Eucharist Lecture #2

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm by Peter Leithart

Eucharist Lecture #2 2017-09-06T23:36:56+06:00 Peter Leithart

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THE TRIPLE BODY OF CHRIST
As Henri de Lubac pointed out, the history of Eucharistic theology and practice is largely a history of the changing relations among the threefold body of Christ. The threefold body is: the natural physical body of Jesus; the Eucharistic bread which is the body of Jesus; and the corporate body of Christ. Two other schemes were also used in medieval sacramental theology. First, the threefold body was overlaid with a scheme involving ?Ei> res ?Eand ?Ei> sacramentum .?E The Eucharistic body was ?Ei> sacramentum tantum ?E(solely a sacrament); the historical body was ?Ei> res et sacramentum ?E(sacrament and thing); the corporate body was a ?Ei> res tantum ?E(solely a thing). In this scheme, the church plays a decisive role in understanding the Eucharist. Second, many medieval theologians taught that sacraments consisted not merely of Word and Sign, but of Word, Sign, and Action. Thus, it was essential to the sacrament that something be done with the thing, and this doing required people. Again, the church is inherent in the discussion of sacrament.

During the patristic period and the early middle ages, the focal point for Eucharistic worship and theology was the relation between the corporate and Eucharistic bodies. The Eucharist was the meal that made the church, the meal at which the church publicly and visibly was what the church in fact is ?Ethe community united in Christ. During the middle ages, however, the focus shifted to the relation between the Eucharistic body and the physical body. This shift was prior to, and the presupposition of, the development of the dogma of transubstantiation, which attempts to explain how the natural body of Jesus is also present in the host of the Mass.

The liturgical and practical consequences of this shift were massive. As I argue in The Priesthood of the Plebs , ?the cup was withdrawn from the laity, and their infrequent participation in Eucharistic bread highlighted their subordination to the clergy. Cloisters and choirs were marked off for clergy, the priest celebrated the Eucharist silently with his back to the congregation and often with no congregation present, the people no longer brought forward the bread and wine, and the host was changed from the bread of the ?lay?Etable to specially prepared wafers. Communal offering per sacerdotes became a sacerdotal sacrifice pro populo . In the end, as Gregory Dix points out, the one loaf exploded into its many grains, as the laity?s role devolved from ?doing?Eto ?seeing/hearing?Eto individual ?feeling/thinking?E(Dix 1948: 249, 616), a shocking ecclesial ?atomization?Ethat originated with the fission of priest and people at the Mass . . . . [For late medieval theology] the historical body is mystically present in the priest?s sacramental actions and materials, now screened off from the ecclesial body . . . . On this theory, the priest stands alone within the veil confecting God, as the plebs outside strain for a glimpse of the marvel.?E

This practice and theology became allied with a Eucharistic piety that emphasized the need for self-examination, and turned the table into a ?tomb,?Ea recollection of the death of Jesus and the great cost of salvation. The meal of joy turned into a time of mourning, and a place of individualistic devotion.

REFORMATION
The liturgical heart of the Reformation was the restoration of the table to the people of God. Among the ?captivities?Eof the Eucharist enumerated by Luther in his treatise on the ?Babylonian Captivity?Ewere the withholding of bread from the laity and the transformation of the Eucharistic meal from a gift into sacrificial labor. All the Reformers attempted to make the Supper more frequent in the churches, often without much success.

In many other ways, the Reformation attempted to restore the Table. Medieval Catholicism had invented the practice of solitary masses. Most of the masses in the medieval church were conducted without a congregation present at all, and even when they were present, they rarely partook. As Geoffrey Bromiley has pointed out, this led to a strange paradox in Catholic sacramental practice: ?mass is the most important service, and on some days an absolute obligation, yet it is depreciated in fact by being turned into something other than the original Supper. The people are almost forced to attend, yet they are not encouraged to participate except at infrequent intervals. Something different ?Ean alleged miracle and offering ?Ehas replaced the original means of grace.?E (This has changed in many Catholic churches since Vatican II.)

OVERTURNING THE TABLE
The Reformation was a great liturgical revival, and at the center of the liturgical revival was a renewal of the Eucharist. But in a number of respects the Reformation project was unsuccessful. In terms of the threefold body of Christ, Protestants have maintained the focus on the connection of the historical and the Eucharistic body, and did not completely succeed in returning the focus to the relation between the Eucharistic and corporate body. Further, much of Protestant Eucharistic piety perpetuated the atmosphere of late medieval piety.

In addition to the gaps in the Reformation heritage, later developments in theology and church life undermined the table among Protestants in radical ways. First, Protestantism has adopted many of the features of modernity, and particularly of modern views of religion. Modern Christianity is plagued by an overly individualistic outlook, by the notion that religion is exclusively a matter of the heart, by a belief that religion is private, and by an insistence that religion must be chosen (else it is an act of tyranny).

Second, Protestantism in some varieties has maintained a sharp distinction of the earthly/external form of religion in the OC and the spiritual/internal form of religion in the NC. When this bifurcation of Old and New is pressed, it is difficult to see how sacraments can fit into a Christian framework. If Christianity is a spiritual religion, why do we need bread and wine? If it is an internal religion, why is water being poured on the outside of our bodies?

Third, connected with these movements is the specifically American phenomenon of revivalism. Revivalism emphasized emotion, a crisis conversion experience, and denigrated the need for the church.

Theology - Liturgical

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