Answering William Lane Craig's objections to transubstantiation

[JuanFlorencio]

Are you trying to get at Craig’s claim that Jesus’s human nature would eventually be “eaten up”?

Not His nature, but His body and blood.

 

[Upgrade25]

If Christ is God the Son and God is infinite, how can God be “eaten up”?

That’s an objection from the Koran.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That’s an objection from the Koran.

I think you posted without knowing my reference, which has nothing to do with the Koran.

 

[KEP1983]

I’m hesitant to accept this answer. If Jesus has to supply an infinite number of his body, then that would imply that his body does get “eaten up.” It would imply that Jesus’s body gets destroyed in the process of digestion, so he had to supply an infinite amount. Plus, having an infinite amount of Jesus bodies seems to fly in the face of Catholic teaching, where we believe there is only one God.

Yes, Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity are eaten under the form of bread and wine. Yes, you really do partake of His flesh and blood.

I don’t understand your objection about there being only one God, so Jesus couldn’t multiply His body. Having an infinite amount of one thing is still one thing. For instance, I could stand next to a telephone pole that is 10 feet tall. That’s one telephone pole. Jesus could then multiply that one telephone pole so that it is a trillion miles long. It would still be one telephone pole, not a trillion different telephone poles.

What Dr Craig means by Jesus’ human nature being “eaten up” is not questioning whether or not Catholics are really eating Him (which is what you seem to be implying). Rather, what Dr Craig is saying is that Jesus Divine Nature is infinite, but there’s only a finite amount of Jesus’ human nature. So, if we were to assume that Jesus was 5’10" and 200 pounds, Dr Craig is saying that if you were to eat 200 pounds of Eucharist’s, you would have “eaten up” Jesus. His physical body would be gone, because there’s only so much of His physical body to be eaten up.

But as I and others have pointed out, Jesus did the multiplication of the loaves over and over again, and right before His bread of life discourse. Jesus can multiply the food as much as He wants.

 

[Latinitas]

What do you have to say to Craig’s objection that we don’t actually eat the human nature of Christ, we only consume the accidents of the bread and wine? If we ate the human nature, Craig says, eventually it would “run out.”

I say that the accidents of bread and wine are inhering in the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. Thus we eat the Eucharist host, the substance of which is the Precious Body and Blood of the Lord. To use my steel pipe example. The welded part of the pipe is converted into the substance of the original pipe. But it being used up does not mean the original pipe is used up. Quanitity is an accident inhering, not attribute subsisting. Another point that needs to be made here is the difference in the mode of presence. The historical body of Chist is present in heaven only. The sacramental body of Christ is present on the altars. You’re converting something into the substance of something else. Using then what you just converted into it does not destory the original. Imagine I have substance A. I can convert a quantity of substance B into substance A, if then use that quantity which I’ve converted, I’m not going to run out of the original substance A. Christ doesn’t cease to present in heaven. In other words, Christ’s body doesn’t moe from heaven to the Altar. The gifts of the Altar are converted into the substance of the Body which is Heaven. It’s the converted gifts that run out. When they run out, one simply consecrates more. In other words the original Body is not divided.

Let’s indulge our imaginations a little bit with some alchemy. There exists at this time, a certain fixed amount of gold in the world. But if some alchemist could succesfully turn iron into gold, and then consume that gold, the original supply would not run out. All that would run out is the supply.

Bendicat Deus,
Latinitas

 

[YosefYosep]

I say that the accidents of bread and wine are inhering in the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. Thus we eat the Eucharist host, the substance of which is the Precious Body and Blood of the Lord. To use my steel pipe example. The welded part of the pipe is converted into the substance of the original pipe. But it being used up does not mean the original pipe is used up. Quanitity is an accident inhering, not attribute subsisting. Another point that needs to be made here is the difference in the mode of presence. The historical body of Chist is present in heaven only. The sacramental body of Christ is present on the altars. You’re converting something into the substance of something else. Using then what you just converted into it does not destory the original. Imagine I have substance A. I can convert a quantity of substance B into substance A, if then use that quantity which I’ve converted, I’m not going to run out of the original substance A. Christ doesn’t cease to present in heaven. In other words, Christ’s body doesn’t moe from heaven to the Altar. The gifts of the Altar are converted into the substance of the Body which is Heaven. It’s the converted gifts that run out. When they run out, one simply consecrates more. In other words the original Body is not divided.

Let’s indulge our imaginations a little bit with some alchemy. There exists at this time, a certain fixed amount of gold in the world. But if some alchemist could succesfully turn iron into gold, and then consume that gold, the original supply would not run out. All that would run out is the supply.

Bendicat Deus,
Latinitas

Ah, I like the gold analogy. It also helps to solve the issue of there being multiple Jesus’s. You may have three pieces of gold, in the same way that you may have three pieces of the Eucharist. But you can’t have three gold. You can have three pieces of gold, but not three gold. Gold is just what it is. You can’t have more than one of what something is. So in the same sense you can’t have multiple bodies of Christ. There’s only one. You can have multiple pieces of the Eucharist, like you can have multiple pieces of gold, but those pieces of Eucharist are all one in the sense that they all share the same essence, substance, or isness.

 

[minion]

I’m starting to think William Craig’s desire to refute Catholicism is due to the “accidental” loss of a job, because this straw man refutation is absurd for someone so learned.

 

[Expatreprocedit]

In a transcript of Craig, he mentions how transubstantiation is ultimately an illogical position. Does anyone have some answers to his objections below?

“Now this occasions a question: when the communicant takes the blood and the body of Christ and eats them and digests them, why isn’t the body and blood of Christ sort of eaten up after a while? Is there a sort of infinite body and blood? Remember we are talking about the human nature of Christ, not the divine nature. In his divine nature, the second person of the Trinity is immaterial. He doesn’t have a body. So we are talking about the human[6] nature of Christ. So as communicants eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood, one might ask, “Why isn’t it all consumed? Why isn’t he eaten up?” And I asked this question once of a Fordham University philosopher who is a priest, and he said, “You don’t consume the substance in the Lord’s Supper. You only eat the accidents.” And it was like the veil fell from my eyes. I suddenly understood. When the communicant takes the elements in, he doesn’t really consume or digest the body and blood of Christ. He only consumes the accidents. And that is why it is not used up. That puts a somewhat different spin on transubstantiation. I remember one Catholic girl saying to me once that she liked the doctrine of transubstantiation because it made her feel so close to Christ, that she was actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It was such an intimate union. Well, that is not really true on the classic doctrine. She is really only consuming the accidents of the bread and the wine, not the substance of the Lord’s body and blood.”

Read more: reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s12-5#ixzz46foKx1y1

I see Dr. Craig’s problem right away. He is a Nestorian, or at least here he is looking at the Real Presence from a Nestorian perspective. He is not taking into account that Christ’s divine nature is indissolubly and intimately united to His human nature. Being united to His divine nature, Christ’s body (and blood) may very well become infinite in nature. To somehow say, as he does, that Christ’s heavenly body is somehow “limited” is ludicrous and betrays a lack of understanding of the Incarnation on Dr. Craig’s part.

I have to add that all this points out the folly, in my opinion, of trying to “figure out” the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. It is simply a gift, and a Mystery, and was not meant to be “figured out”. This is one of the reasons I became Orthodox.