Thought and the Eucharist Philosophical Models and Their Theological Appropriation

Joris GELDHOF K.U.Leuven

The history of the relationship between Thought and the Eucharist is long and complex. Theology, resorting to concepts and the formation of philosophical thought, has never ceased to attempt an understanding of the mystery of the Eucharist. Theologians have certainly reflected on “the sacrament of sacraments”, lyrically described by Vatican II as “a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Pascal banquet”1 inasmuch as it is “the fount and apex of the whole Christian life”2. But philosophers themselves have thematized and examined the Eucharist, too, not only as a social ritual or a religious practice but also as a constitu- tive element of Christian faith. Xavier Tilliette demonstrates this in his recent volume on “Eucharistic philosophies”3. This fundamental observation invites theologians to meticulously study what the philosophers have written, and then to make a critical and constructive assessment. In the current context, the task of dedicating the necessary energy to the deepening of relationships between thought and the Eucharist has become of utmost importance. How is it possible to contemplate the Eucharist without being absorbed in a strictly scientific and rationalistic discourse on the one hand, or on the other hand, without spiritualizing it – which would finally and inevitably end up in a refutation of theology itself? This article presents an authentic exercise of theological thought which confronts each of these two positions. In order to establish a synthesis of Eucharistic thinking, I will refer to the monumental work of Jean Greisch, and in particular to the philosophical models which he highlights in his historical-systematic reconstruction of the philosophy of religion in the

1. Sacrosanctum Concilium, nr. 47 (cf. also Lumen Gentium, nr. 26), to which the recent apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis by Benedict XVI probably makes reference. The idea of considering the Eucharist as the sacrament of charity is in any case an idea from Saint Augustine, taken up again by Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, q. 73, a. 3), reaffirmed by the Council and reminded by the exhortation. 2. Lumen Gentium, nr. 11. 3. Xavier TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques de Descartes à Blondel (Philosophie et théologie), Paris, Cerf, 2006. This book is based on a work written by the same author which is entitled Eucharistie et philosophie, Paris, Institut Catholique de Paris, 1983. All subsequent translations of this work are mine.

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wake of Kantian philosophy4. This method permits the analysis of diverse philosophical and theological approaches to the Eucharist5. The thread which I will follow will thus be based on the following question: Which model is the most appropriate to contemplate the Eucharist in the contemporary context?

I. GREISCH’S PHILOSOPHICAL MODELS: AN OUTLINE IN VIEW OF THEOLOGICAL PURPOSES

Before applying Greisch’s models to our theme of the Eucharist, it is fitting to describe them briefly. The first model is called speculative according to historical motifs; this model contains close links to German idealism6. Here, Greisch discusses three founding intellectuals (Schleier- macher, Hegel and Schelling) before he then turns toward two 20th cen- tury representative figures, Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Rahner. The second paradigm or model is that of criticism. Greisch draws attention to two different philosophical axes. Firstly he deals with Kant and Neokantians7, who wanted to reflect on transcendental questions and fundamental conditions of knowledge. Secondly, he deals with the atheistic and reductionist approaches of Ludwig Feuerbach and Friedrich Nietzsche. The third model, phenomenology, is equally subdivided in two major fields of interest. First, there is a more or less scientific phenomenology marked by the emergence of religious sciences which were equally represented by Rudolph Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and Mircea Eliade. Next Greisch distinguishes a philosophical phenomenology in a more technical sense of the term, which was profoundly inspired by the example of Edmund Hus- serl, who, as is generally known, had a significant reception in France8.

4. Jean GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent et les Lumières de la raison: L’invention de la philosophie de la religion. Volume I: Héritages et héritiers du XIXe siècle. Volume II: Les approches phénoménologiques et analytiques. Volume III: Vers un paradigme herméneu- tique (Philosophie et théologie), Paris, Cerf, 2002-2004. All translations from this hitherto untranslated work are mine. 5. It would be appropriate here to refer to the interesting book by Kevin W. IRWIN, Mod- els of the Eucharist, Mahwah NJ, Paulist Press, 2005. In utilizing the methodology of “models” as Avery Dulles has done for that which concerns the Church and revelation, Irwin analyzes different theological models in order to interpret the Eucharist. Differently from Irwin, I will follow models of a philosophical origin in view of a theological appropriation and evaluation. This will not prevent us from being able to adhere to Irwin’s conclusions. 6. GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), I, p. 63. 7. Strangely, GREISCH (ibid., I, p. 385 – cf. ibid., I, p. 416), included two Protestant theologians in his discussion of Neokantianism: Ernst Troeltsch and Paul Tillich. He was motivated to do so because they are “two thinkers who belong to the Neo-Kantian school of Baden, [which] inclined more towards the philosophy of values and culture than towards epistemology”. 8. Cf. the “theological turn” of (French) phenomenology (GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent [n. 4], I, p. 67). This term is borrowed from Dominique Janicaud.

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The fourth model is attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of language. Greisch calls it analytic and associates it preponderantly with the Anglo-Saxon philosophical world9. Finally, the fifth model is characterized as hermeneutics and it is this last model which Jean Greisch undoubtedly favors. According to him, it is this paradigm which, from now on, will be capable of engaging in the fundamental task of the philosophy of religion, more so than the other models. This task involves being aware of all the aspects which constitute the religious phenomenon: the content of beliefs, the meaning of rituals, the customs of believers, the histories of the great religions as well as their power and current impact, mentalities and spirituality, moral behav- ior and sets of rules, etc. Greisch estimates that an “explicitly” hermeneutic paradigm10 is the most promising to be able to account for all of these perspectives, without trying to unite them in an inclusive amalgam which would neglect the real tensions between them. Still according to Greisch, the great advantage of a hermeneutic approach is that it is possible to penetrate the object which is being examined without destroying, reducing, or alienating it from itself. In a mutually dynamic process, the interpreting allows the interpreted to be reconfigured. In the following reflections, I will not hold to Greisch’s “ideal-typical” order of presentation11, nor will I focus on the evaluation of his own pref- erences and points of view, although I am fully aware of the many good motifs that give life to Greisch’s philosophy of religion. The reason why I deviate from Greischian concepts not only involves the consciousness that the calling of a theology of the Eucharist differs from that of the philosophy of religion; I also believe that the option for a hermeneutical approach, even if it is well-founded and justified, could and should be enriched by other approaches, much more so than Greisch wants to admit. I have in mind one of these approaches in particular, namely the speculative one. I will argue that a contemporary theology of the Eucharist is developed best not as a reaction against speculative reflection but instead as a speculative endeavor in itself. This said, one must reiterate that the most important objective of this contribution is not a critical assessment of Greisch’s work12, but a genuine

9. In what follows I will leave this model unattended. Apart from a few thinkers who have dealt with aspects of Eucharistic doctrines from a logical-analytical point of view (like e.g. Alexander Pruss), there seems to be too little correspondence with the continental tradition to render the insights of analytic philosophers relevant for the purposes of this article. A due discussion of this philosophical current would require a separate study. 10. GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), III, p. 16; I, p. 69. 11. Ibid., I, pp. 7.60. 12. With this aim in view we shall consult the article by Paul GILBERT, L’invention de la “philosophie de la religion” selon Jean Greisch, in NRT 128 (2006) 67-74; cf. also my review of the third volume of GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), in ETL 81 (2005) 554- 556.

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reflection on the relationship between thought and the Eucharist. Let us therefore look now at how this relationship can be revealed with the help of Greisch’s paradigms. It must be mentioned straightaway that the order of chosen models reveals a certain logic taken up in the conclusion. More- over, at each step, I will try to combine a Greischian model with aspects which correspond to Tilliette’s perspective. This should therefore be mutually fruitful for philosophy, theology, and the history of ideas in order to produce an appropriate Eucharistic theology for today and tomorrow.

