Pints With Aquinas - Catholic and Protestant DEBATE The Eucharist w/ Dr. Brett Salkeld & Dr. Steven Nemes

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

A Catholic and Protestant debate the eucharist. Get Dr. Salkeld's new book here: https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/41652 Dr. Steven Nemes received his PhD in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied under Profs. Oliver Crisp and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. He has published a number of articles on a diverse spectrum of philosophical and theological topics. He has been happily married to Rachel for over a year, and he teaches Latin at a preparatory academy in Phoenix, AZ. Dr. Brett Salkeld (pronounced like the past tense of the imaginary verb “to sockle”) is Archdiocesan Theologian for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina, where he is responsible for deacon formation. Brett is the author Can Catholics and Evangelicals Agree about Purgatory and the Last Judgment?, How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating (with Leah Perrault) and, most recently, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity. SPONSOR: Check out STRIVE 21: https://www.strive21.com/

Hey, Matt Fradd here. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com.com. Give or at patreon.com. Matt Fradd with any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Good day, good day, good day and welcome to pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today on the show we have Dr. Stephen Nemesh who is a Protestant and Dr. Brett Sockeld who is a Catholic. Both have their doctorates and they are going to be discussing the Eucharist, transubstantiation and things around that topic. So this is gonna be cool because I'm already seeing people

in the live chat who are saying they're Protestants and they believe in the real presence and so they're really excited for this and so if you're Protestant Catholic or in neither you're very welcome. Before we jump in I want to let people know about a program that I created called Strive. This is a kind of a pornography detox that I came up with it's Strive21.com. Over 46,000 men have either gone through the course or are going through the course. If you're a man who struggles with pornography or lust or masturbation or something like around that fornication, go check this out. We're getting a lot of great results, a lot of great feedback from people. It's 100% free and you can be as anonymous as you like. And when you start going through this 21 day course,

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Strive21.com, Strive21.com. And as I say, you can be as anonymous as you want and it's 100% free. Strive21.com. All right, Dr. Nemesh, Dr. Sockeld. This is fun having two interesting last names. Great to have you on the show. Good to be here. Niceesh, Dr. Sockeld. This is fun having two interesting last names. Great to have you on the show. Good to be here.

Nice to be here. I have your biographies in the description below, but I would love just to kind of give you each a moment to introduce yourself before we get underway. Dr. or Brett, would you begin? Sure, yeah. Trying to remember what I wrote in the bio that's below there, but I'm the theologian for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina.

I'm a family man. I live here in Regina, Saskatchewan with my wife Flannery and seven children. I've written a few books and I work primarily in my academic areas, primarily Catholic evangelical dialogue. I wrote a book on purgatory for Catholics and evangelicals and the book that led to my invitation to Pines with Aquinas tonight, this book, Transubstantiation, Theology, History and Christian Unity. It was my doctoral dissertation. I served the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops in their national dialogue with

evangelical Christians who are sponsored by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. I'm working on a book for Catholic teachers that should come out around this time next year. And I want to put a plug in the Archdiocese of San Francisco is having me teach a course on the Eucharist, Tuesday evenings starting January 11th for six straight Tuesdays. So if you're interested in that course, just check that out on the Archdiocesan website for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Actually the fellow who's bringing me in there might even

be watching tonight. He might put a link in the chat. Very good. Stephen. Yeah, my name is Stephen Nemesh. I have a PhD in theology. I studied at Fuller Theological Seminary under professors Oliver Crisp and Velimati Karkainen. I have no books published as of yet. I'm under contract to write a book called Orthodoxy and Heresy in Christian Theology for the

Cambridge Elements series, so I'm going to be writing that book. I also have a manuscript of a book on the topic of the Lord's Supper and specifically the question of the Real Presence that is currently under review somewhere. So it isn't published yet but God willing it will be published. And I, you know, I like to do theology. I have articles written on various topics. My dissertation was on the relationship between scripture and tradition for theology, specifically from a phenomenological point of view. It was called a constructive theological phenomenology of scripture and I have written most recently on the topic of infallibility in theology, theological method, and also

on the French phenomenologist Michel Henri. So those are some of my recent research topics. I don't teach theology anywhere. The job market is unfortunate at the present time, so I don't have a job. The job market is unfortunate at the present time. So I don't have a job teaching theology, but I teach Latin at a charter school here in Phoenix, Arizona. So I get to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, you know, one of the greatest languages on earth, the Latin language. So I quite enjoy that. That's a good time also. I guess that's all about me. I'm married. I am expecting a child in May of next year. So My life is pretty good right now

Terrific. Okay. Well, I I'm glad to have you both on the show and for those who are just tuning in this is not going To be a structured debate. It's more a friendly conversation Between a Catholic and a Protestant about the Eucharist because I think we could probably both agree that often Catholics don't understand that there isn't one understanding of the Eucharist in Protestantism. Not everybody follows Zwingli, for example. There are different opinions. And maybe sometimes Protestants misunderstand Catholics.

So I thought it'd be great to kind of get together and just sort of chat about it. So I suppose I just got a question for both of you. This won't be hopefully terribly moderated. I'm sure we'll give each other appropriate amount of time each and one of us hopefully won't talk too much, allowing the other to talk. But the question is like,

what do you understand the Eucharist to be? And maybe we'll start with Brett and then we can move on to Stephen. Yeah, I was thinking, I mean, I saw this question before and it, I mean, it's a general enough question that a person could talk for an hour on it. But in light of some of the things I think we'll get to later,

I think what might be useful for me at this stage is to just kind of articulate the point of view I'm coming from, right? So I'm a faithful Roman Catholic. My position on the Eucharist is the position of the Catholic Church. But more specifically, what does that mean? Well, around the question of tonight's discussion, you know, whether the Eucharist is just a symbol or something more, it means I've subscribed to the doctrine of transubstantiation And and the Council of Trent called that the most apt way The most apt way we have at least as of that point

500 years ago of Talking about the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. So I actually think transubstantiation Actually holds up really well So in my book I make a strong case for it. But I would also say, on the other hand, my position might surprise some Catholics because I think there's much more room for dialogue, engagement, and even at least partial agreement with many Protestants on this question. I think lots of Catholics have been taught to frame it as a kind of all or nothing Catholic Protestant debate here. And even

tonight, you know, we've got a representative of the Zwinglian tradition, you know, the symbolic reading of the Eucharist. I think there's actually more for Catholics to engage with in that than they might expect. But if we move away from Zwingli towards Calvin and especially Luther, there's lots of Protestants who affirm some form of a doctrine of real presence. And many Protestants in fact, once they've become familiar with the work of Thomas Aquinas on transubstantiation, who say, you know, maybe that's not as bad as I thought it was supposed to be. And I get emails like this from Protestants

who've read my book who say, oh, but actually that's quite compelling. Thomas isn't so crazy as I thought. So my position is one of a faithful Catholic on this. I affirm the teaching of the church, and I think Thomas Aquinas' articulation of transubstantiation is very serviceable. But I also think there's lots of room for healthy engagement

and at least partial agreement with lots of Protestants. For those who aren't terribly familiar with the Catholic position, just sum it up in a sentence or two. room for healthy engagement and at least partial agreement with lots of Protestants. For those who aren't terribly familiar with the Catholic position, just sum it up in a sentence or two. So you say you hold to the Catholic position, what is it in a couple of sentences? So in really short, with respect to the question of presence, because I mean, we could talk about the question of sacrifice, we could talk about liturgical questions, you know, the mass and the Christian life, all of which would be you know

Part of my position on the Eucharist but with respect to the question of presence. I would say that the fundamental Catholic affirmation is that the presence is real We use this adjective real presence and that real means something very specific It means that God is the primary actor in the sacrament. God is the one doing the giving, doing the making, doing the transformation. It's not a matter of humans doing community meaning making, which is not nothing, by the way, you know, national flags and wedding rings and national currencies. And those are those are things that we can do with human meaning making.

But the Catholic conviction is that this is God's action. And I would say that's the core of the claim of real presence. It's not a claim about some clandestine chemical transformation that you might or might not pick up with a microscope or anything like that. It's a claim about God's action in the sacrament. Which is what? Which is that he, oh, okay, here we go. That the substance of the bread and wine are transformed

into the substance of Christ's body and blood. Okay. For us. All right, thank you. Stephen. I do want to say I really enjoyed your book, Bread on Transubstantiation. I think it's fantastic. I think you make a very strong case that there is more overlap and possibility of fruitful dialogue between the various iterations of the real presence tradition in the Western Christian world, for example, Roman Catholic transubstantiation, Lutheran,

sacramental union, Calvin's variation of the real presence view. I think you do a very good job arguing that there is a lot of overlap. And even a friend of mine was telling me at one point, he said, you know what, when I really think about it, it's hard to tell the difference between these views. I think there is a way of thinking about these iterations of the real presence doctrine where they're almost hard to distinguish from each other. So I think you do a really good job in your book of bringing that out. My own view of the Eucharist, I call it, so I don't, in the past I used to call it liturgical Zwinglianism. Now I realize that that name sort of sounds contradictory because on the one hand, you know, how do you reconcile

the liturgy with Zwingli's own attitudes towards Christian worship? You know, Zwingli in his life really sort of simplified and did away with a lot of what we would call the liturgical aspects of worship in the medieval era. So I thought that that view was too contradictory. And I also didn't want people to think that I'm just a student of Zwingli's because I'm not. I happen to agree with Zwingli on this particular question, but I am not necessarily committed to the various aspects of Zwingli theology. So I've decided to rebrand myself, I suppose, in my view. And the view that I propose is called ritual memorialism. Now, what does ritual memorialism say? In my manuscript for my book, I illustrate ritual memorialism in a few different ways. So, I give basically like one or

two analogies or explanations for what I mean really by ritual memorialism. Ritual memorialism is a view that denies that the body and blood of Christ are really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic meal. Now that doesn't mean that Christ himself cannot be really present to us in some other way, right? So my view leaves open the possibility that Christ himself might be really present apart from the bread and the wine. The connection between the body and blood of Christ and the bread of the wine of the Eucharistic meal is one of signification or symbolization or imagery or representation, but Christ himself can be really present to us apart from the bread and the wine. Zwingli, for example, in his treatise on the Lord's Supper

insists that Christ is always present to us in virtue of his divine omnipotence. So Zwingli, for example, is not somebody who thought that Christ is utterly absent from us when we celebrate the Eucharist and we're only ascribing symbolic meaning to the bread and wine maybe as a way of making up for this absence. That's not true. So for Zwingli Christ is always present to us in virtue of his divinity. It's just that the relationship between the bread and the wine and his own body and blood is one of signification or representation. My own view, I am very sympathetic to the philosophy of the French phenomenologist Michel Henri. And Michel Henri, to really oversimplify things and perhaps to speak controversially, is something of a panentheist. He thinks that all human beings,

there is a moment of ontological overlap or union between the human being and God, so that every human being is ontologically connected as a matter of necessity with God. Now that doesn't mean that the human being is God. There is a distinction between myself and God. I depend on God, and God does not depend on me, but nevertheless there is a moment of ontological overlap such that I can be thought of as like my existence as a self is an activity of God that he accomplishes on himself. Now this is complicated, but all of that is to say that Christ is always really present to me and Michel-Henri will say for example that God, there is not this hard and fast distinction between us and God because God for Michel-Henri is life, absolute life, that

all of us feel within ourselves and on which we depend every moment for our own life. So with this kind of panentheistic picture in mind, I am perfectly happy saying that Christ, who is consubstantial with God, is always present to us, really present and not just present by way of signification. However, in the case of the Eucharistic meal, the relationship between the bread and the wine and Christ's own body and blood is one of signification or representation. So where I deny the question of real presence is specifically in the matter of the bread and the wine. Now how do I understand the Eucharist? One image that I use again and again in my book is the analogy

of a wedding ring, just like for example, or an engagement ring. Just like for example when I proposed to Rachel, who is now my wife, I offered her a ring and by accepting the ring Rachel accepted me and my offer to be her husband. Now the ring is not me, but it is true that the ring is a kind of a representation or an image of my proposal of self-offering. And by accepting the ring, so also does Rachel accept me. So, I say that in the same way, Christ established in the church this ritual of the bread and the wine, which he uses as symbols to communicate to us his offering of himself, his body and his blood, his person and his sacrifice. And by eating the bread and the wine, we are symbolically enacting our determination to accept Christ and to appropriate him to ourselves.

