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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  April 2005

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION April 2005

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Subject:

Re: Holy Blood, again

From:

Gary Macy <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:54:50 -0700

Content-Type:

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture


On Apr 25, 2005, at 12:40 PM, Dennis Martin wrote:

>
> . . . since theologians after about 1225 were
> very suspicious of miracle hosts and even when they did accept the
> possibility, they insisted that any flesh and blood produced by a
> miracle could not be the flesh and blood of Christ.  Transubstantiation
> in fact makes this impossible since substance, not accidents (sense
> data roughly) are what change here.  Thomas Aquinas has a good
> discussion of all this.
>
>
> ****
> It could not be the _transubstantiated_ body of Christ, because by 
> defintion that sacramental presence is not sense-perceptible and 
> non-local.  Agreed.  But would not these same theologians have agree 
> that Christ did appear after his resurrection in a sense-perceptible, 
> local manner and is present in heaven in that manner.  Would not the 
> question then be how something not normally associated with the 
> miracle of transubstantiation could be taking place, not that such a 
> mode of Christ's corporeal presence (sense-perceptible, local) is 
> simply impossible?  In other words, whether or how a miracle added 
> upon the sacrament-as-miracle could or should be taken as true?
> ****
The theologians who discuss miracle hosts would argue that this may be 
flesh and blood, but cannot be Christ's flesh and blood since that can 
only be in one "locus".   Theoretically, Christ could change locus, so 
he could appear to someone by leaving heaven, but that would be quite 
different from the continuing presence of flesh and blood in a miracle 
host.

>
>
>   Secondly, theologians including Thomas Aquinas
> would have held that a belief in the actual physical (that is sensed)
> presence of the body and blood of Christ would be a heresy
> (Capharnaism).
>
>
> ****
> Would this not apply only to claims of a sensed, local presence _in 
> the sacrament of the Eucharist_?  Otherwise the post-resurrection 
> appearances would be Capharnaism?  Or were they distinguishing between 
> post-resurrection and pre-ascension appearances (local, 
> sense-perceptibel) on the one hand and post-ascension appearances in 
> visions etc. (all non-sense-perceptible, non-local)?  Or does the 
> non-local, non-sense-perceptible qualification apply only to the 
> claims made about the substantial presence in the Eucharist, not to 
> other apparitions or miraculous phenomena?
> ****
>
Capharnaism is the heresy that believes Christ is present in the 
Eucharist in a sensed fashion.  As far as I know, this heresy applies 
only to the Eucharist since only in the Eucharist does Christ appear in 
a non-spatial, non-perceptible manner.


>
>   So, for many theologians in the thirteenth and
> fourteenth century . . . any suggestion that the sensed, physical body
> and blood of Christ is present in a miracle would be suspect at best
> and heresy at worst.  The presence they would accept and describe by
> the term "transubstantiation" would be a substantial presence which
> could be accessed only by the mind since that is how one accesses
> substances.
>
> ****
> "only by the mind" =/ non-sense-perceptible--Aquinas himself says "by 
> faith"--is faith a matter only of mind?  Certainly in involves will, 
> heart, person, one's being as a whole.  Excluding sense-perception 
> does not reduce everything to mind, does it?  Are substances 
> accessible only by the mind?   Normally the substance and 
> sense-perceptible are the same so we access the substance of a thing 
> by both mind and senses; in this case of the Eucharist, substance is 
> not the same as the appearance, so the normal mode of mind-perception 
> (via senses) fails, but does that mean that all that is left is 
> mind-access?  Aren't you getting a bit Kantian or Zwinglian here?  Or 
> are you using "mind" in a premodern sense, in the sense of _mens_?  
> Using the word "mind" without explanation runs as much danger of 
> misstating things in a Zwinglian or perhaps Berengarian manner as 
> using "physical" runs the risk of misstating things in a Capharnaistic 
> manner.  The technical language does use _corporeal_ alongside 
> substantial, but immediately qualifies it as a unique non-local and 
> non-sense-perceptible corporality.
>
I didn't want to complicate matters too much in my original missive, 
but I agree with you that the medieval understanding of mind cannot be 
equated with our understanding of mind.  In general, however, 
substances for them were accessible only through the mind.  That form 
of access did not rule out faith, however.  Here the much more 
important issue of the whole point of the Eucharist (the res in 
medieval terms) comes to the fore.  The point of the Eucharist was, for 
them, not the real presence which in itself cannot save anyone.  The 
point of the ritual was to aid or empower a person to live a life of 
faith and active love.  Without that (the res), the whole ritual is 
pointless, as one theologian after another insisted.  As Hugh of St. 
Victor (probably the most influential theologian on this issue) put it 
-- when Jesus was alive many people met him, but not all accepted him 
and were saved.  So too in the sacrament.  Jesus might be present, but 
the presence alone won't save  you.  So I guess I would say that active 
faith and love were more important than the real presence, and so more 
important than what one could access "substantialiter."  The majority 
of theologians did not even think that communion was necessary if one 
lived an active life of faith and love, hence the role of spiritual 
communion.


