Transcript

Okay, so in our second hour tonight we're going to talk about the Eucharist controversy, and we are at the point in the semester where we aren't always able to go strictly chronologically anymore.

You know, I like as much as possible to treat the history of Christianity like we're telling a story and go chronologically, but With certain things, we have to deal with it more topically, which means when we hit the topic, we're going to have to go back and look at it almost from the beginning.

And that's what we're going to do now, with the concept of the Eucharist and the theology of the Eucharist.

Just so you know, I use the word Eucharist.

You're not required to call it that.

Other legitimate names for it would be Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper.

I'm just using the...

What was the word used in Greek?

Eucharist, as you know, means Thanksgiving or something like that.

In the early church, it was understood as a liturgy of Thanksgiving, among other things.

Now, when we talk about the term body of Christ, it's not a coincidence that the phrase can mean three different things.

The body of Christ can mean the humanity of Jesus, the literal body of Jesus Christ, and in that sense can refer to his human nature.

The body of Christ can mean the church, using the metaphor from the Pauline letters that the church is a body and Christ is our head.

And then the body of Christ can also refer to the Eucharistic element of the bread, and so within the Eucharist we celebrate the body of Christ.

And so that phrase, body of Christ, can have all of those different connotations, and that's not a coincidence because they're all connected.

The goal of the Eucharist is not simply individual salvation.

It's not just a way that I connect me and my Jesus.

The goal of the Eucharist is to make us into the body of Christ as the Church.

So in a very real sense, you are what you eat.

Because you eat the body of Christ, and you become the body of Christ, the Church.

So, we're going to go back to the beginning.

We're going to talk about how the different Christian writers understood and wrote about the Eucharist.

So, we're going to go back to Ignatius of Antioch.

Remember Ignatius?

I am a man set on unity.

Remember that?

Well, for him, unity...

Remember, you know, you don't really have church buildings.

You don't have annual conferences or general conferences.

So, you know, Where is the, to use a United Methodist phrase, where is the connectionalism within the church?

It's at the table of the Eucharist.

And in the early church, in many ways, church is defined by the table.

Those who are in the church are those who gather at the table.

Now remember, Ignatius was arguing against, or confronting, the docetics, or the early Gnostics, right?

In his arguments against Docetism, we find out that, well, many of them probably didn't do a Eucharist at all, but those who did, didn't use wine because they didn't believe Christ had any blood.

So, no blood, I mean, if Christ is a phantom, then he has no flesh and blood, so no flesh and blood, no Eucharist, or a Eucharist that apparently was bread and water, no wine.

So, Ignatius' argument against this, and in arguing against that, he connects the bread of the Eucharist with the flesh of Christ, because he's emphasizing that Christ has real flesh, had a real humanity.

So the flesh of the Eucharist is the flesh of the Incarnation, is the flesh that hung on the cross.

The Eucharistic elements, Ignatius says, contain, here he uses the word contain, the body and blood of Christ.

Remember, Ignatius believes that a unified Eucharist is necessary for a unified church.

This is why he goes on and on about, you know, you should not have unauthorized meetings without the bishops.

Why?

Because that's a separated Eucharist, if they're doing the Eucharist.

So, if you have a Eucharist that's not authorized by the bishop, it's a Eucharist that's disconnected from the rest of the church.

And so, a unified church requires a unified Eucharist, one table.

So, as we go into the time of the apologists, then, the Eucharist continues to be connected to the Incarnation, the same flesh that The Logos took on in the Incarnation is the flesh we receive in the Eucharist.

Because remember in John chapter 1, the Word became flesh.

So if the Word became flesh, then in the Eucharist, the bread and wine become Christ's flesh and blood, his body and blood.

So this becoming language comes to be transferred from The concept of the Incarnation to the Eucharist.

John chapter 1 is huge.

Also big is John chapter 6, the Bread of Life discourse, where Jesus himself describes his flesh as true food.

My flesh is true food, my blood is true drink.

Justin Martyr, The food of the Eucharist becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.

So again, there's that becoming language and there's the connection to the incarnation.

This happens at the words of institution, the words of consecration.

When we get to Irenaeus then, now at the end of the second century, Irenaeus is still arguing against So he continues using this language of becoming because he wants to emphasize the real humanity of Christ and his real flesh.

The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

And so this is a miracle.

And you'll remember that Irenaeus likes to use typology.

And in typology, there is a type that can be a foreshadowing or a symbol of something, and then there is the antitype that is the reality to which the type points.

The type points to the antitype.

But the antitype is the deeper reality.

