Sacramental Realism and the Powers: A Reconsideration of de Lubac’s Eucharistic Ecclesiology

by Bryan C. Hollon

Bryan C. Hollon (Ph.D., Baylor University) is Associate Professor of Theology at Malone University, Canton, OH.

Henri de Lubac typically referred to himself, not as a systematic theologian, but rather as a historian of dogma. Although his historical projects had far reaching implications, he often did not make those implications explicit. Nor did he always state clearly the extent of his own motivations for taking on some of his major writings. He simply went about his work, tracing important developments in the history of Catholic theology, and leaving it to others to draw many of the conclusions. His famous book, Corpus Mysticum (completed by 1938 though published in 1944), is a good case in point. Whereas Corpus Mysticum offers a quite technical account of the historical development of eucharistic piety in the Middle Ages, it’s inspiration and implications, though not explicitly stated, are inextricably linked to the ascendance of Nazism and Fascism in pre-World War II Europe.

Indeed, the chief motivation for the book may well have been de Lubac’s conviction that the Eucharist is the central and efficacious sign of the Church’s victory in Christ over the powers and principalities which rule this current age and which ravaged European civilization in an especially monstrous way during much of the 20th century. Along with his conviction that the Eucharist “makes the church” by facilitating an ontological bond with Jesus Christ, the one who defeats the powers, de Lubac was concerned that eucharistic piety had been reduced to a mere spectacle under neo-scholastic influence and thus had become disconnected from true sacramental efficacy. Toward the end of Corpus Mysticum, de Lubac suggests that, considering the sad state of mid-twentieth century “Christendom,” the Church would do well to appreciate, once again, the power of the Eucharist to make the Church anew each day.[1] In short, de Lubac’s genealogical work on eucharistic terminology, and his promotion of a pre-12th century sacramental sensibility, were intended to inspire greater faithfulness in a Church that seemed too often bound by and submissive to the very principalities and powers defeated on the cross of Christ.[2]

It would be easy to conclude that Corpus Mysticum offered at least an implicit criticism of the development of transubstantiation as a doctrine. Indeed, Hans Urs von Balthasar suggests that the primary “point of departure for the problematic of Corpus Mysticum” was de Lubac’s concern that “individualistic Eucharistic piety” took hold only when a focus on the “real presence” displaced a focus on the “social” dimension of the sacrament.[3] If von Balthasar is correct, then it is fair to ask whether de Lubac is suggesting, in Corpus Mysticum, that the doctrine of transubstantiation, with its focus on the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic host, undergirds the feeble, individualistic eucharistic piety associated with neo-scholastic integrism[4] and Roman Catholic collusion with the principalities and powers of World War II Europe.

While it is no doubt true that de Lubac was critical of an individualistic focus on the “real presence” of Christ in the host, a careful reading of Corpus Mysticum offers a more balanced perspective. Indeed, de Lubac criticizes those who water “down the reality of the Eucharistic presence” and suggests that “ecclesial realism … is at the same time, and when necessary, the guarantee of Eucharistic realism.”[5] The purpose of this paper is to consider whether eucharistic realism obscures the role of the sacraments in the church’s confrontation with the Powers and whether de Lubac’s contention that “ecclesial realism … is at the same time … the guarantee of Eucharistic realism” is true. The paper is divided into three sections. First, I’ll describe the way the early church understood the sacraments, and the Eucharist in particular, in relation to the “cosmic Powers who reign over this present darkness” (Eph 6:12). The second section will explain the historical development of eucharistic piety through the 12th century and especially a gradual shift in focus away from the ecclesial body and toward the real presence of Christ in the host. In the final section, I’ll support de Lubac’s claim that ecclesial realism and eucharistic realism go hand in hand, and I’ll illustrate the centrality of eucharistic piety in the church’s ongoing encounter with and victory over the Principalities and Powers of this age.