So just like I offer myself to my wife or to my fiance through the offering of a ring, so also Christ offers himself to us ritually through the bread and the wine of the meal, and we accept Christ by eating the meal. Christ is always really present to us in my view, but with respect to the Eucharistic meal, the bread and the wine signify Christ. They do not really become Christ. So I wanna just kinda ask a clarifying question.

So, and I hope it doesn't sound silly or like I'm making fun of your position. I'm just trying to understand it if I eat a sandwich Christ is Equally as present to me as I eat that sandwich as he is when I receive Eucharist But with the Eucharist this is It signifies Christ's offering for me. And so I am accepting him in the way. I'm not accepting him when I eat a sandwich You can reformulate that if that made any sense. So I would say that there are two senses of presence.

And in my manuscript I mentioned this. I will give this analogy. Suppose that you're in a cafe and you're drinking coffee and you are really engrossed in a memory from childhood, okay? And your friend walks into the cafe and he calls out your name, but you don't hear him, right? And then he comes up to you and he shakes you and you are really engrossed in a memory from childhood. Okay? And your friend walks into the cafe and he calls out your name but he doesn't but you don't hear him. Right? And then he comes up to you and he shakes you and you say, oh there you are. There are two senses of presence going on here. On the one hand, the past event from your childhood is present to you because you're thinking

about it. It's occupying your attention. That's a sort of a phenomenological sense of presence. And your friend is what I say is, I call really present by you. He is there, where you are. But these two modes of presence are distinct, and something can be present in one way that is not present in another. So the past event that you were thinking about, your memory, the thing that you remember, that thing is present to you. But it is not present by you because by remembering it,

you're not traveling back into time. You didn't really go back to that moment in time. You're just thinking about it. It's occupying your attention. So also, your friend in the cafe is present by you because he's there. But he's not present to you because he doesn't have your attention. You don't notice him. And so also now, there are all kinds of things in your room

that are present by you because they're there where you are But they're not present to you because you're not thinking about them. They only become present to you in addition to being present by you When you turn your attention to them So what I would say is that Christ is always present by us, right? Because we depend on him for our existence However in the Eucharist Christ is made present to us in a specific way through the use, the symbolic use of the bread and the wine. So the mode of presence there is actually different. In addition to being present by us, the bread and the wine of the Eucharistic meal are a special ritual by which

Christ is made present to us. And so I compare the Eucharist to like preaching the gospel, all right? Just like when I preach the gospel to a person, I make the person of Christ and his work present to that person by talking about him. The Eucharist is like preaching the gospel, but with the images of bread and wine, right? I use physical objects, you know what I mean? You understand what I mean, right?

So there are two actually senses of presence going on. So if I sit, and then I'll shut up and let you talk, Brett. If I sit in my room and have a glass of wine and a chunk of bread and I think about Jesus Christ and him communing with me and the sacrifice he made for me, right? And then I go as a Protestant to your service and I receive Eucharist but I'm not really thinking about him. Would you say that it's more true to say I partook of communion in your sense of the Eucharist in my room Because I did my house he was present to me not just by yeah

So I would say that you might not have taken communion in either of those cases for the following reason The communion meal as far as I understand it is not merely a matter of eating and thinking about Christ But I have to see the bread and the wine as the symbols of Christ body and blood So I have to assign to them a certain symbolic meaning. It's not just, you know, chowing down and thinking about Christ. That's very nice, but that's not yet a Lord's Supper, because in the Lord's Supper, He took bread and He said, this is my body, and He gave it to them. So there's a ritual element there that is not involved in simply eating and thinking about Christ. And likewise, if you go to church and you just take bread and you eat it as if it were nothing, and you drink

the wine as if it were nothing, because you are not ascribing to these things their symbolic value, that also is not, strictly speaking, participating in the sacrament. That's just eating and drinking. Okay. Thank you. Brett. Yeah, I wonder if I might just jump in. So I mean, you've, I think that the exchange between the two of you highlighted sort of two elements in your position, Stephen, both of which are necessary. Right, if you have one or the other, you don't have Lord's Supper in your construction. And I would say that those elements are important for Catholics, but we would frame them differently. So Catholics too often, I think, imagine that there's... Can you specify which two elements? I'm very sorry to interrupt you. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Can you specify which two elements?

Yeah, the being present in mind to what's going on, right? But Catholics wouldn't say that one's determinative. It might be determinative for whether I receive the grace on offer, but it's not determinative for what's actually happening. Right. So that element. And then the other element is, is the signification, right? Is the community celebrating a ritual where these symbols are being employed to mean something?

And I think Catholics can, uh, you know, because we want to say it's not only a symbol, sometimes we can miss the symbolic element. But of course, Thomas Aquinas says we absolutely need the accidents of bread and wine to remain accidents of bread and wine precisely in order to signify. And one of the things that happens later in the tradition, in fact, is, so between Thomas and the Reformation, actually, is these, the accidents of bread and wine stop functioning

as signs and start functioning as disguises. And then Protestants reject that, and I would say rightly so, and I think Thomas Aquinas would agree that that's incorrect. And what it ends up doing is it ends up making the Eucharist barely even a sacrament by the traditional definition of sacrament. Sacraments have symbols. I mean, read your Baltimore Catechism, read the Summa Theologia. Part of the definition of sacraments is that they employ signs. And so we do need these signs, and they're an essential component of the sacrament. But I think a Catholic would want to say the role of the sign is not simply to bring something

to mind. It's not that humans get together and use some symbolic valences of different substances or whatever it is, so that we can think about something. Of course, we can think about something. There's nothing against that, and even we should. But we would say there's more going on here than a kind of mnemonic device, but rather through these signs God is giving himself. So maybe the better analogy for a Catholic, if I were to take your wedding ring analogy, the Catholic analogy would be more like conjugal union right, so so in in the actual embrace which

both symbolizes me giving myself and Actualizes me giving myself at the same time So I think for a Catholic that analogy would actually hold up better the wedding ring analogy I think for a Catholic, that analogy would actually hold up better. The wedding ring analogy, I think for a Catholic, it just feels... it feels inadequate because it seems to happen simply at the level of the human. Like, we can do this, we can give ourselves symbols and agree on what they mean, and then act accordingly. And it's not clear that God needs to be involved at all. But for the Catholic, God actually has to do something.

This sign that God gives in the Eucharist actually has to communicate himself in a real way. And our whole sort of sacramental economy is built on this idea. We could say the same thing about baptism. Is God really doing something or are we just symbolizing something? And Catholics would say with respect to baptism, yeah, sure, there's a symbol there. We're washing somebody with water. Yeah, fine.

But is God really doing something? We'd say absolutely yes. And we think that that's pretty consistent with how Christians have thought about sacraments more or less since the beginning of the church. Feel free to respond to that, Stephen, and then I'd like to ask you each to justify your positions however you wish through scripture, through the early church. Go for it, Stephen. So if I can, just briefly to respond to your point, Brett, I think you bring up a very insightful point, which is that there is a difference between myself and the Roman Catholic position not only at the level of sacramental theology, but also at the deeper level of what I call in my dissertation theological onto epistemology. So it's not just do I differ with Catholics

about how to interpret scripture, I also differ with respect to the question is, you know, to put it in Thomas terms, is sacred doctrine supernatural or is sacred doctrine concerned with items that are beyond the grasp of philosophical reason? Right, that's the question. The first question that Thomas talks about in his Summa is whether sacred doctrine is about things that are beyond the natural grasp of the human being or about things that are within the grasp of the human being. This is where the fundamental difference is and this also is a point where my own predilection for phenomenological philosophy and especially the philosophy of Jean Rie, is going to have reverberations for our discussion

about the sacraments, and especially your preference for atomism. In chapter four of my book, I argue that memorialism can be understood as a phenomenological theology of the Eucharist, and I compare a certain, I talk first about an argument that appears in Ulrich Zwingli, where he says that basically we cannot say that the bread and the wine

are the flesh and blood of Christ because they don't appear as such, they're not manifested as such, and this argument I call proto-phenomenological, or at least it can be interpreted that way, because it posits such a tight correlation between what is and what appears between being and appearance. And then in the second point I mention, I outline Michel Henri's phenomenological philosophy and I try to argue that because for Michel Henri there is already an ontological union between God and the human being and indeed because there could not be a human being without such a union because because apart from God continually generating the human being as a mode of himself, there could be no human being.

The human being cannot exist apart from God. Because there is already this ontological union, therefore there is no room in the sacrament of the Eucharist for the accomplishment of a further union. The union is already natural and so the the function of the scriptures for Michel Henri and the function of the sacrament of the Eucharist is simply to call attention to this fact, this already true fact about us, that we are as he says the sons of God because we are continually generated, engendered, to use the

language of Meister Eckhart, in the life of God. So there are really radical differences of what I call theological onto-epistemology between the two of us. For me, you know, Christianity and the things that Christian theology talks about are not supernatural realities that are from an inaccessible realm that have to be brought down to us by God. They are talking about things that are here already. Christianity for me is a certain way of understanding this pre-given world of experience that we're constantly dealing with. It's not about things from outside of this world coming down to us. Yeah, so that I mean,

then we've gotten to a fairly fundamental difference and it's probably worth noting that I don't know how strongly I can put this but I would think your position is a pretty minority position even among Protestants because you know, so I mean I think it's worth recognizing yeah, the claim, the Catholic claim that in the Eucharist God is acting is analogous to the claim that God reveals God's self first in the history of Israel, then in Jesus Christ, particularly in his passion, death and resurrection, but not exclusively, and that God continues to be present to the world in the church, particularly through the sacraments. to the world in the church, particularly through the sacraments. I mean, transubstantiation is part of a worldview that says creation doesn't account for itself, creation can't save itself. We need something beyond us,

whether that's incarnation, whether that's incarnation, whether that's Eucharist. Maybe I'm going too far now, because I don't think you would deny that we need something beyond us. But I think there's something really fundamentally different here. And I think we should be cognizant

that you're representing Stephen Nemish and maybe a small group of people and not Protestantism in general in making that claim, which is, and so maybe for you, transubstantiation is like not on the table. I think it's on the table for a lot of Protestants because I think it witnesses to a world that Catholics and Protestants want to witness to in common,

which has to do with God's relationship with creation. I mean, the question about how, whether and how Christ is present in the bread and wine is a question about God's relationship with creation in the final analysis. And I think most Protestants and Catholics would want to witness to something pretty similar there. And I think transubstantiation properly understood gives us some tools for thinking that through with respect to the Eucharist. Do you have a quick response there, Stephen?