In the miracle of the Eucharist, the type becomes the anti-type.

It doesn't just point to it or foreshadow it, it becomes it.

Now, we've talked about this a little bit, but there are types in the Old Testament that are used to foreshadow the church's sacrament of the Eucharist, like the manna in the desert, the bread from heaven, the water from the rock, There is a New Testament type as well.

The wedding at Cana, the changing of water into wine, and then the different accounts of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, the feeding of the multitudes in the New Testament.

So again, these become New Testament types that foreshadow the church's sacrament, and again, as these are miraculous, so is the church's sacrament.

Now, that's all well and good, but when Tertullian comes along, he's got to do this in Latin.

You already know that Latin is not as precise a language as Greek.

And so when he talks about this issue of typology from Irenaeus, he's got to use Latin terms.

So in Latin, the term that Tertullian uses for the concept of a type The bread is figuratively present.

But becomes the body of Christ.

The wine is present figuratively, but becomes the blood of Christ.

In Tertullian's words, the bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ.

So again, the similar sign, if you will, becomes the deeper reality.

The figure becomes the deeper reality.

Now, Tertullian also brings in the concept of remembering.

Now, you have heard the phrase, remember your baptism and be thankful, right?

Sometimes we do renewals of baptismal vows or whatever.

Remember your baptism and be thankful.

Well, for Tertullian, the Eucharist is about remember the cross and be thankful.

And it's very much like the Old Testament understanding of the Passover.

The Old Testament understanding of the Passover is one in which presence, Past history becomes present mystery.

You can tell I didn't make that up.

Past history becomes present mystery.

So, in the Passover, the past history of the Exodus becomes the present mystery of the celebration of Passover.

The past is made present.

The past becomes present.

And this is how Tertullian understood the Eucharist.

The passion of Christ is the past history that becomes a present mystery.

And so the passion itself is made present in order to be made effective for the believers at the table.

Alright, I'm just going to keep kind of moving through.

If you have questions, you want to stop me and ask something, you can do that.

But I'm going to keep moving through history to catch up to where we've been.

Cyprian.

Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage.

Remember him?

Third century Bishop of Carthage?

Cyprian is Critiquing Adoptionists.

And the adoptionists actually Start out at the opposite pole from the docetics, but end up at the same place.

In other words, no wine in their Eucharist.

If they do Eucharist at all, they don't use wine.

The adoptionists apparently didn't use wine because they didn't believe that Christ's blood was salvific in any sense.

They believed he had blood, because he was human, but they did not believe he was divine.

So they apparently didn't use wine.

The stated reason for their refusal to use wine was that during the persecutions, if you go to worship early on a Sunday, but then have to go to work, you go at dawn and drink a little bit of wine, you don't want to go Have your boss smell the wine on your breath when you show up for work later.

And so that was sort of the excuse.

Wine on your breath in the morning would be a giveaway, apparently, during the persecution.

But I think Cyprian sees through this, and the real reason is because of the different Christology.

His blood is not salvific.

Would it also have been related to the adoption of communion to be working towards perfection?

It could be all tied up with that.

Again, if adoptionists understand Jesus as merely human and not divine, any sort of miraculous element in the Eucharist would be de-emphasized by them, we assume.

Cyprian argues by talking about the sacraments, water is the element for the sacrament of baptism.

Wine is the element for the sacrament of the Eucharist, and so a Eucharist validly done has to have wine, because wine is what turns into the blood of Christ.

Cyprian said the blood of Christ cannot be in the cup, Unless it contains wine.

Now the interesting thing is that Cyprian used a different term for the same kind of idea where Tertullian used figura or figure, Cyprian used the term symbol.

And so for Cyprian the wine is the symbol Well, because the wrong symbol won't have the right effect.

Try not to assume this means what we think of when we think of symbol, because often when we think of symbol, It's connected to the word only.

It's only a symbol.

For Cyprian, it's not only a symbol as if it's symbolic in the sense that it has no...

Put it this way.

If we say something is only a symbol, we imply that you can substitute out some other symbol and as long as it has meaning for you, that would be fine.

But that's not what they're saying here.

It's like the way the Gospel of John uses the word sign.

These are the signs that point to a deeper reality or a greater reality.

So for Cyprian, if you have the wrong sign or the wrong symbol, you're not going to get the right deeper reality.

And so the bread and wine are described as figures or symbols or signs.

Which point to a greater or deeper reality, specifically the body and blood of Christ.

But again, it isn't simply that they point to or that they evoke in one's mind the deeper reality.

