From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Tue Apr 26 2005 - 18:36:52 BST
Sam:
[Anthony said]
> 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.
[Sam:]This is false. Unless the Enlightenment predated the Reformation, of
course
:o)
[Anthony:]
> 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.
[Sam:] Is that last sentence your opinion or Barfield's?
Scott:
It's Anthony's. Barfield considers the Eucharist as follows:
"In other men [than Jesus] ... that conscious realization [that "the
inwardness of the Divine Name had been finally realized"] has still barely
begun to show itself. Except that the tender shoot of final participation
has from the first been acknowledged and protected by the Church in the
institution of the Eucharist. For all who partake of the Eucharist first
acknowledge that the man who was born in Bethlehem was 'of one substance
with the Father', and 'all things were made' by him; and then they take that
substance into themselves, together with the representations named bread and
wine. This is after all the heart of the matter. There was no difficulty in
understanding it, as long as enough of the old participating consciousness
survived. It was only as this faded, it was only as a 'substance' behind the
appearances gradually ceased to be an experience and dimmed to a hypothesis
or a credo, that the difficulties and doctrinal disputes concerning
trans-substantiation began to grow.
"But, by the physical act of communion as such, men can only take the Divine
substance, the 'Name apart' directly into the unconscious part of
themselves; by way of their blood. And in this ... we participate in two
ways -- both outwardly as a mere appearance (and, at present, therefore an
idol) and inwardly by original participation. Thus, the relation between
original and final participation in the Eucharistic act is, as we should
expect, in the utmost degree complex and mysterious. If we accept at all the
claims made by Christ Jesus concerning his own mission, we must accept that
he came to make possible in the course of time the transition of all men
from original to final participation; and we shall regard the institution of
the Eucharist as a preparation -- a preparation (we shall not forget) which
has so far been operant for the sidereally paltry period of nineteen
hundred years or so."
- Scott
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