Cause then I wanna move on a little bit. Sure. Move on in order to deepen the discussion, not to derate. Yeah, of course. I entirely agree with you. My position is not typically Protestant. I don't think for example that the reformers had something like my view in mind and I don't pretend to be. I understand my role as a theologian as trying to suggest a new direction. So I think that what we can call the Catholic,

not necessarily the Roman Catholic, but the lowercase c Catholic theological tradition has gone down a certain path which is basically enmeshed with certain metaphysical commitments and metaphysical forms of reasoning which I think are bad and I think lead to bad consequences. And when we talk later about the theological consequences of our various views of the Eucharist, I can mention some of these things more explicitly. But basically, I see myself as trying to further the project of the Reformation by not only, you know, returning to a purported golden age of doctrinal purity, but also by suggesting a new direction for Protestant theology. So I just recently published an article called

Against Infallibility, where I'm arguing that Roman, a lot of Protestant theology and Protestant thinkers are still operating within a broadly Roman Catholic theological framework, or in any case there is enough overlap between their thinking and Roman Catholic theological framework, or in any case there is enough overlap between their thinking and Roman Catholic thinking that they can see, you know, you can trace a line from certain theological commitments of theirs to Roman Catholicism, and that happens with a lot of people. So what I argue is that Protestant theology in order to, now I'm saying this in hostile territory, so please take this in as as positive a light as possible. In order for Protestant theology to become something other than Roman Catholic theology, other than a deformation, you might call it, of Roman Catholic theology, in order for it

to go on its own and to further break from the Roman Catholic theological paradigm, it has to take a phenomenological turn, and that implies renouncing the pretense to infallibility. So that's just to illustrate the point that I don't see myself as a representative of sort of traditional Protestant theology. I think that Protestant theology needs to move in a certain direction precisely because certain modes of Protestant thinking are still essentially Catholic

because they are still essentially metaphysical. Okay, so this is a great discussion and I think we did a good job of kind of teasing out the differences there. We're using philosophical language like Aristotelian language transubstantiation, we're using the word phenomenology, right? And philosophy is great, helps us understand what we're talking about. But for many of us who are coming into this discussion, we love Jesus Christ, he saved

our lives, we want to be faithful followers of Him. Dr. Nemesh, you know, obviously you think the Catholic way of understanding the Eucharist has gone askew. It seems like you think that the Protestant Reformers, even their understanding of it went askew, since you hold a different view to theirs, even if only slightly with some of them. So I guess the question is, I want both of you to kind of help me understand why I should believe your particular view. Is it biblical? Is it what the earliest Christians believed? Because that really is what interests me. I know that is something that people throw out a lot and you're not really sure if they're always being sincere, but I want to know

what does the scriptures teach and how do the earliest Christians understand what the scriptures taught? I want to be in line the scriptures teach and how do the earliest Christians understand what the scriptures taught? I want to be in line with that. So we'll start with Brett and then we'll move to Stephen Yeah, I mean the case I try to make in my book is that transubstantiation which emerges in you know The 13th century is really an attempt to rearticulate the the metaphysics and I don't think there's any avoiding metaphysics You're gonna you're gonna believe something about metaphysics whether and I don't think there's any avoiding metaphysics. You're gonna believe something about metaphysics whether you like it or not. The metaphysics that was operative in the biblical worldview and in the patristic period where

you know Jesus as a good Jew could be at a Passover supper and use language that was familiar to his fellow Jews who understood the celebration of the Passover and just read Exodus, I think it's Exodus 12, who understood the celebration of the Passover actually made present God saving actions from the past to the believer today. That was the worldview that the Jewish people lived in at Jesus' time. And the fathers of the church, who were broadly speaking Platonists,

when they followed Jesus' command to do what he said at the Last Supper and celebrate the Eucharist, believed that he was really present in a way analogous what he said at the Last Supper and celebrate the Eucharist, believed that he was really present in a way analogous to what the Jews thought was happening at Passover, that God's saving work is made present now to the believer. And they recognize that this happened through the symbols of bread and wine. And what we had in the early church is is this sort of unselfconscious oscillation between what, if we want to go digging for like hyper realistic language in the fathers, we can find it. And if we want to go digging for symbolic language in the fathers, we can find that too.

And it's because the fathers weren't operating in this sort of zero sum game where the Eucharist is either a symbol or it's real. If you ask a Platonist if something is symbolic or real, a Platonist says yes. And so it's only later when that worldview breaks down and Christians in the West, this doesn't happen to nearly the same degree in the East by the way, Christians in the West are to say, well, it's either a symbol or it's real. And it's only in that context that Thomas, he doesn't invent the word, but he becomes the sort of classic articulation of transubstantiation. And the goal there is not to come up with something

new in the 13th century. He's trying to trying to say this is a way given the questions of my contemporary culture and the philosophical paradigms that people are living with now in the 13th century, which include the rediscovery of Aristotle and all that kind of stuff. Given that, I'm still trying to articulate what the earliest Christians believed, which is when we celebrate the Eucharist, there's a way in which Jesus is really present that God gives himself to us that's not merely a function of us agreeing on what a set of symbol means or anything like that, even though the symbols have an important role, but rather that Christ is present to me, sacrificed and risen. And I would say more broadly now, why does this matter in Christian life?

In the mass, we participate in Christ's worship of the Father. But one way of understanding, like how we're saved, right, is we, since the fall, humans could never worship properly. And that's the story of the Old Testament, is this continued failure of worship. And what is offered on the cross is finally an ambiguous perfect worship, which we still can't do, but we can join ourselves to. And part of the Catholic conviction for why Christ has to be really present is because he's really bringing us into the movement

of his perfect worship of the Father in the Spirit. And I think that sense that that's what Christians are doing when they celebrate the Eucharist is the sort of larger background against which transubstantiation makes sense or more generally claims about real presence. It also makes sense, by the way, of the Catholic understanding of what it means to call the Eucharist a sacrifice. It doesn't mean we have to redo something that happened at Calvary but is somehow insufficient. What it means is we're participating in Calvary right now.

That perfect sacrifice is available to us to join ourselves to because we could never do it on our own. I think that's the bigger picture in which Catholic insistence on real presence makes sense. Okay. All right, I'll let you go, Stephen. I don't wanna take away from your time. I got a lot going on my head, so. Sure. I think that there are two things that should be taken in mind when we talk about

Eucharistic theology. On the one hand, Christ said that whoever does not eat his flesh does not have life. So whoever does not eat his flesh, whoever does not drink his blood does not have life. And then, on the night of his betrayal, he took bread and wine, he gave thanks for them, he distributed them, and he said, this is my body, this is my blood, take and eat or drink. So I think that two central questions for Eucharistic theology are, on the one hand, what does it mean for Christ's flesh to be eaten, and how does the eating of Christ's flesh relate to the bread and the wine of the Eucharistic meal?

Now, the reason why I think that my memorialist picture is preferable is because it makes it very clear how to understand the answers to these questions. It provides a very simple and elegant, I would say, answer to these questions. What does it mean to eat Christ's flesh? Well, I say that to eat Christ's flesh is to find spiritual nourishment and strength and joy and edification in the person of Christ and especially in his sacrifice just as I would find all those things on a physical level with food. So just like I eat food and it

tastes great and it strengthens my body and it rejuvenates me and it gives me life, so also Christ, the person of Christ and his sacrifice on my behalf, give those things to me spiritually. I love Christ, he died for me, the fact that he died for me and that he loves me and that he gave his life for me fills me with life, it fills me with joy, it makes me love him more, it makes me want to live in fellowship with God and so on. It's spiritually edifying, you might say. And that's what it means to eat Christ's flesh, it's a spiritual eating. And this eating takes place sacramentally when it is

ritually coordinated with the consumption of the symbols of the bread and the wine in the Eucharist. So just like for example, as somebody preaches the gospel to me and tells me that Christ loves me and this fills me with life and with joy, so also in the preaching of in the celebration of the Eucharist I am told exactly that same thing but this time with bread and wine. And so what I can do is I can see in the bread and the Eucharist, I am told exactly that same thing, but this time with bread and wine. And so what I can do is I can see in the bread and the wine the symbolic representations, images of Christ's love for me, and I take them to me,

just like I would if I were to receive a picture of my wife. Let's say I hadn't seen her before, or I haven't seen her in a long time, and somebody gives me a picture of her, and I pull it to myself because I love it. It represents her, it's not really her, but it brings her close to me in a way. So also with the food of the Eucharistic meal, we take the bread and we eat it and we drink the wine because we want Christ.

These things represent Christ to us and we want him, so we eat the food. So this is how the eating takes place. It's a spiritual eating that is sacramentally coordinated when it takes place through the symbols of the bread and the wine. Now, why do I think that this is a preferable view? Because it makes sense of the biblical data. I think, for example, when Christ says at the words of institution,

this is my body, this is my blood, I think he is plainly offering the body and the bread and the wine as images or representations or metaphors or symbolic representations of his body and blood, because this is how we recognize a metaphor or an image or a figure in any case. So think of this example, you know, in the, I think it's in Habakkuk or one of the prophets, God says the following, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Right? So Israel, the nation of Israel is called their two things, a child and the son of God. Now these are clearly figurative words because Israel is a nation of people

and a child is only one person. So Israel is not literally a child. However, it is figuratively a child because it was a young people group with no clear sense of its own identity. Likewise, Israel is not literally the son of God because God did not, you know, engage in the conjugal act with a woman in order to give birth to Israel. However, Israel was the son of God in a figurative sense because it was a special, it was a people group that was specially founded by God and it's especially dear to him in the history of the world. So Israel is a child, he's the son of God, these are figures and you can tell that they are figures because if you take the words

literally Israel cannot be those things. However there is a sort of formal resemblance between what Israel is and a literal son or a literal child and that's how you can represent, that's how you can recognize the use of a figure. Now so also when Christ takes the bread and the wine and he says, this is my body, this is my blood, Zwingli's argument is very simple. They're obviously not really body and blood because the bread looks like bread, it tastes like bread, it smells like bread, it's not heavy, right? The wine looks like wine, smells like wine, tastes like wine.

