How long has the belief of Transubstantiation been around?

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This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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From the beginning:
catholic.com/library/Christ_in_the_Eucharist.asp

Print it out and show it to your friend. (Don’t forget to leave www.Catholic.com somewhere on the page)🙂

"The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world "
(Jesus wasn’t metaphorically crucified.)
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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The word to express the belief in the actual presence of christ in the Eucharist dates from 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, however, transubstantiation itself dates from the Last Supper when Jesus said, “This is my body”. Expressing the real presence outside of the NT is found in two of Ignatius letters: to the Smyrnaens (7:1), and Ephesians (20:2)
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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Your friend is right about the fact that the belief has been “created”. Historically was started before Jesus death at dinner time, and it was created by the same person that was talking about the new and everlasting covenant. 😉

One of the grounds on which the first Christian martyrs (well before 300 AC) were persecuted was because of their immoral behaviors. People who did not know better accused the Christians of being cannibals (eating the flesh of a human God) and incestuous (kissing Brothers and Sisters in God). That misunderstanding was in part due to the fact that most ceremonies appeared secretive because they were done in the dark. That was simply done because it was before or after working hours.

The Theological explanation comes from the Truth and the historical documentation is even accepted and taught by scholars like Prof. Bart D. Ehrman (a protestant I assume).
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 117) “The Eucharist is the Flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ep. ad Smryn. c. 7).

St. Justin Martyr (d. 167) “We take this not as ordinary bread nor as ordinary drink, but, as Jesus Christ our Savior … had Flesh and Blood for the sake of our salvation, so have we been taught that also the food consecrated by the word of prayer coming from Him … is the Flesh and Blood of that Jesus who was made Flesh” (Apol. i. c. 66).

St. Irenaeus (d. 203) “Wine and bread are by the word of God changed into the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ” (Adv. Haer. v. 2, 3).

St. Hippolytus (d. 235) “He hath given us His own divine Flesh and His own precious Blood to eat and to drink” (In Proverb, ix. 2).

Moreover, the catacombs and other early Christian art bear abundant witness to the belief in Transubstantiation. In the Catacomb of St. Lucina (c. 100), for example, a fish symbolizing Christ is represented as bearing on its back a basket of bread and a cup of red wine.
 
wow. thanks everyone. This is really going to help. Perhaps he will understand this. I won’t be seeing him for a few weeks, but this information is now tatooed into my brain 👍 If you all are able to find any other information regarding historical accounts, by all means post it here! Thanks again

In Christ

Andrew
 
There are several levels in which this question could be answered.
First, about the term “Transubstiantion” itself that did not come about until St. Thomas Aquinas and his era.

However, this is was an attemp by St Thomas to explain as best as humanly possible, how bread and wine cam become the Real Presence of Christ Jesus, that is the bead and wine are no longer bread and wine but the actual Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a mystery and we will never fully understand this reality but Thomas in the Church’s understanding has come closest to the truth.

But going to the heart of the question to the question of when did the Church actually come to believe that the Eucharist is the Real Presence I would point out to your friend a couple of things.

First and most important, the belief in the Real Presence is essential to the true “Apostolic Tradition”. Here I am refering to the actual doctrines handed down to the Church from the Apostles themselves and whose Tradition has been taught and safe guarded though the apostolic succession of our bishops.

John 6 is said to be mostly symbolic or metaphorical by those who accepted the teachings of Zwingly, Calvin and to a certain extent Luther especially Calvin’s commentary on the Gospel of John. This, however, just does not stand up to first Apostolic Tradition of both the Easten and Western Traditions which has always held the belief in the Real Presence even though it may not have been articulated in more detail until the beginning of the second century. This was due to the fact that this was an accepted belief and there wasn’t the need to develope a theology for the Eucharist. What we find in Matthew, Mark and Luke in their Last Supper narratives, in John 6 and in 1Cor all point to the Church’s belief in the Real Presence from the time of the Apostles.

Another way of pointing out that this belief has its roots in the Apostolic Tradition is by considering that if the original Church - the Apostolic Church understood the Eucharist to be a symbol only - as Zwingli and Calvin taught, then a radical departure from a “symbolic” understand of the Eucharist to a belief that the Eucharist was Christ’s Body and Blood would have been condemned by the Church immediately. But it was not. Rather than being condemned a theology was begun to understand and articulate this belief.

Even a quick study of a divergence between East and West during the Patristic times would show that a division developed over when exactly the “Change” took place not that there wasn’t a metaphysical change. The Real Presence was believed by both West and East.

