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.
BTW,
Thanks for the very personal assault on my mental/emotional health/sanity.
Very thoughtful.
Would you consider
“from a coward”
to be mind reading
or heart reading
or spirit reading
or just a bitter snide personal assault
or what?
Very thoughtful.
Gee, Quix, did you take that personally? Come on! I didn't post any "funny" pictures. This is an open thread, it's all fun and games, right? Are you pouting? Crying? Shouldn't we all just grow up? I declare, sometimes when a blind person gets a slap upside the head, it helps them CHANGE DIRECTION.
He wasn’t alone. God has always preserved a remnant throughout history.
Not at all.
I just find it instructive to sometimes
shove some folks’ prissy standards and hypocrisies back in their faces.
AS y’all ought to know . . .
i GET CALLED
so many ugly things by such a sizeable percentage of you, it hardly even registers any more . . . except in a philosophical, theoretical way.
And then, given that rank hypocrisy is such a favorite topic of mine, I get to have fun with such incidents.
BTW, I’ve long invited any and all to give me verbal slaps upside the head any time they think such might be instructive.
Just don’t bet the farm on my response.
Time for the shower.
I think that the last 50 or so posts on this thread have not been a credit to any who bears the name Christian.
This thread—as happens so often-—has deteriorated into an 8th grade school yard type verbal foodfight; no one is edified by it. Nor is it, at this point, a legitimate “debate” or “discussion” or “exchange of ideas”.
It’s just a hail of spit wads.
Well, if past performance is any indication, there will probably be multiple whiny "poor little me, people are so mean to me" posts, along with some veiled insults.
Go for it!
Well, that is what the followers of Joseph Smith claim and his notion of the True Faith is quite a bit more radical than Luther’s. Actually there have been sects throughout history who have claimed that their version of the Truth is the right one. How do we determine which one? Luther’s postulating the Bible as the only rule of faith led almost immediately to wide dissent.
Hey, Monday’s a new school day.
Practice, practice, practice!
Naw.
That’s y’all’s turf.
The Canon was reasonably settled long before the RCC came into existence.
Don’t leave yet as I’d be happy to debate or discuss almost any subject with you that you might choose. That is unless you make agreement a condition of so doing.
Ah...Were so easy as that I would venture.
My teacher said you can attract more flies with sugar than you can with vinegar and when I inquired as to why I would want to attract flies at all the whack to the side the head was not verbal.
What this has to do with anything I don’t know.
Same here.Exactly the same.I came to the Bible as an atheist and I am,in a way, glad that I did.
I may be castigated for my YOIPOS but after all it is my backside in a cosmic sling.
Oh, I don’t know that it’s reliably easy.
And the harvest is certainly far from 100%.
It’s just that some folks are quite immune to sugar and spice and everything nice.
Nevertheless, given the bleak other options, it’s a viable risk in behalf of souls and life and growth.
Winding down here.
God’s best to you and yours.
g’nite.
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