Thinking Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context

Article Sections

Contents

  1. Opening Address
  2. Thinking Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context: a Playground for Theological Renewal
  3. 1. Postmodernity and the Withdrawal of the Divine: a Challenge for Theology
  4. 2. Postmodernity and Sacramentality: Two Challenges to Speaking about God
  5. 3. Incarnation of Meaning and the Sense for Symbols: Phenomenological Remarks on a Theological Debate
  6. 4. The Language of Sacramental Memorial: Rupture, Excess and Abundance
  7. 5. The Church as the Erotic Community
  8. 6. Presence et Affection
  9. 7. The Broken Bread as Theological Figure of Eucharistic Presence
  10. 8. Thomas Aquinas: Postmodern
  11. 9. Incarnation and Imagination: Catholic Theology of God between Heidegger and Postmodernity
  12. 10. After Heidegger Transubstantiation
  13. 11. The Concept of "Sacramental Anxiety": a Kierkegaardian Locus of Transcendence
  14. 12. God Does Appear in Immanence after all: Jean-Luc Marion's Phenomenology as a new First Philosophy of Theology
  15. 13. A Genealogy of Presence: Elite Anxiety and the Excesses of the Popular Sacramental Imagination
  16. 14. ("untitled":) On Denoting Sacramental Presence

10. After Heidegger Transubstantiation

Laurence Paul Hemming (p299)

McCabe says transubstantiation (T) is only declared aptissime by Trent but Thomas says it names something that happens during consecration (p299), whereas Pickstock says this pushes Aristotelian categories to breaking point but she misses the point because Aquinas uses  mutare rather than tollere, it is "as if" the substance of bread and wine remains, exceeding the miraculous, avoiding a hierarchy of substances which would "disturb" the theology of Incarnation. Thus T is separate from nature (p300). For Thomas T is redemption not rupture of physical. Reason is the condition under which truth can be understood and it surpasses in intellectus even things divine (301-3). Heidegger (H) on the event of being against all causality; Chauvet's dilemma relating to Pickstock (p304); Judith Butler and transexuality; Zizek on Freud on castration; Butler on H (p205-6); Butler relies on "intellection devoid of God" to understand T, omitting the terms "substance" and "God" in the analysis, term not viable outside Christianity (p207); Chauvet and Pickstock's weakness is that they fail to embrace intellection but rely on the metaphysics of substance (p308); in effect, Butler is saying that T is a change in me (p309).