Posted on 01/21/2011 12:26:40 PM PST by marshmallow
The Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist is a real stumbling block to some Protestants who are seriously considering Catholicism. It was for me too, until I explored the subject, historically and scripturally. What follows is a summary of my deliberations.
Catholicism holds that bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ when they are consecrated by the priest celebrating the Mass. Oftentimes non-Catholics get hung up on the term transubstantiation, the name for the philosophical theory that the Church maintains best accounts for the change at consecration. The Church’s explanation of transubstantiation was influenced by Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), like most philosophers of his time, wanted to account for how things change and yet remain the same. So, for example, a “substance” like an oak tree remains the same while undergoing “accidental” changes. It begins as an acorn and eventually develops roots, a trunk, branches, and leaves. During all these changes, the oak tree remains identical to itself. Its leaves change from green to red and brown, and eventually fall off. But these accidental changes occur while the substance of the tree remains.
On the other hand, if we chopped down the tree and turned into a desk, that would be a substantial change, since the tree would literally cease to be and its parts would be turned into something else, a desk. According to the Church, when the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the accidents of the bread and wine do not change, but the substance of each changes. So, it looks, tastes, feels, and smells like bread and wine, but it literally has been changed into the body and blood of Christ. That’s transubstantiation.
There are several reasons why it would be a mistake to dismiss transubstantiation simply because of the influence of Aristotle on its formulation. First, Eastern Churches in communion with the Catholic Church rarely employ this Aristotelian language, and yet the Church considers their celebration of the Eucharist perfectly valid. Second, the Catholic Church maintains that the divine liturgies celebrated in the Eastern Churches not in communion with Rome (commonly called “Eastern Orthodoxy”) are perfectly valid as well, even though the Eastern Orthodox rarely employ the term transubstantiation. Third, the belief that the bread and wine are literally transformed into Christ’s body and blood predates Aristotle’s influence on the Church’s theology by over 1000 years. For it was not until the thirteenth century, and the ascendancy of St. Thomas Aquinas’ thought, that Aristotle’s categories were employed by the Church in its account of the Eucharist. In fact, when the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) employed the language of substantial change, St. Thomas had not even been born!
It was that third point that I found so compelling and convinced me that the Catholic view of the Eucharist was correct. It did not take long for me to see that Eucharistic realism (as I like to call it) had been uncontroversially embraced deep in Christian history. This is why Protestant historian, J. N. D. Kelly, writes: “Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood.” I found it in many of the works of the Early Church Fathers, including St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110), St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 151), St. Cyprian of Carthage, (A. D. 251), First Council of Nicaea (A. D. 325), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (A. D. 350), and St. Augustine of Hippo (A. D. 411) . These are, of course, not the only Early Church writings that address the nature of the Eucharist. But they are representative.
This should, however, not surprise us, given what the Bible says about the Lord’s Supper. When Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples (Mt. 26:17-30; Mk. 14:12-25; Lk. 22:7-23), which we commemorate at Holy Communion, he referred to it as a Passover meal. He called the bread and wine his body and blood. In several places, Jesus is called the Lamb of God (John 1: 29, 36; I Peter 1:19; Rev. 5:12). Remember, when the lamb is killed for Passover, the meal participants ingest the lamb. Consequently, St. Paul’s severe warnings about partaking in Holy Communion unworthily only make sense in light of Eucharistic realism (I Cor. 10:14-22; I Cor. 11:17-34). He writes: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? . . . Whoever, therefore eats and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” (I Cor. 10:16; 11:27)
In light of all these passages and the fact that Jesus called himself the bread of life (John 6:41-51) and that he said that his followers must “eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood” (John 6:53), the Eucharistic realism of the Early Church, the Eastern Churches (both in and out of communion with Rome), and the pre-Reformation medieval Church (fifth to sixteenth centuries) seems almost unremarkable. So, what first appeared to be a stumbling block was transformed into a cornerstone.
Francis J. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University. He tells the story of his journey from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again in his book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic. He blogs at Return to Rome.
Unless a whole lot of people started using the Arial font, it will still be easy for me to spot my own posts. If most people start using it, I will find another.
“Hardly — if you wish to disagree with Jesus words and St. Paul, go ahead and post bilge”
????
How about something that makes some sort of sense, please?
Hoss
“Hardly — if you wish to disagree with Jesus words and St. Paul, go ahead and post bilge”
????
How about something that makes some sort of sense, please?
Hoss
“Hardly — if you wish to disagree with Jesus words and St. Paul, go ahead and post bilge”
????
How about something that makes some sort of sense, please?
Hoss
“Address the points there.”
You brought it here, so I dealt with it here....
Sorry.
Hoss
What Bible do you use ?
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Sacrifice does not necessarily meaning killing. Check:
Heb. 13:15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.
Ps. 50:14 Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High
Numbers 8:9–15 Aaron is to present the Levites before the LORD as a wave offering from the Israelites, so that they may be ready to do the work of the LORD.
Besides, the sacrifice of the mass is the participation in the ONE sacrifice that was Christ's sacrifice.
You do seem to understand a SIN OFFERING
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
as opposed to a thanksgiving or wave offering.
He was repudiating man-made tradition,Was Yah'shua not teaching from the Tanach ?
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
but never His Holy Word.