It is that they actually become or turn into the deeper reality in some sense.

What exactly that means, we're going to get into.

But at this point, it's enough for these authors to acknowledge that something miraculous is going on.

And the importance is the close connection between the Eucharist and the Incarnation on one hand, and the Church on the other.

So again, body of Christ, body of Christ, body of Christ.

The Incarnation, the Eucharist, The body of Christ is in the bread, and the body of Christ is in the church.

This idea of communion, if you call it holy communion, it's one of those words that can lose its meaning if you don't think about it.

Communion is all about unity, isn't it?

It's about a communalism.

For these early writers, communion is essential for salvation.

The assumption here is that it would be difficult or impossible to be saved apart from the Eucharist.

Salvation doesn't happen on your own as a lone ranger Christian.

Through and at the table.

So, because the table is where you receive the body of Christ and become the body of Christ.

And so this is why, you know, exactly these people, Tertullian and Cyprian, were so adamant that there is no salvation outside the church.

Cyprian went so far as to say, whoever does not have the church for a mother cannot have God for a father.

Whoever does not have the Church for a mother cannot have God for a father.

Why?

Because the Church is where the Eucharist is.

So if you're outside the Church, you're outside the Eucharist.

And that's why excommunication was such a heavy matter.

Alright, moving along.

Ambrose of Milan.

Now you remember Ambrose of Milan because he was the bishop of Milan who was the mentor of Augustus.

And so we're going to talk about Ambrose, and then we're going to talk about Augustine.

Ambrose of Milan uses the word figura, figure, and he's working with the concept of signs.

And so basically he's saying that the bread and wine are figures, Which point to the deeper reality of the body and blood.

And again, I'm using the phrase point to, but it's more than that.

The sign becomes the reality at the consecration.

The sign becomes the reality.

So again, we're still picking up on this language from Irenaeus about becoming.

The bread becomes the body of Christ.

The wine becomes the blood of Christ.

And the conversion of the elements, the elements are converted into the body and blood.

But this is not really a material conversion.

It's not about the physicality of the thing.

The physicality of the bread and wine remains.

It is the underlying reality It is the underlying reality that become the body and blood, and those are the things that you can only see with spiritual eyes, with the eyes of faith.

Your physical eyes, your human eyes, will still see bread and wine, but with the eyes of faith you can see the body and blood of Christ.

Begin to think of this in terms of what you know about what the word essence means.

That there is a material tangibility to these elements that does not change.

But the essence of the elements changes.

The essence of the bread becomes the body of Christ.

The essence of the wine becomes the blood of Christ.

So that's what Ambrose is saying.

And again, if you have that chart in front of you, if you don't, you can look at it later.

But if you have that chart in front of you, you'll notice that it says that the bread and wine are figures, the bread and wine become the body and blood, the sign becomes the reality.

So, the bread and wine are the figures, the body and blood of Christ are the reality.

Now, Ambrose is a student, Augustine, is going to say it a little bit differently.

But at this point in history, nobody thinks it's a controversy.

No one thinks they're arguing against each other.

They're basically assuming that they agree, but they're expressing it a little bit differently.

But Augustine, now remember, Augustine wrote so much that you can't really put him in a box.

He uses the language different ways.

But sometimes he used the Latin language the opposite way Sometimes he used the word figure-up to mean the sign, the same way Tertullian did and Ambrose.

Other times he used the word figure-up to describe the body and blood of Christ.

And so it's a little bit hard to pin him down.

But either way, the elements are still the signs which become the reality, the deeper spiritual reality.

The signs are the things that are accessible to the senses.

The reality is in the mystery and not accessible to the senses.

So the body and blood of Christ are the greater reality, but they're not tangible.

So just like water baptism is an outward sign of an inward grace, so the Eucharist is an outward sign, the bread and wine, and there's the inward reality or the reality of the essence in the body and blood of Christ.

So notice, both Ambrose and Augustine are saying that the body and blood of Christ are the reality.

And that the bread and wine are the sign or the symbol or the figure that become the reality.

Remember your Plato, right?

Plato had this idea that the physical world is actually less real than the spiritual world.

That the realm of the spirit is actually more real than the tangible world.

We're used to thinking that if something is tangible, it's real.

But Plato has said that if it's tangible, it's only a shadow of the thing that's more real in the spiritual realm.

And that's kind of what we're working with here, that the tangible elements of bread and wine are actually a sign or a shadow, if you will, of this greater reality, but that greater reality is not tangible.

So no one is saying that the sacrament is only a symbol, but they're using the word symbol to actually talk about the bread and wine.