II. THE CRITICAL APPROACH

One could legitimately ask whether a purely critical approach of the Eucharist is possible, at least from a theological point of view. This does not mean that it would be inappropriate or unacceptable to question and criti- cize the mystery of the Eucharist, but it is by no means guaranteed that one would begin afresh a work of reconstruction and repair after having found a point of departure in order to deconstruct an element of the Eucharist (or even to take apart the Eucharist as a whole). In any case, theologians must know what critical philosophies say about the Eucharist without allowing themselves to be overcome by their ideas which are at times offensive. In other words, all criticism must be respectful if it claims to be effective. In what follows, two kinds of criticism are distinguished in line with Greisch’s proposals. It is possible to regard them as representative of the majority of contemporary philosophers’ attitude towards the Eucharist, at least to the degree that they voice the consciousness of our time and culture. Whereas the first critique is downright aggressive, the second is somewhat milder but no less deliberate. Its silence and indifference are as telling as the first critique’s pugnacity.

1. Radical Criticism Let us begin the discussion of the critical model with the intriguing perspective of Ludwig Feuerbach. It is in him that theology encounters, perhaps for the first time in history and in any case with virulence, a philosopher who is not opposed to Christianity for purely polemic or bio- graphical reasons. Feuerbach pretends to know this religion more compre- hensively than it knows itself. He moreover does not develop his criticism of Christianity on a sentimental reaction. He justifies and bases it on an utterly audacious claim. The hermeneutical key of his complete decon- struction of the Christian religion is the famous principle, “all theology is anthropology”13, probably better known as the theory of projection. This

13. Ludwig FEUERBACH, The Essence of Christianity. Transl. G. Eliot, New York, Harper & Row, 1957, pp. XXXVII.XLIII.

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principle indicates that there is absolutely no transcendence in the Chris- tian confession. All that is said about God, Christ, or the Church is reduc- ible to specifically human constructs. For example, the Trinity is only a largely exaggerated manner of expressing interpersonal love and the longed-for unity of human capacities. However, Feuerbach is not only concerned with the dogmatic super- structure of Christianity. He extends his criticism to liturgical practice as well. According to him, there is a fundamental contradiction in the sacraments as such and particularly in the sacrament of the Eucharist14. This concerns the opposition between the senses and reason on one side, and faith and imagination on the other. Feuerbach adds that there is an initial antagonism between faith as “the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal, and the unreal real” on the one hand, and the “truth of the senses”, which is at the same time the “truth of reason” on the other hand15. In other words, the opposition between the imagination and reality is nowhere larger than with regard to the sacraments. While the doctrine of the Eucharist maintains that it deals with a real body, nothing seems to confirm this contention. The bread remains bread and the wine remains wine. It is just for imaginative fantasy, so he argues, that the role of these elements is raised up to the level of divine mystery. In fact, no objective cause may really “change” these things. Feuerbach therefore concludes that the Lord’s Supper “effects nothing, consequently is nothing … without a certain state of mind [Gesinnung], without faith”16. Con- sequently, one takes the essential (faith) as a detail (the outer appearance of the host) and vice versa. As always with Feuerbach, one must be more interested in his anthropology than in his theology. It is because of this that perhaps he didn’t quite understand that which Christianity and its physical sacramental substance signify. A human being cannot be reduced to a corporeal combination of feelings and reason (and will). It is not entirely incomprehensible to have wanted to accentuate these characteristics after an idealistic philosophical era. Feuerbach’s sensualism, obstinate empiricism, immanent- ism, and materialism prevent him from rendering justice to the totality and wholeness of the human condition – and it is precisely to this condition that the liturgical life and sacraments of the Church are addressed. As Tilliette has said, according to Feuerbach, it is “the most banal symbolism which replaces the mysticism of the Eucharist”17. Greisch highlights “that irrespective of the accusation launched against speculative philosophy …, Feuerbach’s own radical empiricism is perhaps nothing more than

14. Ibid., p. 240. Because of the Protestant context in which he had been educated and in which he also lived, Feuerbach doesn’t speak of “Eucharistie” (Eucharist) but of “Abendmahl” (Lord’s Supper). 15. Ibid., p. 242. 16. Ibid., p. 245. 17. TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques (n. 3), p. 77.

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the reverse image of absolute rationalism”18. However, from a theological point of view, one must ask if this abstract commentary changes much regarding the sacraments.

2. An Enlightenment Perspective Alongside Feuerbach’s devastating critique, there is another form of criticism, centered on a suggestive silence and yet revealing. In the margins of such a calmness is often concealed the refusal of that of which one does not (like to) speak. One could mention thus the great representative of the German Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. Commenting on the rare occasions where Kant expresses himself on the Eucharist, Tilliette concludes: “We couldn’t declare more clearly that communion … is not sacramental”, because for Kant, “the meaning of communion is primarily ecclesial and cultural”19. The Eucharistic celebration has no other intention than the preservation of the assembled community. For obvious reasons, Tilliette associates these remarks by Kant with typical Eucharistic thought from the side of the Reformation and presents this as a “Protestant flaw of sacramental sensitivity”, which, as such, does not differ even from what is said according to “those two great antagonists and table mates Hamann and Kant”20. Tilliette hence suggests that with regard to the mysteries of faith and their celebration, one would have expected something more sensitive from Hamann than from Kant and that, apparently, this is not the case. In conclusion, one could say that philosophers have not at all escaped the great interdenominational polemics of the West. Even if they have outlined some sketches of a theoretical reconciliation, for that which is sacramental and liturgical in practice they have confirmed the demarca- tion lines between the Churches. A good example is supplied by Hegel, who, in the second edition of his Encyclopedia (1827), §563, actually makes fun of Catholics, equating their Eucharistic devotion with supersti- tious convictions21. He acknowledges an initial reification of the host, while Protestants have already understood that it is an eminently spiritual object, which one must acknowledge by faith (and faith alone). Below I will indicate how Franz von Baader, a Catholic contemporary of Hegel, responded to this provocation.

18. GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), I, p. 517. 19. TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques (n. 3), p. 68. 20. Ibid., p. 66. 21. After having argued that it is not natural elements which form the content of Chris- tian faith, Hegel says: “Und doch wird in der katholischen Religion zunächst in der Hostie Gott als äußerliches Ding, der religiösen Anbetung präsentirt, (wogegen in der lutherischen Kirche die Hostie als solche erst und nur allein im Genusse (d.i. in der Vernichtung der Aeußerlichkeit derselben) und im Glauben consecrirt und zum gegenwärtigen Gotte erhoben wird)” (Georg W.F. HEGEL, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse [1827] [Gesammelte Werke, 19]. Hrsg. W. Bonsiepen – H.-C. Lucas, Ham- burg, Felix Meiner, 1989, pp. 396-397).

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III. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL

As for the phenomenological model, I will limit myself to its philosophical branch, since the point of departure of this reflection is concentrated on the relationship between philosophy and theology more so than on studying the area of cultural and social anthropology22. Philosophers who place themselves in the Husserlian phenomenological tradition are numerous, but they have not all explicitly thematized the sacrament or the liturgy of the Eucharist. Two have worked on the issue, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Jean-Luc Marion.

