Help refuting refutation of Transubstantiation

[ccmnxc]

I am by no means a Biblical scholar, so I was wondering if anyone could counter this evidence against the Real Presence. It is from a website I respect, but it is also not Catholic. I think the page has good intent, but I’ll leave it up to you.

godandscience.org/doctrine/eucharist.html

 

[RSD]

I am by no means a Biblical scholar, so I was wondering if anyone could counter this evidence against the Real Presence. It is from a website I respect, but it is also not Catholic. I think the page has good intent, but I’ll leave it up to you.

godandscience.org/doctrine/eucharist.html

It is just silly. They say that of course Jesus could not have meant that the bread He was holding was His body because he was still there in His body. How could being present in His earthly body possibly prevent Him from also being present in the bread which He blessed and broke? Jesus is present in the Eucharist in many different places at the same time. This definitely is in the category of things that are not impossible for God.

 

[FightingFat]

The readings at Mass at the moment are particularly pertinent in regard to what Jesus means. There’s some good info on this Sunday’s readings here: marklambert.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/sunday-scripture-eighteenth-sunday-in.html and last Sunday’s here: marklambert.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/sunday-scripture-seventeenth-sunday-in.html The next few weeks are quite important with regard to our understanding of the blessed sacrament. This week’s readings show how it was pre-figured in the Old Testament. Hope that helps!

 

[Mystophilus]

I am by no means a Biblical scholar, so I was wondering if anyone could counter this evidence against the Real Presence. It is from a website I respect, but it is also not Catholic. I think the page has good intent, but I’ll leave it up to you.

godandscience.org/doctrine/eucharist.html

“How could Jesus, still present in His own body, say that bread and wine were His body and blood?”

How could Jesus come back from the dead?
How could He raise the dead?
How could He instantaneously heal the sick, including the blind and the deaf?
How could He turn a few fish and loaves into enough to feed thousands?
How could He walk on water?

I rather think that the website is missing a rather fundamental point about the Incarnation of God: He was able to do quite a lot which we cannot.

However, reading through the site, it is noteworthy that they put the Catholic Church on their “cults” page: godandscience.org/cults/index.html

Politics, including religious politics, tend to interfere with people’s thinking processes.

 

[Crumpy]

The Catholic Eucharistic doctrine is a fulfillment of Old Testament “types” which foreshadow the gift of God in the Eucharist.

For example,

In the first Jewish passover meal, the Jews did not eat a symbolic representation of the lamb that was slaughtered, they ate the real thing.

Among the temple sacrifices (described in Exodus/Leviticus) there was one where the sacrificial animal brought by a “sinner” was sacrificed, cooked, and then even partly eaten on the spot. They ate not a symbolic representation of the sacrifice, they ate the real thing.

So

Jesus could have instituted the Eucharist anytime he wanted to, but he chose the Apostles’ passover meal, to link that meal and the new covenant to the old one and to fulfill the typology and establish the new passover in his own body and blood.

The Old Testament eschewed idols and representations, in general. So, Jesus in the Eucharist is the Real Deal, to use a 21st century idiom.

“Refute” is a good word, it’s used in the Bible. but, have no fear, you have the truth on your side.

 

[Cat_Herder]

Answer

 

[MarcoPolo]

Augustine on the Eucharist

And then this statement from the godandscience website: “It is obvious from this statement that Jesus is NOT referring to physical bread.” My response to that is: see Last Supper, 1 Cor 10-11, Acts 2:24, etc… The website’s author also fails to grasp the typology of the manna (bread) in the Old Testament and its New Testament counterpart at the beginning of John 6.

Acts 21:25 is irrelevant because we do not metabolize human blood in the sacramental presence.

The “Real Presence only at Communion?” argument in the article is debunked in CCC#1374: “This presence is called ‘real’ - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too”

And on and on. This author is way off.