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The increasing emphasis on ocular communion in the later Middle Ages highlighted the paradox that attended the Eucharistic miracle—that, at the elevation of the host, one is looking at the body of Christ, but seeing only a piece of bread. Understandably, this inability to apprehend the transformation of the bread into the body led some to question whether anything miraculous occurred. The Church's response was to provide conversion narratives in which unbelievers were granted visions of the host transformed into bleeding flesh. But these stories failed to resolve the disjunction between looking and seeing because (as with the Eucharistic miracle) they relied on the belief that they were true rather than any sensual apprehension. Needing to provide lay churchgoers with something to behold, the ecclesiastical authorities pivoted from the establishment of belief to the detection of disbelief, and trained the gaze of the congregation on something it could see—the unbelievers who failed to reverence the host and thus looked like Lollards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Homily On the mystical body of our Lord Jesus Christ by George Gennadios II — Scholarios (ca. 1400 — paulo post 1472) was the first original Orthodox theological text to use the word μετουσίωσις (transubstantiatio) as an ex professo Eucharistic term and to adopt the doctrine associated with it. In this paper I propose a new reading of the fragment, in which Scholarios writes that God communicates with the faithful in the Eucharist by substance (κατ' οὐσίαν). I argue that this fragment was a paraphrase of the third paragraph of chapter 61, book four of Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra gentiles and should not be interpreted in the context of Palamite theology as has been proposed hitherto. I find support for my case in the manuscript Taurinensis XXIII (C-II-16), a compilation encouraged by Scholarios in 1432 and which contained the translation of the Summa contra gentiles by Demetrios Kydones. In addition, I outline the post Scholarium history of the expression κατ'οὐσίαν (secundum substantiam), which played a key role for the later development of the Eucharistic doctrine of the Orthodox Church in the post-Byzantine period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Thomas More's understanding of the role of the recipient's virtue in activating the full power of Christ's body in the Eucharist in his A Treatise on the Passion of Christe and A Treatise to receive the blessed body of our lorde, sacramentally and virtually bothe. Though passionately committed to the doctrine of the Real Presence, More writes that the body of Christ, while fully present, is not in and of itself entirely sufficient to complete the work of the sacrament if the recipient is not virtuous and receives the sacrament unworthily. An unvirtuous recipient receives only bodily, which is to say not completely — not, in More's terms, virtually. An unvirtuous recipient is not the only means by which the full power of the Eucharist may be compromised. Because the Incarnation and transubstantiation involve transformations of word and bodies into each other, it is not surprising that More's concerns with the sacrament, virtue, and the virtual also involve language. In the Dialogue Concerning Heresy, More strenuously criticizes Tyndale's translation of scripture. This essay also examines the ways in which More's objections to Tyndale's translation understand its destructive power as rooted in linguistic choices that disrupt the crucial nexus of virtue, the virtual, and the corporeal. In More's view, Tyndale's Bible thus deserves immolation along with the heretics themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian writers have always described the Eucharist as a 'sacrifice', but this was ill‐defined before 1500. The Tridentine Fathers offered an account of the priest somehow offering the one sacrifice of Calvary anew at the altar, which depended on transubstantiation, but later theologians have found it difficult to narrate this. I propose a eucharistic theology that draws on Calvin's account of the pneumatological ascent of the communicant, and on David Moffitt's account of Jesus' sacrifice in Hebrews, to suggest a way of understanding the Supper as sacrifice that is acceptable to Reformed sensibilities, and both more coherent, and more responsible to recent ecumenical convergence, than the various post‐Trent theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion, I aim to offer a sympathetic reading of some central themes in Herbert McCabe's 1969 paper 'Transubstantiation and the Real Presence'. I begin by setting out McCabe's core claims, before introducing an analytical framework that is intended to throw further light on their import and importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses and critically evaluates the dispute between Herbert McCabe and his pseudonymous interlocutor G. Egner with respect to the doctrine of transubstantiation. The aim is to treat their views of that doctrine as exemplary of the difference made by what might be called a 'Grammatical Thomist' approach to our view of the nature of the sacrament of the Eucharist, of sacraments in general, and of theology's propensity to violate the rules of sense that are constitutive of ordinary language and of philosophical systems alike, in order properly to establish and maintain a believer's relation to God. Particular attention is paid to the way McCabe's account at once taps into unacknowledged aspects of Wittgenstein's vision of what it is to be human and violates what are usually regarded as the enabling conditions of that vision's articulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work consists of three chapters. The first one takes a historical tour that highlights how the Catholic Church, from