I knew the minute he referred to the anathema that we were in for a ride. What has the anathema to do with the dogma itself?
It is clear from our calling one of those crucified with Jesus “SAINT” Dismas that we do NOT hold that right belief or right reception of the Blessed Sacrament is absolutely necessary for salvation. So before he gets to the dogma he has already said a thing (1) that is not true, and (2) that supports the common and, to my mind, false because over-simplified accusation that the Catholic Church believes in salvation by works. Again, St. Dismas suffices to show that that is not so.
So, at the very kindest, we must conclude that he is not careful or precise and that his statements about Catholic teaching are unreliable.
Even his characterization of Zwingli is similarly simplistic. Zwingli did not say the Eucharist was something the worshippers did, a memorial and a proclamation only. There was a line of thought, hinted at in Cranmer and developed by Hooker that is sometimes glibly called “Real Presence in the Believer,” and sometimes, more seriously, “Virtualism.”
When I read Cranmer on the Eucharist, 40 years ago, I came away with the sense that philosophy had not kept up (and maybe shouldn't have tried) with the thinking of the Reformers. At the time I tended to the Cranmer/Hooker account, if that matters. I was not looking for arguments against it, but for support.
Now, to me, the best and most interesting part of his paper is the argument from the Chalcedonian Definition of the Hypostatic Union.
I would criticize it 3 ways.
1) He stresses the division of natures at the expense of the union in one person. It's easy to stumble on the right dogma of WHAT IHS XP was. I'm certainly never completely confident!
But, as the definition says, you must NEITHER confuse the divine and human nature or substance NOR divide the one person. And once you have someone who appears in upper rooms, the doors being locked for fear of the Jews, some questions about the “locus” of the Risen Lord remain unresolvably mysterious.
(2) But again, as he divides the person, he also shows a one-sided understanding of time and space. In particular, in his consideration of the Last Supper he gives more importance to the sequence of events than I think correct.
Yes, Aquinas suggests that the “body” of the Last Supper was not the Risen Body. So time and sequence matter somewhat. But I propose that every act of God's has always been salvific, FROM the creation of light, the separation of dry-land and water, the provision of food, THROUGH the events of the most holy three days since time began, to the, somewhere, person who accepts Christ as I type or you read this.
The salvific act of causing plants to grow and that of casting the stars from heaven, and everything in between, is, so to speak, powered by the Triduum Sacrum. The effects of the Cross are not bound by the flow of time. God is Melech haOlam, the king of time, not its subject. And his mercies endure forever, for ALL ages. And he was merciful when there was not yet light. And will be merciful when the sun no longer shines.
(3) Protestant thought seems to me to suffer from a very unscriptural and unreasonable understanding of basic matters, like the Biblical relationship between soul and body. If the proper state of the human is the union of soul and body, and if Resurrection is the proper or intended state, then Jesus, united with Divinity, brings a body to that union.
Now, unless God is diminished by the Resurrection — an absurd thought — then he is still omnipresent. And if Jesus is true God he is also omnipresent. So the resurrected body is omnipresent. So being present, sacramentally (whatever that means) shouldn't be the problem this writer makes it out to be.
Thank you very much for this post.
You need to make a copy of this to bring back when the anti-Catholics bring this tropic up again, and again, and again, well you get the idea.