The Gluten Problem Foreshadowed

The later gluten problem is already implicit.

If valid matter must be bread, and if the sacramental species retain bread’s natural operations, then the modern body cannot be ignored.

This does not mean medieval theologians caused modern celiac disease. It means their categories remain active when modern medicine asks what wheat does in vulnerable bodies.

The 2017 Vatican guidance on gluten-free hosts belongs later in the book’s chronology, but Chapter 8 already previewed it.¹

Here the point is doctrinal preparation. Transubstantiation preserves a distinction between metaphysical identity and bodily operation.

That distinction is elegant. It is also difficult for a culture trying to ask whether wheat should remain central.

The next chapters follow the doctrine as it hardens through controversy, leaven, and Reformation dispute.

Related sections: Lateran And Aquinas; Azymes At The Altar.