Bernard P. Prusak

Explaining Eucharistic “Real Presence”: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum

Understandings of body and resurrected bodiliness in the early centuries shaped the explanations of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Medieval writers debated how Jesus’ body, which was at the right of the Father, could also be present in the Eucharist. The concept of transubstantiation and Thomas Aquinas’s emphasis on a substantial presence sought to resolve that conundrum. This article shows how contemporary theological perspectives on body and resurrected bodiliness, on the human personality of Jesus, and on symbolic reality open up a new path toward explaining eucharistic real presence.

Bodily resurrection in catholic perspectives

A growing consensus understands bodily resurrection to mean that the personal identity established in an embodied history is raised up into a transphysical reality. Ongoing debate concerns the notion of a resurrection in death that would exclude an intermediate state in which separated souls await bodily resurrection on the last day. Disagreement also exists about how and at what point bodiliness is fully integrated into ones identity and whether the term soul should designate that which bears ones identity and bodiliness beyond death. The author reinterprets the intermediate state by suggesting that ones relationship to the world will be fully integrated into ones identity only with the completion of history.