The Sacraments and the Powers in the Early Church

Toward the end of Book I of his Confessions, Augustine describes the way that sin and evil preceded him in life, and he suggests that he was swept away by their destructive currents. “Woe to you, you torrent of human custom!,” he writes. “ ‘Who can stand against you?’ (Ps. 75:8) When will you run dry? How long will your flowing current carry the sons of Eve into the great and fearful ocean which can be crossed, with difficulty, only by those who have embarked on the Wood of the cross (Wisd. 14:7)?”[6] Although he makes no explicit mention of the sacraments, the allusions to baptism and Eucharist are hard to miss. Likewise, although there is no explicit mention of the principalities and powers in the passage above, they lurk not far below the surface. Indeed, the “torrent” described above overcomes the young Augustine in a distinctive way during his years as a student at Carthage. He claims that he was molded, during those years, not only in the image of immoral men, but also in the image of immoral gods. His developing rhetorical skills and sharpening intellect were sacrificed to the god’s of the day, so to speak. He writes,

The river of custom strikes the rocks and roars: ‘This is why words are learnt; this is why one has to acquire eloquence wholly necessary for carrying conviction in one’s cause and for developing one’s thoughts. It is as if we would not know words such as ‘golden shower’ and ‘bosom’ and ‘deceit’ and ‘temples of heaven’ and other phrases occurring in the passage in question, had not Terrence brought on to the stage a worthless man citing Jupiter as a model for his own fornication. He is looking up at a mural painting: ‘there was this picture representing how Jupiter, they say, sent a shower of gold into Danae’s lap and deceived a woman.’ Notice how he encourages himself to lust as if enjoying celestial authority.[7]

What Augustine is describing here, according to Charles Matthews, is an educational culture in which “the disgraceful deeds of human beings” are invested with “the aura of divinity.”[8] Lest we fail to understand the full scope of Augustine’s concern, David Bentley Hart reminds us that:

We today are probably somewhat prone to forget that, though the early Christians did indeed regard the gods of the pagan order as false gods, they did not necessarily understand this to mean simply that these gods were unreal; they understood it to mean that the gods were deceivers. Behind the pieties of the pagan world, Christians believed, lurked forces of great cruelty and guile: demons, malign elemental spirits, occult agencies masquerading as divinities, exploiting the human yearning for God, and working to thwart the designs of God, in order to bind humanity in slavery to darkness, ignorance, and death.[9]

For Augustine, the Powers of sin and death, which rule this current age and keep the human race in bondage, are symbolized in the chaotic waters of the flood. We all face their unleashing as an inundation, which flows down through history and submerges us in its rush. Not only are we powerless to stand against the spiritual powers that rule this age—we are conformed to them. We drink them in, gladly, and we become drunk on their “wine of error.”[10]

Augustine suggests that he was caught in a “whirlpool of shame,” as we all are unless we, like Augustine, manage to survive the flood, or find rebirth through it, as we cling to the Wood of the cross. And this brings us to the sacraments, where David Hart can once again offer some assistance. In the early centuries of the Christian church, preparation for baptism was a radical affair for catechumens. Indeed, it was necessary that they be well-educated in the great story of fall and redemption told in the pages of Sacred Scripture. They had to know how once all men and women had labored as slaves in the household of death, prisoners of the devil, sold into bondage to Hades, languishing in ignorance of their true home; and how Christ had come to set the prisoners free and had, by his death and resurrection, invaded the kingdom of our captor and overthrown it, vanquishing the power of sin and death in us, shattering the gates of hell, and plundering the devil of his captives. For it was into this story that one’s own life was to be merged when at last one sank down into the “life-giving waters”: in the risen Christ, a new humanity had been created, free from the rule of death, into which one could be admitted by dying and rising again with Christ in Baptism and by feeding upon his presence in the Eucharist.[11]

Baptism and Eucharist were the central mysteries through which catechumens died to the old order of sin and bondage, and came alive in the new order of grace and freedom. Baptism and Eucharist, thus understood, offer liberation from the “torrent of human custom,” entry into the ecclesial body of Christ, and continued communion therein. In Book VIII of the Confessions, Augustine begins to long for entry into the ecclesial body, which he describes as

Lady Continence, serene and cheerful without coquetry, enticing me in an honorable manner to come and not to hesitate. To receive and embrace me she stretched out pious hands, filled with numerous good examples for me to follow. There were large numbers of boys and girls, a multitude of all ages, young adults and grave widows and elderly virgins. In every one of them was Continence herself, in no sense barren but ‘the fruitful mother of children’ (Ps. 112:9), the joys born of you, Lord, her husband.[12]

In Book IX Augustine finally enters into the embrace mentioned above, as he is baptized into the Church. Alexander Schmemann, an outspoken proponent of the patristic perspective, suggests that baptism is “the sacrament of the Church, i.e., her eternal actualization as the Body of Christ, united to Christ by the Holy Spirit.”[13] Elsewhere he writes that in the Eucharist, this same Spirit “seals and confirms our ascension into heaven” as He “transforms the Church into the body of Christ and—therefore—manifests the elements of our offering as communion in the Holy Spirit. This is the consecration.”[14] Or as de Lubac would put it, the Eucharist “makes the church” as it binds the fellowship together in the reception of Christ’s sacrifice which has defeated all hostile powers.

