Five Reasons I Reject the Doctrine of Transubstantiation

Reclaiming the Mind Credo House ^ | March 8, 2013 | C Michael Patton

[metmom]

And then there's the fact that the RCC calls the sacrifice of the mass an unbloody sacrifice,which is really no sacrifice at all.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P41.HTM

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different." "In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner."188

Deuteronomy 12:16 Only you shall not eat the blood ; you shall pour it out on the earth like water.

When Christ died, His blood was poured out as was required by the law.

Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Since without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins, a bloodless sacrifice is a useless one. It cannot atone for sin.

Jesus commanded His disciples to drink the cup. Catholics claim that doing so is partaking of the literal body and blood of Himself. However, if the mass is an unbloody sacrifice, where does the blood for the cup come from?

Which body of Christ is the priest sacrificing in the mass? The old one that walked this earth?

Or the new resurrected and glorified one? The Bible is very clear that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin. (Hebrews 9:22)

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” (Leviticus 17:11)

Despite the clear teaching of Scripture, Rome has an “unbloody sacrifice.” They say it’s a propitiatory sacrifice, but the Bible says without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. So not only is it unnecessary to sacrifice Christ again and again, but an unbloody sacrifice is worthless to make atonement for sin. An unbloody sacrifice is no sacrifice at all! (By .45 Long Colt)

[metmom]

You have the words of eternal life.

The WORDS of eternal life. Not the flesh of eternal life.

[maryz]

and the flesh is no help at all.

Even the Body (which is of course flesh) of Christ which was given up for us?

[MHGinTN]

beautifully assembled! If we were grading, I’d offer an A+ on a scale of F to A ... but God does not grade on a scale for Righteousness is not measured in degrees of same. If we sinners do not have His righteousness covering us, we are unrighteous. Can’t drink or eat the righteousness of God into you. well done, m’Lady!

[MHGinTN]

Jesus said it. John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. 64 "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him> right there Jesus says eating His flesh is of no profit because you cannot eat the spirit into you.

God's Life, the Spirit of Life comes in not by mouth, eating the flesh, for Jesus explained to His disciples that the entire scene in John 6 is not about the flesh but the spirit: eating the flesh, as He used in sarcasm with the ones He knew were not going to stick with the mission, eating the actual flesh profits nothing. It is the Spirit Who makes alive. And He said His words are spirit and truth.

Humans have inherited a dead spirit from Adam. By the blood of Christ shed in His death, the atonement Has been made for all forever. That atonement allows The righteousness of God to be deposited in your suddenly clean human spirit by the presence of the Holy Spirit spark. You cannot eat that spark into you. Only God puts His life in anyone. See the example of this phenomenon at the day of Pentecost preaching and in the House of Cornelius.

God's Spirit comes into those believers because they did something very similar if not exactly like what Moses prefigured with the brass snake in the desert, to heal the poisonous bite of vipers killing Israelites.+- And we may be certain this is to be seen as comparative because that is the lesson Jesus gave to Nicodemus in John 3.

[RnMomof7]

You may know the truth better than I, but I'll need some persuading that you know Aquinas better than I.

Thomas Aquinas took the position that Christ is not present "locally." But by that he did he deny that Christ's presence is physical?

But again, the physical presence of the risen Christ is something different, something new. The risen Lord enters into our midst. And then we can do no other than say, with Saint Thomas: my Lord and my God! Adoration is primarily an act of faith – the act of faith as such. God is not just some possible or impossible hypothesis concerning the origin of all things He is present. And if he is present, then I bow down before him.
Then my intellect and will and heart open up towards him and from him. In the risen Christ, the incarnate God is present, who suffered for us because he loves us. We enter this certainty of God’s tangible love for us with love in our own hearts. This is adoration, and this then determines my life. Only thus can I celebrate the Eucharist correctly and receive the body of the Lord rightly.

Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2011 --- Benedict XVI

[maryz]

Christ also said, “This is My Body . . . This is the cup of My Blood”, and you find that easy enough to dismiss . . .

[RnMomof7]

Christ also said, “This is My Body . . . This is the cup of My Blood”, and you find that easy enough to dismiss . . .

Did Jesus and the apostles eat the real, actual flesh and drink the real actual blood of Christ at the Last supper?

