But the west, who coined the term and it’s definition, also “adores” the Eucharist as the body, blood and soul of Christ, which sounds like they believe in the elements are the enhypostacized/incarnated Christ in the nature of the bread and the wine more than the east cares to definitively do.

It’s a slippery slope of overdefining Christ’s body and blood in relationship to His person. The east stresses “communion” more. It is the means, not the end.

It is not applicable because the Word’s human flesh and blood, a created reality, is not a “person” or “hypostasis.” The Word, as a person, became incarnate in humanity. His human nature can not become incarnate in another nature. Only persons can become incarnate in natures. Idioms of differing realities can only be communicated to persons, not to other natures. It would be totally inappropriate to communicate the attributes of flesh and blood to bread and wine and vice versa.

And I actually think the fact that many Orthodox were willing to use the concept of Transubstantiation even after the schism speaks well to its fundamental agreement with the Orthodox conception of the Eucharist.

God bless.

Symeon, Isn’t the Incarnation similar to the Eucharist? In Church we sing,

“Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God Who for our salvation willed to be incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who without change didst become man and was crucified….”

He had a fully divine and a human nature. When the Priest says, “Make this bread the precious body of thy Christ” cannot the bread remain fully bread and still become the Body of Christ? The Transubstantiation language about accidens and what lies beneath does not, imo, express the duality of nature, or how they are unified. It is a different language than that of Chalcedon. Not that Chalcedon was implicitly speaking of the Eucharist. Though some Orthodox adopted the explanation of Transubstantiation, wasn’t it put forth after the schism? It seems there wasn’t such a definition of the process in the first millennium, which makes a difference to conservative traditionalists.

Still, in speaking of Christ, the Eucharist and our own deification, to me the language of Chalcedon is better in understanding the nature of the union between created and uncreated. In all three, one is not annihilated in the union with the other.

“We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter, indivise, inseparabilter). The distinction between natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.”

Andrew: I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog or website, but right now is probably not the best time in my life. Thanks for the encouragement, though.

God bless.

And I never said you were a liar. I said the Eucharistic theories you forward will make the Lord’s words untrue. I respect your integrity and the work you and Perry do.

I don’t really care to argue the rests of the points with you since you say I’m a liar. Later.

Photios

Start a blog, if you don’t have one already. Seriously.

Further, consubstantiation or impanation is contrary to the Divine Liturgy. “…send down your Holy Spirit on us and on these gifts set forth; and make this bread the precious body of your Christ, and that which is in this cup the precious blood of your Christ, changing (metabalōn) them by your Holy Spirit.” The subject that is being “changed” into the body and blood is the bread and wine. What is the change in your conception? If the bread and wine are changed (i.e. deified) by being taken up into Christ’s hypostasis, it would still be a false statement that they have been changed into his body and blood.

As for it being impossible for natures to change, where is the basis of this? The biblical examples St. Ambrose gives quite clearly show a change of nature, the staff becoming a snake, the water becoming blood, surely these constitute a change of nature?

Further, I find this conception of all the prior Fathers being “corrected” by St. Maximus troublesome, rather, it strikes me as very similiar to how Fr. John Meyendorff tried to say that St. Gregory Palamas applied “christological correctives” to St. Dionysius the Areopagite. As if the Christology of the previous Fathers was not that of St. Maximus. But anyway, I’d like to see what St. Maximus has written that is relevant to this subject.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann isn’t really an authority to me. But… in what I have read, I haven’t seen him deny Transubstantiation as such (he even uses the word from time to time to describe the change). Rather, he sees the whole Transubstantiation debate and that about Consubstantiation as puting a certain distorting emphasis on Eucharist, because “it practically ignored the liturgy itself, considering it as a non-essential, symbolical ‘framework’ for the minimum of action and words necessary for validity” (Liturgy and Tradition, 19-20). But perhaps I have missed something.

What is the point of citing Calvin, except to say that the bread and blood are not literally in the Eucharist. Of course, I don’t think many will disagree that the Eucharist lifts us up, but denying that he came down rather destroys the real presence.

Your remarks about the Council of Jerusalem strike me as more smear than argumentation. And it isn’t even the only authority.

Christ’s words here have the same general sense as 1 Cor. 15:50, where St. Paul says “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Does that mean Christ is not in heaven in his own flesh? No. Nor does it mean that our bodies will not be resurrected. Likewise, when the Word says that the flesh “profiteth nothing,” he is not saying that his own flesh is unprofitable. The sense in such passages is carnality.