Sacrifice As Gift

Conclusion

287 • De la Taille’s early-twentieth-century work on eucharistic theology provides a new (and not new), forward-looking (and ancient) vision of sacrifice. Mysterium Fidei accomplishes this largely through a retrieval of biblical and patristic sources. But de la Taille also casts a discerning eye toward the best history-of-religions research available at the turn of the twentieth century and seeks an impressive integration of Thomistic thought, as well. His methodology aligns him closely and nascently to the spirit of nouvelle théologie emerging in the second quarter of the twentieth century—but not to the increasingly trenchant refusal of scholastic categories tout court.1 As we have seen, de la Taille’s work on grace demonstrates that he was a creative thinker deeply interested in questions about the supernatural, questions that would polarize theology in the 1940s and that perdure in these first decades of the twentyfirst century. I suggested at the opening of this study that contemporary eucharistic theologians portray a deep divide on the question of sacrifice, presenting two divergent tracks or approaches. The first approach is described as a magisterial teaching that yet articulates the church’s theology of sacrifice in the language of Trent, employing scholastic categories and borrowing “misleading” categories from a history-of-religions ap1 . In his article “Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie” (The Thomist 64 [2000]: 1–19) Aidan Nichols highlights that some voices within the movement, J. Daniélou, for instance, suggested that Scholastic theology had reached an “obsolete” point in Christian thought (4–6). Such a sentiment is far beyond the letter and spirit of de la Taille’s writing. • 288 • Conclusion proach to sacrifice. In recent years, an emerging desire within the church for worship in the Tridentine rite seems to accord with this “official” vision of sacrifice. The second track, heralded by a majority of post-Vatican II theologians, rejects this earlier notion of sacrifice and desires to radically transform the theology of eucharistic sacrifice. In large part they renounce the temple-ritual denotation of sacrifice, along with its accompanying aspects of violence and propitiation, preferring instead to think of “sacrifice” in terms of an ethic of gift, of self-offering. These theologians tend to focus their attention both on “sacrifice” as the self-gift of God and on the transformation of the eucharistic worshippers—rather than attending to sacrifice as a human action directed to God and to the transformation of the bread and wine. I have hoped to demonstrate that de la Taille’s own mystical-theological synthesis leads a nuanced way through this perceived opposition. While he refuses (and rightly so, I think) to disown the ritual-liturgical context of sacrifice, he also argues that oblation—and not immolation —stands at the heart of sacrifice. At the same time, he proposes that sacrifice falls under the genus-definition of gift, thereby requiring a close exploration of the nature of gift-giving between creature and Creator . Critical to his endeavor is a careful parsing of the external-internal signifying function of the gift dynamic, emphasizing the necessity of an exterior sign of the soul’s desire and longing for union with the divine. By way of conclusion, let me rehearse the six central aspects of de la Taille’s thought, which define a viable third alternative for contemporary eucharistic theology. This alternative embraces a wide spectrum of the tradition. First, de la Taille does indeed “spiritualize” sacrifice, but he does so without divesting sacrifice of its temple-ritual context. He engages the history-of-religions context (as does recent teaching from the Roman magisterium),2 and, in fact, finds therein the central key to his theory: the distinction between oblation and immolation in sacrificial acts. De la Taille contends that oblation (and not destruction)—specifically an external, ritual offering—is the central and determining element of 2. See, for instance, John Paul II’s Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003). 289 • Conclusion sacrifice. However mundane this may sound to contemporary ears, his insight marked a decisive shift away from post-Tridentine immolationist theories. This delineation of oblation and immolation in sacrifice allows de la Taille to argue that the Last Supper and the cross are a single sacrifice: the priestly actions of Jesus with the bread and wine in the cenacle manifest the oblation of the sacrifice; his violent crucifixion represents the immolation of the sacrifice. The supper-oblation is fundamental for...