Although some Protestants may have difficulty with the classic understanding of sacramental efficacy, most Protestants embrace a very similar idea regarding the preaching of God’s Word. Indeed, it is hard to imagine an evangelical Protestant arguing that biblical proclamation is anything less than efficacious. Surely, God works through the preaching of his word to convict, transform, encourage, and build up his church. To affirm sacramental efficacy is to affirm something similar about the church’s liturgical and sacramental life. Through participation in the sacraments within the liturgy, and certainly when joined with a Christian’s faith in all that this means, the Holy Spirit convicts, transforms, encourages, and builds up persons into Christ’s body. This is at least a part of what de Lubac means when he claims that the Church is made through the celebration of the Eucharist.

De Lubac contends that “the Eucharist and the Church” are inseparably linked throughout the “whole of Christian antiquity.” “In St. Augustine” he tells us, “this link is given … particular force … [since] the Eucharist corresponds to the Church as cause to effect, as means to end, as sign to reality.”[15] In chapter three of Corpus Mysticum, de Lubac explains that the ancient understanding of this cause and effect relationship was grounded in three dimensions of eucharistic signification, namely: memorial, presence, and anticipation. In the first and foundational sense, the Eucharist represents Christ’s body, which is “hidden—mystically, secretly—under the material or ritual appearances that mystically signify it: the hidden body of Christ.”[16] In this sense, the term corpus Mysticum, was applied to the Eucharist and meant the body of Christ hidden mysteriously in the host.

In the second sense, corpus Mysticum signifies Christ’s sacrifice represented in the Eucharist. “It commemorates and reproduces, that is to say renders once again present—makes present by representing—but in the mystery—represents in the mystery—and through the mystery—renews through the mystery—this same and unique historical sacrifice.”[17] According to de Lubac, this second sense of corpus Mysticum “cannot be separated from … reflection on the entire Christian economy [of salvation] … revealed in scripture.”[18] The Eucharist is thus an especially dense representation of the entire history of salvation—the deepest meaning of which is found, of course, in the cross of Christ. In this sense, eucharistic celebration mediates a participation in the divine economy where God acts to overcome the powers and principalities. It is, as mentioned above, a participation in an economy of grace and freedom where the Powers have been unmasked.

The third sense of the term corpus Mysticum, used in reference to the Eucharist, signifies “a reality to come.” Here it “is the effective sign of the peace and unity for which Christ died and towards which we are reaching … it therefore signifies us to ourselves—in what we have already begun to be through Baptism (one Baptism), but above all in what we ought to become: in this sacrament of unity is prefigured what we will become in the future.”[19]

These three senses of the term corpus Mysticum, used in reference to the Eucharist, suggest a dynamic process through which the church binds itself to Jesus Christ as it receives into itself, his sacrifice, and is thus transformed into what it will become in the future. Alexander Schmemann suggests that “the liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom,”[20] and thus out of the domain of the Powers.

Corpus Mysticum: The Historical Thesis

In pre-twelfth century usages, such as the three senses that I’ve just been discussing, the sacramental elements of the Eucharist were called corpus mysticum while the church was described as the corpus Christi verum. For a variety of complex reasons, these terms were reversed during the twelfth century, so that the church came to be called corpus Mysticum and the eucharistic elements were referred to as corpus Christi verum. The problem with this change, from de Lubac’s perspective is that, prior to the twelfth century, the ultimate “truth” of the sacrament resided beyond itself in the church’s “becoming” Christ’s body, whereas after the twelfth century, the sacrament was its own fulfillment—it was the thing being celebrated.[21] This development entails a move away from the social, communal, and even liturgical dimensions of the sacrament and toward an intense focus on the Host, as an object of special consideration and devotion.

