Another Question About Transubstantiation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hope1960
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
(continued)

Accordingly, it is not necessary to conceive that the body and blood Christ gave to the apostles at the Last Supper was the glorified body of his resurrection which Christ’s resurrection hadn’t even happened yet. The soul of Christ’s human nature was full of grace as we see in the Transfiguration in which Jesus’ soul through grace and from his Godhead shinned through his body so that his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as snow. However, since at this time Jesus was still in his mortal body, this manifestation of Jesus’ Transfiguration was a miraculous work of Jesus’ Godhead.

At any rate, at the Last Supper, Jesus could and I believe did give the very mortal body of flesh and blood he at that time possessed to the apostles to eat and drink and through which as an instrumental cause of grace, Jesus bestowed upon the apostles sanctifying grace from his soul which is full of grace, for “in him was life”, and which soul of Christ again is an instrument of his Godhead, the principle cause and source of grace. Just as the soul gives natural life to the body so it is also through a gift of grace bestowed on the soul that the soul gives immortal life to the body such as Adam and Eve had in the garden of Eden before they sinned. Sanctifying grace is a pledge of our future resurrection of the body which I believe St Paul says somewhere.
 
Last edited:
fide said:
I answered the question.
Click to expand...
To state that there was a substantial or essential change in theological terms suggest that Christ had a new nature and was no longer a true man. There was not a substantial or essential change.
 
40.png
fide:
Did you read this below, on a post above, from JPII? He is speaking of something other than sanctifying grace etc.
Ecclesia De Eucharistia #18. … Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection…
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Well yes, since Jesus’ resurrection, his body and blood we receive in the eucharist is his glorified body obviously. But, at the Last Supper and the institution of the Mass and eucharist which were prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus was in his mortal and unglorified body.

The immortality of Christ’s resurrected body is a gift of grace bestowed on his soul similar to the preternatural gift of bodily immortality God bestowed on the souls of Adam and Eve when they were first created which they lost when they sinned. It is the soul that gives life and animates the body which is why it is a supernatural gift of grace bestowed upon the soul through which the body has immortality. Through this gift of grace the body is completely subject to the power/s of the soul which soul is immortal by nature.
 
Last edited:
Lutherans believe in consubstantiation I.e. the substance of the bread and wine coexist with the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, which is heretical. The Catholic Faith is that the bread and wine cease to exist at each Consecration.
The Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ are under the accidents I.e. appearances of bread and wine.

Sight, taste, touch in Thee are each deceived,
The ear alone most safely is believed…

St. Thomas Aquinas
 
Last edited:
Bodies are in a place and localized through the accident of dimensive quantity which extends the material aspect of the substance into the three spatial dimensions of length, width, and depth and part from part. Thus extended, bodies fill the place and are contained by the place. Transubstantiation is kind of supernatural substantial change of material substances (the eucharistic change only) that terminates at the substance without a change also of the accidents the first of which is dimensive quantity. Accordingly, the substance of the bread changes into the substance of Christ’s entire body though without a change of the dimensive quantity of the bread which remains after transubstantiation into the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body. Consequently, the substance of Christ’s body is present under the dimensive quantity of the species of bread without the dimensive quantity of the species of bread or the other accidents of the bread inhering in the substance of Christ’s body.

A material substance is located in place by its dimensive quantity but the substance of Christ’s body is in the eucharist in relation to the dimensive quantity of the consecrated bread that remains after the consecration. What is located and in a place is the dimensive quantity and other accidents of the consecrated bread but not so Christ’s body. Christ’s entire body including his whole dimensive quantity and various other intrinsic accidents is contained under the accidents of the consecrated bread after the manner of just substance which is ‘not the manner in which bodies are in a place,’ i.e, affected by the accident of dimensive quantity.
 
