Thinking Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context

7. The Broken Bread as Theological Figure of Eucharistic Presence

Louis-Marie Chauvet (p236)

Buadrilliard: modernity is the culture of the new (p236); the game of representation (the Norman farm and health farm) (p237); if theology's task is to speak afresh then  the mutation from modern to postmodern presents challenges; this mystery clashes now not only with "reason" but with the "cultural shape of reason". (p238).

Even though qualified by phenomenology and hermeneutics, metaphysics still has something to say about Eucharist; the idea of an inter-connected set of 'truths', however, is no longer  viable (p239) because we now recognise that it comes through historical mediations: "each affirmation remains internal to a language" (Certeau); they are long, various and dense "The enemy of thinking is the rage of knowing" (Ricoeur). This opens the way to phenomenology and hermeneutics: former, truth arises by transcendental donation but "inscribes this in the thickness of concrete things", things "offer themselves" but are never  complete; the latter, refers to the complexity of the text (p241); a text carries much more than the intention of its author (Ricoeur): the author  brings a whole  culture, as does the reader, all writing or reading is "situated" (p241).

The Scholastics and Trent: Before Alger of Liege the doctrine of Eucharist was so realist that a second miracle  after "transubstantiation" to retain the veil which hid it, as normally one should have seen it; Isidore of Seville's Sacrum Secretum was then in vogue; then in 12th Century Augustine's Sacrum Signum came to the fore, a sign that reveals, not a veil which hides (p242). Christ was broken by the hands and grinded by the teeth, causing a reaction by Berenger of Tours denying the Veritas of the presence  in Eucharist. Then the Aristotelian "substance" (Hypokeimenon, or sub-iectum, Cartesian "Subject"), points to the ultimate reality behind things, as opposed to "accidents"; a substance is "localised" by means of its accidents, makes things intelligible; thus the Scholastics expel all spatial (and temporal - KC) representations because Christ is present at the level of substance not accidents (p243) so it is indivisible; only the sign (accident) can  be divided (p245); the hermeneutic is of optimistic project to turn  faith into science (p245). Trent revised Thomas to free it from a particular theological system and glosses "trans" as a "direction one should not lose sight of" (p246). Ricoeur on original sin (247). Connection with liturgy (p248); "Body of Christ" is not a theological statement but an enactment in liturgy.

The major limit of transubstantiation: The expulsion of the ecclesial body of Christ from the Eucharist (p249), emphasis changing to the presence itself and its quomodo. Trent reminds us (1551): "the Eucharist is the symbol of this unique body of which Christ is the head. ... it is the sign of unity, the door to love, the symbol of concord" but these are Augustinian after-thoughts, a call to church unity, not central to Eucharistic doctrine; the real emphasis is on "real presence", the veneration due to the Blessed Sacrament (p250) and communion. The anti protestant emphasis separated the Sacrament from its being-for of the sacrifice.

The breaking of the bread (p251): Thomas says the Priest is not acting in persona ecclesiae but in persona Christi; (p252). Christ presides at his Eucharist, speaking to the Church in his Scriptures; Eucharist as crystallisation of Word in  visible form; presence follows memory (p253); the Epiclesis unites the personal body of Christ with the whole church as body of Christ; Vatican II follows the Alexandrine epicletic tradition, as opposed to the Antiochene (p253); if apart from  the body of Christ the receiver only receives it sacramentally, not spiritually (p254); Eucharist as gift (p255); the idol and the icon (p256); materiality, exteriority and precedence (p257).

Presence as arrival (p258); if Christ's presence is inscribed in the bread the breaking shows it is not circumscribed (p259); brokenness as openness (p260); Augustine: "be what you see and receive what you are." (p262).