Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dg@lakart.uucp (David Goodenough) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: How does the Eucharist work? Message-ID: Date: 29 Nov 89 05:37:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 59 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Since it appears to be time for the annual "How does the Eucharist work?" discussion, I'd like to submit the following for consideration. This very discussion: transsubstantiation / consubstantiation / something else / who knows what, came up at our church a while ago. Someone settled it rather interestingly by asking the following question: How many of you can explain _EVERYTHING_ that goes on when your car engine is running? What about fuel combustion: you mix air and gas (why does the gas have to be vaporised?), add a spark, and it burns. But what is happening when it's burning - can you answer at the atomic or subatomic level? Why does the carbon want to disconnect from the hydrogen and join to the oxygen? What about the electrical system: where does the electricity live in the battery: it's only full of lead compounds and sulphuric acid? How do you get a 30000 volt pulse to make the spark out of a 12 volt battery - with the coil: but what happens in the coil to cause it? etc. etc. etc. etc. - I won't go into all the nauseating detail. The whole point is WE DON'T KNOW, and WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW. All you need to know is that you put the key in the ignition, turn it, and the car goes. Maybe Eucharist is like that. We know what we need to know: how to make it work, as instructed by Christ. But as to the exact mechanics of what happens, it may be that this is something comprehensible to God alone, and we are trying to understand something that we can't. To provide a loose analogy, how many first grade maths students are going to be able to comprehend integral calculus? Not that many. Are we being first graders trying to grasp integral calculus? Yours in Christ, -- dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough +---+ IHS | +-+-+ ....... !harvard!xait!lakart!dg +-+-+ | AKA: dg%lakart.uucp@xait.xerox.com +---+ [This is a common enough theory, and one that I think has a lot to be said for it. My own position is that the crucial issue is that Christ is really present to us in communion, and transsubstantiation is just a theory about how it happens. However there's a problem with this approach. Transsubstantiation seems to involve the definition of what happens, and not just the explanation of how it happens. If you adopt it, after the consecration there isn't bread there at all. It's really Christ, and you should act accordingly. This can lead to rather different practices. Taken to their limit, you could have practices that appear completely appropriate to someone who believes in transsubstantiation, but appear to be idolatry otherwise. Such an absolute dicotomy is fortunately not an unavoidable result. Even those who consider the elements simply symbols should have some latitude for treating symbols the way you would treat the thing symbolized. However I have to believe that there are going to be at least some implications to believing that the elements are not just symbols for Christ, but Christ himself. --clh]