While I’m sure if you asked them, the churchgoers would agree that Christ is “present”, they certainly don’t speak or act like it. Church seems more like a celebration that we are all together over HERE while God is somewhere over THERE. It’s the difference between words along the lines of, “We rejoice that we are gathered here to serve God” versus, “Lord, we are gathered here to serve YOU.” So much of the Mass is addressed directly _to_ God that it’s quite striking (at least it was to me) how much of a Protestant church service is instead _about_ God. I found it rather sad.

I would love to continue this discussion with you but am not sure that Michael’s combox is the right place for it. Mail me at wnp at doulos.at if you want to continue corresponding about that. Otherwise, let’s leave it at this point.

I never remotely suggested Christ was not present among non-Eucharistic gatherings of believers. Didn’t even touch on it. Now that it comes up, I’m just not quite sure what good it does to gather in Christ’s name and celebrate a “presence” in which he stays away in some important sense. Christ gives himself to us, holding nothing back, and we hang back and worry that he might be giving too much, that he can’t mean all of himself, as that doesn’t fit our reasoning about the body. Again, not a matter of what I say about such groups, but of what they say about themselves: Jesus’ body is up in heaven, and does not encounter us here.

What I really intended (in fact, what I think I did) was to use the sacramental point to drive toward a christological one. If you don’t want to call it truly Nestorian, fine, pick a different word for it–but there’s something faulty about any christology that can separate Jesus’ body from his presence. He is the Word made flesh, the crucified, Jesus of Nazareth, but when he comes to us only spiritually, how can we say any of these things of what comes to us?

So no need to speculate on the how of it. Doesn’t matter. He says he’s here, and we know that the (bodily) man Jesus of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, is the same as the eternal Word. So why would we do something as bizarre as try to separate out which parts of him come among us and which do not? Certainly he gives us no grounds on which to do this. Isn’t he one Lord?

I think it is going a bit far to assert that those who claim the spiritual presence of Christ without claiming the physical presence manifest a Nestorian Christology.

Even Catholics and Orthodox tend to accept the truth of Christ’s statement, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst” about non-Eucharistic gatherings of believers — their own and others’.

My own take on this is that while I do not understand HOW Christ is present in the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, Paul’s words in 1 Cor lead me to believe THAT he is present in some special way and that thus partaking of the consecrated elements is beneficial to me as a believer, not merely as an act of obedience but because God is at work in a special way in this sacrament/ordinance.

I am not really interested in arguing about this (as opposed to discussing it intelligently), but what’s really clear to me is that someone who denies that Christ is present in a special way in the LS should not get upset when those who believe that he is limit that belief to their own eucharistic celebrations.

For me this is a question of fundamental attitude, which I can illustrate with my reaction to the papal document Dominus Jesus. Many of my non-Catholic friends where scandalized because this document asserted that their churches were not churches in the narrow sense but merely ecclesial communities. That did not bother me at all; I am not a Roman Catholic because, among other things, I don’t believe the Pope is vested with an infallible magisterium. So why should I get upset when the Pope asserts something I disagree with? Instead of getting bothered by the Pope’s ecclesiology being different from mine, I rejoiced in all of the great things this document asserted about the Lord Jesus — which was really the point of the document, after all.

My usual response is, “When is He not present?”

This is followed by a bit of sputtering and back-tracking as the Pentecostals affirm that He is always present—that every Christian is indwelt by the Spirit—but at the service they could really tell He was there.

In other words, they were really aware of His presence where otherwise they would just take Him for granted.

In life or in a worship service, the constancy of His presence doesn’t ever change. What changes, I believe, is our awareness of it. And, sometimes, even our lack of sensing or being aware of His presence is a gift from Him. So, while I’m thrilled when I sense His presence, the bottom line is, I don’t really like that being a measuring stick of how spiritual a person or worship service was.

Still, I guess it is good to think about vocabulary for expressing this, because there are times when I really am bubbling over with how God made Himself known to me or touched me in a specific service and I want to be able to share that. And sharing it does take words.

Getting warmer. But “present in our worship” is not something we say. To say that He was present in our worship, but not theirs, suggests that one group’s worship was by its nature able to pull God out of heaven.

We sometimes do talk of receiving the body and blood of Christ with our mouths. But here we say He’s coming to us.

As to the blank, the word ‘physically’ has more than one dictionary definition. On is “of or pertaining to the human body.” I would agree with that one. That’s another way of saying that it is His body we are talking about. But to say Christ’s body is there physically is redundant. I might, however, say “Christ is physically present in the Sacrament” to mean that His body was present. The other definition of ‘physically’ is ‘materially.’ And when people take it that way, they are getting into the mode or manner of presence. If we ask “what” is present, the answer is “the body and blood of Christ.” If we ask “how” it is present, well, that is something we haven’t spent as much time on, and regard as pretty speculative.

One of the arguments I found helpful was coming from the other end. How if you take the denials too far, you end up with another kind of troublesome statement. If Christ is present in our service according to His divine nature, is his human nature separated from it? I don’t want to say yes. Luther argued that what was unique about communion was not that Christ was present, even according to the human nature, but that He chose to be present there for us.

Big danger in second guessing God. History has shown (and continues to show) the pitfalls in assuming any complete and total knowledge about him or how he wants things done in a particular way.

In the end Michael, this just seems to be an argument about semantics and I agree with fr. Peter.

If one just stops to think a moment, the imprecision of the notion of God being “really present” verses being “just present” is astounding. Usually these judgements are based on fellings. Careful reflection on why one might feel — good, warm, anointed, unction — is glaringly absent.

I, frankly, think concern about whether God is “really present” in a worship service is a waste of good brain space.

I think your post is insightful and helpful.