Talk of Christ's presence in the Eucharist has often been understood as endorsing the idea that celebrations of the Eucharist are nothing but liturgical assemblies in which their participants remember Christ and witness to him. A very different view of the Eucharist takes Christ to be literally on Christian altars (if also in heaven). Is one of these views preferable to the other? One can easily see how someone might want to embrace the first rather than the second since there seem to be formidable objections to the claim that when the Eucharist is celebrated Christ (the man who lived and taught in Galilee) comes to be present where something else is to start with (bread and wine). Theologians sometimes speak of the ‘Eucharistic change’, the idea being that what is first bread and wine comes to be the body and blood of Christ. But though one can readily grasp the idea that things often change into radically different things (that cows turn into beef, say), the ‘Eucharistic change’ (in traditional Catholic thinking, anyway) seems not to be a change in this sense. The idea is not that we start with some physical objects which become different physical objects because of ways in which causes in the world act on them. The idea seems to be that we start with bread and wine and that these, though not by being acted on by anything physical, truly become the body and blood of Christ while not appearing to be so. Our usual notion of change (as in cows becoming beef, or as in someone getting to look older) seems not really to work when it comes to talk about the Eucharist.
So how should one understand such talk? One might say that it is a deep mystery and should not be probed. Medieval thinkers, however, stand out, not so much as probing (should that suggest something impious) but as trying defensively to show that talk of Christ becoming present in the Eucharist is not demonstrably nonsensical, and that it should be understood with an eye on the notion of sacrament and on the final state of holy people (beatitude). In the present book Marilyn Adams seeks to explain how some medieval thinkers proceeded with such an agenda in mind. Her scholarship easily allows her sometimes to reference earlier medieval authors such as Anselm, but her focus is on four important thirteenth and fourteenth century ones (those mentioned in her title). Given her previous philosophical publications, one might expect Adams in this book systematically to develop a line of her own about how to think, or not to think, about the Eucharist. And she does sometimes briefly characterize what she reports as ‘startling’ or ‘odd’ (cf. pp. 237 f. and pp. 280 f.). She also ends up offering ‘an alternative focus’ to some things said by her authors on the life to come (pp. 202 ff). Insofar as her book presents a thesis, the ‘big idea’ is: ‘Where the metaphysics and physics of Eucharistic real presence are concerned, my authors were strikingly bold and remarkably resourceful. By contrast, they proved much less imaginative when it came to integrating medieval Christian insistence on material cult with traditional and emerging understandings of human nature and destiny’ (p. 3, and pp. 290 ff). But, as Adams says herself, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist is primarily ‘a work of historical theology and history of philosophy’ (p. 1), not an essay in theology or philosophical theology.
So given its intention, it fittingly starts with an account of Aristotelian theories of bodies and place designed ‘to orient students and non-specialists to ways of thinking that our principal authors took for granted’ (p. 4). Note, though, that ‘took for granted’ here does not mean ‘accepted’ since, as Adams explains, her authors vary in their approach to certain major Aristotelian teachings, notably concerning the notions of ‘form’. As she goes on to note later in the book, the authors she expounds all (in the light of their belief in God as Creator) seriously depart from what Aristotle envisages as they develop their Eucharistic thinking, and so Adams rightly makes it clear that medieval Eucharistic theology was often anything but straightforwardly Aristotelian, as some have taken it to be. In Chapters 2 and 3 Adams sketches what she calls ‘Western medieval commonplaces about what sacraments are and what they are for’ (p. 3). Chapters 1 to 3 of her book are really scene-setting discussions leading to its core: Chapters 4 to 10 dealing with what Adams calls ‘The Metaphysics and Physics of Real Presence’. Chapter 11 basically elaborates on what precedes it, but with an emphasis on eating and drinking (‘Take and eat … ’), while the final chapter contains an account of what some thirteenth century authors meant by speaking of sacraments as ceasing in our future (this is the place where Adams seems to be most critical of her authors).
Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist is most definitely a very distinguished volume. Adams knows her way around the work of the writers she deals with, and she recounts their thinking about the Eucharist (and other matters) in considerable detail. Her book is, therefore, compulsory reading for anyone with a serious interest in later medieval Eucharistic theology. Much of it is somewhat hard-going since Adams often packs a lot into a small space and since she often suddenly switches from expounding one of her authors to expounding another. In general (and with the exception of Chapter 1), the book seems to me to be geared less to a general or student audience than to people who are professionally working on certain medieval texts with a philosophical eye (though it also struck me at times that Adams sometimes makes expository assertions without providing as many references to back them up as she might have). But her book is a publishing landmark when it comes to its topic, and it should be received as such.
