Your tagline, bdeaner: “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16)”
That passage reads:
“14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?”
On the one hand, that supports transubstantiation, since it compares Communion with actual sacrifices being offered by pagans to demons. However, the sacrifices to idols are new sacrifices, while Catholic doctrine agrees that Christ was sacrificed once, for all time. So the analogy isn’t precise. And when he says “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”, he obviously does so in a spiritual sense, not literal.
Baptists agree that when we partake Communion, that we are participating in the blood and body of Jesus, in a spiritual sense. Frankly, I don’t understand the difference between that view, and saying it becomes the actual blood and body of Christ, but that it doesn’t involve a re-sacrifice of Jesus and the physical aspects (taste, texture, etc) remain unchanged. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.
Here is what Baptists wrote over 300 years ago:
“30.7 Worthy recipients, when outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, also receive them inwardly by faith, truly and in fact, not as flesh and body but spiritually. In so doing they feed upon Christ crucified, and receive all the benefits of his death. The body and blood of Christ are not present physically, but spiritually by the faith of believers in the ordinance, just as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.”
Unfortunately, my own denomination (SBC) has watered that down to “The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.” I guess if you are going to use grape juice instead of wine to avoid giving offense, you can’t be taking scripture very seriously, to the terrible shame of the SBC. I suspect the Baptists of the 1600s would be as shocked by Southern Baptists as they were by Catholics...
From what I’ve read, those who argued against transubstantiation did so because they believed the doctrine required Jesus to be sacrificed all over again.
If the misinformed teachings of adherents cause us problems in discussing church doctrine in an age where anyone can go online and read the source documents for themselves, how much more so in an age when printing presses were just starting, and few could afford books, and travel meant walking!
I have many strong differences with the Catholic Church. Infant baptism makes no sense to me. Popes? No thanks! The treatment of Mary disturbs me more than Michael Jackson did. Penances and indulgences are far worse. The idea of a surplus of good deeds indicate a + / - accounting approach to justification that is totally contrary to scripture.
But transubstantiation? Don’t exactly believe it, and don’t exactly deny it. Properly explained, it doesn’t seem substantially different from what Baptists used to teach.