1. Jean-Yves Lacoste Lacoste published an interesting study on the liturgy as a privileged space where human beings can find themselves as such23. Haunted by their own activities, functions, roles, and regular engagements, they risk forgetting that it is first the voice of the Other which constitutes them as human. It is therefore in a being-called and in a willing-to-hear the Word of God, or even obviously in the liturgy, that people can find themselves. But this “retransformation of the subject” by an instance by which it is infinitely transcended, is hardly self-evident. As such, Lacoste develops a profound reflection on breaking apart from the banality of everyday life in order to better understand and specify the liturgical essence. Liturgy, and a fortiori the Eucharist, is not a simple consolation for the soul nor is it a culmination point where human feelings, from the lowest up to the most exalted, attain their fulfillment. It creates above all an occasion to praise God and to give him thanks for his salvific initiative toward humanity. Lacoste highlights that this fundamental conviction inevitably calls for a passive standpoint and an open-mindedness which strongly oppose the eager experiential desire which has become typical for the contemporary mentality, its defenders as well as its predecessors, such as, e.g., Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher24.

22. In order to approach the Eucharist via an ensemble of social sciences and from the theory of symbols in particular, one should consult the second chapter from Maurice BROUARD (ed.), Eucharistia: Encyclopédie de l’Eucharistie, Paris, Cerf, 2004, pp. 21-39. This chapter was written by Louis-Marie Chauvet. In addition, it is worthwhile referring to a chapter entitled on “the anthropological dimension of the Eucharist” in Antoon VER- GOTE, Het huis is nooit af: Gedachten over mens en religie, Antwerpen – Utrecht, De Nederlandsche boekhandel, 1974, pp. 134-174. 23. Jean-Yves LACOSTE, Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man. Transl. M. Raftery-Skehan, New York, Fordham University Press, 2004 (French original Expérience et absolu, 1994). See also his more recent book Présence et parousie, Genève, Ad Solem, 2006. 24. At the deeper layers of the book, there is a certain polemic going on with Schleier- macher and his alleged experientialism (cf. LACOSTE, Experience and the Absolute [n. 23], pp. 197-198). For an evaluation of Schleiermacher’s attitude towards experience, one can

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Lacoste’s analysis could be considered phenomenological because of the sources that he chose25. Even though he keeps strained relations with Heideggerian thought26, he continues to borrow ideas from it27. For example, a radicalization of the theme of the inauthentic leads him to the exploration of the human being as a being who is never “at home”, and then next toward a foundational positioning of the liturgy. Lacoste elaborates upon the philosophy of time as it was begun by Heidegger. He expresses his agreement with him on the subject of the radical temporality of both being as such and the human condition. But for that which affects the liturgy, Lacoste imposes an eschatological view of which he deplores and criticizes the total absence in Heidegger’s philosophy. The phenomenologist in Lacoste does not initially appear because he describes certain states of things that are scientifically observable, but because he solicits a profound vision of the liturgical phenomenon and the corresponding connections with human consciousness – or, more generally, with the human being. The liturgical constitutes the center of gravity around which all thought turns – and one could well imagine that much of what Lacoste says on liturgy in general is appli- cable to the question of the Eucharist28. In this context, it is clear that communal prayer and the Eucharist are often interchangeable concepts. A series of examples in Lacoste’s work may account for this inter- changeability.

consult my contribution On the Relative Unimportance of Religious Experience in the Early Schleiermacher, in L. BOEVE – L.P. HEMMING (eds.), Divinising Experience: Essays in the History of Religious Experience from Origen to Ricœur (Studies in Philosophical Theology, 23), Leuven – Paris – Dudley MA, Peeters, 2004, 89-112. 25. GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), II, pp. 285-287.289, clarifies his reasons for considering Lacoste to be a phenomenologist, and more so as a philosopher of religion. This is also the case according to a thorough critical study by Joeri SCHRIJVERS, Jean- Yves Lacoste: A Phenomenology of Liturgy, in The Heythrop Journal 46 (2005) 314- 333. 26. We remember here Lacoste’s approach in his discussion of Heidegger in the renowned Encyclopedia of Christian Theology. He concludes the entry on Heidegger in the following manner: “Characteristics such as the central role he accords to ‘serenity’ (Gelas- senheit) in the absence of any hope, the subordination of God to a faceless sense of the sacred, and an account of the history of philosophy from which all reference to Christianity has been erased, among others, should enable us to conclude that theology has nothing to learn here, except that which it is absolutely not”. But he significantly adds: “which is, however, a most useful lesson” (Jean-Yves LACOSTE [ed.], Encyclopedia of Christian The- ology, New York – London, Routledge, 2005, p. 679 [French original Dictionnaire critique de théologie, 22002]). 27. This paradox makes up the connecting thread of the meticulous analyses of SCHRIJ- VERS, Jean-Yves Lacoste (n. 25). 28. Lacoste doesn’t often refer explicitly to the Eucharist, but it is at least implausible that he would not subscribe to Catholic contemporary theology, which sees in the liturgy the source and pinnacle of Christianity, and in the Eucharist the source and pinnacle of the liturgy (cf. Vatican II documents already cited in the beginning of this article).

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2. Jean-Luc Marion More so than Lacoste, Marion has expressed himself explicitly on the Eucharist. In his principal work of 1982, God without Being29, the Eucha- rist is not a marginal theme. It is considered to be the decisive and norma- tive issue for theology and theologians. As the highest fulfillment of the Word, it is the hinge of Christian faith which theology tries to elucidate.

The Eucharist accomplishes, as its central moment, the hermeneutic … It alone allows the text to pass to its referent, recognized as the nontextual Word of the words … The Eucharist alone completes the hermeneutic; the hermeneutic culminates in the Eucharist30.

In other words, it is not theologians who first interpret what happens in the Eucharist and what is said about it, but it is in fact the Eucharist which manifests itself as a fundamental hermeneutic to which in one way or another all theology is linked. The hermeneutical work of theologians is secondary compared to the Eucharistic event. This point of view implies a radical change vis-à-vis the interpretive act by which the postmodern subject is marked. The Eucharist is to be understood in the same way as revelation: it is not us, human beings, but it is the Eucharist which comes in the first place. It is not us who will guide it but it is the Eucharist which will direct us. One could say, referring again to Marion’s terminology, that if theological consciousness sincerely conceives this switch of perspective, it would achieve a transgression of a theology toward a theol- ogy31. Anyhow, these ideas are still not very connected to Marion’s evolu- tion toward a more persuasive phenomenological philosophy. God without Being, and mostly the passages devoted to the Eucharist, is first of all a theological book – “to explain the Eucharist”, Marion confirms, is “a decisive moment of theological thought”32. We could propose the hypothesis that many theologically expressed intuitions in God without Being oriented the program of their later analyses, but the arguments in favor of this hypothesis go beyond the bounds of this article’s goals. Suf- fice it to say that the themes of love and the gift already covered his

29. Jean-Luc MARION, God without Being: Hors-Texte. Transl. T.A. Carlson, Chicago IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 1991 [French original Dieu sans l’être, 1982]. 30. Ibid., p. 150. 31. Of the second, Marion holds that “there can be no ‘progress’ of theology without a deepening of the eucharistic gesture”; the first is associated with a “chatter” who “like liturgical bricolage, often testifies less to creativity than to impotence in performing the original repetition – that is, the reintegration in the center, the ‘recapitulation in the unique master, the Christ’ (Eph. 1:10)” (ibid., p. 157). 32. Ibid., p. 161. Interestingly, in this quotation the English adjective “theological” does not render the French word “théologique” but “théologienne”. There is a subtle difference between the two; whereas the first evokes the academic discipline, the second aims to appeal to a deeper, spiritually imbued speaking of God.

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reflections on the Eucharist, and that they are elaborated in a more detailed way in Being Given and The Erotic Phenomenon33. Anyhow, Marion’s thoughts which are devoted to the Eucharist form an element of his work which, strictly speaking, is usually not counted among his phenomenological writings. This impression is clearly affirmed by Jean Greisch, who distinguishes between a “systematic trajectory” which contains among others God without Being, and the “phenomenological cycle” which is developed later34. Moreover, Tilliette himself, also dryly claims that “Marion places himself in the theological terrain”, and knows that in the end he “concludes that a radically theological logic based on prayer is indispensable”35.

