Down yonder some folk ask some interesting questions about the post I did on using a space warp analogy to help understand the Real Presence.
One question was what, precisely, we are touching when we touch the Eucharist. In my post, I spoke of touching the accidents of bread and wine, which led folks to wonder whether accidents are things that can be touched.
Good question! The answer is: I don’t know. Probably not.
If I’m holding a piece of chalk in my hand, we could say that I’m touching a white thing, but not that I’m touching whiteness (whiteness being an accident). In the same way, the physical properties of bread and wine are probably not things that are beind independently touched–at least normally.
The problem here is that the substance of bread and wine–the thing that those properties normally adhere in–has dropped out of existence, and that may affect the way we’d normally talk about this.
The original questioner had spoken of us touching Jesus when we touch the Eucharist, but I’m not quite comfortable saying that, which may only reflect a limitation of my knowledge at the present moment since Catholic theology may have already settled this matter (or at least developed a common opinion about it).
I may be wrong but, if the accidents of bread and wine are between me and Jesus, and if those accidents are not inhering in him (they’re not), then they seem to be a barrier or something analogous to a barrier and thus I might not be touching Jesus even though he is present (the same way that if the Incredible Shrinking Man gets inside a plastic Easter egg and I pick up the Easter egg then I’m not touching the Incredible Shrinking Man).
In any event, it was to account for this concern that I used the languge I did regarding "touching" accidents.
Other folks were wondering about something else I said: That Jesus’ body may not be extended in space in heaven. Some questioned whether bodies can exist without spatial extension.
It would seem that they can. All of the matter in the universe was originally compressed into a body that was a zero-dimensional (non-extended) singularity, or so they tell us.
The reason I said that is that we don’t know whether heaven has spatial extension or not. Recent theologians (like that thar Rapsinger feller) and recent popes (like that thar J.P. 2 gent) have said things calling into question the dimensionality of heaven both in terms of time and space.
Fact is, we just don’t know that much about how time and space work in heaven. What I think we can say is this:
- Heaven is at least capable of receiving a body. Whether, while it’s in heaven, that body is extended in space or transposed into some other kind of medium that preserves its integrity without spatial extension, I couldn’t tell you.
- There is at least some kind of sequentiality in heaven whereby bodies can enter heaven, stay there a while, leave heaven to return to Earth, etc. Whether this sequentiality is expressed over time or not, I couldn’t tell you.
Heaven thus may have both time and space . . . or it may not, but it at least has things analogous to them and capable of interacting with bodies from spacetime.
Finally, some folks were wondering about whether Jesus is "physically" present in the Eucharist.
The Church does not use this language. Phusis means "nature" in Greek, and so the claim that Jesus is "physically" present in the Eucharist would get parsed as a claim that he is "naturally" present in the Eucharist, which is clearly false. He is neither present there in the manner of a natural body (in which case transubstantiation would cause the host into a full-size, human-appearing Jesus) nor is he there by the working of nature.
As a result, the Church uses other language to express the way he is there: He is there really, truly, substantially, and sacramentally.
I haven’t seen Church docs using this term, but it seems to me that we can also safely say that he is present somatically or bodily (they mean the same thing), which are terms that get at what folks mean when they want to say that Jesus is "physically" present. I suggest them as substitutes for that term.
Hope this helps!
Thanks Jimmy, this helps quite a bit.
For those interested, now that I look, St. Thomas seems to have written quite a bit about this in the Summa, esp. sections 76 and 77 in the 3rd part.
In summary, it looks like the short answer to our questions will have to be “it’s a mystery”. That’s fine by me.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/
FWIW, St. Thomas refers to the mode of presence that does NOT apply to Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist, i.e., the mode in which His body is present only in Heaven, by the phrase “present as in a place.”
Regarding the business of bodily extension in heaven, I think the basic Catholic instict which rebells against Jesus not having bodily extension is this: we think of Jesus as possessing now what we hope to possess when WE are glorified, and Scripture seems at least to say that we will have complete human bodies with all parts (e.g. 1Mac 7:11). If Jesus does NOT possess this now, then he too is awaiting final consumation–which doesn’t seem right, at least instinctively.
