Transubstantiation is a false doctrine because Jesus instituted Lord’s Supper before his blood was shed and body broken! He spoke of His blood being shed, which was still yet future. This proves it was a symbol.
The very record of historically, (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian and Hippolytus) which the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches love to quote as authority, proves that before 200 AD, the church viewed the bread and juice as symbols. Conversely, the earliest historical hint of transubstantiation was in the 4th century.
Exactly...But some of them willl blatantly lie and claim the Eucharist nonsense was taught by ALL the Catholic church fathers from the get-go...
And of course I agree with the rest of your post...Most of the Catholics don't spend enough time in the scriptures to know what it says...They just copy and paste the mantra from the institution...
Juice? Grape must?
Ignatius of Antioch:
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).Justin Martyr:
For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66 [A.D.151]).
I don't see how texts like this can support the contention that Justin and Ignatius thought the sacrament was a symbol.
Transubstantiation is a false doctrine because Jesus instituted Lord’s Supper before his blood was shed and body broken! He spoke of His blood being shed, which was still yet future. This proves it was a symbol.
I guess it helps to know something about the doctrine one is attacking. Aquinas deals with this very question.
Again, we think of doctrine unfolding. So to us the comparatively late appearance of the term transubstantiation is not an argument against what we would consider its archaic truth.
I don't expect the average person to think much about the distinction between "real" and "spiritual", or whether there is such a distinction in any important way. I don't expect Mr. or Mrs. A. Person to discourse at length or coherently about what it means that an anchor could be made of different materials and in different shapes and still be an anchor, or that some chairs or wood, some plated in gold, and some no more than large bean bags (filled with "beans" made of Styrofoam).
A football coach gestures at his X's and O's and says, "This is the line backer. This is the running back," but nobody thinks he is asserting anything other than an arbitrary signification.
A groom holds a ring and says "This is the pledge of my vow." What does he mean? What was the ring when he bought it? What would it be if he bought it and then the bride jilted him? What is it 35 years later? What if it falls into and is minced up by the garbage disposal? Is it still a pledge?
In the development of doctrine we start with "This is my Body," "This is the cup of my Blood," and have spent the centuries between then and now doping out what that could mean and how to talk about it.
And think for just a minute of the presence of God, by power, essence, and presence (as Aquinas says.) Isn't God present in the nucleus of the atom or in the membranes of the alveoli? Isn't He present in every mother's womb? But we wouldn't say he is present in every mother's womb in the same way as He was present in Mary's womb, would we?
And while we are content to say that God is everywhere, many get a little uncomfortable when they realize that that means that He is here!
But to talk coherently about all these instances of presence, including sacramental presence, is going to require an increasing precision of diction. We start with "This is my Body," and we flail about, sometimes with hymnodic or poetic beauty in reflecting on that, but as long as we are thinking creatures we are sooner or later going to pick apart what that means.
But a poet can write iambic pentameter without knowing the term, and his poetry is not made new when some critic applies the term to the verses. The Church can teach that Christ is present in the sacrament, and that teaching is not a new thing when somebody starts talking about accidents and substance. The making of verses and the heart's response to them, and the making of a Sacrament and the Church's response to it precedes but is not altered by later thought and conversation.