IV. THE HERMENEUTICAL AND SYMBOLIC PARADIGM

Before developing a connection between hermeneutics and the Eucha- rist, it must be specified that hermeneutical philosophers have not spoken out on the phenomenon of the Eucharist. Neither Gadamer, nor Heidegger, nor Ricœur have broached the subject. The reasons for this silence are varied but in any case it would not be an exaggeration to say that there is a certain disinterest toward the Eucharist as a philosophical problem. Therefore, this observation has driven us to select only theologians36, but, as we will see, they testify to a veritable knowledge of philosophy and strongly incorporate it into their theologizing. Actually, it is not too difficult to identify representatives of hermeneutical models in the theological domain. Many theologians, such as Jean Greisch in philosophy of religion, favor the hermeneutical paradigm. In fundamental theology and dogmatics, Claude Geffré is truly one of the most well known figures. In 1972, he had already written, “At the risk of over-simplifying, I would say that theology is tending to

33. Jean-Luc MARION, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Transl. J.L. Kosky, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2001 [French original Étant donné, 1997]; ID., The Erotic Phenomenon. Transl. S.E. Lewis, Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 2007 [French original Le phénomène érotique, 2003]. 34. GREISCH, Le Buisson ardent (n. 4), II, p. 292. It is striking that Greisch only devotes two pages to God Without Being (ibid., pp. 315-317), and that he remains completely silent regarding what is said about the Eucharist. This confirms the idea that Marion’s book is (perceived) above all (as) a work of theology. 35. TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques (n. 3), pp. 160-161. It would have been rea- sonable to no longer cite the original article by Marion according to the version which was composed for the compilation L’Eucharistie pain nouveau pour un monde rompu (Paris, Fayard, 1980), but to be aware that the text “The Present and the Gift” has been modified and republished in God Without Being. 36. This choice is justifiable not only because Greisch himself incorporates theologians (cf. n. 7), but also because, fundamentally, the boundaries between philosophical and theological disciplines are not absolute.

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become non-metaphysical theology, non-authoritarian and hermeneutic”37. In carefully describing in which sense he understands this last attribute, Geffré explains, in a manner very similar to Greisch’s arguments (even if the underlying presence of the ideas of Paul Ricœur are not yet percep- tible38):

It is … a question of bringing out the permanent significance of the Word of God in its scriptural, dogmatic and theological forms, starting with the historical understanding that man has of himself and his cultural world. This work of decoding meaning is certainly a hermeneutical task par excellence39.

According to Geffré, the “hermeneuticalization” of dogmatic theology is not motivated by conformity with modernity and the diverse methods of reflection which it engenders. On the contrary, “hermeneutics is the very demand of faith, inasmuch as revealed truth is not a dead truth, but a living truth which is always transmitted in an historical medium and which needs to be constantly made present”40. In his subsequent books, such as The Risk of Interpretation and Croire et interpréter: Le tournant herméneutique de la théologie41, Geffré continued and extended his reading on the demand for hermeneutics in theology; and he obtained the most radical results.

1. Louis-Marie Chauvet as a Hermeneutic Thinker Without a doubt, Louis-Marie Chauvet is the theologian who intro- duced, integrated, and applied the ideas of this “hermeneutical turn” of philosophy to the theology of the sacraments42. In light of our theme, the presentation of only a few of Chauvet’s ideas would reveal that he amply

37. Claude GEFFRÉ, A New Age in Theology. Transl. R. Shillenn – F. McDonagh – T.L. Westow, New York, Paulist Press, 1974, p. 36 [French original Un nouvel âge de la théologie, 1972]. 38. It is truly important to mention here the name of Paul Ricœur, because it is he who is, alongside Heidegger, the most important source of the hermeneutical paradigm according to Jean Greisch. 39. GEFFRÉ, A New Age in Theology (n. 37), p. 43. 40. Ibid., p. 45. 41. Claude GEFFRÉ, The Risk of Interpretation: On Being Faithful to the Christian Tra- dition in a Non-Christian Age. Tansl. D. Smith, New York, Paulist Press, 1987 [French original Le christianisme au risque de l’interprétation, 1983]; ID., Croire et interpréter: Le tournant herméneutique de la théologie, Paris, Cerf, 2001. 42. Another contender could have been the American theologian David N. POWER, who among many other works published Sacrament: The Language of God’s Giving, New York, Crossroad, 1999. For two recent critical approches to Power’s theology of the sacraments, see David KIRCHHOFFER, Sacrament and Being: On Overcoming Ontotheology in Sacramental Theology and Marianne SERVAAS, Focusing our Eyes on the Sacraments: An Interaction with David Power, each in Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 88 (2007) pp. 143-156 and 157-169.

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represents the hermeneutical paradigm43. We will see that this exploration is necessary to reach our conclusion. In the first place it is in the first two chapters of his monumental and innovative work Symbol and Sacrament44, where Chauvet presents the details of his philosophical points of departure45. Here he explains why one must follow Heidegger and his efforts to finally abandon the metaphysical tradition of Western thought. If it is true that the onto-theological structure of philosophy has prevented a more original access to being human and that a certain prevalence of the notion of “presence” was an obstacle for a more authentic attitude toward things that surround us and that which happens, Chauvet not only admits that analogous analyses are worthy for the Missal; he also adds firmly that the domination of scholas- ticism, anchored as it is in onto-theological schemas, must be replaced urgently and decisively. This necessitates a profound reevaluation which could contribute to the understanding of the sacraments and the liturgy. Chauvet’s theology may therefore be considered to be a grandiose undertaking in the hope of achieving this foundational change. Instead of an understanding of the sacraments which is objectivist, causal, instrumental, in short, “metaphysical”, he prefers an existential and integral reading of Christian sacramentality. And this translates philosophically as “hermeneuticalization” – or rather, as it is called more frequently, a “symbolization”. It is no longer the essence or the substance of material objects which form the first focal point of sacramentologies, but a dynamic totality and revital- izing of living symbols. In fact, an infinite horizon of meanings makes up the basis of theological reflection. Furthermore, Chauvet consults other philosophical sources which are often associated with the hermeneutical tradition. First there are clear

43. For a complementary analysis and interpretation of Chauvet being a hermeneutical thinker par excellence, see Lieven BOEVE, Theology in a Postmodern Context and the Hermeneutical Project of Louis-Marie Chauvet, in P. BORDEYNE – B.T. MORRILL (eds.), Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, Collegeville MN, The Liturgical Press, 2008, 5-23. 44. Louis-Marie CHAUVET, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence. Transl. P. Madigan – M. Beaumont, Collegeville MN, The Liturgical Press, 1995, pp. 7-83 [French original Symbole et sacrement, 1987]. A summary of similar insights is offered in the “ouverture” and the first chapter of another foundational book: Louis-Marie CHAUVET, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body. Transl. M Beaumont, Collegeville MN, The Liturgical Press, 2001, pp. XIII-XV.1-17 [French original Les sacrements, 1997]. 45. Strictly speaking, the philosophical path of Chauvet had been developed already by the end of the 1970s: Louis-Marie CHAUVET, Du symbolique au symbole: Essai sur les sacrements, Paris, Cerf, 1979. Also in this book, he expounds upon the foundations of a symbolizing paradigm in order to understand the sacramental nature of Christian faith. One of the themes of it is that of a large field of sacramentality, understood according to the modalities of the symbolic, which has priority compared to the generalizing conception of sacrament in its cultural sense.