This change was likely related to an eleventh century heresy involving Berengar of Tours, who argued for something akin to a “spiritual presence” perspective, denying the real presence of Christ in the elements.[22] In defense of Berengar, his concern was to preserve the more symbolic focus of the early church, though, in order to do so, he ignored the fact that the Fathers affirmed both the real presence of Christ in the elements and in the Church. De Lubac has argued that, in response to Berengar’s heresy, more emphasis was placed on the real presence of Christ in the sacramental elements than ever before.[23] In a relatively brief period of time, the classical view that affirmed the real presence in both the elements and in the ecclesial body was lost. Therefore, after the twelfth century, theologians believed that to call the sacramental elements corpus mysticum was equivalent with denying the real sacramental presence of Christ within them. Thus, after the twelfth century, the bread and the wine on the altar were designated corpus Christi verum while the Church was designated corpus Christi mysticum.[24] With the consecration of the elements on the altar, a transubstantiation was believed to have taken place. What was once bread and wine, had been changed substantially into Christ’s body and blood, though the appearance or accidents of bread and wine remain.

This is indeed a dramatic shift from the perspective of the New Testament and the Church Fathers, for whom the Eucharist was a deeply social and communal event. The celebration of the Eucharist meant that individuals were incorporated into the Body of Christ and thus into the communion of saints—a real social body embedded in while also transcending both space and time. However, as the elements came to be designated corpus verum, and the Church was called corpus mysticum, the elements and the historical body of Jesus were more closely united while the Church’s connection to the historical body of Jesus became vague—“mystical” in the sense of something hidden or less than real and knowable.[25] De Lubac explains that, as soon as the ecclesial body becomes the corpus mysticum, eucharistic piety is separated from ecclesial unity.[26] The Eucharist becomes a matter, primarily, of individual piety, and the Church’s identity is tied increasingly to the present, visible institutional structures and less to the sacramental mystery that links the present church to its origin in the person of Jesus and its destiny in the ascended Christ who has conquered the Powers.

Although de Lubac acknowledges that twelfth century historical circumstances may have justified a new emphasis on the real presence in the sacramental elements, he clearly disapproves of what became a disconnection between the Church’s eucharistic practice and its social identity. In deemphasizing the sacramental character of the Church, theologians began to lose site of the Church’s fundamentally social mission.[27]

Indeed, it seems that the change in eucharistic language, described above, occurred at an unfortunate moment in the history of Europe. At just the time when the Eucharist might have served to subvert or perhaps blunt the trend towards secularism in medieval society, its power to unite Christians in a common allegiance to a transcendent body politic under Christ was undermined, since it became increasingly a spectacle and a matter of individual piety. As eucharistic piety became increasingly and narrowly focused on the transubstantiation of the elements, no longer was the Eucharist “making the church.” Rather, priests were merely facilitating the transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, and the laity was merely observing a spectacle.

In the mid-twentieth century, as European nation-states became increasingly totalitarian, and dare we say demonic, de Lubac hoped to see eucharistic practice reinvigorated in order to unite modern Catholics in a common allegiance to a transcendent body politic under Christ. De Lubac, in other words, hoped to see the Eucharist serve its rightful role in the Church’s confrontation with and victory over the Powers of darkness.

Transubstantiation and the Powers

The question remains however, whether we should receive de Lubac’s work on the development of eucharistic dogma as an implicit criticism of transubstantiation. More succinctly, the question is—does the doctrine of transubstantiation, which developed in the 12th century, necessarily lead to a feeble eucharistic piety uninterested in the great cosmic victory secured on the cross? Alexander Schmemann and many others believe that it does. In his classic text, For the Life of the World, he suggests that

It is indeed one of the main defects of sacramental theology that instead of following the order of the Eucharistic journey with its progressive revelation of meaning, theologians applied to the Eucharist a set of abstract questions in order to squeeze it into their own intellectual framework. In this approach what virtually disappeared from the sphere of theological interest and investigation was liturgy itself, and what remained were isolated ‘moments,’ ‘formulas’ and ‘conditions of validity.’ What disappeared was the Eucharist as one organic, all-embracing and all-transforming act of the whole Church.[28]