As far as the way they manifest themselves in the world, they are clearly still bread and wine. However, you can understand that he's using them figuratively, he's using them as images, and he says, this is my body, this is my blood, right? And he's saying effectively, presenting them as images of his body and blood to be taken. Now, I think that on the other hand, if you do propose a theory of the real presence, you have to make all these qualifications to avoid the conclusion that Christ is literally being eaten, assimilated into your body, digested and expelled. You have to make all these

qualifications to the sense in which Christ bought, or the bread is Christ's body, and then after all those qualifications are made, it seems to me it's not clear in any sense how Christ is being eaten. And this will move us into the next part where we're offering arguments against this, but I will just preview my argument here. Once you make all the necessary qualifications to avoid the conclusion that Christ is literally digested and expelled, then in that sense it's no longer obvious in what sense he's eaten. Or if you say that he is being eaten in a spiritual sense, it's not obvious why you need the real presence for that. So that would be in brief kind of my argument. Now there are a lot of other

things that we could talk about, early church fathers and such, maybe we'll have opportunities later, but that's what I would say in brief. Thanks Stephen. I mean it is simple and straightforward, right? If you just, if you take the symbolic read and say these are clearly symbols, apply that hermeneutic anytime the question comes up, whether it's in scripture or the fathers or whatever, it is, it's very simple and straightforward. The problem is it doesn't seem to have compelled very many of the fathers and theologians in the history of the church,

something that struck everyone, more or less everyone, as just unsatisfying, that it somehow didn't account for what Christians had always believed they were doing. And so, I mean, I think, you know, a Catholic can't really argue that it's not a simple and straightforward hermeneutic with which to approach the things, but it seems, it's almost too easy. Like I can say, well, anytime I see this, it's clearly a symbol because look, just look at it. Just look at it. It doesn't look like meat, right?

So therefore, therefore it's a symbol. It's just, it's, then we have to ask ourselves like, why then we have to ask ourselves like why did why was that just not obvious to everyone? Why were Christians so committed to not reading it that way? And it seems to me what it looks like is a very modern worldview that looks back at an ancient text and an ancient culture and says, look, moderns know how this stuff works. This is simple and straightforward. And ancient people didn't think that way. And the question is, does the worldview in which Christianity took shape have something to teach us modern people

about the shape of reality? Or are we able to just say, this is really easy and straightforward, come on ancient people, like just look at it, it's just bread. I think, again, to me what it comes down to is a kind of a godless world. I mean, I've almost heard an articulation of the Eucharist

that makes sense if you're an atheist. And I think, well, then that can't be right. You know, it's simple and straightforward. I'll grant you that. Could I respond to what you said there, Brett? So there are kind of two things going on here. On the one hand, there's the critique of my worldview as godless. And then there's the critique of my worldview as godless.

And then there's the question about whether or not the early church or any figures in the early church thought this way. So those are two things. Let me start with the second. The first question is a much bigger one. That's an issue, but it'll take us far afield. So let me start with the second question about did anybody in the early church think this way? Well, I actually think, so I argue this in my manuscript, and I try to do close readings of

a few figures, the Didache, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. And I argue in my manuscript that actually a close reading of these figures reveals that probably they were not argue in my manuscript that actually a close reading of these figures reveals that probably they were not proponents of the real presence. The things that they say can be interpreted consistently with my ritual memorialist view, but not only can it be, arguably my reading is preferable to the real presence reading. So I'm not going to say that a real presence reading of these figures is impossible on literary grounds. That's not what I'm going to say. But I do think that a memorialist reading is preferable. And I will mention one argument why. There are other things that I mentioned in the manuscript, but you know,

our time is limited. So I will mention one thing. Justin Tertullian and Irenaeus make certain statements that sound as if they are proponents of the real presence, but actually later developments of the real presence doctrine would have to say that what they're saying is strictly speaking false and it was just imprecise. And I'm speaking specifically about language in which Justin, Tertullian, and Irenaeus mention that the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist nourish our bodies and give increase to our substance, you know, like Tertullian says, and on the resurrection of the flesh, the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ and so on. So they are talking about the Eucharistic meal and they mention that our bodies feed on and nourish themselves through the body and blood of Christ. Now,

some people, for example, Ludwig Ott will say that, you know, the real presence tradition didn't really have any competitors, so you get moments in the Fathers where they make these exaggerated and imprecise statements, and a more precise statement of the mode of sacramental presence, you know, would only come about later on with Thomas, or at least in the Middle Ages. But I think actually it's possible to understand them very differently. They are talking about the bread and the wine. They are saying that the bread and the wine nourish us, which is true. And the reason why they call the bread and the wine the body and blood of Christ is because, like Augustine says in letter 98 to, I think, Boniface, that the sacred

rites take their names from the things that they represent. So basically they are calling the bread and the wine body and blood because at that point in the ritual of the Eucharist we think about them as the body and blood, we don't think about them as mere bread and wine. There is a change in signification that takes place after the Eucharistic prayer, and so I no longer think about the bread and the wine as mere bread and wine. I no longer think about the bread and the wine as mere bread and wine. I think about them as the body and blood of Christ. And these figures call them the body and blood of Christ because they represent these. Now, if you take, for example, Thomas's transubstantiation view, for Thomas, there are two critical points. Christ is not locally

present where the Eucharist is being celebrated in his human nature, and in the second place, Christ is not in the sacrament movably. He is not affected by what happens to the species, the sacramental species. Now, if that's true, then strictly speaking, it is not true that the body and blood of Christ nourish our bodies and give increase to our substance and nourish our body and blood like Justin says, for example. What these people would be saying is literally false if you take Thomas's view. And then you would have to say, okay, they didn't have a very developed doctrine of the real presence, that took some time, and then later we can see where they made the mistake. But my suggestion is going to be no, they are not talking about the body and blood of Christ literally at all.

They are saying that the bread and the wine nourish our bodies. And they call them the body and the blood of Christ because they are the symbols thereof. And like Augustine says, the sacred rites take their names from the things that they represent. And in that case, what they're saying is literally true, but this implies that they are not proponents of the real presence. They do not think that the bread and the wine are literally the body and blood of Christ. They think that the bread and the wine are the images or the representations of the body and blood of Christ, they think that the body, the bread and the wine are the images or the representations of the body and blood of Christ, and they argue from the symbolic content, the symbolic information of the Eucharistic ritual against views like the Marcionite view that the flesh does not participate in salvation and so on. Okay. Brett? I'm interested in getting a question from Matt here in a second, but I just want to respond quickly. I mean, I think you can, like I said, I think if you have that hermeneutic, you can apply it to anyone who says anything that sounds like real presence.

But it seems to me, it's strange credulity to think that they were interested in talking about how the actual, you know, physical elements of bread and physical elements of wine nourish our physical bodies. I mean, that just seems just highly implausible to me that that's the thing they were talking about when they were talking about the Eucharist. So now we could go maybe back and forth on that for too long, but I would just say I find it a bit of a stretch to do that with the fathers. And I think in general, if you wanna get rid of real presence in the fathers, you have to make stretch after stretch

as you encounter this or that phrasing or claim in this or that father. I want to make just one brief point if I can, just in response. I'm sorry, I want only to make something clear. I don't mean to say that there are no Church Fathers who believe in the Real Presence. That's not what I'm saying. You know, in my manuscript I say very clearly a Real Presence tradition does appear later. You have it, for example, in Cyril of Jerusalem. By John of Damascus it's very clear. There's no denying John of Damascus,

for example. I'm only saying that in the earliest figures from the Didache to about Tertullian and Irenaeus, I'm saying that those figures are not proponents of the Real Presence. I'm not saying that later figures are not. Okay, a quick question. Stephen, do you think that the Catholic view is metaphysically possible? Just to say, is it possible that God could bring about what Catholics teach about the Eucharist, or is it fundamentally contradictory? There are a few things I would say here. Peter Marder Vermele in his treatise on the Eucharist, he mentions that the point of disagreement

between the Reformers and the Catholics on transubstantiation is not whether transubstantiation is possible, but whether in fact there are reasons to believe that it takes place. So that would be the first point that I make. I am not arguing necessarily that transubstantiation is impossible, although I am not convinced that I don't think we have a reason to think that it happens. The second point that I would make, if I could very briefly, I'm sorry, I don't want to sound like I'm combative. No, you're fine, mate. I just want to... I would here have a question for Brett, because Brett, in your book, you distinguish between the Thomist view that the substance of the bread and the wine are converted or changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood, and then the view that the substance of the bread and the wine are converted or changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood.

And then the view that the substance of the bread and wine are annihilated and replaced with the substance of Christ's body and blood. Now I'm willing to admit at the, go ahead. Sorry. I apologize. Sometimes these things can get awkward, especially when you've got a bit of lag time

on a Skype interview. But I did have a follow-up to that first question. So if you don't mind, I'll get that in and then I'll let you ask Brett the question. Is that okay? Right, if you don't mind, I'll get that in and then I'll let you ask Brett the question. Is that okay? Right, so the question was like, is the Catholic view metaphysically possible? And it sounded like you were saying,

sure, it's possible. I'm not convinced that it's possible, but I don't think it's impossible either. So then my next question is, what would Christ have to have said in order for you to believe that it's true? So if you think it's possible, the Catholic view, what is it that you would need to see in Scripture to believe that it is true? Well, you could very easily see things like what

John of Damascus says, right? Christ could have said, here is my body and my blood. Not images, not figures, but my very true, you know, my true body and my blood not images not figures but my very true, you know, my my true body and blood Did you do that in John's John six? No, I don't think so. I don't think that he did that so I will disagree with you on the reading of John six But it's I don't mean to say that like can you see why Catholics can read that and be like Are you sympathetic to the Catholic reading of John six? Like even if you would say, ultimately Catholic, you're wrong in your interpretation,

can you at least sympathize that when it's like the first people who held this symbolic view were the Jews and Jesus kept saying, no, no, you're misunderstanding me. I mean what I'm saying. Can you at least sort of sympathize where Catholics are coming from, even if at the end of it you think we're ultimately wrong? sort of sympathize where Catholics are coming from, even if at the end of it you think we're ultimately wrong? I can, I will say this, I can see why a person reading the statement of Christ

in John 6 would come to think that maybe he really does believe we should eat his body in blood, but I do not think that a close reading of John 6 supports that conclusion. I think that a closer reading of John 6 militates against that. Okay, thank you. And I would also like to say this, if I can, very briefly. I am not saying that any sort of language can be interpreted against the real presence, because like I said, Cyril of Jerusalem, clearly a proponent of the real presence, you know, John of Damascus, there's no other way to read him. So I'm not saying that any language you can put in front of me I could in

principle interpret it as a, that's not what I'm saying. I'm simply saying that scripture and these earliest figures are not proposing a doctrine of real presence. Even though I grant, I can see why a person would read them that way. I think closer reading reveals that they are not proposing a doctrine of real presence.

Thank you so much. Did you want to respond, Brett, or did you want to ask your question there, Stephen? Yeah, if you had a question for me, Matt, or I mean, there's 25 things I could say, but I mean, you know your audience, so you might have a sense of what they'd like to know from me. It's okay, so I threw sort of an objection there at Stephen,

so here's an objection to you. Whatever we might mean by the real presence, surely we don't mean that Jesus Christ is actually bodily present. You know, for one thing, it appears like bread and wine. Secondly, it just, what does it mean to say we're eating Jesus's body and blood? Shouldn't His body have run out by now? Am I actually, am I eating parts of him? Am I eating the whole thing? Like the more you try to explain the Catholic view, it just seems like really overly complicated.