[MHGinTN]

No, Jesus did not said:Matthew 26:27 Then he took a cup, [The Passover cups never had blood in them, always just wine} and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. [The disciples would immediately understand relating to the Passover Seder of drinking the wine as a memorial USING WINE NOT THE BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE, for in the Seder the wine is specifically spoken of as symbol of the blood of the sacrifice for their deliverance from the death Angel] 29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine [RIGHT there Jesus tells you that what is in the cup is wine!] from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” There is a huge difference that we must comprehend if we are to stop this faux Eucharist and do as Christ Instructed, do this bread and wine as a Remembrance of His death, as Paul explained so succinctly.

The Remembrance Jesus instituted is a part of the Passover Seder no longer prefigured with the Passover, but actualized in the death upon the cross.

[MHGinTN]

“you find that easy enough to dismiss” Actually, yes, it is easy enough to show that the material in the cup was wine, not blood, since Jesus HMSELF said so, as the LAws forbade (Lev 3:17), and as the Passover which they were in the midst of celebrating, taught for generations prior to The Christ coming to be with us. Mixing the scene in John 6 with the actual establishment of the remembrance the night before His death is a sure way to keep you confused. I wonder who wants that, wants you confused so that you continue to believe you eat Jesus IN ANY FORM in order to have God’s Life in you? Who wants to mock the death of Jesus as the propitiation for my sins and yours? Who wants to use people with sincere hearts toward God, to mock God’s Grace? Yup, the evil one, the accuser of the brethren, the one of sin and lawlessness.

[Gamecock]

He also said he is a gate. Does He have hinges on his flank?

[maryz]

When Christ says He is the Gate, the image illuminates something about the nature of Christ and His relationship to us, because He is saying something about Himself. In the sentence "This is My Body," He is clearly saying something about the bread; what does it illuminate about the nature of the bread? It's not a metaphor, but expand it to the form of a simile (This bread is like My Body) -- how is the bread like His Body?

[rwa265]

I’ve enjoyed reading your posts this afternoon. They are helpful in my understanding of transubstantiation.

[MHGinTN]

Actually, Jesus was illuminating something about the Passover Seder. He was illuminating to those with spiritual ears that He is the Passover Lamb to be sacrificed the next day and it is His blood which will be shed for the atonement, and His new covenant was what they had been prefiguring all those generations with the Passover Seder. That is what Jesus was illuminating, and those men there with Him understood that because they were alive in Him via their belief in Him, not by eating His flesh, which He had told them a year before would profit nothing if they ate His body and blood.

[MHGinTN]

See what you insight is doing? Like I said, BRILLIANT insight brother.

[imardmd1]

It shocks some Catholics when I mention that my wife and I sometimes take communion after a meal at home.

Is this a foundational teaching--doctrine--of His command(s), one of His principal Ordinances?

With all due respect, in what sense is this an authorized meeting of the totality in a locality of all the regenerated individual disciple-believers summoned together--assembled, congregated--for the teaching and watchfully preserving without change whatsoever He has commanded?

Is this an observance conducted in His Name (that is, commanded and authorized by Him)? Should others imitate it also?

[maryz]

Convoluted, if sort of ingenious, and not to the point. I asked what He was saying about the bread.

[Springfield Reformer]

I did as you asked. I read all your posts in this thread.  I saw nothing there that constituted a rigorous refutation of the idea that "physical" is important to understanding transubstantiation.  And if I have misstated your point, be assured it is not intentional.  My belief is that you have a vested interest in distancing Aquinan metaphysics from modern notions of physicality, and there is some technical justification for that, as words are slippery things, and over time pick up and lose bits of meaning, and so clarifications are often quite helpful.

But when virtually everybody in the room is bumbling about with the supposedly wrong idea about something, perhaps the fault is in an idea that is impossible to properly conceive, or possibly many of them are just guilty of noticing the emperor's lack of attire.

