Sunday, December 20, 2020

John Scotus Eriugena and Transubstantiation

Q. Did John Scotus advocate the Roman dogma of transubstantiation?


John Scotus Eriugena (c. 800-877 A.D.):

For we also, who, after the accomplishment of His Incarnation, and Passion, and Resurrection, believe in Him, and understand His mysteries, so far as it is allowed us, both spiritually immolate Him, and intellectually eat Him with the mind, not with the teeth. (J. P. Minge, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, [1853], Patrologiæ Latinæ, Tomus CXXII, Joannis Scoti, Comment. In Evangelium Secundum Joannem, Fragmentum I, Cap. I, Col. 311). Here Trans. (J. H. Treat, The Catholic Faith; Or, Doctrines of the Church of Rome Contrary to Scripture and the Teaching of the Primitive Church, [1888], p. 244). Here


Behold how beautifully, how expressly he asserts, that this visible Eucharist, which the priests of the Church daily make upon the altar from the sensible matter of bread and wine, and which, after it is made and sanctified, they bodily receive, is a typical similitude of the spiritual partaking of Jesus, which we faithfully eat with the intellect only; that is, we discern it, and receive it into the inward parts of our nature, to our salvation, and spiritual growth, and ineffable deification. Therefore, he says, the human mind, ascending from sensible things to the similitude and equality of heavenly virtues, ought to think that this most divine and visible Eucharist, demonstrated in the Church, is surely a type of that participation whereby now even we partake of Jesus through faith, and in the future shall partake of Him by sight, and shall be united to Him through charity. What, then, do they reply to this clear trumpet of the great Theologian Dionysius, who will assert that the visible Eucharist signifies nothing else than itself, while the afore said trumpet clearly cries that not those visible Sacraments are to be worshiped, neither are they to be embraced for the truth, because they are significative of the truth, nor are they invented for themselves, seeing that in them is not the end of understanding, but on account of the incomprehensible virtue of the truth, whereby Christ is in the unity of His human and divine substance, beyond everything which is felt by the bodily sense, above everything which is perceived by the power of the understanding, God invisible in both of His natures. (J. P. Minge, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, [1853], Patrologiæ Latinæ, Tomus CXXII, Expositiones Joannis Scoti, Super Ierarchiam Caelestem S. Dionysii, Cap. I, § 3, Col. 140, 141). Here Trans. (J. H. Treat, The Catholic Faith; Or, Doctrines of the Church of Rome Contrary to Scripture and the Teaching of the Primitive Church, [1888], p. 244). Here



~ Soli Deo Gloria



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