Objections to the belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist are numerous. Some attempt to expose the absurdities (here and here) of such belief. Others attempt to show that such belief contradicts what we know elsewhere in the Bible.
Consider, for example, the teaching that Paul gives to the Greeks in Athens: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man” (Acts 17:24).
Someone recently asked me, “How can we say God dwells in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church via Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist when Paul explicitly says otherwise?” It would seem that belief in the Real Presence contradicts what Paul says in Acts 17:24.
Is this true? Are believers in the Real Presence falling into the errors of ancient pagan Greeks?
If there’s one thing Catholics can agree on with Protestants, it’s that whatever we believe at least can’t contradict the Bible. Therefore, let’s see why this belief doesn’t contradict Paul’s teaching.
We must first establish the universe of discourse in which Paul makes the statement “God does not live in shrines made by man.” In other words, we need to know what Paul was targeting and what his listeners would have understood by “does not live in shrines.”
Recall that Paul is in Athens, and thus speaking to Greeks. For the Greeks, deities “lived” in these temples such that they were confined within the walls of the temples and didn’t exist anywhere else. The reason for this belief was due to their more fundamental belief that their deities dwelt in the carved statues located within the temple.
This is the sort of belief that was the target of criticism for several early Christian theologians. Take, for example, Justin Martyr. He argues against pagan idols in his First Apology, writing,
Neither do we honor with many sacrifices and garlands of flowers such deities as men have formed and set in shrines and called gods; since we see that these are soulless and dead (ch. 9, emphasis added).
Why would Justin need to make such an argument unless the pagans of his time thought their carved statues within their temples were alive, or at least had the deity dwelling within the image?
Clement of Alexandria also gives us insight that pagans, at least at the turn of the third century (A.D. 200), believed this as well. In his Stromata, Clement criticizes the pagans and their worship, writing,
Is it not the case that rightly and truly we do not circumscribe in any place that which cannot be circumscribed; nor do we shut up in temples made with hands that which contains all things? . . . And what can be localized, there being nothing that is not localized? Since all things are in a place. And that which is localized having been formerly not localized, is localized by something. If, then, God is localized by men, he was once not localized, and did not exist at all (7.5).
Clement is responding to pagans who worshiped the images of their pagan deities because they believed that their deities were “localized,” or contained, within such images.
This explains what Clement means in the preceding context when he says in Book 5, “for familiarity with the sight disparages the reverence of what is divine; and to worship that which is immaterial by matter, is to dishonor it by sense.” Of course, to think of divinity as being reducible to or confined within matter is to “disparage the reverence of what is divine.”
Such a pagan understanding of divinity stands in stark contrast to the Christian understanding of God, who is omnipresent—existing in all places. It’s this contrast that Paul is drawing out for the Greeks in Athens.
Paul intends to target the Greeks’ view of divinity and their worship that they give to such divinities and say that such belief and worship is false. And he offers Christian belief and worship in its place.
Now, here’s the key to dissolving the force of the objection: the denial of the Greek view of divine temple indwelling doesn’t logically entail the denial of all views of divine temple indwelling.
As mentioned above, the view of divine temple indwelling that Paul rejects is the Greek view. But that doesn’t mean a Christian can’t believe that God dwells in a Church via Jesus’ real presence in the tabernacle.
The reason such a rejection doesn’t follow is because belief in the Real Presence doesn’t necessarily entail the idea that God is confined within the four walls of a Christian church, like what the Greeks believed. A believer in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist can believe that God is omnipresent and at the same time affirm that he dwells in the tabernacle via the Eucharist in a unique way, like how the Jews believed that God is omnipresent and yet dwelt within the holy of holies in the holy tent of meeting and subsequently in Solomon’s temple (Exod. 40:34-38, Lev. 16, 1 Kings 8:1-13) in a unique way.
So, rather than belief in the Real Presence entailing a model of divine temple indwelling based on the Greeks, and thus subject to condemnation by Paul’s teaching, Christians who believe in the Real Presence have a model based on Jewish belief of divine temple indwelling, which is not subject to condemnation by Paul’s teaching.
Catholics, therefore, ought not to fear contradicting the Bible in their belief that God dwells in their churches via Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist.