Autor: Sokolowski, Robert

Buch: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Titel: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Stichwort: Eucharistie u. Transsubstantiation (Materie u. Geist);

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: Matter and spirit

101c I would like to develop more fully the idea that the Eucharist embodies and presents the glorified body of Christ. To do this, I must comment on how matter and spirit are related in the world. I will distinguish three different points of view. (Fs)

101d In the first viewpoint, one that is typified by a darwinian understanding, what we call spirit is an epiphenomenon of matter. All we have in the universe is matter in motion. Matter may be very mysterious, and in its development it gives rise to marvelous kinds of bodies, such as plants, animals, and even human beings, but all these apparently "higher" things are really congelations of matter and material forces. Most of the writers in cognitive science, those who try to reduce consciousness and rational processes to the activities of the brain and nervous system, would subscribe to this understanding. In this viewpoint, of course, spirit and personality are simply complex forms of matter. I have recently seen this reductionist viewpoint expressed in the following way: it is not that God has created the heavens and the earth, but the heavens and the earth have created God, because through evolution they have brought about the human organism, which in turn projects the idea of a divine being. (Fs) (notabene)
102a The second viewpoint is an Aristotelian or Stoic understanding, one that is a rather spontaneous, natural way of looking at the world. It is not reductive, but holds that matter and spirit are mixed in the universe. There are purely material levels of being, but there are also more spiritual and rational levels of being, and each interacts with the other. The spiritual dimension shapes matter and brings about complexities and intelligibilities that sheer matter could not. The existence of life and thinking beings bears the imprint of spirit. Most attempts to refute the Darwinian, reductive point of view aim at reestablishing this kind of understanding of the complementarity of matter and spirit. (Fs)
102b The third viewpoint, which is biblical and creationist, holds that the spiritual or the personal dimension of being precedes the material. Matter exists, but it has come into being through a personal action of God. "Before" there was matter, there was and is God, who is spirit and life. The personal dimension, in this viewpoint, does not arise from matter, nor does it merely accompany the impersonal and the material, but rather it brings it into being. Matter and all created being might not have been, and they exist because of something like a personal choice. The eternal in some sense "precedes" the temporal and causes it to be. In this biblical understanding, the divine choice to create was carried out in sheer generosity or charity, under no pressure and under no need for improvement. The generosity of Creation is the backdrop for the humility of the Incarnation and the charity of the Eucharist. In this third viewpoint, then, the personal or spiritual dimension precedes and causes the material. (Fs) (notabene)
102c Faith in the Eucharist as embodying and presenting the glorified Christ clearly can be held only against the background of the third understanding of matter and spirit. It would not be possible in the first two viewpoints, not even in the one that mixes matter and spirit as two necessary components of the world. The Eucharist must be seen against the setting of Creation, which in turn becomes a context for the Incarnation, in which the eternal and almighty Creator enters into what he has made and becomes a part of it. He then continues his presence in this creation in a eucharistic and sacramental manner. The time and the space of the Eucharist are established by the entry of the eternal and transcendent into the created world. The Eucharist itself, because it would not be possible except against the background of this understanding of spirit and matter, is a perpetual reminder of the transcendence and power of God, which manifested themselves most fully not by spectacular cosmic effects but by the life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus the Lord. (Fs) (notabene)
103a The Real Presence in the Eucharist is therefore not just the concealed presence of one worldly substance under the appearances of another, but the presence of the full mystery of God's being and his work, the mystery hidden from all ages and now made manifest to us, the point of the universe and of creation. It is this presence, this glory, that is the substance of the Eucharist and the core of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Furthermore, the presence of eternity and transcendence in the Eucharist are not merely a presentation of abstract divine attributes, but the presence of the eternal Son, the Logos, who accomplishes two things in the sacrament: he gives glory to the Father and shares his life with us. (Fs) (notabene)
103b Perhaps some of the difficulties that arise in regard to the Real Presence stem from the way we understand spirit and matter in the world. We may unconsciously subscribe to the first or the second understanding that we have listed above: that of reductive materialism or of a Stoic or Aristotelian mixture of matter and spirit. If these two ways of understanding the world remain in the background for us, we will not be able to accept the idea of Transubstantiation. If we propose to interpret the Eucharist in a manner that will speak to a culture that accepts the Darwinian universe, one that accepts only a materialist and technological sense of being, it will be impossible for us to conform to the Church's faith in this mystery. (Fs) (notabene)
103c But we should not think that it is inevitable that a materialist view of nature will triumph; we ought not fear that the studies of life and cognition will reduce life, consciousness, and thinking to mechanical processes. Instead, we should look at the issue in the other way: we have every reason to marvel at the fact that matter enters into life and rationality, that it is assumed into living organisms and into human consciousness and human exchanges, such as moral actions. Matter enters into the realm of spirit and reason. Matter is already spiritualized when it is elevated into life and rationality. (Fs)
104a The Eucharist extends this trajectory into a still greater spiritualization of matter, one that could not have been anticipated by our study of natural phenomena. The Logos through whom the world was created becomes part of creation, not only in the Incarnation, when he became united with a human nature, but also in the Eucharist, under the appearances of bread and wine. Matter is elevated into a new condition in the Eucharist, in a way that expresses its exaltation in the glorified body and blood of Christ. (Fs)
104b I believe that the Gospel of St. John, and especially the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, provides an admirable context for the eucharistie celebration and for eucharistie devotion. The Real Presence in the Eucharist calls to mind our belief in the God who was in the beginning and the Word who was with God, who was God, even in that beginning, "before" there was matter. The Eucharist steers us in that direction and into that context; it is a perpetual reminder of the transcendence of God, both when it is celebrated and overcomes the confinements of time and history by reenacting in the present the sacrifice of Christ, and in the tabernacle, where the saving event is not immediately reenacted, but where Christ is present for our contemplation and prayer. St. Thomas expresses this dimension of the Eucharist when he draws on Aristotle and says, "It is the law of friendship that friends should live together." He goes on to say that Christ "has not left us without his bodily presence in this our pilgrimage, but he joins us to himself in this sacrament in the reality of his body and blood."1