Decidedly not evidential of USUAL human decomposition after death.

After the elevation of the eucharistic gifts to the Father, the celebrant of the Divine Liturgy prays for the Holy Spirit to come upon them, and upon all of the people, and to change (or as the Liturgy of St. Basil says, to show) the bread and wine offered in remembrance of Christ to be the very Body and Blood of the Lord.

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/24/2010 5:49:05 AM (GMT-6)

Invocation of the Holy Spirit in "eucharistic" existence.  Heck, we say "Come, Holy Spirit!" when we know the Spirit is everywhere...right?  And we say that there's SOMETHING to be said for that activity, right?

http://www.theandros.com/iamblichus.html

All of theurgy has a two-fold character. One is that it is a rite conducted by men which preserves our natural order in the universe; the other is that it is empowered by divine symbols, is raised up through them to be joined on high with the Gods, and is led harmoniously round to their order. This latter aspect can rightly be called 'taking the shape of the Gods.'

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 5:54:09 AM (GMT-6)

"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which people may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever."

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So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.  That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.  But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment.  Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 6:05:31 AM (GMT-6)

Let’s go ahead and talk about this—the post-resurrection nature of Jesus’ body. We’d talked about it before too, but it’s been a while and I can’t remember what we said.

I guess the simple question is this, Where is Jesus’ body right now?

He has a glorified, resurrected body, which I take it, is the same ‘kind’ of body we receive in the resurrection (1Cor 15’s “made like unto his glorious body”). Can we understand some of what that means? Yeah. We’ll, from Jesus post-resurrection appearances we can say it remains a physical body. It can fully interact with the present world in its non-glorified state. But it doesn’t seem to be limited to the present world’s problems. It’s no longer corruptible, for example.

[This is interesting, because though Jesus DIES, his body sees NO corruption.]

Anyhow, my question is this. Is the resurrected body of Jesus still spatially delimited (i.e., located at some place and not at others)? It seems pretty obvious that his embodied state was not omnipresent (materially omnipresent) during his lifetime. Incarnation and embodiment mean being and living what we are, and that includes bodies that are limited to being located here (and not there). Does that hold post-resurrection? It’s hard to say. Does the Son’s ‘embodiment’ continue after the resurrection to hold the same spatially delimited characteristics that it had prior to the resurrection? I think D (and the EO) will definitely want to say it does not. After the resurrection Jesus’ “body” is present wherever the Son’s sentience extends. Hence, Jesus’ resurrected body is not spatially or materially limited. It’s infinitely materially instantiable. The same way the resurrected Jesus showed up on occasion in the gospel, he could do so today simultaneously throughout the universe in multiple instantiations. The REAL material body of the resurrected Jesus could have fish in Galilee and at the same time show up in 10,000 different embodied occasions on our planet and potentially all over the universe. There’s no limit to the ‘matter’ of Jesus’ resurrected body.

I’m open. I can see argument pro and con on this. Will WE also be potentially omnipresent in our resurrected embodied selves? Will we be able to materially instantiate multiple embodiments of the one ‘person’ we are all over the globe (each embodied self having one undivided ‘mind’; one mind having multiple embodied experiences all over the universe)? Hmmm. Or (assuming Jesus CAN do this), is that something materially possible for Jesus because he also happens to be sentiently omnipresent anyhow? Interesting.

I know what D’s gonna say.

Part of the difficulty is that we really don’t fully understand what “matter” and “energy” even are. Jesus’ “body” (as the disciples knew and touched and engaged it) ascended into the clouds before their eyes. Where is he now? Is he floating around undetectable by our radars?

