We Who Are Many Are One Body: Rethinking the Real Presence of Christ in the Loaf and the Church

This was my term paper for Laurel Schneider's "Theologies of Multiplicity" class. I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, and I thought others might be interested in reading it.

I draw primarily from Schneider's Beyond Monotheism and from Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible to dialogue with my understanding of real presence in hopes of probing and prompting possibility.

A short abstract: This paper will attempt to re-imagine an understanding of real presence in terms of multiplicity. First I will briefly survey some of the common historical understandings of real presence and how the doctrine functions in the observance of the Eucharist, and point out how these understandings favor obedience to the law of identity over what I argue is a more polydoxically Christian understanding, free of this obligation and open to a multiplicity of identities. Then I will join the cacophonous chorus of constructive theology and rethink what real presence might look like, taking seriously relational ontology and dynamic incarnation, and assert that the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist materializes rhizomatically as the Body of Christ, in and as the flesh and bodies of those who participate in the ritual, such as the many are one and the one is many.

We Who Are Many Are One Body: Rethinking the Real Presence of Christ in the Loaf and the Church