Almost like you've gotta do a bunch of philosophical gymnastics to make your position coherent. Whereas just saying, okay, like it's symbolic, but it's also meaningful, just seems a lot neater, and so why not prefer that view? Right, yeah, I think in our contemporary, you know, philosophical culture, and I mean that at the broad level, I don't mean if you study philosophy, I just mean that the sort of default philosophy that modern people have, both a very sort of strictly physical kind of magic trick, Eucharist can make sense, right? That's real to modern people.

And so you would think, you know, well, if you took it to the lab and put it under a microscope, you'd find something because that's real, right? That's what modern people think of real. Or if it's not that, well, then it's not real. And then we have something like what Stephen is proposing, which makes sense to a modern person, right? You can have either a physical transformation or you can have this sort of mnemonic device. Those two things both make sense in a modern worldview.

What the Catholic claim is, it actually doesn't work well in a modern worldview. What the Catholic claim is, it actually doesn't work well in a modern worldview. It challenges a modern worldview. It says there's a level of reality that you moderns generally don't even pay attention to. You don't even think it's a real thing. That at the level of creation, that everything to be the kind of thing it is is dependent on

a creator and creating God, that we say well that's just obfuscation, that's not even anything, you know, but that's actually that's the Christian worldview, you know, and so I mean yeah, if you have this sort of physicalist idea, well Jesus is going going to run out of body, or he's going to end up in the sewer, or all these kinds of things. The sacramental tradition, I mean, Stephen used the language of, you know, Jesus has received sacramentally. Catholic wouldn't have any problem with that at all. I mean, that's precisely how Jesus is received in the Eucharist.

And what does it mean to be received sacramentally? Well, it's not a physical eating. I mean, obviously we eat the accidents physically, but the kind of consuming is not cannibalism. It is a spiritual eating. And why would it's, this is so strange to me. Catholics say, oh, it's, you know, it can't be just spiritual. Like spiritual isn't like the most important thing. Like Catholics should know that spiritual is more important. Like if we had it the other way, like if we actually had a cannibalistic Eucharist, would that be preferable? Would that get us more grace somehow than a sacramental eating? But the Catholic claim, this is where it runs up against modernity, right? And starting

already at the Reformation and before, is they say, well, if it's sacramental or it's spiritual, that's just nothing. You know, that's just a mnemonic device. That's just a game in your heads. And I think the Catholic stand is like, no, that's the deepest level of reality. Christ is giving himself to us at the deepest level of reality, at the level at which he makes things to be what they are and therefore he transforms them and by that mechanism, mechanism is not the best word, but by that movement he offers a transformation to us. Like do we believe that our transformation as Christians is only spiritual? Or do we think it's just a game we play with words?

Or do we think God really does things? I mean, to me that's what it comes down to. If we start with a contemporary metaphysics that says God doesn't really do anything unless he's manipulating atoms and molecules and the only other alternative is games that humans play in their heads. I mean it's just an impoverished worldview and I think the Eucharist and transubstantiation in particular is a sort of stand for a Christian worldview that says God is at the heart of everything. God makes things to be what they are. God is really says, God is at the heart of everything.

God makes things to be what they are. God is really active. God is working to transform you, me, the church, the world. So does that require some, you know, careful qualifying in metaphysics because our worldview is not automatically attuned to that? Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. And I don't see

any way around that. Some people need it. Some people don't though. Some people are happy to say, with Martin Luther, Jesus told me he's there, that's good enough for me. And that's great. But for a lot of us, the question has been raised and there's no ducking it now. Is this actually a meaningful claim or does this just lead us to absurdities in Jesus in the sewer? Yeah, I wonder at this point if it might be helpful to spend some time having each of you ask the other person questions. Maybe to try to better understand the other person's view and to show why you ultimately disagree with it. If you agree with that, Stephen, would you like to begin? Yeah, I would like to. I had a few

questions for you, Brett. This was one question that was on my mind as I was reading through your book. The way that I formulated my argument earlier was this. There are two things in Scripture that I think Eucharistic theology has to make sense of. On the one hand, Christ teaching that his flesh must be eaten. On the other hand, how to understand the relationship between this eating and the bread and the wine of the Eucharistic meal. So one thing that I was thinking about as I was reading through your book and your elaboration of Thomas's transubstantiation, Thomas says that the substance of the bread and the wine,

which refers to what they are truly at the deepest, most fundamental ontological level, beyond even what manifests itself in the world, what shows itself, what can be experienced, the true reality of the thing, the substance of the bread and the wine are transformed into, transubstantiated into the substance of Christ's body and blood. Now, the appearances of bread and wine remain. The accidents do. However, they are not accidents in hearing in Christ's substance. So it's not as if, you know, like I were to grow bread in a portion of my body or something.

That's not what's happening to Christ. The appearances are no longer appearances of bread and wine because the substance of bread and wine is no longer there. They are pure signs of the sacramental presence of Christ's body. And when they are eaten sacramentally with an appropriate disposition of faith, then there is some sort of a union accomplished between Christ and the believer. Now, the question that was coming up in my mind was this, how is this in any sense eating Christ's flesh? Because it sounds to me like this, the sacramental eating is just an occasion for the accomplishment

of a union between Christ and the believer. But at the same time, it seemed, I remember in one point of your book, if I recall correctly, that you actually denied this kind of occasionalist interpretation of Thomas. So this is my question to you. How, in what sense, is Christ's flesh being eaten on the transubstantiation view? Right, yeah, so I think it's important to recognize the language of body.

Let's take the language of body, right? Body is already itself signifying a larger picture. Body is talking about a whole person and their history and their desires and their loves and their sacrifice. And it's a gift of a whole person. And traditional Catholic piety captures this sense of like what's being offered here is not just a piece of meat but a whole person with this language of body, blood, soul, and divinity, right? Even beyond the human elements but the Christ divine person, you know, his soul and divinity. So, I mean, one way you'd say is, well, what does it mean to eat a soul and divinity? Because that's what we're saying is being consumed. It's not simply a piece of meat. It's a whole person offered, right? And so, I mean, I think we can recognize that eating is not, it's not meant, I want to be

careful with my words here. We say literally. Well, literally is a really ambiguous term. Catholics want to say, he's literally present or he's not literally, and you know Protestants might want to say he's not literally, but that's not, that's a that's a term with no theological pedigree and no specific, you know, meaning. I prefer really present because the tradition says what that means, you know. Literally, well it might be right or might be wrong depending what you mean by it, but what I want to say is we're not literally eating in the sense of consuming a piece of meat, but what eating and body signify is really

taking into oneself, right? And so I don't think Protestants are wrong to say what's going on at the Eucharist is a sort of appropriation of Christ and his promises and all that kind of stuff. The concern is that who's doing it? The danger for me with a certain kind of, you know, extreme Protestantism is almost liturgical Pelagianism, right? It becomes like, I have to do it. I have to do it.

Right. And the thing about eating is it's receptive. It's this is given. It's granted. My job is only to accept, to receive, to take it into myself. I think that's what that's what's going on there. And so, I mean, I don't want to get caught up too much literally with words like eat or body because, you know, if we think, like I said, what would it mean to eat a soul? But that's what we say we receive. We receive Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity. And Catholics might be nervous if I'm saying, well, we have to be

careful to understand that each is signifying something more and it doesn't mean literally eat. But I think even Catholics who want to really insist that we're receiving Christ's soul, then maybe that can help us think, okay, so maybe each strictly literally actually doesn't apply to things like souls. So there has to be something else going on. So there any here's the here's the basic problem anytime we're using human language before we get started anywhere we're already in the game of signification body signifies something eat signifies something there's there is not actually the possibility of a purely

literal if that's what you want. So people who think, oh, you know, he's not, he's not fully endorsing the full Catholic thing if he's not saying literally eat literal body. I'm not sure you really want to do that. I think you're going to end up in ways you're going to end up with a kind of cannibalistic interpretation that's not the tradition and it's not even what you want. What spiritual good would that be? So we wanna really strongly insist that something real is happening here and it's not just us doing it. But we do need to be cognizant

of the way language works here, I think. I would like to offer a bit of pushback. Yeah, Dr. Namish, I was gonna give you time to do that. What if we just did this? What if we kind of give you 10 more minutes, Dr. Nemesh, I was gonna give you time to do that. What if we just did this? What if we kind of give you 10 more minutes, Dr. Nemesh, just to sort of press Brett a bit here, and you can feel free to sort of interrupt him, move the conversation along,

and then we'll give Brett about 13, 15 minutes after that to do the same to you, if that's agreeable to both of you. That's, yeah, that's fine by me. I can really be briefed. I'll give it a try. Yeah. My problem with what you're saying, Brett, and I want to be as friendly as possible

because you're such a charming and kind person. I don't want to come off mean, but I do want to press you a little bit. It seems to me that you are conceding that it's hard to understand how the union accomplished by the sacramental, the consumption of the sacrament can be described as an eating. And so you say that we have to be careful about our use of language. However, eating is what the scriptures talk about. And if the scriptures wanted to say, right, we have to receive the whole person of Christ,

the whole substance, you know, they could have said that. Nothing was stopping them. But the way that they speak is that they use this metaphor of eating. Now my argument is going to be that because it's so hard, you know, once you get to a formal definition of the doctrine of transubstantiation and then you have to like backpedal and say, well this language of eating, we're talking about mystery so it's limited in its application scope, that suggests to me that you are not thinking about things in the same wavelength as the original theologians were, the Apostles let's say, because they used the metaphor of eating. That was the metaphor that they used. So it seems to me preferable to find a way of talking about the Eucharist and what's accomplished there

that makes sense to call it an eating, right? Even if we say that the eating is figurative, we both agree that the eating is spiritual and we both agree that there is an aspect in which the eating is figurative, but it seems to me that once you grant that point about the spiritual and figurative nature of the eating, the real presence is irrelevant. It becomes about, you know, this supposed metaphysical union that is supposed to be realized between us and Christ. Why do I need that when it's not talked about in Scripture in those terms? that when it's not talked about in Scripture in those terms? Yeah, it seems to me that Scripture doesn't talk about it in those terms, but Scripture and the Fathers basically presume that worldview.

It feels to me like we're taking our sort of modern categories and asking them to parse their metaphors. But I mean, that's not how teachers who are, you know, experts in analogy and metaphor and that's not how they work. They let the metaphors work sort of on their own steam. And, but already now I'm nervous because I don't want to concede here in my language that it's only a metaphor, which is how a modern is typically gonna hear that.

For the fathers of the church, metaphors touched reality in a way that they don't for contemporary people. And so, I mean, I think it's unfair to ask them to answer questions put in our terms that they would have never framed that way. But I think it's clear from reading them that they think something real is at stake here.

And in fact, if it's not, often they seem to think, we've lost almost the whole thing, right? Like if Christ isn't present, if he's not really giving himself to us, then what are we actually doing? Then this goes to, you know, some of Matt's questions earlier. Could I just do it by thinking about it? Could I have my own wine and bread in my room by myself? Like, the whole worldview behind it starts to break down if there's not something real going on. We're in an awkward spot because we're asking

kind of metaphysical questions that wasn't a problem for them. Yeah, maybe I'll stop there. Maybe you have a follow-up. Well, I would say, I really would have to, we would have to be more specific, right? Because you say, for example, that certain figures in the tradition thought that if Christ was not really present, presumably in the sense that you intend by the term, then the whole logic of the Eucharistic liturgy is lost and everything comes apart. We would have to, it's impossible to address this question here because we would have to sit down text by text and say, okay, is that notion essential to Irenaeus's argument? Is it essential to Tertullians? Is it essential to Cyril of Jerusalem?