So at this point it's not an argument, it's really about sometimes Augustine uses different words to say the same thing.

But they're both saying that the sign or the symbol becomes the reality, and they're both saying that it's a miracle, the way the miracles of Jesus are called signs in the Gospel of John.

So, this is not considered a debate like Augustine and Pelagius or anything like that.

There was no formal dogma, no one was considered a heretic, it just sort of was what it was.

It wasn't until the 9th century that it became a controversy.

And two things happened in the 9th century, or leading up to the 9th century, that turned it into a controversy and sort of called the question.

The first thing that happened is the missionization, the Christianization of Northern Europe.

In Northern Europe, where paganism held on longer than many other places, you have a background where people have a collective memory of a tradition where priest equals wizard.

Now, I may be oversimplifying that, but go with me.

And, in fact, you can think of the Magi from the Gospels, right?

The Zoroastrian priests.

And did you notice that the word Magi is where we get our word magic?

Right?

Yes.

So, for magician, like Magi, magician, right?

So, in Northern Europe, you have a similar kind of situation where their tradition includes this idea that the priests of the cult It has powers.

So imagine now, Christians go in and they say, okay, we've got this great religion, you should all join.

And then they say, well, we worship the tree.

And the missionary, with all the sensitivity that he can muster, says, hand me the axe.

We worship the tree, watch me.

I'm going to cut down the tree and we'll see if lightning strikes me dead.

And so we cut down the tree, no lightning, and so the people convert.

And again, that also is an oversimplification, but you get the idea.

So now that you have a situation where there are these people who have been converted to Christianity, They come to Mass, and what do they see?

They see a man wearing funky robes that they've never seen before, maybe even a funky hat, speaking Latin, doing what appears to be a magic trick, turning bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, And they hold up the host, and they speak the words in Latin, the words of Jesus, where he says, this is my body, hocus, corpus, maus, hocus, corpus, maus, hocus, hocus, and hocus, hocus, magic trick.

Some people are going to wonder whether we need to clarify what's going on here a little bit.

The other thing that's going to happen is that as Europe becomes an empire, under Charlemagne especially, there will be a movement towards the standardization of liturgy.

In other words, if Europe's going to be an empire, we better all do liturgy the same.

Those things kind of come together to call the question.

We come to the ninth century and two important theologians who have written documents on the Eucharist that you're going to read.

And the first one is a guy named Rad Burtis.

Yeah, Rad Burtis.

Radford has died about the year 860, so you can see where we are in the timeline now.

He was a monk at the monastery of Corbie, C-O-R-B-I-E, later he became the abbot, and he wrote a document called On the Body and Blood of the Lord.

On the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Wrote it in 831, revised it in 844, in case you're keeping score.

on the body and blood of the Lord.

And basically, Radbertus just lays out what we've just been talking about.

He follows the apologists, and Irenaeus, and Tertullian, and for the most part Ambrose.

And he says that at the consecration, the elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

And a miracle is taking place.

And it's not a magic trick.

It's not like a seance, like if anybody doesn't believe it won't happen.

It does not require the faith of the participants for the miracle to occur.

Of course, the faith of a participant is necessary for the miracle to be effective, for the grace to be received, but in general the miracle happens simply because the words are said.

And so he says, the body and blood The body and blood of Christ are hidden underneath the figures of bread and wine.

So again, bread and wine are the figures, and the body and blood are hidden under the figures.

The bread and wine are there as figures.

They are figuratively present.

But the body and blood are there in truth.

Truly.

They are truly present.

Now here he's working right off the bread of life discourse.

My body is true food, my blood is true drink.

John 6, 55. So after the consecration, there is the true presence of the body and blood, but no longer the true presence of the bread and wine.

The bread and wine are still there as figures, but the substance or the essence The body of the elements has changed into the body and blood of Christ.

And that body of Christ must be the same body that was born of Mary and hung on the cross, or it can't be effective for believers.

It's not tangibly present, but it is essentially present, present in its essence.

This is the difference between what is tangible and material versus what is the essence or substance of a thing.

This whole miracle is possible because, remember, this is not only the flesh of Christ that was born of Mary and hung on the cross, but it is the body of Christ that was raised.

And so because it's the resurrected body, this miracle takes place.

So, again, true presence does not mean tangible or physical presence, but it means essential presence.

And basically, this is going to be the concept of transubstantiation, but we don't have that word yet.

So we'll get there.

Now, this is what Radvertis says.

