Posted on 12/02/2005 11:58:27 AM PST by HarleyD
You confuse transubstantiation and real presence. Transubstantiation is one mode of explaining how the real presence came to be. The real presence was never questioned until the 1000s when Berengar asserted merely symbolic presence (an earlier controversy in the 800s was not about real presence, though it is often portrayed as such).
Lateran IV used the word transubstantiation and asserted real versus symbolic presence but did not develop or dogmatize a doctrine of transubstantiation.
The doctrine was being developed in the 1100s and 1200s; Aquinas gave it thorough statement. Alternatives persisted and the Church did not dogmatize transubstantiation as the explanation of how real presence comes about until later, ultimately at Trent.
But often when someone is said to have denied transubstantiation (which would be merely denying one mode of explanation among several) in fact he was denying real presence, which was had been defined in the 1000s. Loose use of transubstantiation leads to a lot of misunderstanding.
It's not right to say that symbolic presence was an acceptable alternative at any time. The first time it came up it was condemned, in the 1000s.
If one "rejects" transubstantiation because one denies that the bread ceases to be bread and becomes solely and truly body of Christ, then one is denying real presence, not transubstantiation. All the reformers except Luther denied real presence as well as transubstantiation. Only Luther was choosing an alternative explanation while upholding real presence. And the one he chose had very little support in his day because it involved a second and more difficult miracle than transubstantiation.
Most of those disciplined as heretics for denying transubstantiation in the late Middle Ages were in fact denying real presence.
No one has yet come up with a better way for explaining real presence than transubstantiation. Consubstantiation is not really helpful. So in effect, those who believe in true real presence (Anglo-Catholics) also believe in transubstantiation or they say, I won't even try to explain how merely assert that it happens.
Because of the problem of ubiquity? Omnipresence can only be spiritual not physical.
I like the part about abolishing "war (and) the arts unnecessary to life" best. No FreeRepublic in Wycliffe's America, I suppose :-).
John of Gaunt is a fascinating character. His long-time (married) mistress, Katherine Swynford, was the aunt and grandmother of the later kings of the Lancastrian line, through some marriage complexities among kissing-cousins. I wonder if that bothered Wycliffe, or if he took the approach of Bill Clinton's pastors ...
John le Gaunt was a great soldier, though, deserving of his reputation.
I know ... there were some scenes of what happened to the churches in Simon Schama's "History of Britain" TV series. Dreadful - just like the Moslems.
Cool site, btw.
Integrity.
A person who is willing to die for his beliefs gets some points.
In our church we discovered a lollard
Thin as rail, he ate nothing but collard
He objected to art
And to priests dressing smart
He preached heresies till he got collared
My history rhymes.
LOL!
In fact, there are a number of similarities between the psychology of Wahabism and some of the more radical puritans.
One of my favorite who was willing to die for his beliefs is St. Thomas More:
When ordered to swear to the Act of Succession, he tried to evade the issue; but the king's soldiers came to arrest him, and on 17th April 1534 he was sent to the Tower. For fourteen months he remained in prison . . . On 1st July 1535 he was condemned to death in Westminster Hall where he had so often dispensed justice in the past . . . Thomas More rose to his feet, very calm, and told this court of flunkeys and time-servers why he was going to his death:
I will now in discharge of my conscience speak my mind plainly and freely touching my indictment and your Statute withal. And forasmuch as this indictment is grounded upon an Act of Parliament directly repugnant to the laws of God and His holy Church, the supreme government of which . . . may no temporal prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome, a spiritual preeminence by the mouth of Our Saviour Himself . . . only to St. Peter and his successors bishops of the same See . . .
Very and pure necessity . . . enforces me to speak so much. Wherein I call and appeal to God, whose only sight pierces into the very depth of man's heart, to be my witness . . . the Church is one and indivisible, and you have no authority to make a law which infringes Christian unity.
Only the executioner could reply to words like these. The last word was his . . . This judicial murder provoked the strongest reactions throughout Europe . . . All protests were of no avail against an autocrat like Henry. He confined himself to telling other rulers that he had merely punished traitors, and had fourteen Anabaptists burned at the stake to demonstrate his own religious zeal . . . Stapleton relates how Henry was brought the news of More's execution . . . He sprang to his feet, quite pale, overcome by an absurd remorse. Looking blackly at Anne Boleyn, he shouted: "You are responsible!" The blood of this new John the Baptist was soon to spill over the Tudor Herodias. A year later, to the very day, she too would mount the scaffold steps.
{Daniel-Rops, ibid., pp.248-250}
On July 6th, More was led to the scaffold. He retained his dignity and humor to the end:
He said to an attendant, "I pray you . . . see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." The executioner asked his forgiveness; More embraced him . . . More begged the spectators to pray for him, and to "bear witness that he . . . suffered death in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church." He then asked them to pray for the King . . . and he protested that he died being the King's good servant, but God's first. He repeated the 51st Psalm. Then he laid his head upon the block, carefully arranging his long gray beard that it should take no harm: "pity that should be cut," he said, "that has not committed treason." His head was affixed to London Bridge . . .
A wave of terror passed through an England that now realized the resolute mercilessness of the King, and a shudder of horror ran through Europe. Erasmus felt that he himself had died, for "we had but one soul between us"; he said that he had now no further wish to live, and a year later he too was dead.
{Will Durant, The Reformation, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p.558}
The whole piece is at: http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ76.HTM
Excellent!
Sir Thomas was a real gentleman.
What a great man, one every attorney and judge in the English speaking world should model himself or herself after. Every year here at the Red Mass we are reminded by the Roman Catholic bishop of this man's qualities. Your post reminds me of a scene from "A Man for All Seasons" where +Thomas is discussing the common law and the rights of Free Englishmen with a young firebrand:
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law?
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down—and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Great lines. Reminds me of the statement attributed to Winston Churchill, "If a man is not a conservative at 40, he has no brain."
""If a man is not a conservative at 40, he has no brain.""
By 40 one ought to have just a little seasoning. By 50 one ought to figured things out pretty well. Churchill was right, of course, but I always felt that Churchill was presupposing that the 40 year old conservative still had the heart of the 20 year old socialist.
Just this morning I was listening to "Talk Radio" and heard a fellow in his 30s pontificating about the healthcare system in this state and what an abject failure it is, etc, rambling on about how its socialized medicine and destroying business etc. He is the head and founder of a conservative "non partisan" think tank, non profit of course. He has never had a job where he had to deal with people, never ran a company, or even worked in a company, which had to show a profit or go out of business, be answerable to a boss or stockholders. He apparently is what we call a "trust fund kid", who has never spent a sleepless night worrying about how the mortgage is going to be paid, whether or not he should take that second job because one of the kids is sickly and he can't afford insurance. In fact, it seems he's never even met people who've lived through these problems. And yet he has a forum on the airwaves to lecture the people of this state, thunder that the sky is falling and tell them they are all massive economic failures. He is, by the way, from another state and has only been here a few years.
I'm no liberal socialist. I'm no liberal anything...I'm way past 40 and do have a brain, or so I tell people! It pains me, however, to see how many conservatives, especially the younger ones, have neither a brain nor a heart. Seasoning is as important in life as it is in good food!
Interesting points.
I got out of my youthful liberalism early by becoming an honest history major. Something about how ideologies vs. reality work when the ideologies don't take into account human nature....and something also about the meanspiritedness of conservativism without Christian truth mixed in as well.
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