Con substantiation v trains substantiation

Mockingbird · Oct 31, 2015

Thomas said: ↑

(1) My point in noting the transfiguration was not to show His resurrection, but to show that His body was fully indwelled with the Godhead (Col. 2:9). What this demonstrates is that His body was not only capable of showing forth the power of divinity prior to His resurrection from the dead.

(2) But your example betrays a lurking dualism. Christ does not negate His body in saying that His words are "spirit and life." When He says that the "flesh is of no avail," He is not speaking of His own body, or of the human body in general. He is speaking of the old sinful flesh which we have inherited from our father Adam. Likewise Paul, when he contrasts spirit with flesh is not contrasting "immaterial" and "material." There is no contest between body and spirit. The latter fulfills and glorifies the former.

(3) By "reformed" I did not mean the school of John Calvin, but the more general school of that mindset which adopts a highly dubious philosophical axiom: finitum non capax infiniti ("the finite is not capable of the infinite). If you don't believe this, then I would more than happy to be proven wrong. I do not mean to stifle your "thinking aloud." I just want to let you know that when you "think aloud" you tend to sound like you hold to a reformed view of the Eucharist.

(4) Again, you say that "a body can only be present in one place at one time." You are construing the presence of Christ in localized terms--rather than in terms of ineffability. Hence you fear (as did Calvin) a "huge Cosmic Body," a fleshly monster of a God. But this false fear of yours is due to your having filtered any consideration of what Christ's body can or cannot do through the narrow funnel of your own preconceived notions of what your body can or cannot do. Your example is also ridiculous, seeing that the Gospels in no way support that idea that Christ appeared to His disciples on the road to Emmaus and in the upper room at the same time.

(5) I disagree with you here. We are not "full human persons" between death and the general resurrection. We are disembodied souls, waiting for our bodies and the redemption of our fullness. The separation of soul and body at death is an unnatural disruption of human personhood. Aquinas says the same (not that he is infallible, but that his argument in convincing and worth reading). But even if we admitted that this was the case, why so for Christ? Who is not waiting around for a body, but whose body was resurrected and ascended to right hand of the Father (what ascended to the Father was not His divinity but His flesh--which is why we worship Christ's flesh. To worship a fleshless Christ is to worship no Christ at all.)

(6) God has a "right hand," if by "right hand" we understand the actual meaning of the term, which is a Hebraism denoting the full power and authority of God. This is why Christ says before ascending that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (that is, to His human nature). Therefore when He continues to say, "Behold, I am with you always," the I refers to His full person: divinity and humanity. There is no other Christ but the enfleshed one. Again, you assume the "spiritual" must in some way be opposed to the "material" and "physical."
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Mockingbird · Oct 31, 2015

Spherelink said:

Thomas said: ↑

philosophical axiom: finitum non capax infiniti ("the finite is not capable of the infinite).
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Never heard of this phrase.
I certainly have never used it, and I don't know anyone who has.
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Finitum non capax infiniti is an accurate summary of the first part of Richard Hooker's description of the Real Presence, the negative part in which he argues against crude, superstitious, materialistic interpretations. There he writes:

Richard Hooker said:

All things are in such sort divided into finite and infinite, that no one substance, nature, or quality, can possibly be capable of both.--Laws 5.55.2
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But this is only part of Hooker's argument. He goes on to develop a positive description of how Christ is received in the housel.

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Con substantiation v trains substantiation

Mockingbird Member

Mockingbird Member