I agree with you that from Cyril of Jerusalem, you know, to John of Damascus, you can find plenty of proponents of the real presence. And for them, it is true that the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine is essential to their understanding of the function of the liturgy. Where I will disagree with you is that this is true of the Didache, Justin, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Ignatius. It doesn't seem to me that those earlier figures have quite that same attitude in mind. And my idea, again, I think that transubstantiation is basically the logical consequence of, it's basically like the destination once you take a certain path down the, you know, the logical road of ideas, starting from the idea of the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine.

So I think that transubstantiation is basically a consequence of a commitment to the real presence, plus some other, you know, mediating commitments. Historical conditions, philosophical currents, yeah, sure. I'll take that, by the way, I agree with that. Yes, it is a logical consequence of real presence as trying to be expressed in a given cultural and philosophical context. I agree with that entirely. However, where the disagreement lies is that basically the the the real presence commitment was there from the beginning. That's where I disagree with you and that this is something of course that we we're not able to establish here because we don't have the time and the

the the context for it. But this is just a just to note my point of disagreement. I would disagree that there is actually a real presence tradition from the beginning. I agree that you have one at some point in Christian history. Cyril of Jerusalem would be a clear example, but I disagree that it's there from the start. Right. So I guess one question I have is like, if this is the case, right? If scripture and the early fathers make more sense read in a sort of symbolic hermeneutic, what accounts for the radical shift to real presence, let's say starting with Cyril or wherever you wanna start it, right?

I mean, it seems to me that if you're going to claim that there's a radical break between an early era of the Church Fathers and a later era, that you need some kind of narrative that says, like, why was this all of a sudden compelling? Why is this thing which was not part of the Christian tradition, all of a sudden so compelling that it comes to dominate the tradition from, let's say, Cyril to Thomas and beyond. It, like, that seems, that seems unlikely to me. So do you have some sort of proposal for what would have led to such a dramatic shift? Yes, I have not investigated this question to such detail that I can give you a confident answer,

but I have speculative hypotheses that perhaps future research will confirm or disconfirm. In the first place, I would note that the social situation of Christianity is not always the same. Things are very different when you get to Augustine compared to Irenaeus, right? Christianity is not always the same. You know, things are very different when you get to Augustine compared to Irenaeus, right? Christianity is not in the same social situation, it is not socially the same religion. I would also note that there is, so I think that the real presence tradition is basically a strong turn towards the metaphysical. Now by metaphysical, what I mean is a reality that is accessible purely to thought and that

makes no experiential difference. This is, for example, when Thomas says that the substance of Christ's body and blood are perceived in the sacrament by the intellect alone and not by the senses or by the imagination and the rest. The metaphysical, for me, is an item or an object or an entity that is accessible only to thought and whose existence or non-existence would make no difference to the manifest world. It seems to me that there is a turn towards the metaphysical. When you get to the Christological and the Trinitarian debates, the question about the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, in all these issues, you get the attention

of Christian theologians moved in the direction of these purely metaphysical categories, which then begin to preoccupy Christian theology from that movement going forward. And then you have, for example, at some point the Athanasian Creed, which says, you know, whoever will be saved must hold to the Catholic faith. And that Catholic faith consists in basically, you know, various theses about the consubstantiality of Father and Son and Holy Spirit and so on.

Right. So the Catholic faith then becomes a matter of pure metaphysics, items that make no difference in our experience of the world, but that have to be thought about and that are only accessible to pure thought. And it's very different, I think, from the earlier theologians who, although they are not, they're not phenomenologists by any means. I'm not saying that the earliest theologians were phenomenologists, but it is true, I think, that they had more of a sense of Christianity as being concerned with the world of experience. And so the clearest expression of this for me is in 1 John,

where he says, what we saw with our own eyes, what we touched with our hands, what we heard, this we share with you. Right, so it seems to me that after a point, especially because of the Christological debates and so on, the experiential concern of the earliest Christians was transformed into a concern for metaphysics. And this is where the doctrine of the real presence comes in. Pure metaphysics. Do you think that that kind of

argument, though, could be used against the bodily resurrection of Christ by saying that the early fathers spoke about it in a spiritual sense, an experiential sense that wasn't bodily? Is there an analogy there? I mean, there's definitely an analogy. I think it's... No, I don't think that there's an analogy there because you read in Acts, the apostles talk about sitting down with Christ and eating and drinking with Him. Now, maybe you can have a hallucinatory experience where you see Christ or whatever, but you cannot hallucinate, you know, the fish in your plate being eaten. And, you know, it's not like the cup was floating in the air and, you know, wine was being poured out and disappearing as it was. No, they sat down and they ate with him, right? So it seems to me that the actual testimony of the

Apostles is to real experiences. It's not... I am... so we should be clear that just because I'm saying that the earlier theologians were not so much concerned with metaphysics, that doesn't mean that they were concerned with pure subjectivity, right? There's something between pure subjectivity and hallucinations and then the pure metaphysics of, for example, the doctrine of the real presence. I would just offer, and then I think we're probably running out of time, and I wonder if Matt has any sort of final questions for us, but I mean, I would just,

in response to this suggestion that the break came with a turn to metaphysics, on the one hand it's plausible that I mean the the Christological controversies did demand explorations of metaphysics. Like what do you mean when you say he's one with the father? So yeah I'm happy to grant that. Why the metaphysics took the turn of real presence rather than another turn seems to me left open by that. I mean, you could have you could have had a metaphysics that that didn't go in the direction of real presence. It doesn't seem obvious to me that the turn to metaphysics as a as a central concern for Christian theology later in the patristic period guarantees real presence. It gives you some tools for talking about real presence. Sure. But, you know, and as you said, this would have to be investigated

and confirmed or disconfirmed. But even before we get to investigating the specifics historically, it seems to me that just a turn to metaphysics doesn't account necessarily for this particular emphasis. Yeah, anyways. Hey, I would agree that the turn to metaphysics isn't deterministic. So I don't mean to be offering a deterministic account. Once you start doing metaphysics, you end up in the real presence. That's not what I'm saying. I am saying however that the doctrine of the real presence and specifically

its formulation and transubstantiation becomes possible for you once you're a metaphysician. Unless you are a metaphysician, I don't think it's really like something that you would think about. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. That's a hundred. I'll give you a hundred percent on that. No transubstantiation without metaphysics. All right. I got a question for you. Then we'll take about three or four, because we've got four super chats here, and we'll give you just like say two minutes each to respond to those.

And then I want to give both of you time to kind of offer your concluding thoughts, because I don't want to kind of end without you being able to say all that you wanted to say. But I suppose I don't want to kind of give the wrong impression from the Catholic side either. You know, in a sense, when the Protestant thinks this is merely symbolic, he is right. The Catholic isn't saying to the Protestant, you ought to believe that what you receive at your services is Jesus Christ, body, blood, and soul, and divinity. I mean, this is tied to the priesthood. The Protestants don't have a valid priesthood, so they don't have the Eucharist and can't have the

Eucharist. So like, your goal, presumably, Brett, isn't merely to get people to agree with the Catholic interpretation of Scripture when it pertains to the Eucharist, but to bring them into the Catholic Church so that they can actually receive what you believe the Eucharist to be. Right, so this is actually, this is a whole other episode. I was turning, if you saw me turning to look at my bookshelf here, there's a book that I'm not going to find in a timely way. It's, Colonel Ratzinger wrote a book called Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, and in that book there's a letter he writes to a Lutheran bishop, I believe his name is Hanselman.

And it's on this question of, do Catholics say that what's happening in Protestant services is simply nothing and he says no But it's not clear what he says is happening The surely surely you wouldn't affirm that transubstantiation takes place at a Protestant service No, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that what I would say is that Catholicism it seems to me and and I I think rat singers the go-to on here, is sort of agnostic about what exactly you can say happens in a Protestant Eucharist. that it's just play acting actually doesn't comport with our ecclesiology. And so, and like I said, that's a much bigger question. And so I would recommend anyone who's interested to start by looking at Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, the letter to the Lutheran bishop, Hanselman. But I mean, my first question then for Protestants is, is not so much do you agree or disagree, how do I want to say this?

I'm trying to come to a common understanding with Protestants about what the gospel says about this. And it seems to me that transubstantiation properly understood is actually quite productive for that. Now, with Stephen here, we have almost an extreme version of Protestantism where maybe even transubstantiation can't get that far. But I think for lots of Protestants, and many of whom have read my book,

a couple of Protestant theologians who blurb the book, there's lots of room for common understanding. And then the question that you raised, Matt, the question of validity of orders, apostolic succession, all that kind of, that's another question that's complicated, but that would be aided, or coming to some mutual understanding on that, would be aided by coming to better mutual understanding on this question.

Now, on whether... Fair enough. If I'm bringing... If a Protestant reads my book and says, Aquinas had it right on transubstantiation, I'm becoming Catholic tomorrow, praise God, I'm all for that. But if a Protestant reads it and says, you know what, our tradition is not so far from the Catholic tradition and I'm still a committed Protestant, but I'm working towards more mutual understanding and union of Christians from that side of the divide, praise God for that too.

I'm happy to let God work with either of those outcomes. Okay, did you wanna have a quick response to that, Dr. Nemesh, or shall I jump right into these questions? I would like to mention one thing. I think that the language of just is a bit unfair. For example, to say that the Eucharist is just a symbol or it is just a meal and so on, I mean, it is just a meal in comparison to somebody who says that it is the transubstantiated, real presence of Christ's body and blood. That's true.

However, it seems to me anybody who takes the Eucharist seriously, anybody who really loves the Lord Jesus and who takes the bread and the wine as the figures and as the representations and really the symbolic offering of His person and His sacrifice, loves that, right? So even if I say that it is just the relationship between the bread and the wine and the body and blood of Christ is one of signification, that doesn't mean that the Eucharist is boring to me. Quite to the contrary, I love the Eucharist. I attend a church where we have the Eucharist every week. And when I receive the body and blood of Christ, I'm filled with spiritual consolation. I love Jesus more. So even if... I would say that the significance of the Eucharistic Act and its spiritual benefit is not incompatible with the idea that the relationship between the

bread and the wine and Christ's body and blood is only one of signification. Okay. Let's take some questions here, and we could devote no doubt entire episodes to each of these questions, but I'd like to kind of give you about, you know, two minutes each if you could so we don't, so everyone can go home on time. So we have a question here. Let's see here, golly. Thanks to everybody who sent in these super chats,

by the way. A.D. says, please bring up Ignatius of Antioch, Lella the Smyrnans, section seven. Let me just kind of read that because for those, let's see if I can find it here. Okay, so he's writing to heretics who are in some sense denying the real presence in the Eucharist.

