Convergence At The Table

Creative thinking about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the twentieth century has been largely devoted to overcoming the ecumenical impasse on eucharistic presence inherited from previous times, especially the Reformation era in the sixteenth century. One of the consequences of ecumenical dialogue has been a reconsideration of the positions of medieval scholastic theologians and Protestant Reformers. One of the best surveys of the issues discussed remains Hermann Sasse's This is My Body (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1959). A Protestant Impasse ll the Protestant Reformers rejected the scholastic dogma of transubstantiation in the sixteenth century, while the Council of Trent reaffirmed it for the Roman Catholic church. This way of understanding the Real Presence of Christ grew slowly but logically out of the controversies over Christ's eucharistic presence during the ninth through eleventh centuries, and was promulgated as dogma by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The teachi…