“Let’s see if I can simplify it:
Christ’s death happened once in our past. The sacrifice is done, it will not be repeated
God exists outside time, as does heaven
The mass is the participation in the same heavenly offering, the same sacrifice”
If “God exists outside time, as does heaven” then all terms pertaining to time past, present and future have no real meaning and therefore saying “once, past, done, happened (past tense), is (present tense)” have no real relationship to any statements about God or heaven.
To so say would be like saying, “the material qualities of immaterial things”, self contradictory.
On the other hand Jesus clearly says things like, “in the day (future) I will do (future)” and “concerning that hour no one knows...only the father”, and so forth.
So God, Jesus, heaven all exist and are spoken of as existing “within time”.
Sophistry and word games just don’t fly. Even when I toss in some silliness like “can say what about the effects of inter-dimensional space on the flow of time as it is compressed around event” it fits neatly with all the rest of the “out of time” word games.
One of the very first things the Bible does is tell us how time begins “in the beginning” and how God marks off time “day one, evening and morning”, “day two, evening and morning”, etc.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear Uri’el-2012!
Don’t hold back now, just give us your unvarnished opinion, let your inner committee man out and give him a sound thrashing, refuse to make copies in triplicate, LET IT ALL OUT!!!!
There now, Don’t you feel better? I know I do, Whew!
Yeah. My wanting to be unpinged was NOT AT ALL about you.
I don’t know about the Vatican and Alexandria. I have heard, though, that the west got Aristotle, Euclid, and a lot else from the Muslims. (I THINK that Ptolemy’s astronomical work is called “the Almagest” because of it’s Arabic preservers and transmitters.) There is also a tale of Irish monks sneaking into Muslim Spain and copying Or stealing Euclid’s “Geometry.”
Around the time of Aquinas (1200’s), whose feast is today (curry in the crockpot! YEAH!), there was much intellectual commerce among Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Averroes (Ibn Rushd) proposed a metaphysical theory which was debated by Christians for quite a while until it was stomped into the earth by Aquinas et al.
But my alleged point is that, unless the Vatican is like Maxwell Smart and the cone of silence, if they had the juicy parts of the Library then MAYBE it wouldn’t have been necessary for the monks to sneak into Spain and maybe Aristotle would have influenced Scholasticism earlier.
So, the short answer is, “Mmmph.”
Jesus did not come to nurture our flesh and blood...
1Co 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
The flesh and blood are corrupt...
Mar 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
Mar 7:14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand:
Mar 7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
Mar 7:16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
Mar 7:17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.
Mar 7:18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;
And conversely, whatever enters from without can not help him
Mar 7:19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?
Purging ALL meat and wine...
God condemns your religion at every turn and yet you guys claim the name of Jesus while rejecting most of what Jesus said...
If Justin Martyr believed one could become clean or holy by putting something into his stomache, he is a heretic of the first order just like the rest who teach this damnable heresy...
# The sacrifice is done, it will not be repeated ...It CANNOT be repeated. Once is once.
No argument there.
# God exists outside time, as does heaven...The Spirit of God lives within me, I'm not outside of time.
In our view: if you are "in Christ" (and he in you), you are a kind of hybrid, both temporal and eternal. This relates to the wonder of the Incarnation when the wall between Creator and creature was breached. He "came down" to us to "draw us up" to him, wherefore it is written, "He has gone up on high and led captivity captive."
# The mass is the participation in the same heavenly offering, the same sacrifice.... How can it be the same sacrifice when it cannot be repeated? It's more like mimicking His death.
This question reveals the seam in thought. We think that God is eternal, and that eternity "comprehends" time so that all times are "now" to God. So Peter's addition to Psalm 90:4 (in 2 Pet 3:8) "... that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
We hold that it is incoherent to hold that God, outside the Incarnation, is subject to time or 'caused' by any other thing. Therefore He does not change, therefore he is eternal, and all time is in His "now."
As you say, the Spirit (which we hold to be eternal also) is in us and in the Church. By the work of that Spirit (operating through what I facetiously call "the wonder of eternity") the "now" of the sacrifice is united with our "now." Therefore it is, in our view, not a repetition or a piece of mimicry. It IS, by the working of God, the identical sacrifice, which we hold to be all-sufficient.
That's way too much secular philosophy with way too little bible...
In heaven, what is seen is as described in Revelations. We witness that heavenly scene and witness that ONE-time event, the sacrifice, we participate in that ONE-time event.
No, the Apostle John witnessed that scene...Did John see anything else???
Rev 1:12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
Rev 1:13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Rev 1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
Rev 1:15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
Does that sound like a description of a lamb that had been slain???
Rev 5:5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
Rev 5:6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
A slain lamb with seven horns...
You notice what the verse did NOT say??? It did not say 'there stood a lamb that was being slain'...John saw the lamb after it had been slain...
The sacrifice is over...It's been over for 2000 years...There is no way possible that anyone you know could be participating in that sacrifice...
Your religion sure does torture the scriptures...
Apologies for the triple....
Hoss
“A slain lamb with seven horns...
You notice what the verse did NOT say??? It did not say ‘there stood a lamb that was being slain’...John saw the lamb after it had been slain...
The sacrifice is over...It’s been over for 2000 years...There is no way possible that anyone you know could be participating in that sacrifice...”
Amen, Amen, Amen!!!!
Beautiful.
Hoss
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