For just one example (there are others), the folks at the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association, you would think, would have this right. But:

It was Pope Paul VI who declared Mary the Mother of the Church at the close of the Second Vatican Council, who visited her shrine at Fatima in 1967 and continuously exhorted Catholics to pray her Rosary. He also published the great Encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, "Mysterium Fidei". On the last page of that Encyclical he wrote this beautiful tribute to our Blessed Mother showing the unbroken link that has to exist between her and Christ who is physically present in the Eucharist: He wrote: "May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary from whom Christ Our Lord took the flesh which under the species of bread and wine 'in contained, offered and consumed,' may all the saints of God, especially those who burned with a more ardent devotion to the Divine Eucharist, intercede before the Father of mercies so that from this same faith in and devotion toward the Eucharist may result and flourish a perfect unity of communion among all Christians."

Available at: http://therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/ladyeuch.htm

BTW, please do not think I am confused that this is an authoritative representation of Roman doctrine.  In some sense I feel I have completely lost track of what constitutes authoritative Roman teaching, as there are so many qualifiers to keep track of and such diversity of opinion on the matter, and so I am quite sympathetic to the multitudes of the rank and file Catholics, some of whom are family to me, who do not get the fine points of transubstantive ontology, and so persist in such unsophisticated descriptions.

Nevertheless, I believe even the sophisticates are in trouble on this. For example, not even Aquinas could avoid linking both matter and form to substance:

We likewise find an order of goodness among the parts of a substance composed of matter and form. For since matter, considered in itself, is potential being,542 while form is the actualisation of that being, and the substance composed of the two is actually existent through the form, the form will be good in itself; the composed substance will be good as it actually has the form; and the matter will be good inasmuch as it is in potentiality to the form.

Available here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/gentiles.vi.xvii.html

In Aristotle, such a composite necessarily entails materiality.  In what sense then is "physicality" distinct from this concept of material, of matter, that joins with form to give substance?  While there may be distinctions for us moderns resulting from the current dominance of a general materialism, the two sets overlap significantly, and it cannot be said that there is no or even just a merely insignificant role for materiality in the scholastic concept of substance.

Again, I have seen nothing so far, whether in your posts or anywhere else, that protects the alleged sacramental presence of Christ from being properly seen, under the Aristotelian-Aqinan formulation, as the physical presence of Christ.

One more point.  OK two more points.  First, I agree that the brevity of both our comments defeats a full exploration of the subject.  Full books do not even cover all the bases.  So at best we are exchanging brief sketches, not full portraits of the topic.  My apologies in advance for any important details overlooked.  I'm sure there are such.

Second, with respect to the body of Christ being a spiritual body as Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians, I think it is clear on a number of grounds that he is not being dismissive of ordinary physicality of such bodies. We know Christ in His resurrection body did interact with ordinary physical objects, food, people touching Him, etc. I do not think that is a ticket out of the problem of Aquinan substance implying the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Furthermore, it is possible to understand that distinction in a manner you hinted at, that the resurrected body is animated by a spiritual principle that is different in kind from the fleshly principle that animates our present physical being.  This could well be what Paul meant, but if so, it does nothing to discredit that Jesus' body was (and still is) physical in some reasonable sense and therefore still subject to the proper limitations in time and space of a physical body, as well as the law concerning cannibalism.

But on the sharp edge of Ockham's we still find the most elegant solution is to look at what Jesus said in the most ordinary light, that these teachings were wonderful metaphors of the believer's total dependence on and faith in Him as Messiah, as Peter vividly demonstrates at the end of John 6.  No extraordinary journey into medieval alchemy is necessary.  Christ is real, and He is present with us when we gather in His name, and even when we commune with Him alone during the dark night of the soul.  That presence is no less real than His walk with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Peace,

SR

[Springfield Reformer]

There is a whole branch of linguistic science about metaphors. You do not have to have a particular direction from “left to right,” as it were, to set up a comparison that functions as a metaphor.

For example, if I say, “This is my little angel,” as I show you a picture of my granddaughter, this is what is called a gestural metaphor, taking a physical object and referencing it with the demonstrative pronoun “this.” Every ordinary user of English would know the picture is not my daughter, nor an angel per se. But they would know exactly what I intended to communicate about my daughter. Therefore metaphor. It’s automatic, unless it’s controversial.

Peace,

SR

[RnMomof7]

Do you ever get hungry or thirsty ?

Douay-Rheims Bible
And Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger: and he that believeth in me shall never thirst. ( JOHN 6:35)