Okay, I'm gonna give you a chance to respond to that, but this is a direct quote from him, and this is Ignatius. When's he writing? In the 100s, 200s? That's actually a question. 100s, thank you. It wasn't rhetorical. So he says, from Eucharist and prayer they hold aloof because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in His loving kindness raised from the dead, and we can go on. Now, when you read that, it does sound like the Catholic view, or at least an Orthodox view. What's your take on that, Stephen? Yeah, I discussed this and all the other major passages

from Ignatius in my manuscript, and the point that I make there is that Ignatius really is not doing anything special. He is talking about heretics who do not believe that Christ had true flesh and blood, that he did not actually suffer, and so on. And he says that these persons, you know, they don't help the poor, they don't help the widows, they don't care about the suffering of other persons, they abstain from the prayers and Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Alvin Kimmel has an article called Eating Christ, where he distinguishes between the doctrine of the real presence and

the doctrine of the real identification. The doctrine of the real identification is this statement, the bread and the wine of the Eucharistic meal are the body and blood of Christ. That's the doctrine of the real identification. And the doctrine of the real presence is a specific interpretation of that. How is it that the bread and the wine are the body and blood of Christ? Well, because of transubstantiation or because of some sacramental union or whatever. Now, I also agree that the bread and the wine are the body and blood of Christ. They are in the way that an actor, for example, is Hamlet after the director calls for action. Or a ring is the offering of a man who gives

it to a woman with the proposal for marriage. Or, for example, an icon of Christ is Christ. A portrait of a man is that man. The bread and the wine are the representations. They're the images of Christ's body and blood, the representations of his sacrifice. And if you don't believe that he sacrificed himself, if you don't believe he actually died, if you don't believe he didn't have body and blood, then you would not participate in the Eucharist. Because you do not accept that what is being offered to you there is a representation of his body and blood. So the point that I make in my my book

is that Ignatius is perfectly compatible with the memorialist position because a heretic who denied Christ to her body and blood would have just as much reason not to participate if the bread and the wine were the symbols thereof. Okay, thank you. Go for it, Brett. I would just say that, I mean, that just strikes me if that was one passage in the Fathers before Cyril that you had to make that move with and it's and it stood out as sort

of weird and unique then maybe but it feels like a stretch here and the fact that it has to happen over and over again to me I I don't I don't have a like, I'd have to do a textual argument, which we don't have time and space for here, obviously. But it just, it feels like a stretch. And whether I'm compelled to go with you on that stretch, yeah, if this was a one-off thing, okay. But if this is, if there's a bunch of passages that need that kind of treatment, and then the tradition goes in the other direction when they start doing metaphysics, if not, then it's not compelling to me. Okay, and you can respond in your final closing words if that's okay. I want to try to avoid a back and forth or else we're not gonna get to these questions.

Michael Beaumert says, "'For clarity, does Dr. Nemesh consider himself "'a metaphysical restorationist?' If that's the word, I don't know what that word means. Nominalist, I don't know what that means. "'Some of his language of rescue of metaphysics suggests so.'" So I guess he's asking you to kind of, yeah. So I cannot say for sure that I have an idea

of what the person is asking. If that, okay, so if by restorationists, this person is suggesting that I think that the church went off the rails very early on and that we have to go back to the beginning, that is not what I'm saying. I am not saying that the church went off the rails and for the majority of its history, it's been in the wrong, and now we have to go back to the beginning. That's not what I'm saying. I am not saying that the church went off the rails and for the majority of its history It's been in the wrong and now we have to go back to the beginning. That's not what I'm saying

I am saying that I think the church moves forward in time and its theology develops and it every ages Theology is a result of the conditions of that age right the way Thomas Aquinas argued theology is not the way that we argued theology Now it's not the way that Augustine argued theology. The conditions were different. So Christian theology transforms as it moves throughout the ages. So I am not suggesting a return to a hypothetical Golden Age. I am however suggesting that in the matter of Eucharistic theology there was a turn towards something that is a wrong turn and we can course correct now. Now it is obvious to anybody who reads my work that I am not a restorationist

because I argue for things that probably nobody in the history of Christian theology would have accepted in exactly the way I formulate it. So I'm not a restorationist, but I do think I am sort of forward thinking and I think it is possible at the same time to course correct certain trends in Christian theology. Okay, why don't I just move to this next one here,

unless you have something pressing you want to add there. No, okay. Dr. Nemesh, are there Church Fathers who argue about this issue? Who are the first people to have the debate you're having now? Let me just sort of, if I can put my own spin on this, right? It would make sense to me, if the Catholic position is the correct one, that we would see Church Fathers speaking about the Eucharist in a spiritual sense and in a bodily sense, since the spiritual and the bodily do not contradict. But it would be surprising to me, but it would contradict your position, Dr. Nemesh, I think. You know, so the Catholic can say, this is a symbol, and I'm also receiving his actual body. Dr. Nemesh, I think you would say this is a symbol that truly signifies Christ,

but not in a bodily sense. So maybe maybe here's a here's a way of a simpler way of asking it. Who is the first prominent Christian in church history who denies a bodily view of the Eucharist? Well, I don't know if there are very many early figures who explicitly deny a bodily view of the Eucharist. That's because a denial implies that a view is being proposed. You know, you can't deny something that nobody's talking about because the occasion wouldn't come up. What the early theologians in the church say is in response to the promptings of heretical

groups who denied that Christ had a body and blood altogether, and they were concerned to argue against this view that Christ really did have a body and blood like we did, he really did die, he really did raise from the dead, and among their arguments they appeal to the Eucharist. Now in my manuscript, I argue at length that careful attention to what they're saying will reveal that they are arguing from the symbolic content of the Eucharist.

They're trying to show, if you think about the symbols involved in the Eucharist, obviously we have to say that the flesh participates in salvation, that Christ had true flesh and so on. But I will say this, there is language in Tertullian, and I know that what I'm about to say is going to be controversial and we could go back and forth at nauseam. So just take this, you know, as a with all the relevant disclaimers and qualifications being made. Tertullian very clearly says in his book against Marcion in book four chapter 40, he says,

Christ took the bread and he made it his body saying, this is my body, that is the figure of my body. And in my book, I discuss at length why I think it's clear that for Tertullian, what Christ was doing in offering the bread and the wine is he was offering an image, a representation of his crucifixion. And he calls it a figure. Now there are some people who say that in Tertullian,

the language of figure does not mean a representation. It can be more robustly metaphysical than that. These are controverted issues, so we cannot get into them here. But I would say that Tertullian is one person who is very explicit that in the Eucharist, we have images of the crucifixion, you know, through the bread and the wine.

And something similar, I think, can be said about Justin and Irenaeus, who talk about us feeding on the flesh of Christ. I think the best way to understand that is that they're talking about the bread and the wine. Okay, thanks, Brett. Could I jump in on this one? Yeah, could. This is your response. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it seems to me that the question I think is well put because if, if Cyril or someone else is, is the

jumping off point at which the metaphysicians take over and, and the real presence tradition really gets off the ground, you would expect some pushback if it was really running contrary to how Christians had always thought. So there and the real presence tradition really gets off the ground, you would expect some pushback if it was really running contrary to how Christians had always thought. So there should be some documentary evidence of some kind of controversy there. And I don't think we have it.

What we do have historically is the first time we get someone denying this, and this is a little fuzzy, so there's two candidates. One is in the ninth century at the monastery of Corbie in France where the emperor asks the theologians at the monastery whether Christ is present in truth or in figure. And two different monks give two different answers. One says Christ is present in truth and the other says present in figure. But it doesn't seem to lead to any controversy between

them and it's possible that both of them were speaking within the tradition and not following this, I would call a false dichotomy sort of all the way down and committing themselves. But what does happen is a couple hundred years later, so the first option is a fellow named Retramnus. He's the guy who says, present in figure. Pascasius Redbertus says, present in truth. Now Pascasius's answer becomes dominant and it starts to be a little too literalistic. We've got a minute left here for your answer here, Brett, just so we can... It gets a little too strong. The language gets too cannibalistic, too literalistic, and then there's some pushback.

The first real argument against real presence is not against the best expression of real presence, but it's this over-literalized version that starts with Pascasius and that's Beringarius And that's where things blow up in the Middle Ages And I go in great detail in my book about how Beringarius led to transubstantiation and Thomas's articulation But it's really Beringarius who makes the first like no way this can't be right argument against real presence Okay, let me ask this question. This is the last one I'll ask it to Brett first and that way Stephen can have a chance to offer the sort of final response and then we'll move into sort of closing statements if you want. All right, so we've got a question here and it's

sort of similar to what we've just been discussing but it might kind of give you a chance to sort of to circle around it again. If Jesus had in mind just a symbol, and again there's that word just, but you know it's language man, what are you going to do? Why the apostolic fathers don't witness to that symbolic interpretation? So let me kind of rephrase that. Do we find in the fathers a symbolic interpretation that excludes the bodily understanding that Catholics and Orthodox have today. And we'll start with you Brett, two minutes, and then Dr. Namashir. Yeah, I mean, I don't think so. You'd have to, my sense is you'd have to go digging for some real sort of one-off, you know,

one-liners you could pull out of context to try to make that work. You're going to find lots of symbolic language, absolutely, but it feels to me like you really got to take it out of context. You're not going to find a Beringarius who says, look, all you guys with your realistic interpretations are out to lunch. You're going to find people who see no problem at all talking on one page about realistic language and on the next page about symbolic language. But that's a totally different thing, I think. Okay. Stephen? Yeah, well, one thing that I would say is this. You do not have to be explicitly

denying the real presence tradition in order to be offering a memorialist or symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist. So I can propose my view without arguing against a competitor. I would say that the real presence tradition is something added to a primordial Eucharistic tradition, which later, with some controversy and with some problems, was attempted to be removed. So I am going to say that if you read very closely the most primordial sources, the primordial Eucharistic doctrine

is not a real presence one. Now, they are not explicitly denying the doctrine of the real presence, because nobody is saying that, presumably. It's only later, after with this primordial doctrine, you get a real presence doctrine added onto it, that you have people arguing explicitly against a real presence doctrine. onto it that you have people arguing explicitly against a real presence doctrine, right?

Now I will say this if you read the Didache, the Didache is extremely early. It was written, you know, the some scholars say that the material in the Didache comes from a period closer to the time of Paul and James than of Ignatius. So it has very early material. There is zero mention of the real presence in the Didache. What you have is the notion of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and what it does say about the Eucharist is that it is a Thanksgiving. It is a meal in which the church gathers, it offers Thanksgiving prayers to God for bread, for wine, and presumably for all the other food items that were there gathered, and then it is a prayer for the eschatological unification of the church. So the Eucharist talks about the, excuse me, the Didache talks about the Eucharist as a Thanksgiving meal that is offered to the praise of God, but never

is there an identification of the bread and the wine with the body and blood of Christ. Now some scholars think that this is so outrageous that actually what the Eucharist is talking about is not the, excuse me, what the Didache is talking about is not the Eucharist at all, but some sort of agape meal. And then the sacramental Eucharist just goes entirely unmentioned. You just get a hint of it in chapter 10. But I think that this interpretation is strange because the Didache talks about everything. It talks about the two ways. It talks about baptism. It talks about appointing bishops and deacons. It talks about how to fast. And when it does talk about the Eucharist, it

mentions only a memorial meal where thanksgiving is offered to God for food and for the salvation that is brought through Christ, and that's it. And there is no mention of the real presence. And also if you read in Justin Martyr, in the Dialogue with Trifo, chapter 41, Justin Martyr says that the Old Testament flower offerings, which were brought by lepers who were healed of their sickness is an image of the Eucharist, a type of the Eucharist. And he says that in the Eucharist we offer to God a memorial of the sacrifice of Christ and we offer thanks to him for creating us, for purifying us, and so on and so forth. Now in that section he describes the Eucharist as a memorial and a thanksgiving to God for the salvation that is already

accomplished for us in Christ just as the leper offering flower in the Old Testament was already healed of leprosy. And he makes no mention of the body and blood of Christ being eaten. So it seems to me that close reading of the early sources will reveal that when they are talking about the Eucharist, they are talking about something that is adequately described as a memorial meal in thanksgiving for salvation. And it's this notion of real presence that gets added on later.

