Posted on 07/09/2015 9:33:36 AM PDT by RnMomof7
The doctrine of Transubstantiation is the belief that the elements of the Lord’s table (bread and wine) supernaturally transform into the body and blood of Christ during the Mass. This is uniquely held by Roman Catholics but some form of a “Real Presence” view is held by Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, and some Anglicans. The Calvinist/Reformed tradition believes in a real spiritual presence but not one of substance. Most of the remaining Protestant traditions (myself included) don’t believe in any real presence, either spiritual or physical, but believe that the Eucharist is a memorial and a proclamation of Christ’s work on the cross (this is often called Zwinglianism). The Roman Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563) defined Transubstantiation this way:
By the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation” (Session XIII, chapter IV)
As well, there is an abiding curse (anathema) placed on all Christians who deny this doctrine:
If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ,[42] but says that He is in it only as in a sign, or figure or force, let him be anathema. (Session XII, Canon I)
It is very important to note that Roman Catholics not only believe that taking the Eucharist in the right manner is essential for salvation, but that belief in the doctrine is just as essential.
Here are the five primary reasons why I reject the doctrine of Transubstantiation:
1. It takes Christ too literally
There does not seem to be any reason to take Christ literally when he institutes the Eucharist with the words, “This is my body” and “This is my blood” (Matt. 26:26-28, et al). Christ often used metaphor in order to communicate a point. For example, he says “I am the door,” “I am the vine,” “You are the salt of the earth,” and “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14) but people know that we don’t take such statement literally. After all, who believes that Christ is literally a door swinging on a hinge?
2. It does not take Christ literally enough
Let’s say for the sake of the argument that in this instance Christ did mean to be taken literally. What would this mean? Well, it seems hard to escape the conclusion that the night before Christ died on the cross, when he said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” that it actually was his body and blood that night before he died. If this were the case, and Christ really meant to be taken literally, we have Christ, before the atonement was actually made, offering the atonement to his disciples. I think this alone gives strong support to a denial of any substantial real presence.
3. It does not take Christ literally enough (2)
In each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) we have the institution of the Eucharist. When the wine is presented, Christ’s wording is a bit different. Here is how it goes in Luke’s Gospel: “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood” (Luk 22:20). Here, if we were really to take Christ literally, the “cup” is the new covenant. It is not the wine, it is the cup that is holy. However, of course, even Roman Catholics would agree that the cup is symbolic of the wine. But why one and not the other? Why can’t the wine be symbolic of his death if the cup can be symbolic of the wine? As well, is the cup actually the “new covenant”? That is what he says. “This cup . . . is the new covenant.” Is the cup the actual new covenant, or only symbolic of it? See the issues?
4. The Gospel of John fails to mention the Eucharist
Another significant problem I have with the Roman Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist and its abiding anathemas is that the one Gospel which claims to be written so that people may have eternal life, John (John 20:31), does not even include the institution of the Eucharist. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of Christ giving the first Lord’s table, but John decides to leave it out. Why? This issue is made more significant in that John includes more of the “Upper Room” narrative than any of the other Gospels. Nearly one-third of the entire book of John walks us through what Christ did and said that night with his disciples. Yet no breaking of the bread or giving of the wine is included. This is a pretty significant oversight if John meant to give people the message that would lead to eternal life (John 20:31). From the Roman Catholic perspective, his message must be seen as insufficient to lead to eternal life since practice and belief in the Mass are essential for eternal life and he leaves these completely out of the Upper Room narrative.
(Some believe that John does mention the importance of belief in Transubstantiation in John 6. The whole, “Why did he let them walk away?” argument. But I think this argument is weak. I talk about that here. Nevertheless, it still does not answer why John left out the institution of the Lord’s Supper. It could be that by A.D. 90, John saw an abuse of the Lord’s table already rising. He may have sought to curb this abuse by leaving the Eucharist completely out of his Gospel. But this, I readily admit, is speculative.)