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references to Geffré’s thought (as a theologian) and to that of Ricœur (as a philosopher)46. Then Chauvet calls attention to linguistic turns of thought in diverse contexts and in variants, but never pejoratively. Finally one can also mention other influences, though less dominant in Chau- vet’s theology, such as Jacques Derrida, structuralists47 and Anglo-saxon philosophers of language48. Next Chauvet puts the hermeneutical model into practice by comparing it with social sciences and, in particular, anthropology49. Theology is not only capable of explaining the relationship between man and the divine. Other sciences are able to contribute to the permanent theological pursuit for that which is the human being and what is necessary to express its connection with its Creator and Redeemer. For example, in pastoral liturgy, Chauvet does not hesitate to draw attention to what sociological research has shown. Statistics concerning the adherence to the Church are for him an important source in order to find the most appropriate method to launch into the problem50, because – and it is here that his theological interests adhere to sociology – one must always take into account any recognizable situations. People must no less than the ecclesiastical heads be realistic with their pastoral demands. Neither an insistent subjectivism nor a simple call to authority will suffice in actual pastoral contexts. A second example deals with which today is known by the name “ritual studies”, which arose in the wake of the investigations and publications of Victor Turner51. We notice that well before discussions of an eventual “de-theologisation” of liturgical studies came about52, Chauvet had

46. For a clarifying passage in which CHAUVET combines the ideas of these two thinkers, see Symbol and Sacrament (n. 44), pp. 65-69. One should bear in mind also that Claude Geffré was the supervisor of Louis-Marie Chauvet’s dissertation, and this dissertation was the basis for Symbol and Sacrament. 47. Here one must mention Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, and indicate that Chauvet was very critical toward the idea of structuralism as a current trend or a specific position. He sees it as a formalist philosophy without content. However, the language understood as a determining structure of the believing subject is evidently paramount to him. 48. Here I think particularly of J.L. Austin, who familiarized the world with the idea of the notion of “speech acts” and with the concept of “performativity”. Cf. CHAUVET, The Sacraments (n. 44), pp. 79-80; Symbol and Sacrament (n. 44), pp. 130-133. 49. Cf. CHAUVET, Du symbolique au symbole (n. 45), p. 10: “Disons simplement, pour faire bref, que nous avons au moins la conviction que le déplacement effectué en anthro- pologie par la linguistique, la psychanalyse, l’ethnologie, la sociologie, l’éthologie, la biologie, etc., opère nécessairement un déplacement du théologien lui-même, et donc aussi de sa théologie, si bien que la théologie concrète commence dès le dialogue avec les sciences de l’homme”. 50. CHAUVET, The Sacraments (n. 44), pp. 174-176. 51. CHAUVET, Symbol and Sacrament (n. 44), pp. 115-117.136-137. 52. These debates, which, actually, are not yet finished, even though they may have become a bit less fervent, must be situated within the spectrum of debates regarding the relationship between “theology” and “religious sciences”, which have occupied many institutions, departments and universities. These debates must be linked to secularism, to (post)modernism, and to pluralism. For a recent volume which addresses the issue, see Paul

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already developed a natural and spontaneous interest in scientific studies of rites and ritualisations. Moreover, it is perhaps for this same reason that Chauvet is, as a theologian, fascinated by Marcel Mauss and his essay on The Gift53. The integration of social sciences and anthropology in particular is in any case indispensable in its sacramental synthesis. A third reason for which one may consider Chauvet as an eminently hermeneutical thinker is the fact that he rejects a dualism of body and spirit – which is, moreover, significant for a paradigm of “symbolicity”. According to Chauvet (and many others before and after him), body and spirit are two “poles of the same reality”, which evolve(d) in a continu- ous and reciprocal exchange. Chauvet even goes further: we can understand nothing of spirituality and of Christian sacramentality, unless we realize that, as Tertullian had said, flesh is the pivot point of salvation (caro salutis est cardo)54. It is with this first conviction that he is fully in agreement with Chauvet when the latter formulates his own adage, taken up with numerous variations: “What is most spiritual always takes place in the most corporeal”55.

2. Hermeneutics and the Eucharist What the hermeneutical movement of Chauvet’s sacramental theology signifies for the Eucharist is pointedly shown when he interprets the dynamic symbolism of anaphoras. In the two already mentioned books, Chauvet proposes a reading of the second Eucharistic prayer from the Roman Missal56. It engages the function of the symbolic and the reception of the Word of God through concrete mediations of the liturgy and

POST – Benedikt KRANEMANN (eds.), Die modernen Ritual Studies als Herausforderung für die Liturgiewissenschaft: Modern Ritual Studies as a Challenge for Liturgical Studies (Liturgia Condenda, 20), Leuven – Paris – Dudley MA, Peeters, 2009. 53. CHAUVET, The Sacraments (n. 44), pp. 117ff; Symbol and Sacrament (n. 44), p. 100. 54. TERTULLIAN, De resurrectione carnis, VIII. 2. References to the work of this Church father are easily available at www. tertullian.org. 55. CHAUVET, The Sacraments (n. 44), p. XII. He draws this conclusion after making the following remarks: “the fact that Chriatian idenity cannot be separated from the sacraments (in particular those of initiation) means that faith cannot be lived in any other way, including what is most spiritual in it, than in the mediation of the body, the body of a soci- ety, of a desire, of a tradition, of a history, of an institution, and so on”. It is evident also that in his previous book Chauvet articulates the same conviction, but formulates it in a slightly different way: “Now, according to Church tradition, the most ‘spiritual’ commu- nication of God (that of the Holy Spirit itself), and thus the truth of the believing subject, takes place through this language, eminently sensory and bodily. The sacraments accord- ingly teach us that the truest things in our faith occur in no other way than through the concreteness of the ‘body’”. Or a little further: “the most ‘spiritual’ happens through the most ‘corporeal’” (CHAUVET, Symbol and Sacrament [n. 44], pp. 140-141.146). 56. CHAUVET, Symbol and Sacrament (n. 44), pp. 268-282; The Sacraments (n. 44), pp. 129-147.

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its sacraments toward a life lived as a Christian. According to Chauvet’s interpretation, the Eucharistic prayer reflects and incorporates this triple movement: (1) from the Eucharist we receive a gift, the gift of the Word, which is at the same time the subject and the object of the giving act; (2) we then solemnly celebrate this gift by memorial modalities and modalities of thanksgiving, as well as through the actual continuation of that which was started in Christ, recognized as the Word; (3) in and through the Eucharistic action we realize that this celebration in and of itself can never be sufficient. To celebrate the Eucharist, therefore, implies practical consequences in the life of a believer. It means that it is not only legiti- mate but also indispensable to speak of a Eucharistic dimension of the Christian life, and that the life of a believer unfolds under a Eucharistic mandate prior to any initiative of him- or herself. As deep and rich as Chauvet’s analysis is of the Eucharistic prayer nr. 2, one is amazed by the “narrative” qualification of this prayer. In spite of its philosophical anchoring, it is hardly evident that the Eucharist is, above all, a matter of a story or of an account – as is nonetheless suggested by the etymology of the word “narrative”. The narrative approach to Eucharistic prayers does by no means exhaust that which the Eucharist brings into play. However, Chauvet would undoubtedly be the first to admit that the Eucharist is in the first place a real event57. It is neither a gathering to commemorate the tremendous life of an extraordinary man nor an initiative to continue to “tell” the story of his message. What, then, is the interest in a narrative model? Here we reach the limits of hermeneutical thinking58. Since it undeni- ably remains connected with a philosophy of finitude, one discovers some difficulties in accounting for the Eucharistic mystery as an authentically