I haven’t studied what They say about matter being in a zero-extension singularity way back when, but it sounds a bit like someone taking a helpful heuristic mathematical model and confusing it with reality. If it DID happen that way, the question becomes: was the universe a body at that point (pun! pun!), or did zero-extensionality mean it was something else?
Also, a quick thanks to Jimmy for the tip about “bodily” as a safe description of Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist. That will be helpful come time to give a talk about the Eucharist! I’ve wrestled with this question when I’ve talked about it before, but never been satisfied with any one word.
When I was a new convert and struggling to understand how the Blessed Sacrament could be Jesus’ body and blood, it helped to realize that it could not be his physical body as it was when he was here on earth. It would have to be his glorified body, what the apostle Paul described as a “spiritual” body.
On Resurrection morning, an angel opens the tomb (Mt. 28), but Jesus is already absent physically, having somehow bodily left the sealed chamber. Nonetheless, he had some sort of physical “extension” because he Luke tells us that later that day
he came to his followers, and said,
“Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.
Despite this palpable physicality, he was able to suddenly be in and just as suddenly disappear from the shut room.
Physical extension, yes. Subject absolutely to the laws of physics, no.
Fr. Pedrano: The resurrection appearances do show that Jesus’ body was extended in space but not subject to the limitations that unglorified bodies are, but there is a question whether his body in heaven is similar extended in space or whether it is in one of its “not subject to to the laws of physics” states in a way that it is not (presently) extended spatially in heaven.
Jimmy, as we all speculate on this topic, I recall a retreat speaker at our monastery one year who asked rhetorically what theological or salvific meaning might we glean from the instances of Jesus walking on water:
“Why did Jesus
walk on water?
I don’t knoooow….
Because he could?”
Since everyone agrees that Jesus’ body was extended in space during the post-resurrection appearances, it seems that the only reason one would posit a non-extentional mode of being in heaven is some kind of discomfort with seeing heaven as a physical place. I have to admit, I do not share this discomfort. (Perhaps if I were more educated on what we know about the universe[s], I would.)
I know many say that hell is not a physical place but a spiritual state. Am I correct that those who posit a non-extended body of Jesus would say that heaven is a “spiritual state” rather than a “physical place”? Is this correct?
Tim, that is the Calvinist view of the eucharist. . .
The fact that we can imagine ways in which the Eucharist could be as the Bible says it is, is helpful in showing that God could do that, but not that He does it in that particular way.
The subatomic particles could simply be given the property of identity of Christ’s Body and Blood, while the electroweak interaction with the rest of the universe, such as your mouth, could still be that of the bread and wine. Or you could have EPR identity-sharing-over-distance. Or micro black holes exchanging each atom, or molecule or subatomic particle. Luther didn’t want us to be locked into Aristotelian terminology made dogma, as Aristotelianism having gone from banned to dogma was a ‘recent’ development in the life of the Church.
The important thing remains “hoc est”
As to the New Heavens and the New Earth, and Heaven:
God is clearly portrayed as Trinity, and eternal, not frozen, interaction between the three Persons. Therefore there must be sequence, and that it flows from the very nature of God, and is not a created thing. Thbe Einsteinian view of time is likely therefore wrong.
In Heaven, in the intermediate state, the saints are clearly portrayed as having bodily extension in time and space, likewise for the cheruvim and seraphim. In the New Heavens and the New Earth, the planet, the City, and its inhabitants are all protrayed as having interactions with each other in space and time analogous to that of our present physical bodies.
Let us be good, physical, incarnational Judaeo-Christians and not gnostics.
Puzzled-
How is it gnosticism to assert that our glorified bodies are “spiritual”? That is scriptural. To say that they are spiritual is not to say they are insubstantial. Quite the opposite (I think Augustine had something to say about “spiritual substance”). Extended in “time” and “space”? I don’t know, what meaning can we give to these words in heaven?
Having experiences that are “portrayed as” or “analagous to” physical time/space interactions does not mean that our glorified bodies can be described as “physical”.