And the king of the Franks, grandson of Charlemagne, whose name is Charles the Bald, later he would be the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Bald, I have no idea if that name is literal or ironic, I have no idea.

No, no, it's a description.

Charles the Bald.

Charles the Bald read Radford as his document on the body and blood of the Lord, as you will, and he wasn't sure.

He thought maybe this overemphasized the connection with Christ's physical body.

And so he posed the question, whether the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist are present in truth or in a mystery.

Which is it?

In truth or in a mystery?

Now, spoiler alert, I'm going to tell you right up front, it's a little bit like asking you, do you prefer the country or do you bring your lunch?

But go with me here, because this was the way he posed the question.

Are the body and blood of Christ present in truth or in a mystery?

So, responding to Radhartus is another monk, also at the monastery of Corby, named Radtranus.

And by the way, if any of you have twins, these are great names for twins.

I always talk about what great baby names you can get out of early church history, and someone once responded with, why do you hate my children?

So, alright, maybe you won't name your kids Rad-Verdus and Rad-Tramnus, but Rad-Tramnus is a contemporary of Rad-Verdus, died a few years later about 868, and so Charles the Bald commissioned Rad-Tramnus to write a response to Rad-Verdus' document.

And Ratramnus wrote a document, cleverly titled, On the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Same title.

Now, in the translation that you're going to read in the supplemental book, they give it a different title.

But basically, Ratramnus writes as though he's He seems to be arguing against Radbertus, but he's not really arguing against Radbertus, he's arguing against the caricature of Radbertus, because he's arguing against things Radbertus never says.

And in the end, Radtramnus basically says almost the exact same stuff as Radbertus.

But what he was uncomfortable with, like Charles de Paul, was Radbertus' emphasis on Jesus' historical body.

So, He picked up where Augustine used the language differently and tried to basically say that the word figure should be used not of the bread and wine, but of the body and blood.

So that he said that the body and blood of Christ is present, but figuratively.

Now notice here figuratively is not the opposite of truly.

Figuratively for him is the opposite of literally.

So here's what Radtramus is thinking.

Well, I can touch and taste the bread and wine.

So they are present literally.

Therefore the body and blood of Christ are present not literally but figuratively.

And so the figure, so he's using the word figure there as the thing which is hidden or veiled.

So he's saying kind of the same thing as Brad Burns.

The body and blood are hidden under or veiled behind the bread and wine.

The issue is, what is the definition of true?

What is the definition of true?

Because for For Radbertus, true is the deeper reality.

For Rattranus, true is the literal.

What exists on the literal level that you can access with your senses.

So, Travis is not saying that the spiritual presence is any less real.

He's just saying it's there as a mystery.

It depends on faith.

You see it with the eyes of faith.

But for him, it's the bread and wine that are there in truth, because they're tangible.

The body and blood are there in a figure.

So, let me just glance at my chart here.

If you're following along, You can see on the chart that, you know, Radbertus is on the right column, the bread and wine are the figure, the body and blood are true.

For Radtramnus, the bread and wine are true, and the body and blood are the figure.

So, you see how they're using language differently, but they're both saying that the body and blood of Christ are present, In a mystery, in a mystical way that is accessible to faith, but not to the senses.

It's just that for Radtrandan, what is true is what is literal, or on the surface.

The spiritual presence is no less real, it just isn't called true because it's not on the surface.

So, they're both saying that there's a change, they're both saying that the essence of the elements become the essence of the body and blood of Christ, but they're using the word true differently.

And both of them will claim to be faithfully presenting what both Augustine and Ambrose taught.

Both of them are connecting the Eucharist to the Bread of Life discourse in John 6. Both of them are saying that something miraculous happens in the Eucharist.

Both of them would say that the tangible, physical part does not change, but it's the underlying essence that changes.

And both of them would say that when Jesus said, remain in me and I will remain in you, that this is how Jesus remains in us, by taking him into ourselves in the Eucharist.

The problem is with the terms figura and veritas, truth.

What is there figuratively and what is there in truth?

For Radvernus, what is true is that which is the underlying essence.

For Radtramnus, what is true is that which is on the surface and plain and accessible to the senses.

So they would both accept the idea that The body and blood of Christ are really there, but the question is how do they define truth?

Neither of them would say that it's only symbolic or anything like that.

There's still a miracle taking place.

So the problem is that in answer to the question to Charles Duval, are the body and blood of Christ present in truth or in a mystery?

Radvertis would say both.

The body and blood of Christ are present in truth and in a mystery.

Radtramnis would say, mystery only, because what is true is the literal and tangible.