It wouldn’t be for some 1500 years with the Protestant reformers mentioned above that there was ever a serious denial of the Real Presence. Now duing those 1500 years the Western and Eastern Traditions certainly had there disagreements (to put it mildly) but there was never a denial that Christ was fully present in the Eucharist. If both the East and Western Traditions held this to be true shouldn’t that tell us something about the Church’s belief in the Real Presence and this belief goes all the way back to the teachings of the Apostles?

And building on this thought to a concept that I feel is so obvious it is almost trite if it wasn’t so serious. This is how could the Church have gotten this belief in the Real Presence so wrong for so long and how could the Holy Spirit have been so silent and dormant for 1500 years?

And finally, what about Jesus’ words as found in the Gospels. Doesn’t John 6 relate how this teaching the the Eucharist was His Body and Blood a ccause for a huge defection amoung His followers? Yet where does it say Jesus change or adapted His proclamation to emphasize He was only speaking symboliclly?
I guess one could say that the question Jesus posed to His Disciples during this mass defection was rhetorical in nature but for me that just does not make sense but is a real twisting of the historical nature of this passage from John.
 
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TEME525:
There are several levels in which this question could be answered.
First, about the term “Transubstiantion” itself that did not come about until St. Thomas Aquinas and his era.

However, this is was an attemp by St Thomas to explain as best as humanly possible, how bread and wine cam become the Real Presence of Christ Jesus, that is the bead and wine are no longer bread and wine but the actual Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a mystery and we will never fully understand this reality but Thomas in the Church’s understanding has come closest to the truth.
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This is often a misunderstanding for those who are not familiar with the Church’s teachings. The Church has alsways believed that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. As TEME points out, the term “transubstantiation” came about later. More specifically, the endeavor to explain how Christ becomes truly present was necessitated in order to refute the writings of Berengarius of Tours (c. 1050 AD). The Church officially adopted transubstantiation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 AD. The Council of Trent also confirmed the use of transubstantation by the earlier Council.

Because the Church had no need to define the process by which the Real Presence occurs until the 12th century, many non-Catholics erroneously assume that that was when the Church “invented” the doctrine.
 
The belief has been around since the beginning. The word came along later, to help explain what the belief meant in philosophical terms.
 
I assume the real question here is about the Real Presence, since “transubstantiation” is just a fancy way of saying “it continues to appear in every way like bread and wine, but all the bread and wine is gone and it is now all Jesus”. That is, the word just reinforces the Real Presence: “this is My body”, “this is My blood”.

Anyway, if the Real Presence were added to the faith, then there should be a rich historical record of the fact. If the Real Presence is actually a heresy that displaced the truth, then we should have evidence of such displacement. After all, heresies start small and spread. They don’t just appear everywhere at once. So while the “heresy of the Real Presence” was spreading we should see documents, pronouncements, councils, even wars to fight the heresy. Even if the truth lost and the heresy prevailed, we should have evidence of a heresy which spread from a tiny dot to conquer the entire Church, both east and west. We should even have ancient remnant churches that appear otherwise very Catholic but which reject the Real Presence.

But there isn’t any such evidence. No evidence of the complete overthrow of a central doctrine of the Church. One could almost think it never happened.
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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WHAT about 33ad.
 
Jesus told the people that “unless you drink to flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Those who heard him took this literally and Jesus did not correct them so that they would understand otherwise, and in fact those who did not accept what he said left him for good(Jn 6:52-59; 66). Of course Jesus said too at the last supper that the bread and wine were his body and blood. Ironically, those who say that they base their belief on the Bible, don’t accept what Jesus said, but instead base their belief instead on their own traditions, going back to the Reformation, that tell them what Jesus said was symbolic, though thout there is no evidence for this outlook in the passages on the last supper or in John 6.
 
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Harpazo:
This question was posed to me by a friend of our family. He asked me because he knows that I have been studying Catholicism and that I will be joining the Church eventually. He’s Anglican and he was trying to tell me that John 6 is mostly metaphorical. I don’t believe so.

I was trying to convince him and he then asked me how long the belief had been around, in a historical persepective. He claimed that if the belief arose after the 300s or so, then it would most likely have been “created.” As far as my current knowledge goes (i’m only 16), transubstantiation has been around since before AD 100. If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

In Christ,

Andrew
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It first appears in a theological text in 1140, when Roland Bandinelli (later Pope Alexander III) uses it - the first time it is used in a text of the episcopal magisterium, is in 1215 at Lateran IV.​

The word *transsubstantiatio *would not mean much before theologians writing in Latin started discussing the metaphysics of the Eucharist by using talk about substance - which is why the word does not crop up until then.

Transsubstantiation is a change of the kind called conversion, and the word was coined to focus on what, in metaphysical terms, this conversion involves. Belief in a conversion of the gifts is much older; the new thing is the application of the language of substance to discussions about it

Hope that helps 🙂 ##
 
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