Beyond the Body: An Antitheology of the Eucharist

The Eucharist has become the central act of Christian life and worship. Unresolved disagreements about it however remain as obstacles to religious unity and to developing a eucharistic spirituality adapted to the unpredictable standards of a deconstructed critically driven postmodern age. Beginning with a reassessment of medieval realist doctrines of the Eucharist Beyond the Body argues that the real meaning of the Words of Institution is their use in fulfilling the Last Supper command of Jesus to be remembered. Where traditional doctrines of the Eucharist and their corresponding forms of piety dead-end in intellectual conundrum or disembodied symbolism that command evokes a world of transformative events with the historical Jesus of the Last Supper as real and constant partner. As an antitheology the task of this book is to sketch the intellectual footprint of a nonmetaphysical eucharistic faith. Setting aside traditional approaches however will have been worth it only if this enables a eucharistic belief that meets the needs of and is fruitful for religious life in general. Its ultimate goal is to refocus eucharistic piety on the liturgical act itself as a transformative event united in time with the person of Jesus in both remembrance and thanksgiving. Heaney ingeniously uses Alain Badious notion of anti-philosophy to develop an anti-theology of the Eucharist. Critical of traditional objective approaches Heaneys anti-theology seeks to locate the reality of the Eucharist non-objectively in its contingent repetition as lived liturgical event. Beyond the Body should be required reading for anyone interested in eucharistic thought and practice but also for those more generally concerned with rethinking the nature of theological reflection. --Hollis Phelps University of Mount Olive Mount Olive NC Beyond the Body is an extended meditation on the do this of the institution narrative pursued through consideration of a host of unusual suspects such as Plato Anselm Kierkegaard and Badiou. It is both a delight to read and a challenging intellectual workout partly because it is exceptionally well written but mostly because it proposes a new critical theological account of the Eucharist. --Siobhan Garrigan University of Dublin Dublin Ireland James J. Heaney is Lecturer in Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion at Cleveland State University Cleveland Ohio.