But both would agree that there is a spiritual reality that is a mystery that is the presence of the body and blood of Christ.

They're just not accessible to the senses.

Ragtranus would say it's only a truth or only a mystery.

Neither of these were considered heresy within their lifetimes.

But later on, Ragtranus, his document will resurface when they don't even remember who wrote it anymore, but it will be considered heresy later.

So I need to jump now to the 11th century and continue the story.

Any questions about Radbertus and Radtramnus before we fast forward to the 11th century?

Alright.

11th century.

Berengar.

Berengar of Tours.

And again, he is on the chart as well.

Well, same Tours, but not related.

So Berengar of Tours reads both Radtramnus and Radvertus, but again, he doesn't know who wrote the Radtramnus document.

He reads them both, and he likes Radtramnus better.

And he confides in his friend, Lanfranc of Canterbury.

He calls up old Lanfranc and says, you know, I really like this other document better.

I really think this other document, meaning the Retramnus document, I really think this other document is more faithful to Augustine.

But again, he doesn't even know who wrote it.

Berengar is interpreting it as if it says, yes, there's a conversion, the essence or the substance of the elements become the body and blood of Christ, but the essence of bread and wine can't just go away.

So he speculated that the substance of the bread and wine remain.

So in other words, The essence or substance of the body and blood of Christ are present, but the essence or substance of the bread and wine don't just go away, they are still present as well.

This will actually come to be called, not transubstantiation, but consubstantiation.

Again, I'm getting ahead of myself, but consubstantiation is the idea that when the Eucharist is all said and done, what you have is the essence of both the elements of bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ.

So, Berengar came up with that?

Yes, Berengar comes up with this from reading Red Tramp.

Is he the first one to use the word consubstantiation?

No, he doesn't even use that word.

I would say that will become that later, but he's got the idea.

So remember I said he confided in his friend, Lanfranc, sends him a letter and says, I really like this document and I think this is what it's saying.

And Lanfranc gives the letter to the Pope and got him in trouble.

And so Berengar is condemned as a heretic in about the year 1051. And it was confronted at a council in 1059, and he and the document were then condemned.

So the document gets condemned now, you know, almost 200 years after Radtramnus wrote it.

They were called heresies of the fourth Lateran council?

Lateran council.

Yes, the fourth Lateran council, exactly.

What was the problem they had with that?

Well, the problem is that it doesn't seem to go far enough to emphasize the connection with the physical body of the human Jesus.

In other words, remember, that was Radtramnus' concern from the beginning.

Radtramnus thought Radvertis had gone too far towards the emphasis of the physical body of Jesus.

So now, reading Berenard, they're saying, uh-oh, we're losing the connection to the physical body of the human Jesus.

So, what do they do?

Well, one of the Pope's cardinals This cardinal, by the way, Umberto or Humbert.

We're going to meet him again later, that's why I put in the answer.

Cardinal Humbert writes a confession for Baradar to sign that goes to the other extreme of the biblical, saying that when we receive the Eucharist, we are literally chewing the flesh of Christ.

And, you know, so he goes way to that extreme.

But, you know, the church is looking for that middle way, and so, you know, one extreme would be, I guess, no connection with Christ's physical body.

The other extreme would be too much connection to Christ's physical body so that you're thinking about it while you're chewing the wafer.

Right?

So, Len Frank comes along and he writes a document called On the Body and Blood, where he follows Brad Birdis.

And so, you could just kind of look at it like this.

Yeah, but he was a candidate later.

Well.

Now, what L'Enfant does here is important, because before we get too deep into medieval philosophy, and this is extremely important, because he sets the stage for the official Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, which, as you probably already know, will be one of the issues in the Protestant Reformation.

Maybe not so much from Luther's perspective, but later.

So you need to understand it.

And this really sets the stage for what Thomas Aquinas will do.

And basically, what Lanfranc does is he makes clear the distinction between The external attributes or aspects of the elements that are tangible and accessible to the senses and the essence of the thing.

Hopefully this will all be clear within the next 15 minutes.

You'll be able to go home rejoicing over the clarity of which I explained.

So, von Frank is making a distinction between the tangible surface accessible to the senses external aspects or attributes of the elements of bread and wine versus The essence, substance, or underlying reality.

See where we're going with this, right?

In fact, I should say that later on, Aquinas will clarify this, that This is what will come to be called the accident.

Remember we talked about this.

Accident doesn't mean something that happens by mistake.

It means something that is sort of tangential to the essence of a thing.

So, it is not essential to the thing as it is, whereas the essence or substance is what makes a thing a thing.

