In a short monograph of 2018 Stephen Shaver investigated eucharistic sacrifice using a cognitive linguistic approach. Now in this much longer and deeper study he uses the same methodology to discuss eucharistic presence with the belief that this can be of ecumenical benefit. An Episcopalian priest, Shaver notes that the Anglican liturgical tradition tends towards a hermeneutic of multiplicity, and therefore is an ecclesial tradition that is disinclined to commit to a single metaphor to explain the transcendent. Shafer's preferred lens is that of metaphor, which in modern linguistic scholarship is regarded as embodied thought, and not some simple figure of speech. His chosen interlocuters include Dancygies, Kövecses, Masson and Sanders as well as Lakoff. Drawing on their studies Shaver stresses that there is no alterative to metaphors because they are an inherent part of human cognition. Chapter ii of this book sets out to summarise recent thinking on cognition and metaphors. Having laid the groundwork, in subsequent chapters Shaver explores these findings as applied to the Last Supper narrative and the interpretive words of Jesus, asking the question, what it might mean to ‘feed on Jesus’? He notes how words blend and change. The technical discussion pivots towards the terminology used in St Mark's Gospel and 1 Corinthians xi, and then to historical discussion of eucharistic battles over presence. Particular attention is given to the difference in understanding of how words are used between Luther and Zwingli. Zwingli regarded alloeosis as a matter of rhetorical elegance, and believed words have fixed meanings. In contrast, Luther tended towards the idea that metaphors create new meanings for words, and Shaver sees this as foreshadowing recent thinking on cognitive linguistics and how language works. Zwingli understood language as monosemy whereas Luther recognised the reality of polysemy. Shaver also sees Calvin's belief that a sign is not totally separated from the reality. Appealing to Masson, Shaver notes how the term ‘Messiah’ is reconfigured in the Gospels, and this points to how bread/wine and body/blood can be understood. Chapters v–ix take up the terms ‘Identity’, ‘Representation’, ‘Change’, ‘Containment’ and ‘Conduit’, which have been used to categorise various approaches to explain eucharistic presence. ‘Representation’ is represented by a Zwinglian approach, whereas ‘Change’ is the terminology for Roman Catholic teaching (transubstantiation) and the Eastern Churches (transmutation). ‘Containment’ as ‘in, with and under’ is Luther's approach, and ‘Conduit’ is more applicable to Calvin, Hooker and a good many seventeenth-century Anglicans. Using the insights of cognitive linguistics, Shaver suggests that all of these are valid but each one by itself is inadequate. Ecumenical rapprochement is possible when all agree that all these may be used together, which would require all parties to accept the insights of contemporary cognitive linguistics.
Shaver's book is potentially one of the most promising ecumenical contributions since George Hunsinger's The eucharist and ecumenism (2008). The problem might be that some will immediately dismiss the book because of their own rather facile understanding of the term metaphor. Reinhard Hütter, for example, in his book Aquinas on transubstantiation (2019), asserts that the words ‘This is my body, this is my blood’ are to be taken at face value and not as spiritual or metaphorical flights from reality (my italics). This presupposes a particular diminished understanding of spiritual (in Neoplatonism spiritual is the only abiding reality), and had Hütter read his coreligionist Janet Martin Soskice's work on metaphors, he would have known that there is no such thing as ‘a mere metaphor’. Those who assume a popular facile meaning of ‘metaphorical’ as a description of an object that is not true should be enlightened by the studies that Shaver has used as the basis for this study. It would be a shame if the insights he uses fall on deaf ears. Those with ears to hear and eyes to see will find some helpful goods to bring to the meal that still divides.