its beginnings, has confessed the truth of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Furthermore, it teaches that this presence takes place by virtue of transubstantiation, by which the substance of the bread and wine becomes the substance of the body and blood of Christ, while preserving their appearances. The second chapter describes in detail the content of the official documents of the theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the other christian confessions with regard to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. A theological order is followed for this, beginning with those traditions that share the Catholic doctrine in the real presence to a greater degree. The third chapter studies the theology about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in some contemporary theologians belonging to various christian confessions (Ratzinger, Kasper, Zizioulas, Williams, Pickstock, Pannenberg, Hunsinger). The reflection of Ratzinger stands out, who defines the substantiality of things from faith in Creation and describes transubstantiation as the transformation exerted in bread and wine by the powerful presence of Christ, which causes them to lose their creative autonomy to become pure signs of his presence. This opens up promising horizons for dialogue driven by ecumenism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Cuestiones Teológicas is the property of Cuestiones Teologicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the main meanings given to the presence of the relic of the Precious Blood of Christ in the city of Mantua, and also highlights the links with the Altdorf-Weingarten relic of the same, which derives from it. For centuries the presence of this relic has intertwined in several ways with events in Mantua and has shaped some of their most significant religious and cultural expressions. Above all, during the Middle Ages, the Precious Blood had a widespread impact, destined to expand all over Europe. However, we possess vague and scarcely defined evidence of this, as much of the evidence was removed, mostly in the name of rationalist critique, and diminished with the passing of time. Within a long-term perspective, the text which follows here aims to tackle some relevant problematic issues, from a historical and historico-anthropological viewpoint. It attempts both to strengthen understanding of the local and wider intertwining which characterised the development of such a relevant religious experience of our culture, and also to enter into contact with essential aspects of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of the South American Andes have long noted the extraordinary force of objects to traverse cosmic and psychic distances, fill (or empty) the living with power that is often exhibited through public dance, and serve as ‘transactors’ in senses socioeconomic, psychic, cosmic, and geographical. In this article, I examine substances and actions involved in a modified version of Holy Communion that took place in June of 2012 in a working-class neighbourhood located at the outskirts of Quito, Ecuador, to celebrate the nativity of St. John the Baptist. I argue that this act was specifically designed to expand the celebration of the Eucharist in a way that allowed a type of transubstantiation whereby the relatives and friends of former hacienda peons were able to transform their physical bodies into something some believed had long been hidden from them – their right to live in the city as persons of their own making, ones who could legitimately adopt the identity and corresponding histories, territories, and political rights of indigenous persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine of the Eucharist has been one of the more fruitful locales of philosophical reflection within Christian theology. The central philosophical question has been, 'what is the state of affairs such that it is apt to say of a piece of bread, 'This is the body of Christ'?' In this article, I offer a delineation of various families of answers to this question as they have been proffered in the history of the church. These families are distinguished by how they view the presence of the body of Christ as well as the continued presence of the bread and wine after consecration. I then provide a specific examination of some recent attempts to explicate these views. A number of the recent work has focused on the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but I also survey consubstantiation, transignification, and a recent revival of impanation as potential means for describing the metaphysical realities of the Eucharist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Confessions of Faith of the XVIth - XVIIth centuries do not set forth comprehensively and systematically the teaching on the Eucharist, but they contain statements of great importance, with solid scriptural argument. All these emphasize the sacramental and sacrificial character of the St. Eucharist and the real presence of Lord's Body and Blood through transformation (epiclesis), excluding any rational explanation and rejecting the Catholic transubstantiation. There are also highlighted aspects of the Saint Eucharist: the use of leaven bread, the sacred Communion under both forms, the practice of giving the Saint Eucharist to children, the thorough preparation, for its reception, the Confession being a condition sine qua non. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the trajectory of women towards more visibility in society and in the Catholic Church in order to consider the feminine body in relation to the Eucharist. It examines how the awareness of the bodily awareness in women has an inherent resemblance to the Eucharist as real presence and as mystery of transubstantiation and communion. It explores how the presence of women within the social and ecclesial bodies has increased.

