Transforming Vision. Meister Eckhart's Speculative Interpretation of the Real Presence in the Eucharist

Autor(en)

Martina Roesner

Abstrakt

There are hardly any Christian mystics who have been more critical towards the classical forms of medieval sacramental piety than Meister Eckhart. Nevertheless, his conception of the immediate ‘generation’ of God in the intellectual soul of every human being does not aim to abolish the sacraments altogether, but only to correct their classical interpretation as instruments of salvific ‘mediation’. Without ever putting into question the Real Presence as such, Eckhart does not follow the strategy of most contemporary scholastics, who try to explain Eucharistic transubstantia- tion according to the substance-accident schema of Aristotelian physics. Instead, he adopts a speculative approach that considers the Eucharist as the paradigmatic place where the immediate but latent self-recognition of the absolute substance of the divine intellect in all created beings becomes evident. To Eckhart, Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is not of a ‘merely’ sacramental nature, but appears as an explanatory corollary of his doctrine of creation, which is based on the idea of the real immanence of the divine being in all things. As a consequence, the reception of Holy Communion by the faithful has to be interpreted as a process of quasi-metabolic assimi- lation and transformation of the human being, not into a perfect but passive mirror, but into an active spiritual eye, capable of responding to the loving gaze of the divine intellect. Thus the Eucharist is no longer a place where the divine presence is mysteriously hidden but, on the contrary, a place where this presence becomes most evident in order to reveal the whole world as transparent to God.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Bibelwissenschaft

Seiten

287-318

Anzahl der Seiten

32

Publikationsdatum

03-2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

603110 Metaphysik, 603118 Religionsphilosophie, 603205 Dogmatische Theologie, 603212 Liturgiewissenschaft

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/transforming-vision-meister-eckharts-speculative-interpretation-of-the-real-presence-in-the-eucharist(92e3809d-7886-4d8e-8580-482aba967fc2).html