Symbol or Substance: A Dialogue on the Eucharist with C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham and J. R. R. Tolkien by Kreeft Peter

Author:Kreeft, Peter [Kreeft, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

7

Other Possible Positions:

Compromises?

GUY : What about those other positions, though? Can you tell us about them, Jack? I think I underestimated now many very different positions there were among Protestants.

LEWIS : All right, but it will have to be pretty short and simple. I’m neither a professional historian nor a professional theologian, but I think I know enough about that period to try to distinguish three different Protestant positions at that time. What they all have in common is that they disagree with the Catholic position, which is Transubstantiation, which means that the whole substance or essence or being of the bread and wine ceases to exist and becomes the literal Body and Blood of Christ. Only the appearances of bread and wine remain, as a kind of disguise that He hides behind.

GUY : So, according to this Catholic position, since anyone’s body and blood are physical, it’s a physical presence.

TOLKIEN : Sorry, but I need to correct that. It’s the presence of His Body, but it’s not a physical and chemical change that happens. Put a consecrated Host under a microscope and it looks exactly like ordinary unleavened bread. Science perceives only the appearances, and the appearances don’t change.

GRAHAM : I don’t understand your distinction between bodily presence and physical and chemical presence. Bodies are physical and chemical, aren’t they?

TOLKIEN : It’s a change, not in the appearances, but in the substance, the essential being. Physics and chemistry tell us about appearances. They don’t tell us what is the substance.

LEWIS : Frankly, Tollers, I never understood that. What is “substance”? When I try to think that concept, my mind comes up with something like a grey clay or plastic that changes color and shape.

TOLKIEN : That’s not your mind, that’s your imagination.

LEWIS : I accept your correction and your distinction. But my mind simply cannot wrap itself around the concept of “substance”.

TOLKIEN [half-jokingly]: In that case, perhaps it is a piece of providential good fortune that you did not get the job you wanted at Oxford, in philosophy instead of literature.

GRAHAM : Can we define the different views?

LEWIS : Yes, let’s. There’s the Roman Catholic view, and there’s my Anglican view, which is close to it, and then there were at least three main Protestant views at the time of the Reformation: Luther’s, Zwingli’s, and Calvin’s.

Luther’s view denies Transubstantiation but affirms what he calls Consubstantiation. That means that Christ is really present, objectively and personally, there in the sacrament, behind the disguise of bread and wine, but the bread and wine remain bread and wine, they don’t get transubstantiated, they don’t disappear in reality, or in essence, or in substance, any more than they disappear in appearance.

Zwingli totally disagreed with that and saw it as the same superstitious and idolatrous error as the Roman view. He said the presence was only symbolic. In fact, he called Luther’s view demonic, from the devil. And Luther famously responded, “One of our positions comes from God and one comes from the devil, and I do not get my theology from the devil.

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