Last edited:
fide said:
Because the Church presumes to teach that the Last Supper was the first Eucharist, and she does NOT give a disclaimer that the First Eucharist, by the way, was radically - substantially - essentially different from every other one since then.
Click to expand...
Yes, it was the first Eucharist. No, it wasn’t ‘radically’, ‘substantially’, or ‘essentially’ different. Christ was sacramentally present in that Eucharist – body, blood, soul and divinity, in his substance – just as He’s present in every Eucharist. No difference in the ‘essence’ of the sacrament. No difference in the ‘substance’ of the sacrament. No difference at the heart of the sacrament. Same Eucharist.
 
fide said:
I answered the question.
Click to expand...
Incorrectly, unfortunately. Christ’s essence didn’t change between the Last Supper and the Resurrection. Nor did His substance. To claim that the essence or substance of the Eucharist was different, then, between these two days, is a categorical error. 🤷‍♂️

I get what you want to say… but it doesn’t impinge on the Eucharist at all.
 
I’m glad you “got” what I want to say, and (perhaps) allowed a non-technical meaning for substantial/radical/essential change as in “significant, fundamental, of considerable importance, size, or worth,…”

I don’t get at all your insistence on a Last Supper “communion” with the mortal pre-resurrected body of Jesus. Why would you want to conclude such a thing? One can credibly conclude otherwise.
 
fide said:
“significant, fundamental, of considerable importance, size, or worth
Click to expand...
Well… hold on. I am making the case that it’s not fundamentally different, and that it’s not significant to what the Eucharist is, and therefore, it’s not “of considerable importance”.
fide said:
I don’t get at all your insistence on a Last Supper “communion” with the mortal pre-resurrected body of Jesus. Why would you want to conclude such a thing? One can credibly conclude otherwise.
Click to expand...
Aquinas concluded otherwise. I don’t hold so high an opinion of myself that I’d be willing to say I know better than him.

(And, I’m making the case that Pope St John Paul II was talking about Mass in a Catholic Church in #18, not the Eucharist at the Last Supper, so I’m also not saying that I’m contradicting a pope & saint.)
 
Let me rearrange my question:
  1. Do you want the actual truth of this question to be as you have concluded it?
  2. If so, why? How would that history be “better” in your mind, than the other?
  3. Another possibility is that you simply enjoy theological arguments - I’ve encountered many who do, so that possibility would not surprise me.
    As for me, I do not enjoy arguments - not any more. And I really do not enjoy doing a lot of work in arguing, when the outcome is almost surely to be “no resolution.”
I’d like to hear your response to this, but that’s as far as I want to go with this thread.
 
fide said:
  • Do you want the actual truth of this question to be as you have concluded it?
Click to expand...
No. I’m just following Aquinas on this one. I have no ulterior motive here.
  • If so, why? How would that history be “better” in your mind, than the other?
Click to expand...
It follows Aquinas and doesn’t seem to contradict the teaching of the Church. But, if you found an authoritative document that literally said “at the Last Supper, the Apostles ate Christ’s glorified body”, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
  • Another possibility is that you simply enjoy theological arguments - I’ve encountered many who do, so that possibility would not surprise me.
Click to expand...
I think you’re trying to say that I don’t believe the argument I’m presenting, but just presenting it out of the joy of debating. Umm… no. :roll_eyes:
 
Last edited:
Aquinas can be wrong, you know - maybe especially on this matter, which has a “solution” to its obvious problem that is the same as the accepted solution to a similar problem in Church teachings. Do you see the similarity of these two “problems”:
  1. It seems more fitting that Mary, the mother of our Lord, be a holy and unstained “tabernacle” for Him in whom to abide between His conception and His birth. BUT - she is human, stained by origin sin as all humans are, and her freedom from sin can’t (can it?) come until “after” His redeeming work on the Cross.
  2. It seems fitting that the Last Supper be the Holy Eucharist, communicating His resurrected and glorified Body, as is the teaching for all celebrations of Eucharist afterward. BUT - He was not resurrected and glorified until after He died on the Cross; His Self-gift of Himself in resurrection glory can’t come (can it?) until the Passion historically occurs.
Do you see the comparison? And the identical “problems” - they are the same “problem” (linear time) - and I suggest they have one and the same solution.

