The thickness of things and the godding of Gods

eucharist, discipleship, and trinity

pp. 147-166

in: Peter S. Dillard, Non-metaphysical theology after Heidegger, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

Dillard applies Gelassenheit theology to specific antinomies in traditional Catholic thinking about the Eucharist and recent Catholic thinking about religious vocations. The paradoxical understanding of transubstantiation as grounded in autonomous substances both available and not available to our senses is eschewed in favor of a non-paradoxical understanding of the Eucharistic as a transition from the ordinary "thickness' of things made phenomenally salient through our mindful practices in daily life to a new sacred "density" communicated through participation in religious ritual. Additionally, an existential confusion that Sandra M. Schneiders ascribes to human beings threatens to undermine her initially attractive account of celibate religious life. Dillard disarms this threat by construing members of religious communities as "future ones' intimating the possibility of humans fully and non-confusedly sharing in the plurality of a divinity that is no multiplicity.