57. We notice that Chauvet’s and Marion’s positions with regard to the aspects of the anamnetic and the eschatological are if not identical then at least astonishingly similar. One should compare at this point the following pages: CHAUVET, The Sacraments (n. 44), pp. 135-138 (on “the discourse of anamnesis” and “the discourse of epiclesis”) and MARION, God without Being (n. 29), pp. 243-247 (on “le mémorial” and the “épectase”). The two philosophers achieve a vision regarding the time of the “present” which is “over-deter- mined” by a non-chronological but properly “theological” past and future. (In Symbol and Sacrament [n. 44], Chauvet refers to Marion’s work, but he does not cite God without Being [n. 29]. At a thematic level there is much overlap between both thinkers, but they don’t really interact or influence one another.) 58. We could have opted for other themes linked to the theology of the Eucharist and explicitly developed by Chauvet, for example the sacrificial dimension or the breaking of bread (cf. his studies La dimension sacrificielle de l’Eucharistie, in L’eucharistie: Tradi- tion, célébration, adoration. – The most beautiful studies of La Maison-Dieu, Paris, Cerf, 2005, 59-90, a study which originally appeared in La Maison-Dieu 123 [1975] 47-78; and The Broken Bread as Theological Figure of Eucharistic Presence, in L. BOEVE – L. LEIJS- SEN [eds.], Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context [BETL, 160], Leuven – Paris, Peeters, 2001, 236-262). In these two cases, there also, Chauvet appeals to hermeneutics in a manner completely comparable to the treatment of the Eucharistic prayer. But we would go too far if we gave all the details of these discussions.

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theandric totality. This is because the Eucharist, as the theological tradition would have it, develops itself, of course, in the world, here below, among the people, but it participates at the same time in the world of the infinite or of the absolute – even though these words are maybe not the most adequate to explain what is actually happening. In any case, in the Eucharist as a factual celebration of the faithful the earthly liturgy is somehow joined with the heavenly liturgy. Hence, if it is true that the Eucharist engages itself directly in the world and that it derives its most intimate identity from the Paschal mystery, and therefore from the life of the Triune God, it is always necessary to have a “theological” comple- ment to hermeneutical, symbolic, narrative, and anthropological issues. If, in the language of Chauvet himself, one wants to have a balanced comprehension of the Eucharist, it is necessary to have numerous “mediations” with the divine across the terrain of multiple interrelations, signs, symbols etc. that make up this rite. It is nevertheless likely that a strictly hermeneutical point of view will never be capable of doing justice to this infinite complexity. For a more general philosophy of religion, hermeneutics is probably the most promising model as it offers a valid and testable methodology. However, for a theology of the Eucharist, hermeneutics eventually remains insufficient. At the end of the trajectory of reflection, hermeneutics suf- fers from flaws and insufficiencies, of which many may indeed be invol- untary. Is it possible to penetrate ever more deeply into the Eucharistic mystery, not only in order to explain it and tell about it, but also to consciously take part in it? In its bosom is born a desire for an addition by means of speculation – as risky as this maneuver is. Moreover, Chauvet himself has recently suggested that his philosophical position in the theological program of Symbol and Sacrament could indeed be in need of a revision59. He remains convinced that the question of being must always be treated by that of language. In effect, there is no other way of “posing” the question of being. At the same time it is possible to observe in Chauvet’s work an increasing openness for ontology and metaphysics, in any case a greater opening than in Symbol and Sacrament, which was still “marked by the animated debates of the 1970’s”60 and their vehemently anti-metaphysical outlook. It is not strange that he arrived at this conclusion. And yet it is not the only context, or rather the awareness that all theology bears the fruit of the intellectual circumstances and philosophical debates in which it emerges, which plays a role here61. It is also because the contents of Christian faith as such require a certain metaphysics – as has been convincingly argued by the American theologian, Thomas Guarino,

59. Cf. Louis-Marie CHAUVET, Une relecture de Symbole et sacrement, in Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 88 (2007) 111-125. 60. Ibid., p. 111. 61. Ibid., p. 112.

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in a thought-provoking study62. Revelation asserts an ontological claim, Christianity is meant to be without a doubt “in” truth, and the contents of dogmas are never allowed to be reduced to their linguistic, historical, contingent, or contextual shapes and meanings. However, it is unclear how a hermeneutical paradigm would account for all of this. On the other hand, I sometimes have the impression that it puts to work subtle strate- gies in order to escape these kinds of questions, which are undoubtedly difficult but nonetheless crucial for the future of Christianity63. Somewhat surprisingly, Chauvet’s approach is along the same line for the theology of the sacraments. One is amazed that, in his work The Sacra- ments, where he finds himself in the “theology” of the sacraments (and not in the propaedeutics of the anthropology of rites or in philosophical schemas of prior understanding), he sometimes employs a very metaphysical language64. It is as if the expression of the faith itself, at the basest and most concrete level, would only tolerate for metaphysics and speculation.

3. Paul Moyaert’s Theory of Symbols Along with a hermeneutical sensibility an attention for symbols and symbolicity is often stressed in contemporary philosophical and theological accounts of the Eucharist. There is a close relationship between hermeneutics and symbol theory, which is obvious in Chauvet’s theology. In view of our purposes, it is particularly interesting to additionally refer to Paul Moyaert, who has on many occasions engaged in interesting discussions on the nature and meaning of the symbolic. He has developed a general theory of images and symbols which accentuate the physical incarnation of symbols and their meanings65. This perspective

62. Thomas G. GUARINO, Foundations of Systematic Theology, New York, T & T Clark, 2005. 63. Incidentally, it is such a great pity that Guarino does not incorporate the liturgy in his reflections and that he moves exclusively within the field of fundamental theology. One would certainly be in need of a supplement of sacramental theology or theology of liturgy, which would prolong and elaborate his position. 64. For a good example, one should read what CHAUVET says regarding the paradox of the incarnation in The Sacraments (n. 44), p. 163. At a certain moment he states: “God reveals God in what is most different from God. God reveals the divine self ultimately as God when God ‘crosses out’ God in humanity. God reveals God as human in God’s very divinity. This does not just mean that God is ‘morally’ more human than humans, who so often are inhuman, but that ‘ontologically’ it belongs to God to be the only one fully human” (second italics are mine). 65. Paul MOYAERT, Incarnation of Meaning and the Sense for Symbols: Phenomeno- logical Remarks on a Theological Debate, in BOEVE – LEIJSSEN (eds.), Sacramental Pres- ence (n. 58), 112-129; The Sense of Symbols as the Core of Religion: A Philosophical Approach to a Theological Debate, in J.E. FAULCONER (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion, Bloomington IN, University of Indiana Press, 2003, 53-69. Cf. also his monographs in Dutch De mateloosheid van het christendom: Over naastenliefde, betekenis- incarnatie en mystieke liefde, Amsterdam, SUN, 1998, esp. pp. 97-172, and Iconen en beeldverering: Godsdienst als symbolische praktijk, Amsterdam, SUN, 2007.

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moreover has guided him to a daring interpretation of the decrees of the Council of Trent on the Eucharist66. Moyaert more or less defends the doctrinal decisions that were taken there, considering that one can hardly separate the material aspect of the Eucharist from its spiritual reality as a presence of Christ himself. The dogma of transubstantiation, in speci- fying just what the praesentia realis contains, helps to “understand” how the Christian symbolic realm can never be reduced to an intellectual explanation or a spiritual experience detached from all that is bodily and material. The philosophy of Wittgenstein functions as an interpretive template for Moyaert’s philosophy. Even though his explicit references are not that frequent, one could easily compare what Wittgenstein says about language games and the conventions of life that they constitute (and by which they are themselves constituted – this concerns a dialectic), with the framework of symbolic references about which Moyaert speaks. Moy- aert’s encompassing symbolic worlds seem to follow the same rules of comprehension, comportment and initiation which Wittgenstein distinguishes. They are characterized by some arbitrariness. The fact that the rules are in fact precisely those rules escapes the competences of the individual and obliges him or her to accept them as they are. They call to the will more than to the capacity to understand and internalize. It is not always easy to know how Moyaert avoids criticisms that Wittgensteinians such as Dewi Z. Phillips have received67. Even if Moyaert does not develop his philosophy under the direct influence of Wittgenstein, and although he doesn’t participate directly in the discussion around the Wittgensteinian tradition, one could still ask if his position does not necessarily evolve from “contextualism” to its inevitable consequences, among which a certain fideism needs to be counted68.