The present paper argues that while Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham disagree about the metaphysical status of 'quantity' as articulated in their respective eucharistic theologies, they agree about the theologically more significant issue regarding the metaphysical status of the real substantial presence of Christ's body. The essay proceeds by first examining Thomas's account of eucharistic presence, eucharistic change, and eucharistic accidents before considering Ockham's argument against Thomas's account of quantity. The paper subsequently turns to the agreements between Thomas and Ockham, before concluding that while Thomas's account of transubstantiation is a historically significant contribution to eucharistic theology, Ockham's interpretation of eucharistic transubstantiation is also a valuable resource for modern theologians investigating the relationship between ontology and the Lord's supper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last fifty years ecumenical progress on the Eucharist has been accompanied by widespread disregard for semantic and metaphysical questions about how Christ is, and comes to be, present in the Eucharist. This paper argues that these questions must be faced, and that Christ's Eucharistic words ("This is my body," "This is my blood") should be understood semantically as genuine identity statements. They were taken this way by Christians from the earliest times, and this is the most natural way to take them. Christians also insisted early on that Christ's Eucharistic presence comes to be by way of a radical conversion of bread and wine into Christ's body and blood. The Council of Trent's teaching on transubstantiation is meant to insist that this ancient conviction about Eucharistic conversion is normative doctrine. Thomas Aquinas's application of the idea that God is the auctor entis can aid in an understanding of Trent's teaching on the Eucharist. At the same time, the arguments of Scotus and Ockham make the ecumenically helpful point that this conversion is not metaphysically necessary for Christ's Eucharistic presence, though it is, of course, the way this presence actually comes about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that the thought of American polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) offers a coherent, adequate, and versatile framework for understanding the eucharistic species as "signs." Specifically, the historical analyses in the first and second parts of the article provide a conceptual grammar for showing the usefulness of Peirce's sign theory to interpret the understanding of the Eucharist as expressed in Sacrosanctum concilium (1963). The article concludes by suggesting how these clarifications might help promote cross-disciplinary study of the liturgy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On October 7, 2004, the Pope John Paul the II inaugurated the Eucharistic Year, but he left to God before its conclusion, on April 2, 2005. Being the last matter that he gave to the Universal Church in his 27 years of pontificate, we can consider the "Imperious Eucharist" as his last spiritual will, the horizon of the pastoral direction that he wished for the people of God at the turn of the third millennium. Underlining the inestimable value of the Eucharist, the Pope John Paul the II put into bold relief the contrast between the teaching of the Church and the life of Christians. His mystical view observed the deficit of the Eucharistic experience; that is why he noticed the Eucharistic urgency that the Church is living nowadays. The refresh of the faith in the true presence of the Christ in Eucharist will determine a refresh of the life and of the testimony of the Church in the middle of nowadays people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), the church, with the exception of the Eastern Orthodox Church, restricted the participation of children in eucharistic celebrations based on the exegesis of I Corinthians 11:29 regarding "recognizing the body of the Lord" and Roman Catholicism's emphasis on the doctrine of transubstantiation. It has long been common for adults to believe that children lack the degree of cognitive ability necessary to give a confession of faith in order to receive the Lord's Supper. After the publication of Christian L. Keidel's article "Is the Lord's Supper for Children?" in 1975, however, many Reformed churches in North America began to reconsider age appropriate participation of children in the Lord's Supper. Because there is no mention of the Lord's Supper for children in the Bible or in any historical documents from the first to the third century, scholars have been unable to establish clear guidelines for acceptance or refusal. Therefore, researching children's religious thinking in relation to cognitive development is essential in deciding the matter of their participation in the Lord's Supper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship of theology and truth in philosophy, focusing on accidental properties, truthmaker theories, and the dogma of transubstantiation in the Catholic Church. Quotations and analysis of the Eucharist and transubstantiation as declared in the Ecumenical Councils and the work of Dominican scholar and author St. Thomas Aquinas are given. The concepts of truth, accidents, and substances are also discussed.