Okay, thank you, Stephen. Brett? Yeah, again, it would require some textual work on the dedicate, but it just, it seems to me, most of what I've had to say about this has already been said. I mean, I'm not surprised to find some symbolic language or places where symbolic language worked, but if real presence was a real departure from what Christians had believed for the

first little while, I would expect to see some textual evidence for that, and I don't. You know, so maybe I'll leave it at that. Okay, well, what if I give you each, say what do you think, five minutes each, just to sort of sum up your concluding thoughts, share whatever you'd like to share. Who would like to go first? Okay, go for it, Stephen.

Thank you, and thanks for being on the show. Thank you for having me, and thank you especially, Brett, because this has been a wonderful conversation. I have, you know, chats with people online about the Eucharist and so on sometimes and they are never anywhere near as pleasant or as enjoyable as this conversation has been. So thank you very much. You're welcome.

I would like to make clear my view. I do not think that the Eucharist, the real presence is something that is somehow contrary to the primordial Eucharistic doctrine. I am not saying that the real, you know, all of a sudden, this real presence idea came along and people weren't reacting to it violently, even though it goes contrary. I'm not saying that I'm saying that the real presence tradition is a possible evolution out of a primordial Eucharistic doctrine. Okay, there is not, it's not like for no reason that people read these early sources and think that they're

talking about the real presence. It's a, it's a possible reading. It is, you know, when these sources are looked at from a certain point of view, you can see how you would get from what these people say about the Eucharist to a doctrine of the real presence. So what I'm suggesting is not that, you know, the doctrine of the real presence is somehow contrary to what Christians were always believing as if earlier Christians had this clear notion that Christ is not really present there. I am saying that the doctrine of the real presence

is an evolution out of a primordial Eucharistic doctrine. Just like, for example, a tree can grow, but if you don't prune its branches, it can start to grow wild, and it can start to grow in a really, an undesirable way, let's say. Right? So what I'm thinking is that the doctrine of the real presence, basically, and especially its more robustly metaphysical formulations like in Thomas,

is like a tree that started growing wild, and it seems to me better to prune it, to sort of cut off some branches and to give it a cleaner shape. So I am not saying that the doctrine of the real presence somehow comes in and appears magically within a tradition that was consciously denying it for 200 years or something. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the doctrine of the real presence is an understandable evolution out of a primordial Eucharistic doctrine, but actually it's an evolution in the wrong direction and it should be corrected. So

that's briefly, just to make clear how I understand the historical situation. So that's briefly, just to make clear how I understand the historical situation. You still have like four minutes since we're kind of wrapping up here. Did you wanna offer more? I mean, we could do this all night if you want, but. Yeah, no, I would love to do this all night,

but I don't think Brett would, I don't think you would. I know my wife would not want me to, so I won't do that. I will say this. If God wills it, if the Lord wills it, I know my wife would not want me to, so I won't do that. I will say this. If God wills it, if the Lord wills it and my book is published, you are free to, anybody will be free to get the book and to see the arguments that I make ad nauseam. Obviously, we cannot in a context like this offer these arguments because we need the text in front of us and we need to have a couple of coffees in hand and be able to talk

about them. So we can't do that here. But basically, what I would suggest is that if the Lord wills it and this book is published, anybody can read it and see the arguments that I make there in greater detail. I'm willing to admit that my position maybe sounds crazy to somebody who, as long as they've been alive

or as long as they've been concerned about these things, are used to reading the Church Fathers a certain way. But I think that a closer reading actually can give my position some plausibility. Now, if that is going to convince everybody, I don't know. But that's just what I think. Yeah, I got a new idea for a Plants with Aquinas kind of themed video. We basically debate debate a topic until somebody finally concedes or we just go insane from lack of sleep. Yeah I would do that but just do it during the break you know during the break the Christmas break or whatever when I'm not teaching the next

day. Yeah all right well thanks and then Dr. Dr. Nemesh real quick where can people kind of find you online if they if they want? Well you can go to my website stevennemesh.com there you you will find my CV, you'll find links to all my articles if you want to read about Catherine of Siena or Origen or Dmitri Staniloje or Petitionary Prayer or Apocatastasis or Michel Henri or any of these topics that I write about, you can find all my papers there. I also have the YouTube channel Dr. Steven Nemes. You can see my videos there. And you can leave me a comment.

You can like and subscribe as I suppose. So you can find me on the web. Well, thank you so much. God bless you and God bless your bride and your beautiful soon to be born child. Congratulations again. That's really terrific. Brett, why don't you offer your kind of closing thoughts here?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and a pleasure to be with both of you. Great to meet you both. Good to be here. I was just thinking, when you were giving the pruning of the tree metaphor, I mean, this is a very Catholic image, right? That there's primordial sort of doctrines in scripture

in the early church and they flower over time, right? Something like purgatory. We wouldn't even say the Trinity, actually. I mean, even though it flowered earlier than purgatory or transubstantiation, but it's not explicit in scripture. There's something primordial that the theological tradition is trying to take account of and then language develops to try to articulate it. And it seems to me, you know,

my view is that transubstantiation was a healthy pruning. Things threatened to go off the rails with Beringarius when there was this tug of war in the medieval church between a sort of overtly cannibalistic kind of language and articulation and then this pure symbolism on the other hand, and that did threaten to get wild and I think discontinuous with what Christians had believed from the beginning. And so to me, Thomas and transubstantiation are a pair of good garden shears that trim those bad branches back and kept it closer to the heart of

of what Christians had always believed. So if I can employ your metaphor for, you know, for my own purposes, that would articulate some of what I believe. You know, I've managed to say a lot of what I think already, but maybe I'll mention a few things. I mean, my book is not a study of the patristic period. And we spent a lot of time on patristics today, and that's not my area of specialization. I did careful, close textual readings of Thomas, Luther, and Calvin in my book. So if you're interested in that, I do a really deep dive on all of those people. And I end up concluding, I think Thomas's articulation stands up. But Luther and Calvin were trying to say things.

Their intention was very close to Thomas's intention. And I think I think they didn't quite do as good of a job. And I point out places where I think they slipped for one reason or another. But I think that their intention gives us lots to work with in terms of ecumenical agreement. Now, conversing with Zwinglians is another matter, you know, say is something purely symbolic, but I would say, you know, Catholics should be careful not to ignore the symbolic element of sacraments. I mean,

sacraments are symbols. That's the beginning of Thomas's discussion of why we even have sacraments at all, is because God needs to speak to us through things that we can experience right and it's it's in your Baltimore catechism you know what's your definition of a sacrament so I mean we shouldn't we shouldn't make an outright denial and we also shouldn't say it's nothing you know I would agree with you Stephen when you said you know when I when I say it's a symbol I'm not saying it's nothing. It's not nothing. You know, we, if someone burns a flag, that's a symbol. And we don't say that's nothing, you know, it's a real

thing. It stands for something very important to people. So, you know, I think Catholics can grant something. On the other hand, obviously, I think it's not adequate. I don't think it's adequate to the tradition. I don't think it's adequate to scripture, to what Christians have always believed. But then here's maybe my last point. And this has already come up in some of my earlier comments. To me, it's not adequate to a basic Christian worldview. I think transubstantiation is one place, it's not the only place, it's one place where we articulate God's relationship with created reality. And what is articulated in the doctrine of transubstantiation?

I think, is that God's presence in reality is not a competitive presence. God doesn't need to overrule things, God doesn't need to physically manipulate things in order for God to be really active, right? God's way of working in creation is not so blunt. I can't think of a better word than that right now. But let me zoom out from that because that image of how God works in creation,

that impacts how we read scripture, it impacts what we think of ethics It impacts how we think about sacraments it impacts how we think about the incarnation if God is If God's relationship with creation is such that God can be fully human That Jesus can be fully human and fully divine that says something about God not being in competition with creation And let me just throw an example out there could be a whole other show, right? About a minute left. Awesome. Catholicism has never had a huge problem with the question of providence and free will.

But immediately in the in the Reformation this becomes a major question between Protestants. And it's still a question between Protestants today. The difference, you know the Providence and free will and which one takes precedence and it seems to me that as a concrete example of a worldview where God is in a sort of Competition with with God's creatures and that that's gonna lead us to all kinds of absurdities that make the Christian worldview

It's going to lead us to all kinds of absurdities that make the Christian worldview less coherent. So for me, real presence and transubstantiation as a good articulation of real presence is a kind of bulwark for a Christian view of creation and the relationship between creation and God that has implications for everything else we think about. And we could explore those, we're running out of time, but I think it's not just a one-off thing that you can, you know, take or leave. I think it's really an articulation of a Catholic, but not only Catholic, a basically Christian worldview. Thank you very much, Stephen and Brett, for preparing for this discussion and for doing it so

Articulately and charitably. I thought it was excellent. If people are watching right now, it's great We've had over 400 people watching through the duration of this live stream not to mention all those who will come afterwards But if people are hungry for more and are interested I Engaged in a debate with Cameron Batuzzi on the topic of the Eucharist. So I'll link to that I'll pin to that. I'll pin that to the top if people, there's been two hours and they just need more. They just need more.

And Matt, sorry if I'm butting in here, but- No, you're great. You're probably gonna ask me where they can find me and my work online, is that right? Yes. Where are they gonna find you and your work online? Yeah, I mean, you follow me on Twitter at Brett Saucold. I have a podcast, Thinking Faith,

that's got something like 300 episodes now. It comes out every Tuesday morning, has for years. So if you're interested in that, Thinking Faith, we cover almost any topic, 300 topics or more at this point. Well, we've revisited some. I write, I don't have my own website, I should probably get one. I write quite a bit at Church Life Journal.

I have an article on transubstantiation, it was my first one I ever published at Church Life Journal that you might check out there. But I publish a lot of stuff there. I've been on Crux, Busted Halo, Word on Fire. But I'll post anything that I'm coming up with new on my Twitter feed, and check out the podcast if you're a podcast listener. It'll take a long time to catch up with our 300 and some episodes on Thinking Faith. All right, thank you. We good? Dr. Namish,

anything else? Or should we wrap up and all good a bit? All right. Go bless you both. Just a thank you to the both of you. You're very welcome. Thanks for being here, guys. God bless. See ya.