I’m tempted to leap into quantum mysteries and just make up sh**, but what I’d say would be this. Resurrected embodiment (for Jesus at least) means not uninterrupted material manifestation (Jesus' body is not floating around in the atmospher somewhere undetected by our radars) but instantiable material manifestation. The universal divine sentience means that the RWE complex of Jesus CAN be materially instantiated any place at any time. I’m unsure if the same temperature and oxygen requirements that define bodily existence for humans as we presently know it would limit Jesus’ bodily instantiations to similar worlds or not. But the basic idea is that Jesus’ resurrected body (when not needing to relate materially to creation) is LIKE a probability wave—instantiability—except it's universally pervasive, the sustaining wave of God's will delivering both actualities and possibilities. Under certain conditions that wave can collapse materially here, there, etc. But it NEED NOT do so. And in Jesus’ case, when are where it might collapse is determined at least partly by the will of Jesus (and partly, perhaps, by the conditions definitive of the matter/energy creation). But we have no real knowledge of what the fully redeemed material cosmos will be like, except that it WILL be fundamentally continuous with our present material cosmos (otherwise the rationale for physical resurrection so important to Paul would be pointless). But what possibilities lie inherent in a fully redeemed triangulation of matter/energy/spirit are way beyond our ability to say.

To bring this all back to Communion…

I’m all for (theurgical) calling upon the omnipresent Spirit to “Come,” i.e. to manifest her power and realize possibilities here and now. Cool. God is in everything, but not doing all he can do in everything. To my mind, rites and ceremonies (theurgy) and symbols are about creating conditions that encourage and facilitate the offering ourselves (as a community in this case) as space for the already present Spirit to manifest herself in and through us. God doesn't need them. We as a community need them, and not absolutely either. They help us maintain and recommit to our identity. But that identity might just as effectively be held out and perceived by us though a good sermon. The same grace is at work wherever and by whatever means we might be able to hold out to the entire Body of Christ the key events that define our existence.

As well, we do not need the bread and the wine to become anything other than bread and wine. It can’t be any more infused with the "real presence" of the resurrected Jesus than it already is—whether as communion bread or a Whopper bun. It’s all the same. But the already present Logos can DO or EFFECT in us what he is not presently effecting in us when and where WE decide together to celebrate and contemplate the events that brought and continue to bring us into existence as his people. Jesus decided to determine what and where those symbols would be (and they have far more to do with the Exodus as an event that constituted Israel as God's people than they do any particular view of God being in the elements). My view of communion is that it replaces the Pesach meal as a celebration and retelling of the events that save us and make us God's people. It's totally Hewbrew and OTish. Nothing Neo-Platonic about it. And wherever we perceive by faith that we are his, and we say, "Yes, we are God's!" there the grace of God extends to all our being--soul, spirit, mind, body.

In theurgy, with agreed upon symbols rooted in history, we’re able as a community to call upon the Spirit to quicken our hearts and minds in the contemplation of the power and grace of the Cross. In the elements we symbolically re-enact these events, and where their significance is perceived by faith, one’s whole being—spirit, soul, body, mind, all of it—is then touched and infused by the grace and presence of Christ. The doing gets done in all that we are. This is a KIND of divine nourishment, yes, but not materially present in the elements eaten and digested (in spite of the fact that the one Christ is universally present in all things). It is present in the perception of the significance of the Cross and the offering of one’s whole being to the living Christ. This “act of will” is the eating, is the communion, and what's partaken is no MORE present in the elements that it is in any other thing that happens to be around us at the time (clothes, benches, car keys, wallets). The bread and wine point away from themselves to these realities, and that's what Whoppers and car keys DON'T do. But the bread and wine are not the realities themselves. This gives us just as great a ground upon which to believe grace is at work in our whole being, doing whatever God intends to do in/with our bodies. So communion becomes the Community's way of saying "These are the events that create and sustain our existence as the people of God, and so we cry, 'Lord, fulfill in us your will, manifest the power of your Kingdom in us'." I don't ask for God to DO anything TO the elements. I ask God to give ME a renewed VISION OF THE CROSS whose essential MEANING (the meaning I need to perceive and contemplate) is held out to me (symbollically) in the elements.

But the idea that a saint's body took 20 years to decay BECAUSE of the virtue that entered his body FROM the elements? I dont' know what to say. It's like eating Elvish bread I guess. Was Tolkein Orthodox?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/24/2010 1:58:46 PM (GMT-6)

Incidentally, Tom.  Would you used John 6:63 to deny any possibility of Real Presence?  Is that biblically solid to you?

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 4:12:29 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 4:48:30 PM (GMT-6)

...

