EUCHARISTIC UBIQUISM
Eucharistic Ubiquism is a Lutheran error which claims to explain the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist by means of the communication of divine omnipresence to the human nature of the Redeemer.
This antimetafisical conception found some precursors even in the Middle Ages. In the 9th century, John Scotus Eriugena alludes to it (De divisione naturae, V, 38: PL 122, 994); in the 12th century, Almaric of Bène maintained that the Body of Christ is present everywhere, even in ordinary bread, and that therefore the words of consecration merely attest to the real presence, rather than producing it (cf. Garnier of Rochefort, Contra Amaurianos, in Jahrbuch für Phil. und spekul. Theol., 7 [1893], pp. 56-57). In the same century, Folmar of Trefenstein, according to his adversary Arno of Reichenberg (q.v.), affirmed that “the Body of Christ, which we receive, cannot be in so many places at once unless Christ is bodily everywhere” (Apologet. contra Folmarum, ed. Weichert, Leipzig 1888, p. 162). In the 14th century, Ockham admitted that the eucharistic Body of Christ can be contracted to the size of a point and be present “ubique per potentiam divinam, non virtute propria” (In IV Sent., q. 4; cf. Quodlibet, I, 4 de Sacramento Altaris, 6). In the 16th century, Lefèvre d'Étaples (Faber Stapulensis) enunciated the ubiquist thesis, though without eucharistic concerns.
Luther certainly knew this formulation of the error, which he proposed, applying it to the Eucharist, on 29 March 1526 in his discourse Vom Sakrament des Leibes und Blutes Christi (ed. Weimar, XIX, pp. 482ff.), in March 1527 in his polemical writings against Zwingli and Œcolampadius: Dass diese Worte: das ist mein Leib noch feststehen (ed. cit., XXIII, pp. 28ff.), and in 1528 in his work Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis (ed. cit., XXIV, pp. 261ff.). In these writings, following the eucharistic theory, he first attributes to the Body of Christ the prerogative of spirituality and thus of definitive presence (angelic mode), and then goes so far as to say that the humanity of Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father (i.e., made a partaker of God’s omnipotence), is present wherever the divine omnipotence extends (omnia implet): consequently, the Body of Christ is present everywhere, but in the Eucharist it is present for us, according to the divine will, which, though able to communicate the flesh of Jesus through all things, chose bread and wine to render it suitable to our human needs.
Rejected by the other “Reformers” (Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon), this theory became a dogma among Lutherans after the Schwabach Articles (1529). The interpretation of this “article of faith,” however, gave rise to a heated controversy after Luther’s death. Tenaciously defended by Flacius Illyricus and Martin Bucer (who elaborated its definitive formula: the humanity of Christ has obtained divine omnipresence, whereby in the Eucharist it acquires the esse definitive of spirits and the esse repletivum of God), but attacked by Melanchthon, Frederick III, Elector Palatine, Philip of Hesse, and the Synod of Dresden (1571), ubiquism was defended to the utmost by the noted theologian Andrea, who went so far as to declare pertinaciously heretical and worthy of the severest penalties anyone who denied the omnipresence of the humanity of Christ in stones, plants, animals, etc. Though opposed by Lucas Maior, Andrea’s idea prevailed almost everywhere. Chemnitz, a conciliatory spirit, proposed a middle way (1578), which served to moderate the original ubiquism in the Formula of Concord (1580). Despite the moderation of this Lutheran confessional formula, integral ubiquism resurfaced among the two Swabian theologians Leonard Hutter and Giles Hunnius, who influenced, during the first half of the 17th century, the three schools of Tübingen (radical tendency), Giessen (more mitigated tendency), and Helmstedt (minimalist form).
After the mid-18th century, ubiquism disappeared, absorbed by the new theory of kenosis (q.v.). Recently it has reappeared in some theological tendencies condemned by Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis (1951).