Schmemann believes that the Roman Catholic doctrine, with its emphasis on the real presence in the host, simply misses the point, since in his mind, the Eucharist cannot be separated from the “whole liturgy” which is “sacramental” in its entirety in so far is it is “one transforming act and one ascending movement.”[29]

De Lubac, too, is clearly concerned that the focus of the Eucharist has shifted from the Church to the elements. He suggests that, beginning in the twelfth century, “the mystery to be understood [that is the making of the Church] fades before the miracle to be believed.”[30] No longer is eucharistic faith a process that leads to greater understanding. Now, it becomes a problem that must be surmounted. For instance, no longer is the sacrament itself a mystery that leads the faithful to a greater understanding of and hence participation in the body of Christ. Rather, the “miracle” of the bread-become-flesh must be, quite simply, “believed” by the faithful. In this context, both “faith” and “understanding” are to a certain extent cut off from mystery. One must have faith in the miracle, which is clearly understood: “you see bread, understand flesh.” De Lubac suggests that the only role for “understanding” here is that it provides a clear idea of the object that must be accepted by faith.[31]

The entire sacrament and all that it signified was once an illuminating mystery, but after the twelfth century the only mystery concerns the miraculous transformation of the elements. While the accidents (outward appearance) of the elements remain the same, Catholic faith affirms that the substance (perceptible only by faith) is changed. In the new context, the only role for mystery is that it provides the opportunity for the exercise of faith. If one cannot understand the transformation of the elements, no problem, since the exercise of faith enables persons to gain merit.[32]

Yet, de Lubac also insists, as I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, that ecclesial realism, which he surely affirms, guarantees eucharistic realism. What I’d like to suggest now is that, in this simple statement, we may arguably find the grounds which would allow us to embrace, rather than reject, the doctrine of transubstantiation. The point that de Lubac is making, which is consistent with Thomas Aquinas’ teaching, is that the transubstantiation of the elements is dependent on and must be understood in relation to, the parallel transformation of the ecclesial body.

Aaron James has written about transubstantiation in Aquinas and, in particular, about the difference between the ancient understanding of “substance” in comparison to more modern views. I will quote him at length here. He explains that

For Descartes, substance indicates an ‘isolated self-enclosed’ thing that exists ‘by itself.’ For Locke, substance names the ‘inert, static, unknowable … underlying substratum needed to support the properties and accidents of a thing, which are all we can know.’ And for Hume, substance is in an important sense at best an abstraction, if not simply an absurdity … In contrast to Descartes, for Thomas and Aristotle, substances are not isolated things that exist by themselves; rather substance is ‘that which exists in itself’ … Substance for the ancients was ‘naturally oriented toward action, hence toward relations of giving-receiving to all around it.’ In contrast to Locke, rather than a static, unknowable substrate, substance was ‘oriented toward self-expressive action.’ And in contrast to Hume, substance was a ‘metaphysical co-principle’ not a separably existent thing.[33]

In short, a substance for Aquinas names the identity of a “thing in relationship.” Edward Schillebeeckx, in a classic and quite orthodox work on the sacraments, is helpful here as he writes that “a sacrament is of its nature not a ‘thing’ but a human action performed by a man in the name of the Church, and thus ultimately in the name of Christ himself.”[34] He also writes that “the essence of a sacrament lies therefore neither in its spiritual significance on the one hand nor in its outward shape on the other, but rather in the manifested signification.”[35] In other words a sacrament is ultimately defined by what it signifies and what it accomplishes. The elements, in other words, may be called corpus verum only because the Eucharist makes the church.

With regard to the real presence of Christ in the host, then, we can affirm that with the words of consecration, the elements are received into the dynamic of the eucharistic liturgy where the Church is made into the corpus Christi verum. The substance of the host is necessarily related to what it becomes or what it is in the context of a series of relationships. And in the context of the liturgy, we can affirm the real presence in the host in relation to the historical Christ, the re-presented sacrificial lamb Christ, and the fullness of Christ that the Church is in process of becoming.