5. Problems with the Hypostatic Union and the Council of Chalcedon
This one is going to be a bit difficult to explain, but let me give it a shot. Orthodox Christianity (not Eastern Orthodox) holds to the “Hypostatic Union” of Christ. This means that we believe that Christ is fully God and fully man. This was most acutely defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Important for our conversation is that Christ had to be fully man to fully redeem us. Christ could not be a mixture of God and man, or he could only represent other mixtures of God and man. He is/was one person with two complete natures. These nature do not intermingle (they are “without confusion”). In other words, his human nature does not infect or corrupt his divine nature. And his divine nature does not infect or corrupt his human nature. This is called the communicatio idiomatum (communication of properties or attributes). The attributes of one nature cannot communicate (transfer/share) with another nature. Christ’s humanity did not become divinitized. It remained complete and perfect humanity (with all its limitations). The natures can communicate with the Person, but not with each other. Therefore, the attribute of omnipresence (present everywhere) cannot communicate to his humanity to make his humanity omnipresent. If it did, we lose our representative High Priest, since we don’t have this attribute communicated to our nature. Christ must always remain as we are in order to be the Priest and Pioneer of our faith. What does all of this mean? Christ’s body cannot be at more than one place at a time, much less at millions of places across the world every Sunday during Mass. In this sense, I believe that any real physical presence view denies the definition of Chalcedon and the principles therein.
There are many more objections that I could bring including Paul’s lack of mentioning it to the Romans (the most comprehensive presentation of the Gospel in the Bible), some issues of anatomy, issues of idolatry, and just some very practical things concerning Holy Orders, church history, and . . . ahem . . . excrement. But I think these five are significant enough to justify a denial of Transubstantiation. While I respect Roman Catholicism a great deal, I must admit how hard it is for me to believe that a doctrine that is so difficult to defend biblically is held to such a degree that abiding anathemas are pronounced on those who disagree.
He commands us to eat His Body and Blood. His words are unmistakeable.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
Christ literally gives Himself to us as real food and real drink. There's nothing to misinterpret here. There's no room for manoeuvre.
Moreover: when we consider the language used in the Gospel of John, the literal interpretation becomes undeniable.
In John 6:50-53 Christ's words are translated using various forms of the Greek verb phago, 'eating.' As in 'Sarcophagus'.
However after the Jews begin to express incredulity at the idea of eating Christ’s flesh, His language intensified.
In verse 54, John begins to use trogo instead of phago. Trogo is a decidedly more graphic term, meaning 'to chew on' or to 'gnaw on'—as when an animal is ripping apart its prey. The text is closer to:
Whoever gnaws on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
If anything more needed to be said: St Paul is also abundantly clear
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
All this: not to mention Christ's institution of what we now call the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
From Luke:
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."
If any corroborating evidence were needed, St Paul speaks about the Eucharist in Corinthians.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
I quote these to show that Christ's Body and Blood were eaten and drunk in the very early Church.
Do not separate yourself from the Body and Blood of Christ! He commands you to eat of Him, or 'you will not have life within you'.
How could it be cannibalism to eat of the Living God?
How could eating and drinking of He who Is Uttermost Reality break a dietary code?
I knew the minute he referred to the anathema that we were in for a ride. What has the anathema to do with the dogma itself?
It is clear from our calling one of those crucified with Jesus “SAINT” Dismas that we do NOT hold that right belief or right reception of the Blessed Sacrament is absolutely necessary for salvation. So before he gets to the dogma he has already said a thing (1) that is not true, and (2) that supports the common and, to my mind, false because over-simplified accusation that the Catholic Church believes in salvation by works. Again, St. Dismas suffices to show that that is not so.
So, at the very kindest, we must conclude that he is not careful or precise and that his statements about Catholic teaching are unreliable.
Even his characterization of Zwingli is similarly simplistic. Zwingli did not say the Eucharist was something the worshippers did, a memorial and a proclamation only. There was a line of thought, hinted at in Cranmer and developed by Hooker that is sometimes glibly called “Real Presence in the Believer,” and sometimes, more seriously, “Virtualism.”
When I read Cranmer on the Eucharist, 40 years ago, I came away with the sense that philosophy had not kept up (and maybe shouldn't have tried) with the thinking of the Reformers. At the time I tended to the Cranmer/Hooker account, if that matters. I was not looking for arguments against it, but for support.
