Transubstantiation 4: The Openness of Being

No more baseball, although I am still going to talk about a batter.... There are many kinds of cake: chocolate, strawberry, German chocolate, white cake, coconut and wedding cake and birthday cake. As you look at that list, would you agree those are all different kinds of cake? Would you also agree that the latter two are not the same kind of different cakes as the first five?

The latter two have to do with a different kind of question about a cake. When I ask "What kind of cake is it?" and you say "a wedding cake" I may still end up asking, "But what kind of cake is it?" In truth, I will eat any wedding cake, if it is chocolate. I am not a fan of white cake, even if it is for a special event.

Is a wedding cake different from other cakes? Well, no, well yes. A wedding cake is a cake but it has a different essence. It is not the meaning which it has for me which makes it different. Perhaps I hate the couple, or h ate cake, or do not believe in marriage, or think it is a bad union and so the cake for me means nothing. That is my response to the reality of the cake. I reject it. But I reject the essence of the cake, that does not mean the essence changes. The essence changed when it was baked, created and served that function.

So this is another angle on what I have said over and over with baseball. What is the point? My point is that the essence of something can and does change, essence in a non-material yet real sense. And, I repeat, my emotional response is TO THAT CHANGE, it does not cause it. Also, someone who does not know what a wedding cake is could see one and have no idea what they are looking at. Our ignorance or indiffernce do not change the cake; they change our response to the reality!

The problem with Religion, in our culture, is we are often so "in love" with the miraculous and so uncomfortable with God being involved in mundane things, that we fail to see the repurcussions of our beliefs. One huge example, Christians believe that Jesus is Human and Divine. We say He is ONE person with TWO natures (essences, beings). Jesus is a human being and a divine being at one and the same time. This is called a mystery (and for good reason). How, we ask, can God become human?

Well, something I rarely hear spoken about is that this doctrine/dogma includes something radical and amazing. It includes the idea that human nature is essentially open to divinization. [To the extent I understand Orthodox thought, divinization is the fundamental focus of its theology.] What I mean is when God created humanity (abstractly as an idea, first) He formed it in such a way that it is able to be filled with divinity while remaining human. Perhaps, transubstantiation is more important for understanding the Incarnation than we thought. (and I have not thought this through all the way). Jesus, the God-Man does not obliterate humanity (any more than He obliterates the bread when it becomes His body).

In addition, all created entities have something at work in them which is similar. My daughter did a science project on iron in cereal. We soaked some flakes and used a magnet and, lo and behold, ended up with tiny little iron flakes. Wow! We actually really eat iron when we say it contains iron. Which leads to questions about the physical makeup of human beings: chemicals, molecules, atoms, etc. We are all manner of dumb matter. We are made of the same stuff as rocks and trees and lakes. Yet, somehow, that combination of unliving things is brought together and constructs a thinking, feeling, hungering, laughing, praying person. There is something in those elements which is "OPEN" to something more. There is something about stuff which can be essentially changed while remaining what it is. Now this may be more analagous to transubstantiation than eucharist, but it does remind us that the world is not so simple as we like.

I believe that the problem with the word 'transubstantiation' is that it is late in Christian theology (because Aristotle's thought is not discovered and integrated until the 13th Century). If you do not buy Aristotle (and I do not completely) then his language system is a problem. Snatching up a concept out of its context leads to saying things that are confused and confusing. But saying Jesus is "present in a heavenly way" does not avoid the question of change. It does not escape the question, "is that heavenly presence unique here? Was it there before in all bread or just now in this bread?"

We also speak with unmeasured words (who has time, seriously, to measure every word?). So we say a mass murderer is "not human, but an animal." Never pausing to ask what are we saying about human nature. Is it transient? Can killing people change my substance? Is humanity a fleeting nature, requiring us to regularly focus on certain values and skills to retain it? Is a person who would like to kill but doesn't also an animal? or maybe a mixed human-animal? I hope you see my point.

In conclusion, each Sunday I pray that the Holy Spirit will fall on us and these gifts (bread and wine) so they will become for us the body and blood of Christ. If the Holy Spirit is doing something then I believe something is done. Something signifcant. And if it is just a 'remembering' (in the weak sense of the word) there is no need for the Spirit. I can remember all manner of things without God enterring the picture. However, if it is anamnesis then our memorial is a participation in that first meal where Jesus gave Himself. Like Passover, we transcend time and enter actively in the past event. It is present to us (or better, we are present to it) inspite of the pasage of time (and we do not even want to talk about time and what a slippering concept "past, present & future" really is).
If it is not a sacred event, then I would expect all Christians who think that way to not celebrate the Lord's Supper regularly.

I get why people reject "transubstantiation." Probably the same reason others embrace it. It is what 'our church team' says. It was what I was taught as a kid. It was what my daddy or grandma or favorite teacher taught. My hope is people would get out of themselves long enough to think about what we do believe. I also hope my RC friends note that bread (and priests) is not the only thing essentially changing on the planet. Even if we do not know much about Aristotle, we can see that there are invisible realities, not-physical at all, and whatever we do call them, we know that they there. And they change. And the change is in them (as well as in us). There is a real world. We are in it, but we do not create it out of ourselves. And when we pretend we do: disaster.