The Epiclesis (invocation of the Holy Spirit to perfect the Consecration of the Gifts) differs in that Chrysostom says "Make this bread the precious Body of Thy Christ" and "Make that which is in this chalice the precious Blood of Thy Christ", while Basil says "This bread is in very truth the precious Body of our Lord, and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ" and "This chalice is in very truth the precious Blood of our Lord, and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ … which was poured out for the life of the world." So for Saint John Chrysostom, the transformation is taking place in the present, whereas for Saint Basil it is already an accomplished fact.

No "holy action of which there is inherent power" for freedom from sin.  No context for theurgy there. 

Funny how he was still cool with infant baptism though. 

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 4:53:04 PM (GMT-6)

Greg makes a false dichotomy between relationship and ritual that theurgy ALLOWS for.  But then again, Greg ain't even thinkin' that way...

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I’m all for (theurgical) calling upon the omnipresent Spirit to “Come,” i.e. to manifest her power and realize possibilities here and now. Cool. God is in everything, but not doing all he can do in everything. To my mind, rites and ceremonies (theurgy) and symbols are about creating conditions that encourage and facilitate the offering ourselves (as a community in this case) as space for the already present Spirit to manifest herself in and through us. God doesn't need them. We as a community need them, and not absolutely either. They help us maintain and recommit to our identity. But that identity might just as effectively be held out and perceived by us though a good sermon. The same grace is at work wherever and by whatever means we might be able to hold out to the entire Body of Christ the key events that define our existence.

As well, we do not need the bread and the wine to become anything other than bread and wine. It can’t be any more infused with the "real presence" of the resurrected Jesus than it already is—whether as communion bread or a Whopper bun. It’s all the same. But the already present Logos can DO or EFFECT in us what he is not presently effecting in us when and where WE decide together to celebrate and contemplate the events that brought and continue to bring us into existence as his people. Jesus decided to determine what and where those symbols would be

-----------------------------------------------------------

Resurrected embodiment (for Jesus at least) means not uninterrupted material manifestation (Jesus' body is not floating around in the atmospher somewhere undetected by our radars) but instantiable material manifestation. The universal divine sentience means that the RWE complex of Jesus CAN be materially instantiated any place at any time. I’m unsure if the same temperature and oxygen requirements that define bodily existence for humans as we presently know it would limit Jesus’ bodily instantiations to similar worlds or not. But the basic idea is that Jesus’ resurrected body (when not needing to relate materially to creation) is LIKE a probability wave—instantiability—except it's universally pervasive, the sustaining wave of God's will delivering both actualities and possibilities. Under certain conditions that wave can collapse materially here, there, etc. But it NEED NOT do so. And in Jesus’ case, when are where it might collapse is determined at least partly by the will of Jesus (and partly, perhaps, by the conditions definitive of the matter/energy creation).

--------------------------------------------------

In theurgy, with agreed upon symbols rooted in history, we’re able as a community to call upon the Spirit to quicken our hearts and minds in the contemplation of the power and grace of the Cross. In the elements we symbolically re-enact these events, and where their significance is perceived by faith, one’s whole being—spirit, soul, body, mind, all of it—is then touched and infused by the grace and presence of Christ.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 5:29:58 PM (GMT-6)

After breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, Martin Luther developed his own interpretation of the Lord's Supper known as consubstantiation.  According to this view, there is no need for a priest to bless the elements in order for a transformation to take place.  Rather because he believed that Jesus is present everywhere, Luther claimed that Christ's body is literally "in, with, and under" the bread and wine.  The bread and wine, however, are not themselves transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

In the evangelical world today, there are primarily two perspectives on the nature of the Lord's Supper. Those who hold to a spiritual presence view remain close to Luther's conviction. They believe that in a unique way Christ is spiritually present in the Lord's Supper. There is therefore a sacramental aspect to communion in that the believer is sealed in Jesus Christ as a confirmation of God's saving promises. Those who hold to a memorial view claim that Christ is not literally present in the Lord's Supper. They affirm that a distinct spiritual blessing is involved in taking communion, for believers are remembering what Jesus did for them. But this blessing is due to their obedient response to Christ's instruction, not because Christ is uniquely present in the Lord's Supper itself.

Tom, from Greg's perspective, you are NOT a true memorialist.  Not from what you've been saying lately.  It really seems that he'd easily put you in the "spiritual presence" camp.  Ask him.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2010 6:47:51 PM (GMT-6)