Dialectical Anatomy of the Eucharist

An Étude in Phenomenology

Donald Wallenfang

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781498293402
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Pratiche e rituali cristiani

For centuries, Christian theology has understood the Eucharist in terms of metaphysics or in protest against it. Today an opening has been made to imagine the sacrament through the method of phenomenology, bringing about new theological life and meaning. In Dialectical Anatomy of the Eucharist, Donald Wallenfang conducts a sustained analysis of the Eucharist through the aperture of phenomenology, yet concludes the study with poetic and metaphysical twists. Engaging the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas, Wallenfang proposes pioneering ideas for contemporary sacramental theology that have vast implications for interfaith and interreligious dialogue. By tapping into the various currents within the Judeo-Christian tradition--Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant--a radical argument is developed that leverages the tension among them all. Several new frontiers are explored: dialectical theology, a fourth phenomenological reduction, the phenomenology of human personhood, the poetics of the Eucharist, and a reinterpretation of the concept of gift as conversation. On the whole, Wallenfang advances recent debates surrounding the relationship between phenomenology and theology by claiming an uncanny way out of emerging dead ends in philosophical theology: return to the fray.

chapter 1

The Eucharist and Phenomenology

The point of departure most often decides the point of arrival, for the target depends on the aim and the aim on the sight and the angle of the shot. The exercise of thought makes no exception to this rule; it even makes it all the more imperative, since, in this case more than any other, nobody can turn back once out of the gate or take back the shot once fired. And, for that matter, there is no second chance at a first beginning.

—Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self’s Place

Hocus-pocus. This is how the postmodern world typically views the religious phenomenon of the Eucharist, and virtually all religious phenomena in general. Magic, trickery, bullshit. Yet the irony is that this phrase—hocus-pocus—is derived directly from the Latin words of consecration in Roman Catholic liturgy: Hoc est corpus meum (“This is my body”). Why do religious phenomena, such as the Eucharist, meet with such scorn, contempt and indifference according to the natural attitude of the public sector? Is there a way for religious phenomena to be considered seriously as to their intelligibility, plausibility and even truth? If the answer to this question is yes, then phenomenology is the method that holds the most promise for exploring religious phenomena in a serious intellectual and public manner for today. Phenomenology is the method that justifies all scientific inquiry and claims, inasmuch as all perceptible data—that is, givens—emerge from a human subject’s interaction with given phenomena. Phenomenology carefully examines the most basic and fundamental processes of conscious perception and meaning-making that form the very heart of every human experience. This book aims at considering the religious phenomenon of the Eucharist according to the most stringent demands of rationality possible. It will attempt to probe the meaning and truth of the Eucharist by using the phenomenological method, especially as developed by French phenomenologists Jean-Luc Marion (1946–), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95), and Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005). The primary question to be asked is this: How does the Eucharist say and/or give itself? Phenomenology will be called upon to best detect this “how.” Ultimately this study will be situated within a Roman Catholic theological context, though significantly informed and enhanced by Jewish and Protestant theologies. Before diving into the heart of the matter, let us submit a warrant for using phenomenology within the discipline of theology.

I. Phenomenology as a Method for Theology

Can theology be justified in employing phenomenology as a central method of investigation? The argument of the pages to follow hinges on the affirmative response to this hotly contested topic of recent debate.1 To be in agreement with Emmanuel Falque, “in contrast to the ‘liberation of philosophy by theology’ (Balthasar), a ‘liberation of theology by philosophy’ will take place today.”2 Not only is theology justified in sequestering phenomenology from the field of philosophy alone, it is enhanced and set free by its incisive methodology. If the science of phenomenology operates according to the aperture of the exacted reduction (epoché), by definition one cannot predetermine that which may or may not give or say itself to human perception to the measure that the reduction is deployed effectively. The genius of the phenomenological method is that it seeks to extricate and set aside all biases, pre-understandings and presuppositions (or what Husserl has called the “natural attitude”) from its purgative procedure of examination.3 Instead of beginning with so-called first principles, schemas of causality, predetermined configurations of reality, definitive laws of nature, metaphysical constructs, or frozen avatars of the transcendental ego, phenomenology proves itself to be a purely descriptive method of analysis. If this is truly the case with phenomenology, why could it not serve as a productive method for theology and the investigation of theological phenomena?