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It's that the external doesn't exactly embrace the internal?

It could be, yes.

I think you're onto something there.

Because what we have here is the difference between the accident and the, we'll use the word substance, And so the substance is the underlying reality.

The substance is the true reality of the thing, the essence of it.

The actives are the outward appearance.

And while the outward appearance is more accessible to the senses, it isn't the essence of the thing.

What we have here then is that the accidents of bread and wine do not change.

Because after the consecration, obviously, you're still looking at bread and wine, and if you taste it, you'll still taste bread and wine.

And, God forbid, if you grab one and run out to church and run down the street and put it under a microscope, you will still see bread and wine.

Although, if the ushers are doing their job to attack you, you can force it out.

But the substance of bread and wine is converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.

So the body and blood of Christ are hidden under the form or the figure of bread and wine, but the substance, the essence of the thing changes.

This way of looking at it was affirmed as the official interpretation of the Eucharist in the year So the doctrine of transubstantiation is this.

that the substance changes while the accidents do not.

And the substance of the body and blood of Christ are said to be under the accidents of bread and wine.

So, hidden under, veiled under, however you want to say it, they are under the accidents of bread and wine.

Question?

No, they're only under, they only come under, they're not under there all the time, only when the priest From the consecration, because there's a change taking place.

So the substance of bread and wine turns into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.

And again, this is all possible because this is the resurrected body of Christ.

So the miracle of the Eucharist is part of the ongoing resurrection appearances of Christ.

But it will become heretical to use words like figure, sign, and symbol about the body and blood of Christ.

You can only use those words to talk about the bread and wine.

Now, let me give you my analogy and see if this works for you.

Think about a Christmas gift.

You have a Christmas gift under the tree.

And you see it there, and you know that on Christmas morning you're going to get to open it.

And so, that Christmas, or let's call it a Christmas present, because I want to reserve the word gift for the thing inside.

There's this Christmas present that is made up of two things.

There is the gift that is inside, and then there is the packaging, which is a box wrapping paper and a bow.

So, in this analogy, think of the bread and wine like the packaging.

Now, if you think about it this way, let's say on December 23rd, that present is sitting under the tree, and the gift inside the box is bread and wine, the packaging is bread and wine.

But, on Christmas morning when you wake up, someone has opened it, taken out the bread and wine, and put in something much more valuable, the Body and Blood of Christ, and closed it up again.

So now what you have is bread and wine packaging with the gift inside has changed to the Body and Blood of Christ.

Does that make sense?

So when you think of it in terms of gifts and packaging, the understanding is that it is the packaging that doesn't change, it is the gift that changes.

Now, any questions about that so far?

Okay.

So far, so good.

So that is transubstantiation, and that is the orthodox understanding of the Eucharist in the Church up to the Protestant Reformation.

Now, if that's true, though, that what we receive in the Eucharist is, in fact, truly the essence of the Body and Blood of Christ, Think back to 1 Corinthians 11. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

But a person must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

For this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.

So now it becomes a very heavy responsibility to receive those Eucharistic elements.

Notice, a person must examine himself or herself.

And, you know, I argue that from the beginning of the Church, the Eucharist was really two sacraments in one.

It was confession and the receipt of communion.

But in the early days, confession may very well have been a public prayer of confession, a corporate confession.

But the point is that you don't receive the Eucharist without first confessing your sins.

And it became so serious, and people People became afraid to receive the elements.

So as we move into the Middle Ages, people stopped receiving communion.

They started to believe that it was enough just to witness the miracle happen, to be there when it was taking place.

And in some cases, many people felt it was enough that the priest was doing it, even if no one was there.

And so you had people making donations And this would be one of the things that I think the Reformers would feel was an abuse.

You had people making donations, like, if I'm super rich, and you're my parish priest, I can say, okay, look, I'm going to give you a million dollars.

When I'm gone, you're going to say Mass for my soul every day.

Whether anybody shows up or not is not the point.

You're going to do it.

And that's what I'm buying with my million dollars.

The amount is ridiculous.

But you get the idea.

The feeling was that it over-emphasized maybe the miracle aspect and de-emphasized the participation aspect.

So people stopped receiving communion.

One of the things that Francis of Assisi did, we're going to talk about it later, but one of the things he did was go around preaching that people ought to go back to the table.

This led to things like withholding the cup from the laity as well.

Because if in fact the cup contains the blood of Christ, you don't want to spill the blood of Christ again.

And so you have You have all kinds of experimenting going on with golden straws.

