Taste and See: Eucharist as Revelation in Phenomenological Perspective

J.W. Olson

doi:10.5771/9781978715790

Summary

J.W. Olson argues that recent Christian theologies of divine revelation, though often centered on the irreducibility of the incarnation, have not taken incarnality sufficiently into account as the mechanism for the knowledge of God in Christ. Addressing this problem within a secular context in which the viability of religious truth is under increased scrutiny, Olson engages with the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger to suggest that Christian language and belief are shaped at the precognitive level of embodied involvement long before they ever take mental, conceptual form. He then offers an original interpretation of the Eucharist as the material epicenter of Christian epistemology. In the sacrament, Christians are swept up into a dynamic world that reveals itself as the very person of Jesus Christ, so that Christians come to know Christ most fundamentally through the movements of the body. Recasting the parameters for identifying Christ’s sacramental presence, Olson reiterates the Christian focus on the incarnation as not just the medium of God’s self-revelation but as the very content of Christian faith. Christ is known in act, and so God is revealed where Christ lives in us.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2023
Copyright Year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-9787-1578-3
ISBN-Online: 978-1-9787-1579-0
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 246
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figure and Table No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
Revelation Revisited No access Pages 1 - 34
Understanding No access Pages 35 - 70
Language No access Pages 71 - 108
Personhood No access Pages 109 - 148
Eucharist as Revelation No access Pages 149 - 192
Eucharist as Hermeneutic No access Pages 193 - 220
Conclusion No access Pages 221 - 228
Bibliography No access Pages 229 - 236
Index No access Pages 237 - 244
About the Author No access Pages 245 - 246