The Reciprocal Causation of the Eucharist and the Church: A Critical Analysis from Catholic Theological Perspective
Francis Appiah-Kubi
Issue: Vol.6 No.6 September 2020 5th Anniversary Special Edition Article 6 pp. 318-324
DOI : https://doi.org/10.38159/erats.2020096 | Published online 24th September 2020.
© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
The Catholic Church believes in the intrinsic and inseparable bond of the Holy Eucharist and the Church. In reference to its dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium paragraph 11 (LG 11) the Church professes that the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, is “the source and summit of Christian life.” Each of these two sacraments effects and builds each other. This implies that as the church celebrates the Eucharist, the members as they partake in the Holy Communion manifest concretely their unity and become one body of Christ. This article seeks to underscore the indissoluble reciprocal causality of the Eucharist and the Church, while it stresses on the Eucharist as the origin, the being, and the destiny of the Church. The study drums home critically the idea that the Eucharist builds the Church, and the Church makes the Eucharist. These are but two complementary terms, the Body of Christ, the Church which lives and continuously builds itself up through the Eucharist, Body of Christ. This great theological theme is one of the central points of a deeper interest in Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican ecclesiology. However, the paper examines critically the reciprocal causality between the Church and the Eucharist from the Catholic perspective as proposed by H. de Lubac, a French theologian. It finally treats the interpenetration of the Eucharist as the Body of Christ and the Church as the Body of Christ from the perspective of sacramental theology.
Keywords: Eucharist, Church, Body of Christ, Interpenetration, Sacramental Theology, Reciprocal Causation.
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Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Francis Appiah-Kubi is a Senior Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, former Head of the Department of the Religious Studies Department at the Faculty of Social Science in the KNUST is currently Chairman of Tender Evaluation Panel (Goods and Services–Procurement). He is a Ghanaian Theologian specialized in Ecclesiology and studies in African Traditional Religions.
Appiah-Kubi, Francis. “The Reciprocal Causation of the Eucharist and the Church: A Critical Analysis from Catholic Theological Perspective ” E-Journal of Religious and Theological Studies – 5th Anniversary Special Edition 6, no.6 (2020): 318-324 https://doi.org/10.38159/erats.2020096
© 2020 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