My essay offers a personal reflection on Poteat as both a beloved teacher and philosopher. I suggest that Poteat's teaching and writing had to do most radically with describing an alternative ontology to the ones that have haunted both modern and postmodern thought. Poteat's ontology leads him to a profound embrace of the Incarnation and its liturgical celebration in the eucharist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the theology developed by reformer John Calvin concerning the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, with particular focus given to theological similarities to the beliefs held by reformers Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli. Sacramental union, the presence of Jesus Christ through the Lord's Supper, and transubstantiation are discussed. The book "Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper," by Calvin is examined and the theological concepts of the Holy Spirit, spiritual presence, and participation in the sacrament by the unworthy are explored. The relationship between Calvin and reformer Philipp Melanchthon is also discussed.

This paper will explore parallels between Eucharistic and psychoanalytic transformation. Its objective will, in part, challenge the assumption that Eucharist constitutes a concrete and material reality, insular and devoid of symbolism; indeed, offering similarities to the psychoanalytic concept symbolic equation. It will be argued that Eucharist must be understood in context to its transformation within the community of believers, a relationship that offers accord to the transformation within the psychoanalytic relationship. Moreover, parallels between ultimate truth and divine mystery will be examined using the Bionian concept O. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Protestant Reformers' categorical rejection of transubstantiation has made the question of christological presence in the eucharist one of the most problematic points in the history of Catholic-Protestant discourse. Ecumenical dialogue on this issue has been conducted in official ecclesiastical language, located primarily on a doctrinal level. An alternate language and locus of investigation — namely, popular religious literature and lay perceptions and experiences of Christ's presence in the sacrament — may provide new avenues of exploration and may prove beneficial in making progress on this question. This essay considers such popular perceptions as evidenced in seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed texts (poetry and sermons) of two prominent and popular clergy, Willem Teellinck and Jacobus Revius. Characteristics of their representation of christological presence in the eucharist — collapse of historical time through narrative imagination, engagement of the five senses for affective experience and spiritual nourishment, and emphasis on relating to the physical aspects of Christ's corporeal body — are points that may demonstrate congruence with Roman Catholic lay language and concepts with respect to popular participation in the sacrament and may suggest avenues for Protestant-Catholic rapprochement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article expounds the distinctive eucharistic views of Pope Benedict XVI. Eucharistic themes have been prominent in the pope's work from the start of his career. As a young theologian, he wrote several articles on formal aspects of eucharistic doctrine such as transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice.

Cyprian of Carthage is one of the most important witnesses of communion and its implications in the Ancient Church. This study is focalized on his thought about the link between Eucharistical Sacrament and ecclesial communion. In his writings, this African Father shows a clear vision of Eucharist as a communional sacrament, traded by Christ in order to produce the divine unity of the Church. Because in the mystery of the bread, the wine and the communitarian participation of Christians, we have a real sign and an effective agent of ecclesial communion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demonstrates how a Mahayana thinker might envisage the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Background of the Mahayana theology; Theology of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; Edward Schillebeeckx's insights on the action of the Eucharist; Dogma of transubstantiation; Mahayana's understanding of transubstantiation.

Discusses the eucharistic theology of theologian John Wyclif. Information on the heresy of Donatism allegedly associated with Wyclif; Heretical propositions attributed to the theologian found by a council convened by Archbishop William Courtenay in May 1382; Views of Wyclif on the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Discusses the meaning of Eucharist and the Christian attitudes toward celebrating it. Theories of eucharistic presence; Examination on the criticism to transubstantiation; Exploration on post-modern positions to promote ecumenical dialogue.

Considers the possibilities of a Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist without metaphysics. Elizabeth Anscombe's transubstantiation for little children; Michael Dummett's Wittgensteinian exploration of transubstantiation; Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

The theme of table communion is recurrent in the traditions of the two covenants. The study addresses this subject based on the semantic fields that define it - food, meal, table, feast - in order to identify their different meanings and senses in the biblical world: Literal, symbolic, social, religious. In trying to understand the subject of table communion in the New Testament, we note the relationship of continuity, discontinuity, and novelty between the two covenants, and so it becomes possible to focus on the experience of table communion as practiced by Jesus of Nazareth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]