Metousiosis is a Greek term (μετουσίωσις) that means, literally, a change of οὐσία (essence, inner reality). It was coined as a translation of the Latin word transsubstantiatio (transubstantiation), which likewise means a change of substantia (substance, inner reality). The website reproduces in English translation many instances in which councils, individual ecclesiastics, and other writers and theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Church used the Greek term in the same sense as the Latin term.

The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church, known also as The Catechism of St. Philaret states: "In the exposition of the faith by the Eastern Patriarchs, it is said that the word transubstantiation is not to be taken to define the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord; for this none can understand but God; but only thus much is signified, that the bread truly, really, and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord.". The official Greek version of this passage (question 340) uses the word "metousiosis".

Writing in 1929, Metropolitan of Thyatira Germanos said that an obstacle to the request for union with the Eastern Orthodox Church presented in the seventeenth century by some Church of England bishops was that "the Patriarchs were adamant on the question of Transubstantiation", which, in view of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Anglican bishops did not wish to accept.

In modern times some endeavour to give the word metousiosis a meaning distinct from transubstantiation, as illustrated in the rest of this article.

Relational action

According to the doctrine of metousiosis, the mystical action of the sacrament is relational; that is, several things happen by way of the mystery:

• the hypostasis of the bread and the wine are changed into the full reality of the Risen Christ — a full reality of the personal unity of Christ's Humanity and the Divinity together (some have stated this as "body, blood, soul and divinity"). This reality is as true as being Jesus of Nazareth present in the flesh and blood;
• the hypostases of the partakers in the mystery are changed in a mysterious way; and
• the communicants of the mystery are commissioned to live-forth the mystery into the world.

In this occurrence, the Church's sacrifice of praise and the sacrifice of Christ are mystically at-one. Hence, taking part in the mystery is also taking part in the at-one-ment (atonement) of Christ's eternal sacrifice, which was lived-out on Calvary. This calling to mindfulness and presence — anamnesis — thereby is effectually salvific.

During the action of this "calling Christ to mind," especially during the epiclesis (calling the Holy Spirit upon) during the consecratory Eucharistic prayer (which is variously called the anaphora, or the canon missae or, simply, the Great Thanksgiving), participants pray, by God's Holy Spirit:

• that their gifts will be transformed and made whole (holy),
• that they will be transformed and made whole (holy) by them, and
• that they will go forth to transform the world and make it whole (holy).

Thus understood, this whole Divine work of transformation is the metousiosis.

Contextual terminology

In this context, the word hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) is used as equivalent to ousia (οὐσία), essence, that which the word metousiosis indicates as being changed. In the change of the bread and wine (which is only one of the changes effected by metousiosis) the hypostases of bread and wine are mystically changed to be the hypostasis of the Risen Christ, as truly such as

Differences over meaning

Eastern writers have often used the word metousiosis, but some have been painstaking to distinguish their view from the medieval scholastic philosophical views of transubstantiation. As Dr. Claude Beaufort Moss writes in The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Dogmatic Theology (London S.P.C.K., 1965):

"The Greek term corresponding to transubstantiation is metousiosis, which, however, is not bound up with the scholastic theory of substance and accidents."

Some interpret the scholastic term "substance" as referring to the perceptible substance, part of the accidents, whereas the Latin term substantia (from sub- + stare) was coined to render the Greek term ὑπόστασις (from ὑπο- + ἵστημι), which, as stated above, was sometimes used as equivalent to οὐσία.

J.M. Neale on page 1172 of the work referenced below quotes (in a slightly different translation from that given above from the Catechism of St. Philaret) the 1672 Orthodox Council of Bethlehem, held in 1672:

"When we use the word metousiosis, we by no means think it explains the mode by which the bread and wine are converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, for this is altogether incomprehensible . . . but we mean that the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord, not figuratively or symbolically, nor by any extraordinary grace attached to them . . . but . . . the bread becomes verily and indeed and essentially the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord."

Some, unlike J.M. Neale, have been known to assert that documents of the Roman Catholic Church do claim to explain the manner or mode by which the bread and wine are converted into the Body and Blood of Christ. The assertion has been made on this page with regard to an unspecified part of One bread, one body of the Catholic Bishops Conferences of Great Britain and Ireland, which on the contrary states, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1333, that the change "happens 'in a way surpassing understanding'."

Lutheran and Anglican official doctrinal statements reject transubstantiation outright.

Metousiosis, understood as the doctrine that the Eucharist concerns more than the bread and wine and affects the participants and, especially through them, the world, is, of course, a much older concept than the word, and is a belief shared by the Roman Catholic Church (see Pope John Paul II's Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia,Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1391-1397, etc.)

Generally, Eastern Christians hold that the essential change is effected through the whole prayer of the Church by the action of the Holy Spirit, and this is why Eastern writers have tended to place greater emphasis on the epiclesis than on the Narrative of the Institution in the Eucharistic consecration.

See also

• Real Presence
• Eucharistic theologies contrasted
• Eucharist

References

• Rev. Theorides commentary on "Our Liturgy" expounds on metousiosis, in this Liturgy and Prayer booklet widely used in Greek Orthodox parishes in the United States.
• An excellent commentary on this theology.

External links on metousiosis and on



development of the Eucharistic doctrine

• An exposition on Eucharistic mysticism that connects to the Eternal Sacrifice, by Bishop C.W. Leadbeater of the Liberal Catholic Church.