(Aquinas had a problem with both of these matters, did he not? He changed his mind in the case of Mary, as I read on the internet…
 
Last edited:
fide said:
(Aquinas had a problem with both of these matters, did he not? He changed his mind in the case of Mary, as I read on the internet…
Click to expand...
Aquinas changed his opinion on something? Can you link us to that? Like I said, my former priest said that Aquinas was rarely wrong but he believes he was wrong about this.
 
These are the notes I took from a website - I’ll see if I can find the site again and then [post it for you…
  1. Early Stage (before 1254 – Commentary on Sentences ): St. Thomas affirmed the Immaculate Conception of Mary. “Such was the purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exempt from both original and actual sin.” [Com. in I Sent , d. 44, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3]
  2. Middle Stage (1254-1272 – Summa theologiae ): Thomas denied the Immaculate Conception of Mary. “The Blessed Virgin did indeed contract original sin.” [ Summa theologiae IIIa, q. 27, a. 2, ad 2]
  3. Final Stage (after 1272): Thomas returned to his faith in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. “For she [the Blessed Virgin] was most pure because she incurred the stain neither of original sin nor of mortal sin nor of venial sin.”[ Expositio super salutatione angelica ]
 
Hope1960 said:
So, in English…we do eat Jesus’ hair, fingers, toes,etc?
Click to expand...
We receive (by eating and drinking) all of Jesus, including His physical body. His physical body has those parts, so in that sense, yes, we are receiving/eating them.

BUT we do not eat Jesus in the way we eat animal flesh, crushing and dividing it part from part. Jesus’ body is untouched and unharmed by our act of eating. His parts cannot again be separated (which is why we receive Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity even if we receive under one appearance only). So while we receive all of Jesus, it is not in the way we would normally eat the body parts of a creature. Our mouths and digestive systems interact with the accidents of bread, not with the reality underneath.
 
fide said:
This looks like a good discussion on it (I haven’t yet read this, but I will…)
Click to expand...
It says that it was unlikely he denied that after all but let’s suppose both you and my former priest are right and the Eucharist was glorified at the Last Supper. How could it be, if Jesus hadn’t died yet?
 
Last edited:
fide said:
Aquinas can be wrong, you know - maybe especially on this matter, which has a “solution” to its obvious problem that is the same as the accepted solution to a similar problem in Church teachings. Do you see the similarity of these two “problems”:
  1. It seems more fitting that Mary, the mother of our Lord, be a holy and unstained “tabernacle” for Him in whom to abide between His conception and His birth. BUT - she is human, stained by origin sin as all humans are, and her freedom from sin can’t (can it?) come until “after” His redeeming work on the Cross.
  2. It seems fitting that the Last Supper be the Holy Eucharist, communicating His resurrected and glorified Body, as is the teaching for all celebrations of Eucharist afterward. BUT - He was not resurrected and glorified until after He died on the Cross; His Self-gift of Himself in resurrection glory can’t come (can it?) until the Passion historically occurs.
Do you see the comparison? And the identical “problems” - they are the same “problem” (linear time) - and I suggest they have one and the same solution.

(Aquinas had a problem with both of these matters, did he not? He changed his mind in the case of Mary, as I read on the internet…
Click to expand...
This misunderstands Aquinas’ error. He felt that Mary received God’s saving graces in the womb by special privilege, but only at the moment after she received her rational soul. That is, conception and the receiving of a rational soul were two separate events, so to say that she was immaculately conceived was illogical to him. Aquinas thought human beings in utero progressed from having a nutritive soul, to a sensitive soul, to a rational soul, which was the error, and the error stemmed largely in part from outdated science on the biological facts concerning gestation.

Still, following Aquinas on the question about what type of his body Christ made present in the Eucharist is following also the broader consensus of Catholic theological opinion on that question today.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top