> An excessively "idealist" glossing of transubstantiation, out of fear 
> of Capharnaism is a real danger in a modern world for which "mind" and 
> "faith" mean something quite different than for Thomas Aquinas and the 
> technical theologians of his day.
>
> I also think it important to recall that the basic principles of the 
> technical theology were set forth in the Corpus Christi sequences and 
> hymns for the Office.  The language there is careful to avoid local, 
> sense-perceptible presence, but also underscores real reality, 
> substantiality.  How this all played out in the minds and hearts of 
> those who learned enough Latin to understand those hymns poses a real 
> challenge for modern scholars but I don't think that the technical 
> transubstantiation theology was entirely inaccessible to people other 
> than expert theologians.  It surely was frequently misunderstood and 
> the bleeding host miracles in many, probably most, instances represent 
> such misunderstandings and indeed, Capharnaism.  But I would not 
> assume that every single instance of apparitions or visions or 
> apparently tangible appearances of Christ associated with the 
> Eucharist necessarily have to have been Capharnaitic.  The theologians 
> properly were concerned about this danger, but in a situation where 
> the doctrine of substantial, corporeal, yet non-sense perceptible 
> presence was under attack as being merely in the mind or merely 
> symbolic, it would not be surprising that reports of unusual phenomena 
> of this sort would occur, nor do I think that the theology of the 
> Eucharist rules them out.  It does urge very great caution, extreme 
> skepticism, but not a priori impossibility of a visionary experience 
> of Christ associated with but not identical with the non-visible, 
> non-local substantial sacramental presence.

I am not sure that the doctrine was under attack by anyone who thought 
the presence was merely in the mind.  That challenge would come later 
in the sixteenth century.  The Cathars attacked the idea that anything 
physical could be of spiritual value which is not quite the same thing. 
  Berengar's challenge, I would argue, had a much more limited impact 
and again does not quite argue that the presence is "merely" symbolic.  
Certainly theologians did accept that miracle hosts could occur to 
strengthen belief in the real presence, but whatever continued to exist 
in the form of flesh and blood could not be Christ's flesh and blood.
>
> That distinction, of course, would have been lost on nearly 
> everyone--it seems to be lost on most scholars addressing the issue 
> today--the reports get reduced in one direction or another when 
> handled by modern scholars.  But if we are going to address the matter 
> by introducing theological fine-points, why not fine-tune it just a 
> bit more?

I really appreciate your fine tuning.  It is so very difficult to 
capture the medieval thinking on this issue without conjuring up the 
entire modern problem of mind and body as well as the Reformation 
debates on faith.  The medieval theologians, just to complicate life 
for us I am sure, also did not agree as to how transubstantiation 
worked.  I tried to spell out some of the differences in my article, 
"The Dogma of Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages," (Journal of 
Ecclesiastical History, vol. 45 (1994): 11-41).  Thomas, for example, 
uses "substantialiter" interchangeably with "spiritualiter" and 
"intellectualiter" in his discussion of the Eucharist.  To say however 
that he understood the substantial presence as "spiritual" or 
"intellectual" in the modern sense would be very misleading and 
inaccurate.  Finding the right modern terminology to express this (that 
is without reverting to Latin and Aristotle) is a real challenge.  It 
gets even tougher with Scotus and Ockham who have a very sophisticated 
rejection of Thomas' understanding of transubstantiation while at the 
same time accepting both the real presence and transubstantiation.
        Again, thanks so much for your clarifications.

>
> Dennis Martin
> ****
>
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>
Gary Macy, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Latino/a Catholicism
University of San Diego
5998 Alcalá Park
San Diego, CA 92110
619-260-4053

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