3. Incarnation of Meaning and the Sense for Symbols: Phenomenological Remarks on a Theological Debate
Paul Moyaert (p112)
Christianity is quintessentially incarnational, that Jesus was like us in everything except sin; through suffering, death and Resurrection he has given us a share in divine grace; the divine and the human, horizontal and vertical are made one without losing their respective autonomy; Christ is the sacrament of God. The unity of Christ finds its high point in the Last Supper when Christ identifies bread and wine with his body and blood (p112). The Reformation and Trent focus on the "is" of the institution, of a 'strong' or 'weak' version; how close is the sign to the reality signified in it (p113). Abstract of paper (p114). The reformation is not a division about Christology but about symbols in the twin dogmas of real presence and transubstantiation.
Polanyi distinguishes between signs as indicators and signs as symbols, the former vehicles or transparent references to something else; the latter, exemplified in flags, medals and head-stones (p115), unable to stand on their own but an essential part of what they symbolise; symbols are not extrinsic; names grow with the person; as obscene words are in themselves obscene, that which is consecrated is sacred; the symbol forms a part of what it symbolises, or partly contains what it expresses, the latter conterminal with the "real Presence"; the symbol a departure and end-point (p116); symbols are strongly incarnated meanings. Relics (p117); the transformation of values in an object depends not on itself but the person who valued it; there is no chemical change but it is, nonetheless, transubstantiated, may be described as fetishism (p118).
Polyani: an intellectual view of symbols: where the symbol brings the symbolised to mind as clearly as possible (p119) but this fails to recognise the significance of the physical contact between a person and a relic (p119); the intellectual view (p120-21).
Trent: "The foregoing analysis can shed some light on the theological dispute that took place at the Council of Trent. Both the dogma of praesentia realis and ... transubstantiatio attempt to protect the proper nature of symbols that make up the core of Christian worship from an intellectualist vision that goes too far in hollowing out the 'incarnatedness' of symbolic meanings and the contraction of significant and significie that comes with it" (p121). The twin dogmas at Trent are: "expressions of the insight that symbols are an objective fact of the life of faith. But the autonomy of symbols is put at risk by the underlying ontology (122). Thus, according to Trent, the consecrated elements are not extrinsic signs; it also rejected the figurative;; these two reaching their extreme form in Zwingli; Luther also objected to the incarnational evaporation (p123).
In transubstantiation the appearance properly remains the same but the relation between the faithful and the elements alters (p124). this relies on a transformation at a deeper order than the physical; while not susceptible to scientific empiricism, at least the notion should be plausible (p125); Trent took transubstantiation away from rationalism and the intellectual view of symbols (nominalism - KC) (p126); dogma shifts the ground from speculation to faith (should it? Or is this a sleight of hand? - KC) from theologia rationalis to orans; but Trent might have been better off not forcing the doctrine to be so explicit (p127), thus realising what it tried to avoid, a leeching of the mysterious (p128).
To take symbols seriously, as Catholics must, is not to take them literally (p128-9).
Kerr: response to Moyaert (p130). Wittgenstein's phenomenology (p131); basing mystery on ontology (transubstantiation) dangerous (p132); Ansombe's famous paper saying that children should be taught transubstantiation in advance of later discussion; Dummet agrees; the primacy of practice over metaphysics, opposed by Pickstock's ontological claim based on Resurrection (p133-4).