Re-telling the Mystery
Many old doctrines that we have thought were saying too much are quite frequently saying hardly anything at all, or are saying something only in the negative. Protestant scholars still criticize the doctrine of transubstantiation, for example, for ‘importing Aristotelian metaphysics.’ But what has actually been imported? The mystery of the Eucharist has from the beginning been that the bread and wine are Christ’s body while seeming in every physical way to be plain bread and wine. So when the medievals insist, in Aristotelian language, that the ‘substance’ of the elements is the body and blood of Christ even while they retain the ‘accidents’ of bread and wine, they are doing nothing but restating the same old mystery: looks like physical food, but is really the paschal sacrifice. Has Aristotle gained some hidden control? Nothing is different here; the same mystery has just been made intelligible for philosophical conversation.
25 June 2007 |
tags: Lord's Supper
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In addition to making the biblical proclamation intelligible for philosophical conversation, the language of transubstantiation protects the biblical proclamation from incorrect exegesis. We rightly regard the biblical texts as containing an almost infinite amount of possible (and valid) readings. But the limitless echoes which we may be found within the Bible require immobile cave walls in between which to resound. The dogmatic specificity of transubstantiation forms the rigid walls(themselves formed from the biblical proclamation) in which the Scriptures may be rightly proclaimed. This is the purpose of all dogmatic statements.
So when are you becoming Catholic? Your quotes and short reflections show some affinities for it all.