A. Phenomenology and Religious Traditions

Some may argue that theology implies a tacit acceptance of actual divine reality at first blush. Indeed, this is a valid objection as phenomenology would demand that any predetermination of God and divine revelation be held at bay according to the exigencies of the phenomenological reduction. Phenomenology cannot begin its method with an explicit or implicit assent to the truth status of a particular content of alleged divine revelation if it is to proceed with openness and intellectual integrity in describing phenomena as they give or say themselves in the course of human experience. Rather, the phenomenologist must bracket not the question of God but only any ready-made answers to this question. It would be intellectually dishonest to bracket out any question of possibility prior to the start of exploration. All questioning must remain open just as all possibilities must remain open if phenomenology is to succeed in its proposal and method. As a field of study, theology bears within itself its antithesis: a-theology, that is, the possibility that its object of study does not give or say itself—in a word, atheism. Moreover, the possibility of atheism is a necessary condition for any assertion of theological faith whatsoever. What, after all, is faith if not the overcoming of doubt? Faith is precisely the risk one takes in assenting to a proposition that may not be true after all. Joseph Ratzinger has put it this way:

No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself . . . Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man’s destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty.4

Ratzinger correctly notes that the phenomenon of faith is operative both in the affirmative and the negative responses to a proposition. Faith is that riskful stake a person puts in a given testimony, whether for or against a proposed state of affairs. The human act of faith, for instance, is a phenomenon that cannot be bracketed out of phenomenological inquiry for the simple reason that to commence the method of phenomenological analysis in the first place, one must put faith in the very method of phenomenology! Faith turns out to be a sine qua non of asking a question insofar as asking a question is to trust implicitly that an answer may be found and that the question itself is meaningful.

To recapitulate, the field of theology does not necessarily imply a ready-made answer to the question of God. Yet theology does imply asking the question of God vis-à-vis various religious traditions and their constitutive testimonies, including the tradition that proclaims that no God as such gives and/or says Godself—or in more common parlance, the tradition of atheism that holds that “there is” (es gibt) no God/s. Employing phenomenology as a helpful method within theology is to allow phenomenology to serve as a hermeneutic for diverse religious traditions and the question of God. Phenomenology thus comes as a welcome method for the expanding context of religious pluralism. A method of investigation is needed for today that allows all religious traditions to be put at arm’s reach—a method that levels the playing field of truth-claims and alleged instances of divine revelation. Phenomenology, as a method that claims to ask questions of universal proportion, permits so-called religious phenomena to be described while temporarily suspending the determination of the absolute truth status of such phenomena.5 The logic and rational coherence of religious phenomena can be examined while, at the same time, postponing the adjudication (that is, judgment) of their absolute veracity. In the end, phenomenology could be described as a method of observation and listening—or, more precisely, a method of attunement—whereby the human subject intentionally attempts to recognize the most precise intuitive data of phenomena as they say or give themselves prior to perception.6

B. What Is Phenomenology?

Before attempting to apply the method of phenomenology within the discipline of theology, it is necessary to define the primary steps of the method. Phenomenology is a distinct method within philosophy begun explicitly by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) at the beginning of the twentieth century.7 Trained as a mathematician, Husserl eventually turned his attention to logic and philosophy. His primary concern was to develop a philosophical method that would escape the vortex of relativism, or what was called in his day, “psychologism.” Since the turn to subjectivity, especially as inaugurated by Descartes, philosophy and psychology commonly fell prey to relativistic conclusions. Objectivity became a distant memory of Scholastic naïveté and all that was left was an assortment of indeterminate points of view. Was it possible to make contact with objective truth in a post-Cartesian world? Husserl wondered if objectivity and universal data were still possible and he sought to prove that they were. Beginning with his Logical Investigations of 1900–1901, Husserl began to develop what would come to be known as “phenomenology.” Derived from the Greek words phainómeno (“that which appears” or “shows itself”) and logos (“meaning, word, science”), phenomenology is the science of phenomena, or more specifically, the science of meaning, of that which gives, shows, or says itself. Phenomenology is concerned with getting “to the things themselves” as precisely as possible. It investigates how meanings or essences are given to consciousness through the interplay of intentionality and intuition. Phenomenology involves the human subject, what gives or says itself to the human subject, and the interaction between the two. Husserl would disciple many students, such as Edith Stein (1891–1942) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), who would take the method to new stages in its development. A host of others would continue to extend the tradition into the twenty-first century, including Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Michel Henry (1922–2002), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Paul Ricoeur, and Jean-Luc Marion. Phenomenology has come a long way since the work of Husserl, so much so that it cannot be confined to the work of Husserl alone. In fact, I suggest that there are two distinct strands within the tradition that have developed since Husserl, according to the following genealogy:

According to this diagram, the two schools of phenomenology that have evolved are (1) phenomenology of givenness and (2) hermeneutical phenomenology. Stein is placed in her own category because of her Thomistic (re)turn to metaphysics along with a phenomenology of givenness. The two schools branch off in the wake of Heidegger b...