knowledge I would loose if I held Reformed Sacramentology is critical. I would move from being a mother nursing her son, to a mother nursing some baby that happens to be her son (though she doesn’t know it).

I really wasn’t trying to fight. It seemed that people were having a difficult time understanding how, psychologically (or devotionally), the Reformed view is different from the Catholic one. Thus Peter can say “I affirm what you wish to affirm, without any of the confusion I believe to be inherent in your account.” In abstract that sentence can be true–both views preach that we are actually united to Christ. But in practice it isn’t true. Catholics have a loyality to the Host, and want to love the Host. The Reformed view tells them not to love the Host. And Catholics delight in being physically in the presence of Christ. The Reformed view says they cannot.

I honestly wasn’t trying to start a fight, but only to explain that the Reformed view isn’t just another way of articulating the idea that we are united to Christ by the Sacrament, but that for a Catholic, an attachment to the Physical Presence of Christ is a reasonable thing, and so to a Catholic, the Reformed view comes up short of full Sacramentology.

From my perspective, the fighting started when, though I was saying that for reasons that are particularly important to me the Reformed view isn’t sufficient, people told me that the Reformed view is indeed sufficient in every meaningful way. It was this perceived dismissal of what is important to me, and thus of me, that hurt me.

But I honestly wasn’t trying to fight. The earlier comments were about “I think people are drawn to be Catholic because of…’ I was trying to give a concrete example. “I don’t know why everyone is drawn to believe in the Physical Presence, but here’s why I was.”

Sigh. Maybe this whole thing came about because everyone thought I was fighting, and they replied accordingly, and then I (never having even begun to fight, and comming to the discussion without sword, and hardly even with cloths) felt attacked and like everyone was taking advantage of my vulnerability.

Matt
on March 2, 2008 at 12:05 am Tim Enloe

Well, Matt, if anything is clear from all this is that there is a lot of conflating of subjective psychology with objective ontology. Namely, you’re confusing the lack of a particular type of psychological attachment to the Host with a simple functional denial of presence. Who, one may ask, are you to say that? It’s a nice piece of autobiography for you to say that the Reformed view can’t sastify your personal psychological and emotional wants, but what has that to do with anyone else’s personal experience? I never have understood, myself, why I should give a rip what Roman Catholicism thinks about my communion with Christ.

At any rate, I think Jonathan is right and this thread just needs to stop.
on March 2, 2008 at 1:48 am Matthew N. Petersen

I’ll certianly go for stopping the discussion.

Have a good Lord’s Day tomorrow (or I hope you had one if you get this tomorrow afternoon).

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Evangelical Catholicity

Ecumenical discussion founded upon historic Christian orthodoxy

History and Catholicity

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