From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 25 2005 - 20:54:00 BST
Hi Anthony,
> Owen Barfield (in "Saving the Appearances", 1965, p.170) mentions that
> 'the difficulties and doctrinal disputes concerning transubstantiation'
> only arose after SOM became dominant during the Enlightenment.
This is false. Unless the Enlightenment predated the Reformation, of course
:o)
> This was because the inorganic and biological world became perceived as
> non-spiritual, mechanical and determined (read lacking Quality) and, as
> such, the ontological status of communion bread was stuck between being a
> manifestation of pure Dynamic Quality (analogous to this mysterious
> 'substance' of Sam's beneath the accidents) or being simply symbolic. The
> first viewpoint has been taken by the "Vatican Authorities" and the second
> by the "Protestant" Christian tradition. Both traditions are wrong.
Is that last sentence your opinion or Barfield's? In any case the mysterious
'substance' doesn't come from me, it comes from Aristotle, via Aquinas. The
doctrine of transubstantiation is an attempt to render the sacrament
intelligible in what was then the highest quality science available, ie
Aristotle's physics. If you're going to make some criticisms of the
doctrine, don't you think you should do some research on it first?
I'm not sure what the rest of the Barfield quotation was trying to
accomplish. But you said something in another post that is worth commenting
on.
> Thirdly, as far as transubstantiation is concerned, the priest in a Roman
> Catholic Church after blessing the bread and wine, doesn't qualify, for
> instance, the statement "this bread is the body of Christ" with the words
> "but only in the sense of a being a non-scientifically known substance".
> He
> simply states "this bread is the body of Christ". It is publicly given as
> a
> literal truth in the Catholic mass. As such, the doctrine of
> transubstantiation does imply that something that chemistry can measure in
> the bread has been changed and, in consequence, this is one clear example
> where 'science and contemporary, non-fundamentalist theism are in
> conflict.'
Are you seriously suggesting that the priest in the middle of the liturgy
should alter what he says to fit it into a philosophical argument (one
which, it should be emphasised, arose much later than the rite itself)? This
puts me in mind of some of Wittgenstein's comments regarding JG Frazer:
"Baptism as washing - an error arises only when magic is interpreted
scientifically. If the adoption of a child proceeds in such a way that the
mother draws it from under her clothes, it is surely insane to believe that
an _error_ is present and that she believes she has given birth to the
child...
"What a narrow spiritual life on Frazer's part! As a result: how impossible
it was for him to conceive of a life different from that of the England of
his time! Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically a present-day
English parson with the same stupidity and dullness.
"...it is nonsense for one to go on to say that the characteristic feature
of these actions is the fact that they arise from faulty views about the
physics of things. (Frazer does this when he says that magic is essentially
false physics....) Rather the characteristic feature of ritualistic action
is not at all a view, an opinion, whether true or false, although an
opinion - a belief - can itself be ritualistic or part of a rite.
"Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as
far removed from the understanding of a spiritual matter as a
twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are
much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves."
Sam
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