Appears to be one thing, but is something entirely different

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steamboatp2

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Silly-sounding but dead serious question…If I told you, that thing over there appears to be (has the accidents of) a bowl of ice cream, but is actually is a frog (the substance), you might say I’m crazy. How is that different from something that scientific tests say is bread but is actually Jesus?
 
What science can measure is not all that makes up something.

Generally speaking, you are correct, ice cream is not and cannot be a frog. Similarly, bread is not and cannot be anything other than bread. However, this statement does not account for God’s sovereignty and authorship

When considering the transubstantiation, you need to start with a philosophical understanding that isn’t really taught much nowadays. The difference between substance and accidents. The accidents of something are its outward, physical characteristics. You, for example, are a human being of a particular height, weight, skin color, etc. This is the way your nature has manifested physically.

Your substance on the other hand, is who and what you are. While your accidents change over the course of your life (you go from a baby, to a young adult, to an adult) your substance does not. You are always you, regardless of the accidents of your genetics.

In transubstantiation, the accidents of the bread and wine remain constant while the substance is changed to the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.

This is something we cannot measure, and cannot truly understand, but it is important to recognize that this is within God’s power. God is the source of all accidents and substances, and they are completely within the scope of His control. He defines the accidents of bread as well as the accidents of human flesh.

It is also important to understand the difference between necessary accidents and unnecessary accidents. An example of a necessary accident is a square. The nature of the square demands that it have four equal sides. Without that, it is not a square. Nothing about bread or muscle requires that they take the appearance they do. It is only through God’s will that bread and muscle look and act the way they do.

With all of that in mind you can, hopefully, see that it is completely within God’s power to change the substance of bread and wine into the substance of flesh and blood, while allowing the accidents to retain their previous appearance. This isn’t something we’re ever going to be able to fully grasp this side of eternity, but that doesn’t make it impossible or illogical.

And yes, this also means that if God wanted to, He could turn ice cream into a frog. I sincerely doubt He ever has or ever will, but it is possible.

(Sorry for the wall of text. I was going to write a concise answer, but the more I wrote the more I realized I needed to explain underlying principles for it to make any kind of sense >_>)
 
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steamboatp2 said:
Silly-sounding but dead serious question…If I told you, that thing over there appears to be (has the accidents of) a bowl of ice cream, but is actually is a frog (the substance), you might say I’m crazy. How is that different from something that scientific tests say is bread but is actually Jesus?
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H.H. Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, 1965:
CHRIST PRESENT IN THE EUCHARIST THROUGH TRANSUBSTANTIATION

46. To avoid any misunderstanding of this type of presence, which goes beyond the laws of nature and constitutes the greatest miracle of its kind, (50) we have to listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. Her voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is through the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, a unique and truly wonderful conversion that the Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls transubstantiation. (51) As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
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There’s no reason to think that bread or wine could become the body and blood of Jesus Christ apart from his promise that it does so, carried on down through the Church he established to teach right doctrine and holiness to the faithful.

Did Jesus promise that bowl of ice cream would become a frog?
 
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“Sorry for the wall of text”
  • no, I appreciate the thoroughness.
… How does a person know which accidents are necessary and which aren’t?
 
Talk of “accidents” and “substance” means nothing to me .

I am not on that philosophy’s wavelength .

This verse from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ translation of Adoro Te Devote makes more sense …

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.
 
steamboatp2 said:
Silly-sounding but dead serious question…If I told you, that thing over there appears to be (has the accidents of) a bowl of ice cream, but is actually is a frog (the substance), you might say I’m crazy. How is that different from something that scientific tests say is bread but is actually Jesus?
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Good Lord in Heaven. Are you seriously comparing a frog masquerading as a bowl of ice cream with the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord in the Mass? 😠
 
… So a man “masquerading” (your word) as a piece of bread is different?
 
There is no intent to deceive, so in that sense, ok. But do appearances matter at all? We can’t directly interact with the substance of a thing, so we must go on appearances (“accidents”). If something appears to have wings and feathers and the ability to fly, is it really possible to call it something other than a bird? After all, those are just appearances… but they mean something. If something tests out as containing gluten, does it really make sense to NOT call it bread? (Actually I do want to believe; it’s just hard)
 
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Actually to believe is hard. We can make a poll here, probably most of us do not believe perfectly. We always carry some amount of unbelief, which we have to struggle with.
 
I don’t remember where I heard this, a priest on YouTube I think, but he gave the example of a couple having their first child. Outwardly they appear the exact same: man and woman, but in fact they are now something completely different and new: mother and father. The very essence of who they are has undeniably changed, though their physical, biological reality has not. So it is with the eucharist as well.
 
steamboatp2 said:
Silly-sounding but dead serious question…If I told you, that thing over there appears to be (has the accidents of) a bowl of ice cream, but is actually is a frog (the substance), you might say I’m crazy. How is that different from something that scientific tests say is bread but is actually Jesus?
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The difference is, it’s not you telling me this. It’s God Almighty telling me this.
 
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