I'm caught up short by SR's saying "magic" and "Aristotelian" because I do think that WHAT a thing IS is only an easy question if you don't think about it. But once you ask "What is a thing?" and that whole family of questions, well, SOMEBODY is going to start doing metaphysics. It seems unavoidable to me.
So if/when IHS says
τουτο εστιν το σωμα μου... Τουτο εστιν το αιμα μου της διαθηκης...
How does one understand that simply?
One thing we bring to the conversation is that we think his word makes it so. So thinking that, we think a change happens as he speaks. But it still has the appearances, the sensible qualities of bread or wine. So what changed? Nothing 'material,' evidently.
And then when a convert says, "What do you mean, what did he mean?" how do you answer -- simply? SOMEBODY's going to bring something to the table whether he says a change happened or no change happened.
Verga: I don't see how ειμι could be passive - or deponent. Did you mean, maybe, intransitive?
My quote is from Mark, BTW.
Generally, other languages (Spanish, Italian, maybe Latin and Greek) have a funny thing going on with words that, at root, mean "stand" and words which pertain more simply to being. We say, "How ARE you?" but Spanish asks "Como estas?" where estas is a 'stand' (or "state" verb. And unless we have to, that's why I don't want to go running into that maze.
I feel your pain. :) CS Lewis used an example of a chair. Anyone who thinks describing the reality of being a chair is easy, hasn't, as you say, thought about it. That does not however, prevent us from immediately recognizing it's 'chairness' and using it properly. For most humans, even a recklessly casual exposure to the object will produce the same result. If we see a chair, we may well sit it in, and rely upon it, though we are dumb as rocks as to what it really, actually 'is," and why it is holding us up.
Which is why I am grateful that God is the one communicating these truths through His word and His Spirit, and not through the wisdom of men. Though it should be obvious, He hides the truth from the wise and reveals it unto babes.
As for his word "making it so," we certainly agree in principle. He spoke, and the universe sprang into being from nothing. But it was an identifiable, discernable change. He turned the water into wine. But there is no record of him saying of the water, while it still looked and behaved like water, "this is wine." There was a discernable transition that occurred in real time.
In fact, I am not aware of any contradiction to this implied principle, that whenever he changed any material object or physical condition by His word, the result was always discernable to ordinary, even unspiritual human observers.
Yet Aquinas et al run against that pattern and would have us believe a transformative miracle has occurred upon a physical object, for which there is no discernable physical evidence, and for which, in language under ordinary rules of construction, there is no command given to effect such a transformation.
This is asking for more faith than Abraham had. Or perhaps less. A definite and promise was given, and Sarah did give birth, after all, to a physical son. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, true, but it can hardly be evidence that a command never given resulted in a change never detected. Abraham believed something would happen, and it did happen, and everyone knew it happened.
So in the view of Abrahamic faith, there is no need to make excuses for undetectable miracles issuing from undetected commands. God is perfectly capable both of expressing to us when he has commanded change, and of bringing it to pass in a way that unmistakeably manifests His glory and power. Under the ordinary rules of language, we know when he tells the lame man to pick up his bed and walk, or when he commands the sea to be calm. Like the Roman captain says, just say the word, and I know it will happen. And it did, in an open and discernable way.
And he is also perfectly capable of using the ordinary language of simple description, when he tells us that a farm field represents the world, the wheats represent believers, and the tares represent unbelievers. He created all these objects, and the language to describe them. That does not mean that at the moment of speaking about them he changed them. He is only speaking descriptively of things He already created in time past.
So, as I said, I am happy to agree with you on his power to create any reality he chooses. But if he chooses to use an expression which, per Occam's razor, is best understood, under the ordinary rules of language, not as a pop quiz on speculative metaphysics, or a cryptic signal of crypto-creation, but as a simple, garden variety descriptive analogy, then what can justify our venturing unbidden into deeper waters, and worse, to pronounce anathema's on those who are unwilling to join in the speculation, as Trent certainly did re transubstantiation?
Just as an observation, the adjective καινης needs to be put in there someplace. But laying aside all the fancy mode of address, one's choices are limited. the verb "to be" is in the present active indicative third person singular. The "is" means time is involved, and "present tense" means that the sense is that of an action in progress, something continually being. It has no other sense.
Thus, keeping faithfully to a literal interpretation, the language is simply either literal, or it is figurative-literal. There are no other choices. Literally, Jesus is saying that either (a) the bread loaf is of the same substance, character, and use as the flesh of His body, or that (b) its nature, preparation, and use are to be taken figuratively to represent the literality of His Body as a sacrifice. Jesus is also saying (verb tense) that the item of bread in His hand may be habitually regarded spiritually in its ritual ingestion as a reminder of His Body given for them/us. With these choices in mind, no sane onlooker could or would understand that (a) above is true, as being a literally transmitted fact.
Therefore, only (b) can be a rationally acceptable statement that the bread loaf in its current state can be viewed figuratively as illustrative of His Body (not his flesh) as a burnt offering. Note that he is communicating the abstract concept "Compare this bread loaf to my Body in a spiritual sense, not a literal, carnal sense."
The same hermeneutic process applies in the same way, to His announcement of the paradigm of ritually partaking of unfermented juice of the grape being (Gk present tense) a reminder of His Blood, that was to be shed for them as a sin offering.
No other interpretation is possible without introducing doctrinal schism in its explanation or application. The normal interpretation of this passage is a plainly obvious one attributing Jesus as using figurative expression, as He did at the time reported in John 6:35 and onward in that lesson, and which from Him the twelve learned of spiritual application of a literal object or process. Other disciples, interpreted what he said as speaking literally/carnally and not figuratively/spiritually, and walked away, not to return again (see Jm. 6:61-66 and be advised, especially 6:65).
Problems arise when something is read into a passage (eisegesis) that is not there, when a literal hermeneutic (exegesis) is abandoned for an allegorical one. The abnormal transubstantiation implementation is just such a one.
We say, "How ARE you?" but Spanish asks "Como estas?" where estas is a 'stand' (or "state" verb. And unless we have to, that's why I don't want to go running into that maze.
What you are introducing here in Koine would be the perfect tense, an action completed in the past with a continuing effect or consequence. This has no relevance to the verb tense you are discussing, if I may point out.