66. MOYAERT, De mateloosheid van het christendom (n. 65), pp. 131-158; ID., Het dogma van de praesentia realis: Enkele beschouwingen over het belang van betekenisre- alisme in de religieuze devotie, in R. MICHIELS – H. SCHWALL (eds.), Herinnering en hoop. FS H. Servotte, Averbode, Altiora, 1995, 291-312. I call this interpretation “daring” because it is not at all obvious in a cultural climate such as ours, which is often indifferent and relativistic vis-à-vis religion. 67. As compared to D.Z. Phillips, GREISCH (Le Buisson ardent [n. 4], II, p. 541) refers to two of his interlocutors, who find that “Phillips is wrong in relying on the obscurity of such a language, which is a part of the ‘tribal folklore of humanity’, but which turns out to be incapable of proving its rational coherence”. In truth, Moyaert also seems to use the opacity of symbolic language as an argument against a thoroughgoing scrutiny of its content and coherence. The conclusion of his ideas on the canons of the Council of Trent may demonstrate this. 68. One must always be very prudent when using this term, especially if one applies it to Wittgenstein himself, as Fergus KERR warns in Theology after Wittgenstein, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986, pp. 28-31.

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V. SPECULATIVE THOUGHT

Reversing Jean Greisch’s order, I will complete the current discussion of philosophical models and their theological appropriation with the speculative paradigm. I believe that there are good reasons for proceeding in this way, in the hope of clarifying certain aspects of the mystery of the Eucharist with the aid of philosophical thought. First, it would be mis- leading to generalize by saying that the difference between the hermeneutical paradigm and the speculative model is all-encompassing. As in hermeneutics, there is a certain elasticity and flexibility in the speculative act regarding human categories of thought, which one would not recognize if one obstinately sees speculation as a difficult or even impossible undertaking, e.g., only from a totalitarian and therefore violent perspec- tive69. Next, Xavier Tilliette’s historical view of the whole amply shows that there is, or at least that there was, speculative thought which was not necessarily linked to the philosophical tradition of German idealism. Maint, a believing philosopher, was involved in an explanation or interpretation of the Eucharist which is clearly fed by other sources. It is often a call to spirituality or toward mystical writing which add fruition and color to the visions of these philosophers, but this still doesn’t render them less philosophical. A further explanation and examples are necessary. The most pertinent examples for Tilliette are Antonio Rosmini, Mau- rice Blondel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Simone Weil, to each of whom he devotes a chapter. These four authors construct an original synthesis between their philosophies, their being a Christian, and their faith in the Eucharist. According to Tilliette, Rosmini manages to preserve an intimate connection between the Eucharist and a life of faith by means of a concentration on communion as an existential expression of the Christ event. Blondelian philosophy is equally promising for clarifying the Eucharistic mystery, in that it envisages the most comprehensive and highest achievement of Christian faith70. Finally, Teilhard was also able to maintain a vision of the Eucharist which is at the same time universal (cosmic) and concrete (singular). Teilhard contended that the significance of the sacrament must always be linked to the total mystery of the appearance of Christ in the world. In short, for Tilliette, “Teilhardian realism” corresponds with

69. The most well known victim of this disbelief toward speculative thought is Hegel. In fact, one should distinguish between different notions such as “speculation”, “system” and “the absolute”. There is nothing wrong with trying to avoid being a Hegelian when contemplating the Eucharist, but this does not mean that one should do everything in order not to speculate. 70. TILLIETTE (Philosophies eucharistiques [n. 3], p. 108) also discerns remarkable cor- respondences between the ideas of Blondel and Rosmini, whom he seems to want to agree with.

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the grand patristic doctrine which never separated the Eucharistic mystery from the life of grace or from the organic whole of the sanctification of both world and humanity. This is [also] the point of view of spiritual authors, which in our day was rediscovered by theologians and philosophers of the Eucharist: to unfold the intelligible richness included in Eucharistic faith, extract the multiform understanding of the simple truth of ‘Hoc est Corpus’ … That is what is so admirable in the great Eucharistic approaches of Ros- mini, Blondel, Simone Weil71…

Another excellent example of a thinker who dealt with the Eucharist from a speculative perspective is the romantic intellectual Franz von Baader (1765-1842)72. Named professor at the University of Munich in 1826, he developed an entire speculative dogmatics73. That which renders his sacramental theology “speculative” is difficult to define. We will not try to provide such a description here, according to the standards and rigorous requirements of a “scientificized” theology. From Baader’s very dense thoughts, we are only able to sift out some of those elements which cannot be ignored, in hopes of renovating a speculative theology of the sacraments worthy of this name. It seems that speculative thought offers at least three advantages, and from each of them any theory of the Eucha- rist would benefit a lot: a metaphysical confidence, an authentically theological sensibility, and a philosophy both of finitude and infinity. 1. As for metaphysical confidence, there are two aspects one needs to take into account. Firstly, for a theory of the Eucharist to be credible, it must have confidence in being itself. For the question of the Eucharist does not escape the question of being; it assumes it. To explain the Eucha- rist even presupposes a realism of the first rank; even though this realism can no longer be modeled according to epistemological schemas with which modern philosophy has provided us. A strict Erkenntnismetaphysik could never pierce the deepest layers from where the mystery of being shines like an apparition; neither does it access the necessary conditions in order to understand the “event” of the Eucharist. One cannot do justice to the Eucharist if it is limited to a game of signs without real referent, or if it is interpreted it in a manner which is merely constructive, or if we think it is only a rite inaugurated for coherence and a group identity. In effect, the truth regarding the Eucharist seems to transgress every theoretical approach and finds itself in the core of reality. Secondly, to

71. TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques (n. 3), p. 167. 72. For a more developed argument see my contribution Baader sur l’eucharistie, in Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 89 (2008) 194-208. TILLIETTE (Philosophies eucharistiques [n. 3], pp. 83-90) also devotes a few pages to Baader but the source texts to which he refers are incomplete and he does not manage to come up with an actual summary of Baader’s Eucharistic thought. Unfortunately enough, it remains on the level of an introduction and of information. 73. Franz X. VON BAADER, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, in Sämtliche Werke. Ed. F. Hoffmann, et al., Aalen, Scientia Verlag, 1963, vol. VIII-IX.

