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{"id":19845,"date":"2017-10-27T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=19845"},"modified":"2017-10-24T23:09:49","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T17:09:49","slug":"contraction-theological-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/10\/contraction-theological-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Contraction of Theological Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Toward the end of Corpus Mysticum<\/em><\/a>, Henri de Lubac says that one of the most serious results of the shifts in Eucharistic theology he examines is \u201cthe devaluation of symbols.\u201d Augustine\u2019s entire theology was about \u201csigns\u201d and \u201cthings.\u201d In the late Middle Ages, \u201cconsideration of \u2018signs\u2019 would soon suffer an eclipse\u201d (244).<\/p>\n

Late medieval Trinitarian theology provides an example: \u201cthe doctrine of image and of vestiges began to be demolished. The school of Gilbert de la Poree denied it all noetic significance, already reducing it, as modern writers would, to simple comparisons. The critique that it instituted consisted in saying that these comparisons are without interest from the moment when it becomes impossible to extract any proof from them\u201d (244). Rational demonstration or nothing!<\/p>\n

The Porretans were mild rationalists by comparison with those who came later, denying the Trinity itself in the name of reason. They were \u201centhusiasts of reason\u201d while the later anti-Trinitarians championed \u201ccritical reason\u201d (244).<\/p>\n

Both stood at some distance from \u201cAugustinian symbolism.\u201d Even when theologians used Augustinian comparisons they were diminished. Berengar of Venouse noted that Augustine found a \u201cneat simile [in] bread and wine, which are so united out of many parts that single elements can no longer be distinguished or separated from each other\u201d (245).<\/p>\n

Nothing but an \u201celegant comparison.\u201d The possibility that there is not merely a \u201csimilitude\u201d between the bread\/wine and the church has been lost; there is no \u201cessential link\u201d between Eucharist and Eucharistic community.<\/p>\n

Which puts one in mind of Flannery O\u2019Connor: If it\u2019s only a \u201cneat simile,\u201d then to hell with it. I imagine O\u2019Connor meant her comment literally; I know I do.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"