REAL Christians have believed that it was literal for 2,015 years....even Martin Luther KNEW that it was true....what's your objection to it????
REAL Christians have believed that it was literal for 2,015 years....even Martin Luther KNEW that it was true....what's your objection to it????
So you believe as Martin Luther once did (as of 1519) that "The bread is changed into his true natural body and the wine into his natural true blood," (Luther's Works,35:47ff.) Is this what you are referring to as Luther believing in the Cath Eucharist?
But within a year it was evident that Luther rejects transubstantiation, though he does not yet condemn those who hold to it. "Therefore I permit every man to hold either of these opinions, as he chooses. . . . One may . . . believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation" ("The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, p. 145).
According to Luther, it is an error to say that no bread remains, but only the accidents of bread. The bread remains real bread and the wine remains real wine. He emphasized this by talking about the grain of the bread and the grapes of the wine.99 Luther had no regard for the "subtle sophistry" of those who teach that the bread and wine lose their substance. The bread and wine do not surrender or lose their natural essence.
Luther blames the teaching of transubstantiation on adherence to ancient philosophy. He cites Thomas Aquinas as being more influenced by ancient philosophy than by scripture. He says that the church of Thomas is "the Aristotelian church."l0l Even at that, the church survived for 1200 years without the doctrine of transubstantiation. He refers to the official establishment of the dogma as set out by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.102 Luther challenged the assumption that "heat, color, cold, light, weight, [and] shape are accidents."103 The result was a complex doctrine which became more elaborate and confused as it developed. Luther preferred a simpler explanation for the real presence.
Yet Luther did present a complete and satisfactory explanation, and what he did provide is far from simple or satisfactory ( if one wants to hold to a literalistic understanding) upon examination.
The doctrine of communicatio idiomatum was developed to show the communion of the two natures in Christ; that is, the divine nature is communicated to the human nature in such a way that the two natures share the attributes of each other, Luther maintained that, just as there is real communication in the man Christ who walked in Palestine, so there is real communication of the glorified Christ at the right hand of God.
In conclusion, we see that Luther could refute the radical reformers, who thought the Lord's supper was only a reminder and nothing more, and that he could also refute the Roman Catholic doctrine that says the bread and wine are transformed. He maintained the simplicity of the scripture references which refer to the bread and wine—against the Catholics; and he maintained the real presence through a literal interpretation—against the Reformed theologians. - http://www.acu.edu/sponsored/restoration_quarterly/archives/1990s/vol_32_no_3_contents/craycraftluther.html
For her part, Roman Catholicism had to devise a metaphysical explanation to justify her eucharistic claim.
In Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship, Bernhard Lang argues that, “When in late antiquity the religious elite of the Roman Empire rethought religion and ritual, the choice was not one between Mithraism and Christianity (as Ernest Renan suggested in the 19th century) but between pagan Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic Christianity.”
“In the third century CE, under the leadership of Plotinus, Plato’s philosophy enjoyed a renaissance that was to continue throughout late antiquity. This school of thought had much in common with Christianity: it believed in one God (the “One”), in the necessity of ritual, and in the saving contact with deities that were distinct from the ineffable One and stood closer to humanity. Like Judaism and Christianity, it also had its sacred books–the writings of Plato, and, in its later phase, also the Chaldean Oracles. In fact, major early Christian theologians–Origen, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysus–can at the same time be considered major representatives of the Neoplatonic school of thought.” - (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2014/04/08/early-churchs-choice-between-neoplatonism)
From a RC monk and defender:
Neoplatonic thought or at least conceptual terms are clearly interwoven with Christian theology long before the 13th century...
The doctrine of transubstantiation completely reverses the usual distinction between being and appearance, where being is held to be unchanging and appearance is constantly changing. Transubstantiation maintains instead that being or substance changes while appearance remains unchanged. Such reversals in the order of things are affronts to reason and require much, not little, to affirm philosophically. Moreover, transubstantiation seem to go far beyond the simple distinction between appearance and reality. It would be one thing if the body and blood of Christ simply appeared to be bread and wine. But I don’t think that is what is claimed with “transubstantiation.”
Aristotle picked up just such common-sense concepts as “what-it-is-to-be-X” and tried to explain rather complex philosophical problems with them. Thus, to take a “common-sense” concept like substance–even if one could maintain that it were somehow purified of Aristotelian provenance—and have it do paradoxical conceptual gymnastics in order to explain transubstantiation seems not to be not so anti-Aristotelian in spirit after all...
That the bread and wine are somehow really the body and blood of Christ is an ancient Christian belief—but using the concept of “substance” to talk about this necessarily involves Greek philosophy (Br. Dennis Beach, OSB, monk of St. John’s Abbey; doctorate in philosophy from Penn State; http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/05/30/transubstantiation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy)
Edwin Hatch:
...it is among the Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr. But at the same time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them on their travels. (Hatch, Edwin, 1835-1889, "The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian church;" pp. 308-09 https://archive.org/stream/influenceofgreek00hatc/influenceofgreek00hatc_djvu.txt)
The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the magical conversion of bread into flesh, was also familiar to the Aryans of ancient India long before the spread and even the rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that the rice-cakes offered in sacrifice were substitutes for human beings, and that they were actually converted into the real bodies of men by the manipulation of the priest. ...At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. - http://www.bartleby.com/196/121.html
Rather than paganistic or Neoplatonic ideas, it remains that the metaphorical view is indeed the only one that easily conflates with the totality of Scripture, while the literalistic one cannot , but is necessary for her unScriptural priesthood . For the rest of my objection, all you needed to do was to take your mouse and place the cursor on the links provided, and left click on them. Table of Contents