Autor: Sokolowski, Robert

Buch: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Titel: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Stichwort: Eucharistie u. Transsubstantiation;

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: [7] THE EUCHARIST AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION

95a Christian theology is reflection on the faith of the Church. The Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, receives and teaches her faith and when necessary defines it. Theology reflects on this faith, in a manner analogous to the way in which philosophy reflects on prephilosophical life and conversation. Theology is the exercise of reason within faith, and scholastic theology is reason's self-discovery within faith. (Fs)
95b Theology helps bring out the intelligibility of the deposit of faith. The intelligibility is already there in faith and revelation, and theology helps to make it manifest. It performs this service for the benefit of the Church and the faithful, and also simply for the distinctive understanding that faith can bring. (Fs; tblStw: Theologie)
Two theological issues regarding the Eucharist
95c When we reflect on what the Church believes concerning the Eucharist, two theological issues come into prominence: the identity of the sacrifice between Calvary and the Mass, and Transubstantiation or the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament. (Fs)
95d Regarding the identity of the sacrifice, the Church holds that one and the same sacrifice is offered on Calvary and in the Eucharist, first in a bloody and then in a sacramental manner. The two ways in which the sacrifice is offered do not mean that two sacrifices are offered; rather, a single sacrifice is offered by the incarnate Son of God to God the Father. As regards the temporal structure of this mystery, we can formulate the identity between Calvary and the Eucharist in two ways. We can begin with the sacrifice of Calvary and say that it is reenacted when the Church offers the sacrifice of the Eucharist (that is, we can say that the past sacrifice is brought forward to the present moment). Conversely, we can begin with the present liturgy and say that in the sacrifice of the Mass the participants are brought into the presence of Calvary (that is, the present community is brought back to the past moment). We can say either that the past becomes present or that the present is brought to the past. Both ways of speaking are equivalent, but both obviously are paradoxical or "beyond belief" when viewed within the horizon of human history. Clearly, the belief in the singularity of the sacrifice does raise a problem, since the temporal distance between the two historical events (the death of Christ and the celebration of the Eucharist) seems at first glance to exclude the possibility of a single action. We will have more to say later concerning this topic. (Fs) (notabene)
96a The second theological issue in the Church's eucharistic faith is that of the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament. This is the issue of Transubstantiation, according to which the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, while retaining the appearances and the natural characteristics of bread and wine. (Fs)
96b The identity of the sacrifice and the question of Transubstantiation are two different issues, but they are closely related: how could the Eucharist be the same sacrifice as that of Calvary if Christ were not truly present to offer himself to the Father? Without the Real Presence of Christ, the same event or the same action could not take place. (Fs) (notabene)
96c Both issues are present in St. Thomas Aquinas s treatment of the Eucharist, but in his work by far the greater emphasis is placed on the theme of the Real Presence. Most of Thomas's discussion in Questions 73—83 of Part III of the Summa Theologiae is concerned with the question of how the matter of the sacrament is changed: how the substance of the bread and of the wine become the body and blood of the Lord, while continuing to appear and to react as bread and wine. Thomas also gives much attention to the effect the sacrament has on those who receive it. He gives relatively little space, however, to the question of the identity between the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrifice of Calvary. Indeed, when he addresses this topic, he says simply that "the celebration of this sacrament is a certain representative image of the passion of Christ, which is the true immolation of him," and this representative function of the Eucharist is compared with the representation provided by the figures of the Old Testament.1 It is even compared with the altar as representing the cross on which Christ was sacrificed.2 Thomas insists that there is only one sacrifice, that of Christ himself,3 but he speaks of the Mass more as an image of that sacrifice than as identified with it. (Fs) (notabene)
97a We find a contrasting emphasis in the eucharistie theology of the twentieth century, in the type of thinking begun by Dom Odo Casel, O.S.B. Here, the issue of the identity of the sacrifice comes to the fore. The event of the Eucharist is seen to be somehow the same event that took place in the redemptive Death and Resurrection of Jesus. When this theme becomes prominent, however, the issue of the Real Presence seems to fall into the background. We may insist that the Eucharist reenacts the death of Jesus, but then what are we to say about the Real Presence, apart from the event of the Eucharistie celebration? In this perspective, does Transubstantiation have any role? (Fs) (notabene)
97b I would claim that the two issues are closely related, and that we cannot have the one without the other: no Transubstantiation without identity of sacrifice, and no identity of sacrifice without Transubstantiation. Both issues are essential, but emphasis will be placed on the one or the other depending on the theological approach we use. It may be that a more ontological approach will emphasize Transubstantiation, while a more phenomenological approach will emphasize the identity of the sacrifice. (Fs) (notabene)