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elucidate this enigma, we need a true metaphysics to characterize the Eucharist more precisely. With Louis-Marie Chauvet and many others, this is not a return to classical metaphysics; it will be a metaphysics “after” the linguistic turn but a metaphysics nonetheless. It will be one which understands that “Being and Language are inseparable even in their distinction itself”. In any case, it will be (a) true metaphysics, since “the surpassing … of metaphysics never implies its elimination”74. 2. Next, it is important not to approach to the question of the Eucharist with a narrowly rationalistic mentality. There must be a sensitivity for that which is not rationalisable but neither irrational. According to Baaderian theology, two pitfalls must be avoided here. On one hand, one must absolutely deny naturalistic materialism, which reduces the sacraments to an external objectiveness which has nothing to do with a theological content. On the other hand, one must resist all spiritualistic charm, which separates the essence of faith from its true embodiment and encloses it in an interior world. The balance between materiality and spirituality, objectivity and subjectivity, externalism and interiority, etc., is confirmed more plausibly by the faculty of speculation, understood as the complex of reflexive oper- ations which intercede in the “here-below” for the “hereafter”. Understandably, according to Baader, all theology which does not the- matize the “grand narrative” of creation–fall–redemption risks missing its most important vocation. And it is precisely from this perspective that the theology of the Eucharist receives its profoundest meaning. In other words, in the Eucharist is subtly crystallized the creed75. We give thanks to the Father for and with Christ, his Son and our Savior. All of this manifests itself within the call for the unity of the Holy Spirit through the Church. The Eucharist engages the theology of the trinity as well as Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. Moreover, it is through the Eucharist that believers may yet understand the existential significance of this soteriological meta-schematic more intimately, which bears and at the same time is implicated by the mystery of the Eucharist. If the Eucharist is truly a sacrament of salvation, then speculation is nothing other than the persevering attempt to contemplate it and explain its wisdom. But it must be said that, in and of itself, it inevitably comes up against the mentality of the majority of contemporary culture. The Eucharist stands at odds with the opinions of the (post) modern subject, who is no longer disposed to recognize the need for grace, given by an external instance, which he can neither control nor manipulate76.

74. CHAUVET, Une relecture de Symbole et sacrement (n. 59), p. 116. 75. Cf. J.-M.R. TILLARD, Théologie: Voix catholique. La communion à la Pâque du Seigneur, in BROUARD (ed.), Eucharistia (n. 22), 397-437. 76. Baader indicates clearly that he was truly over-saturated by the “non orem, non accipiam, non credam, [et] non serviam” of modern subjectivism (Vorlesungen [n. 73], IX, p. 259; cf. also ibid., p. 105).

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3. Thirdly, and closely linked to what precedes, it is evident that thought which refuses a connection with the infinite would never be capable of doing justice to the Eucharist. In the same way that both Baader and Chauvet directly affirm this, the sacraments are obviously understood through a field of many mediations. One must situate them within the incredibly vast field of sacramentality, in which the individual sacraments are clarifying moments and which constitutes a vital horizon for a life of faith. There is a certain dialectic and therefore reciprocal dependence between sacramentality and sacraments: there is no sacramentality without true sacrament, however there are neither sacraments without sacramental extension. This dimension is, admittedly, rendered comprehensi- ble very clearly through different philosophies of finitude, of which hermeneutics is merely one instance. The movement was such that it seems to have forgotten the orientation toward the infinite. In so far as one discovers that a movement of transcendence is obtainable and important, it is certain that this transcendence may open the path toward God77. In any case, the interest of speculation is to tirelessly search, amidst the larger context of sacramentality, for the way in which sacraments share in divine revelation.

VI. CONCLUSIVE REFLECTIONS

The conclusion of this contribution primarily concerns two fields of reflection. The first is concentrated around the essence of the Eucharist. It must be said that the sacrament of the Eucharist forms an inseparable unity. As the Second Vatican Council says,

the two parts which, in a certain sense, go to make up the Mass, namely, the liturgy of the word and the Eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship78.

Therefore,

the rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily79.

For theology this implies that each isolation strategy of a specific element of the Eucharist must be avoided. A theory of the Eucharist which

77. To use the well-known terms of Jean Wahl, it is more so the “transdescendance” rather than the “transascendance” that is addressed. 78. Sacrosanctum Concilium, nr. 56. 79. Sacrosanctum Concilium, nr. 50.

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only concerns itself with communion, for example, without including the readings, or the homily without its being fit within the trajectory of the entire Eucharistic celebration80, of the transubstantiation without the rec- ognition of the presence of Christ in the life of the Church and the lit- urgy81, or the consecration without any attention to the consecratory dimension of Eucharistic prayer and even of the Eucharist as such82, would always be limited and, as such, would need additional modifica- tions, amplifications, nuances, and even corrections. The history of theology has known examples of unilateral interpretations. This is a danger against which it must be protected in the future, if one wants to be able to appreciate the astonishing richness of the Eucharist. Philosophical thought and philosophical models can be particularly inspiring in this respect. The second field of reflection is that of the quest for the most appropriate paradigm to do justice to the unity and completeness of the Eucharist as a sacrament where divine love is shared with humanity. The essence of this article has been devoted to an evaluation of philosophical models discerned by Jean Greisch regarding a universal theory of the Eucharist. It is necessary now to point out more specifically what we have learned. From a critical approach we only retain one restrictive element: one must know why and how certain philosophers “give a rough time” to the Eucharist. Most often they think that they have seen the core of the Eucha- rist, having identified and isolated one of its characteristics which they have consequently extrapolated in a very strange manner for a systematic theologian. The often subtle and elaborate phenomenological model permits us to specify the stakes of the question. Nevertheless there is a disadvantage. The methodology can be reductionist. On the one side, it is necessary to reach the essence of the phenomena and to formulate clear-sided ideas. On the other, this methodological concentration necessarily produces an “abstraction”, which conceals ambiguities from that which I have called (along with Chauvet) the field of mediation. Phenomenologists would like to see things in their truest form, but in practice, this strategy is likely to end up a little elitist and merely aesthetic. Concerning the hermeneutical paradigm, we are reminded that for Gre- isch, its strength consists of a capacity of integration. Hermeneutics is capable of doing justice to the religious phenomenon in its fullness and depth. Yet we have opted for speculative thought. The main reason was primarily theological: to think about the Eucharist, this capacity of integration is better achieved through speculation than through the labor and art of interpreting. However, the very fact that we have chosen to deal with Greisch’s models is telling and rests on deliberate considerations.

80. Cf. MARION, God without Being (n. 29), p. 152. 81. Cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, nr. 7. 82. Cf. Paul DE CLERCK, L’intelligence de la liturgie, Paris, Cerf, 22005, pp. 183-185.

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One should not abandon non-speculative models. But the integrating fac- tor of all thinking is different from the one which was proposed by Gre- isch: for the Eucharist, one needs speculation rather than the art of interpretation in order to encompass, synthesize, and integrate everything. Therefore, at the end of this reflection, we declare ourselves in complete agreement with Xavier Tilliette, when he says:

The best Eucharistic theory is not the one which isolates aspects from one another, and which decomposes the sacrament in a multiplicity of objective elements, but [it is] the one which embraces the breadth of the mystery and which holds together as good as possible all aspects83,

the heavenly liturgy as well as the earthly liturgy. Let us repeat one last time that according to us, such a theory is, preferably, of a speculative kind.

K.U.Leuven Joris GELDHOF Faculty of Theology Sint-Michielsstraat 4 bus 3101 B-3000 Leuven

ABSTRACT. — This article first presents and discusses the five philosophical models which Jean Greisch distinguished in his seminal study on the philosophy of religion (Le buisson ardent et les Lumières de la raison, Paris, 2002-2004). It then asks whether the same reasoning can be extrapolated to the theology of the Eucharist. Jean Greisch appears to favor a combination of phenomenology and hermeneutics, because this approach is both the most promising for the future and the most appropriate to deal with religion in all its complexity. Greisch acknowledges some strengths of the other three models (speculation, criticism, and analysis) but in the end repudiates them. In this article a case is made for a rehabilitation of the speculative paradigm, for speculative theology is not a relic of the past but can be considered to provide an orientation for future theologizing. Correspond- ingly, the thesis is defended that a theology of the Eucharist can profit a lot from a speculative vision, albeit not in an isolated way but always accompanied by the intrinsic values that a hermeneutical (or symbolic) approach and phenomenology contribute to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Eucharist. In particular, this case is made through a critical exchange with Louis-Marie Chauvet, who is rightly interpreted as one of the major representatives of the hermeneutical (or symbolic) paradigm in contemporary sacramental theology.

83. TILLIETTE, Philosophies eucharistiques (n. 3), p. 169.

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