UBIQUITY, EUCHARISTIC. - A Lutheran error, which claims to explain the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist by the communication of divine omnipresence to the human nature of the Redeemer.
This anti-metaphysical conception already found some precursors in the Middle Ages. In the 9th century Scotus Eriugena gives a hint of it (De divisione naturae, V, 38: PL 122,994); in the 12th century the heretic Amaury of Bène maintained that the Body of Christ is present everywhere, even in ordinary bread, and that therefore the words of consecration attest the real presence, they do not produce it (« subesse ostenditur»: cf. Garnier of Rochefort, Contra Amaurianos, in Jahrbuch für Phil. und spekul. Theol., 7 [1893], pp. 56-57). In the same century, Folmar of Triefenstein, according to his adversary Arno of Reichersberg (v.), affirmed that «corpus Christi, quod sumimus, non aliter in tam multis locis simul esse posse, nisi Christus corporaliter sit ubique» (Apologet. contra Folmarum, ed. Weichert, Leipzig 1888, p. 162). In the 14th century Ockham admitted that the eucharistic Body of Christ can be condensed ad instar puncti and be present «ubique per potentiam divinam, non virtute propria» (In IV Sent., q. 4; cf. Quodlibet, 1, 4 de Sacramento Altaris, 6). In the 16th century Lefèvre d'Étaples (Faber Stapulensis) set forth the ubiquistic 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 the discourse Vom Sakrament des Leibes und Blutes Christi (ed. Weimar, XIX, p. 482 ff.), in March 1527 in the polemical writings against Zwingli and Oecolampadius: Dass diese Worte: das ist mein Leib noch feststehen (ed. cit., XXIII, p. 28 ff.) and in 1528 in the work Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis (ed. cit., XXIV, p. 261 ff.). In these writings, following the Ockhamist theory, he first attributes to the Body of Christ the prerogative of spirituality and therefore of definitive presence (modo Angelorum), then goes so far as to say that the humanity of Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the Father (that is, 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, although it could communicate the flesh of Jesus to us through all things, has chosen bread and wine to make it suited to our needs as men.
Rejected by the other «reformers» (Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon), this theory became a dogma among the Lutherans, after the article of Schwabach (1529). The interpretation, however, of this «article of faith» gave occasion for a heated controversy after Luther's death. Tenaciously upheld by Flacius Illyricus and by Martin Brenz (who elaborated its definitive formula: the humanity of Christ has obtained divine omnipotence, so that in the Eucharist it acquires the esse definitive of spirits and the esse repletive of God), but attacked by Melanchthon, by Frederick III Elector of the Palatinate, by Philip of Hesse and by the Synod of Dresden (1571), u. was defended to the last by the well-known theologian Andréa, who went so far as to declare a hardened heretic and worthy of the greatest punishments anyone who had denied the omnipotence of the humanity of Christ in stones, in plants, in animals, etc. Although combated by Lucas Maius, Andréa's idea triumphed almost everywhere. Chemnitz, a conciliatory spirit, proposed a middle way (1578), which served to mitigate the primitive u. in the Formula Concordiae (1580). Despite the moderation of this Lutheran formula of faith, integral u. resurfaced among the two Swabian theologians Leander Hutter and Aegidius Hunnius, who influenced, during the first half of the 17th century, the three schools of Tübingen (extreme tendency), of Giessen (more mitigated tendency) and of Helmstedt (minimalist form).
After the middle of the 18th century u. disappeared, absorbed by the new theory of kenosis (v.). Recently it has reappeared in certain theological tendencies condemned by Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis (1951).