Now, to me, the best and most interesting part of his paper is the argument from the Chalcedonian Definition of the Hypostatic Union.
I would criticize it 3 ways.
1) He stresses the division of natures at the expense of the union in one person. It's easy to stumble on the right dogma of WHAT IHS XP was. I'm certainly never completely confident!
But, as the definition says, you must NEITHER confuse the divine and human nature or substance NOR divide the one person. And once you have someone who appears in upper rooms, the doors being locked for fear of the Jews, some questions about the “locus” of the Risen Lord remain unresolvably mysterious.
(2) But again, as he divides the person, he also shows a one-sided understanding of time and space. In particular, in his consideration of the Last Supper he gives more importance to the sequence of events than I think correct.
Yes, Aquinas suggests that the “body” of the Last Supper was not the Risen Body. So time and sequence matter somewhat. But I propose that every act of God's has always been salvific, FROM the creation of light, the separation of dry-land and water, the provision of food, THROUGH the events of the most holy three days since time began, to the, somewhere, person who accepts Christ as I type or you read this.
The salvific act of causing plants to grow and that of casting the stars from heaven, and everything in between, is, so to speak, powered by the Triduum Sacrum. The effects of the Cross are not bound by the flow of time. God is Melech haOlam, the king of time, not its subject. And his mercies endure forever, for ALL ages. And he was merciful when there was not yet light. And will be merciful when the sun no longer shines.
(3) Protestant thought seems to me to suffer from a very unscriptural and unreasonable understanding of basic matters, like the Biblical relationship between soul and body. If the proper state of the human is the union of soul and body, and if Resurrection is the proper or intended state, then Jesus, united with Divinity, brings a body to that union.
Now, unless God is diminished by the Resurrection — an absurd thought — then he is still omnipresent. And if Jesus is true God he is also omnipresent. So the resurrected body is omnipresent. So being present, sacramentally (whatever that means) shouldn't be the problem this writer makes it out to be.
Because what Christ spoke of was not literal. God forbids eating human flesh. Period. Christ spoke of a symbolic ingestion of His words so that they became an active part of the believer.
How could eating and drinking of He who Is Uttermost Reality break a dietary code?
Symbolism. Unless you honestly believe that eating a steak will make you a cow. We are to digest Christ's words and live out our lives accordingly. Becoming Christ-like in our thoughts and deeds.
There is is!
Rome picks and choose which parts of the words of Jesus to be literal and allegorical.
Thank you very much for this post.
A yearly meal of REMEMBERANCE.
Most folks recognize it as the PASSOVER meal.
You've got to IGNORE Jesus' words 37 verses earlier to continue on with the Transubstantiation Theory...
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us
The Jews were commanded to eat the Passover Lamb. How then could eating the Passover Lamb be against the law?
When we eat Christ we fulfill the Mosaic Law.
Indeed, we fulfill it more than even Solomon or David - or Moses! - ever had a chance to during their lifetimes. We do not break it, and Christ is not asking us to.
Mumbo-Jumbo.
Elsie of FreeRepublic, July 9th, 2015 AD
So - when the One He has sent asks you to eat His Body and drink His blood, why don't you take Him at His word?
Why not, you know, believe Him?
John 4:14
...but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
Where will we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.
Galatians 3:10 (ASV)
For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.
Within the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, this would translate to Christ being a sheep. Literally an ovine. Gonna go there?
Christ fulfilled the law, not us. To say otherwise is to claim that we can save ourselves.
If He had, we would celebrate that sacrament.
But He didn't. This is why no-one celebrates a sacrament of drinking water today.
But - at the Last Supper - Christ did institute the sacrament of His Body and Blood. He spoke in metaphor about living water - but he spoke literally about His body and blood.
He commands us to eat His Body and Blood. His words are unmistakeable.
Why do you not believe? He offers you His Body and Blood.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Not a sheep. Christ is THE sacrificial lamb. The one and only sacrifice to God, both priest and victim.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
and also:
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
and of course:
Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.
The cannibalsim argument proceeds from a misunderstanding of what substance is. What a cannibal eats is the accidents of a body, not its substance.
Thank you for those kind words.
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