Conclusion

The real presence of Christ in the host cannot, therefore, be considered in isolation from the process and movement of the liturgy as a whole. Or to restate de Lubac’s contention, Ecclesial realism (corpus Christi verum) guarantees eucharistic realism. In this way, transubstantiation, properly understood, is far from an individualistic spectacle. On the contrary, the doctrine of transubstantiation in inseparably linked to Church’s process of becoming that de Lubac is so concerned to retrieve. To believe that the substance of the elements has been transformed, is also necessarily to believe that Church (the ecclesial body) has been actualized through the entire movement of the liturgy—made into a true body politic liberated from and victorious, in Christ, over the Powers that once held its members captive. Recalling David Bentley Hart’s contention that the sacraments of early Christianity were radical and subversive, I would suggest that they are still and that de Lubac is right to remind us that this is so.

Notes

1. H. d. Lubac, Corpus mysticum: l’Eucharistie et l’Eglise au Moyen Âge. Étude Historique (Paris, France: Aubier-Montaigne, 1944), 292–293.
2. Of particular concern to de Lubac was the neo-scholastic political philosophy called integrism, which led to unholy alliances between Roman Catholicism and fascist regimes in the early 20th century. I offer a more complete discussion of the political context which informed de Lubac’s sacramental ecclesiology in Everything is Sacred: Spiritual Exegesis in the Political Theology of Henri de Lubac, Theopolitical Visions (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 39–54.
3. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1991), 36–37. I was alerted to von Balthasar’s claim in the editor’s preface of the recently translated, H de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: the Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: SCM, 2006), xi–xvi. For a recent discussion, see Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 103–120. See also my Everything is Sacred, 39–71.
4. According to Gabriel Daly “the word ‘integralism’ has had a varied history from its origins in Spanish politics in the 1890s, through the modernist period, down to the present day when it is usually employed to describe the anti-modernist crusade launched in 1907 and lasting until the end of Pius X’s pontificate. The fact that it often carried strong political overtones is a reminder of the overlap that often occurs between political and theological conservatism. (Action Française could count many right-wing Thomists in its membership.) The usefulness of the term integralism to describe extreme theological conservatism during the modernist period lies in its etymological suggestion of orthodoxy as devotion to an alleged ‘whole’ that had to be defended against the modification of any of its parts.… Precisely because the integralists saw this whole as transcendentally guaranteed, they insisted on its segregation from the normal commerce of critical ideas,” Transcendence and Immanence: a Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1980), 187.
5. H de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 252. I should note here, that to speak of ecclesial realism is not to imply pantheism—the idea that there is a real identification between God and God’s creation. Indeed, ecclesial realism in no way denies that God utterly transcends all that He has made. For a helpful clarification of both ecclesial and sacramental realism, see Boersma, Heavenly Participation, 21–26.
6. Saint Augustine, Confessions, ed. Henry Chadwick (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), bk. 1.16.25.
7. Ibid., 1.16.26.
8. Charles Matthews, “Book One,” in A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions, ed. Kim Paffenroth and Robert Peter Kennedy (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003), 19.
9. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 113. Hart continues on the following page suggesting that “in late antiquity, practically no one doubted that there was a sacral order to the world, or that the social, the political, the cosmic, and the religious realms of human existence were always inextricable involved with one another. Ever state was also a cult or a plurality of cults; society was a religious dispensation; the celestial and political orders belonged to a single continuum; and one’s allegiance to one’s gods was also one’s loyalty to one’s nation, people, masters, and monarchs,” Ibid., 114.
10. Augustine, Confessions, 1.16.26.
11. Hart, Atheist delusions, 112.
12. Augustine, Confessions, 8.11.27.
13. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist—Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 24.
14. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, N.Y.: ST Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 44. Italics original.
15. H de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 13.
16. Ibid., 55–56.
17. Ibid., 59–60.
18. Ibid., 65.
19. Ibid., 67–68.
20. Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, 26.
21. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 3–9.
22. Hans Boersma, in good fun, suggests that Berengar was something of an “eleventh-century Calvinist,” Heavenly Participation, 118.
23. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 162–166.
24. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 229.
25. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 288. Cf. Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 82–83, Lubac, Corpus Mysticum.
26. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 275–277.
27. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 263–265.
28. Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, 34.
29. Ibid., 42.
30. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 269.
31. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 269–270.
32. Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 271.
33. Aaron James, “Eucharistic Identity and Analogous Uses of Language,” Unpublished Conference Presentation: Young Scholars in the Baptist Academy (Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2010), 18.
34. E. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 100.
35. Ibid., 96.