You can't give the people the cup, so we'll give them a straw to drink out of.

And then you're always looking who's in front of you, right?

So that didn't work.

Eventually the cup was held from the lady so that people were only getting the bread.

And a theology arose out of this to explain it, which was that both elements are present in each element.

So it's not as though to get the body of Christ you must have the bread, and to get the blood you must have the wine, and each is separate.

But that both elements are present in each.

So if you only get one of the two, you're still getting both the body and blood.

And if you will watch in a, like in a Roman Catholic Mass, or of course others, they will actually put a couple of crumbs of the bread into the wine.

But the point is that if you only get the bread, you're still getting both the body and the blood of Christ.

And by the same token, if you only got the wine, suppose if you have allergies to gluten or whatever, you only get the wine, you are still getting both the body and the blood of Christ.

You're not missing out on anything.

The other thing that emerges in the Middle Ages as a response to this is What we sometimes refer to as ocular communion.

The reason why this is important is because it helps you understand the Protestant Reformation.

Ocular communion.

What does this mean?

Anybody know?

Communion with your eyes, right.

And this leads to the tradition that still exists of Eucharistic adoration.

In other words, if we assume that within the host, the bread, is the real, true presence of the body of Christ, then in that presence of Christ, one can One can be in the presence of Christ.

One can be in the presence of Christ in a more powerful way than simply just because Christ is omnipresent or whatever.

And so this is a tradition that continues to this day, where a consecrated Eucharistic host is placed in basically what amounts to a reliquary, but it's a thing with a window in it.

And people pray in the presence of Christ.

You may have noticed that when we go to Rome sometimes people see that, but you can see it all over here as well.

Did the Orthodox do that?

I don't know.

The question was, do the Orthodox do that?

And I'm not entirely sure.

I would have to check on that.

I don't know.

I mean, the problem was when people thought that was all you had to do, and that no one was actually receiving, and that became a problem.

But the Church would eventually call the people back to the table, and at the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council affirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, And also says that you have to receive communion at least once a year at Easter.

And you have to go to confession first.

And you have to fast, which includes no sex before receiving the Eucharist.

But again, the point is that it's not enough just to watch it happen.

And so even though those people who practice Eucharistic adoration today Still receive the Eucharist.

That's not a substitute.

It's a devotional practice that's done in addition to regular liturgy.

So, questions?

So what does happen when we spill the wine?

We spill it on the hands on the floor?

Yeah, well there's a... Within the traditions that...

have a Eucharistic theology that includes transextantiation.

If you spill the wine, there's a process for, you know, there's a cloth, you take it up in the cloth.

But like, for example, you know, in these traditions like the Roman Catholic, you can't just dump out, get extra wine that's been consecrated.

You don't just dump it out.

Somebody's got to drink it.

It has to be consumed.

And even for washing out the cups, there's a special sink Where the water goes right into the ground without going through the sewer, because that would be disrespectful.

So the people who serve are all trained.

I don't personally do that.

I guess that's why there's altar service, and one would have to church the host of the community.

Yeah, they used to do the same with the little plate and hold it under your chin.

I don't see that much anymore, but yeah, again, you don't want to drop crumbs or whatever.

The Coptics have those, almost like handkerchiefs that you take when you go, because if you're not Coptic, you can't view them taking it.

They go kind of behind, but they have almost like a handkerchief tree that you take a handkerchief and go in the back and you hold it underneath so nothing drops.

Well, it's not bad luck, it's not a superstition, but it's meant to be consumed.

So, I want to wrap up here, but we end up with The church's attempt at finding a middle way here between, on the one hand, maybe what might be seen as not enough connection with Christ's physical body, the consubstantiation, or the idea that Is that in the Eucharist the connection with Christ's physical body is downplayed or in fact the conversion is downplayed in the sense that the essence of the bread and wine remain.

So you sort of have that on one side.

On the other side you have the extreme connection with Christ's physical body where you're supposedly chewing Christ's flesh There was a time when Catholics were told not to chew the wafer, you just have to let it dissolve.

Again, that may be going a bit too far in the other direction.

Yeah, right, but I mean the point is that going to this other extreme sort of assumes that the physicality changes too.

On your chart it's called annihilation because basically there's nothing left of the bread and wine.

that even the accidents of bread and wine are changed into actual flesh.

So that would be the other extreme.

And then somewhere in the middle is the idea of transubstantiation.

Now when you take History 2, hopefully your professor will talk about theories of the Eucharist and where that goes in the Reformation and how some reformers went with consubstantiation as their option in Transcription by CastingWords