Sacred Space 2
Transubstantiation, Zwinglian or Real Participation I was quite pleased while reading Joseph Ratzinger’s (now Pope Benedict XVI) piece “On the Meaning of Church Architecture” in his Dogma and Preaching , “We could summarize this finding in the formula: Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, has replaced the Temple. Or, in a way that more clearly applies to our question: What the Temple was for the Old Testament is supplied for the Church, not by any building, but rather by a man--the God-man Jesus Christ” (235). Though he will continue to make the case, based on transubstantiation, that a church building must “express the fact that inside there is God’s presence, an incursion of the eternal into time” (238), nevertheless, his admission that the temple is replaced by Christ Himself, is significant as we think of sacred space for worship. [To see why Ratzinger's admission that the Church building is not a Temple is important see my previous post Sacred Space 1 ] To put the issue pr...