Is the "Real Presence" real?

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SyCarl said:
While other writings indicate that Augustine believed in a Real Presence it would appear to be spiritual, not physical. He says elsewhere.
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Lol. I do not have the time to go into my library of Church Fathers, but I’m sure someone else will dig up St Augustine quotes showing that he truly believed in the Real Presence. You may also get about 5000 or so other Church Father quotes. 😃

I cannot help but to find a bit of amusement when someone tries to use St Augustine against the central teaching (Eucharist) of the Catholic/Orthodox Church. 🤷
 
SyCarl said:
I believe it does. The point being replied to was that Jesus did notthing to explain to His disciples what He meant. Augustine indicates that He did clearly provide an answer. Jesus would ascend to Heaven. They would not be consuming Him by tooth-biting which would indicate that it would not be a physical consumption. It is interesting to read the several tractates in which Augustine deals with the Bread of Life discourse. A couple earlier he indicates that:

newadvent.org/fathers/1701025.htm

While other writings indicate that Augustine believed in a Real Presence it would appear to be spiritual, not physical. He says elsewhere.

newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm
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These quotes from St Augustine are out of context.

And, even if this one man did not get it correctly as the church had always taught, he is just one man and not the final authority on this matter. The majority voice of the other bishops in union with the successor of st peter is the authority God speaks through.
St Augustone got it wrong on a few matters.
 
mathematician said:
What do you mean by “define”? Have I got a metaphysical theory about how God can become man? No, and I don’t particularly want one, but I am sure the Vatican would have no trouble coming up with one if I did.

**This is my point, we cant exhaust the definition of the Eucharist. Because it is Spiritual, what I dont mean by Spiritual is symbolic, I mean it is the eternal presence of Jesus made present in time to God’s people in every age past, present and future.

The word the church uses to help us understand this incarnation is “hypostatic union”, but that is another thread. **

You mean the Vatican came up with it? Well I hope they thought they had some biblical basis for doing so.

**They defined or revealed this Transubstantiation, in order to clarify the belief in the true presence. And to defend against heretical teachings of the true presence. For example, some christians believe in co-substantiation. The Roman Catholic church, revealed this to by in error, because We believe that Jesus body and blood do not co habit with the bread and wine with his body and blood. So the Roman Catholic church to defend the real presence against such heretical teachings, Gives us Transubstantiation, whereby the species of bread and wine may remain bread and wine to our natural senses, but in the eternal present of the Mass, The Species becomes totally the body,blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.

The only support there is in scripture is that God revealed himself to man in many different ways, (incarnation, bread, wine, rock, wind, cloud, burning bush, transfiguration etc.) And in Genesis God spoke creation into existance with his Word. And the Word of God became flesh and spoke to the bread and the wine to become his body and blood. Just like God ordered Moses to speak to the Rock, after smiting the Rock once.**

It is a metaphysical theory without a biblical basis. That wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t clash with what we otherwise know about the universe, but it does.

It does not clash with the universe, for one the Universe was created by his Holy Word, just like the bread and wine become his body and blood by his Holy Word.

The problem some RC’s have (and the Catholic priest I was talking to this morning wasn’t one of them) is that they can’t get it out of their heads that transubstantiation and real presence are synonyms.
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I am sorry to admit that I am one of those Roman Catholics that dont believe that “Presence” and Transfiguration are synonymous. Because the defiinition of “Presence” is taken from the biblical term “Parousia” Jesus truly Present in the Eucahrist. Transubstantiation wants to explain how this is done.
 
Mickey said:
Lol. I do not have the time to go into my library of Church Fathers, but I’m sure someone else will dig up St Augustine quotes showing that he truly believed in the Real Presence. You may also get about 5000 or so other Church Father quotes. 😃

I cannot help but to find a bit of amusement when someone tries to use St Augustine against the central teaching (Eucharist) of the Catholic/Orthodox Church. 🤷
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I have seen a number of quotes from Augustine posted in the past. Unfortunatley many of the whole documents from which the quotes are taken note available on line to see the context. I know that the Church Fathers spoke are supportive of the Real Presence. I feel however that many of their writings are not contrary to that presence being spiritual rather than physical. To me spiritual is just as real as physical.
 
Mickey said:
Wait a minute! Are we agreeing on something? 😃
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Yes, precisely, it wants to explain a mystery. The Incarnation is a mystery, but thankfully it hasn’t occurred to them that we need an “explanation” for it yet.
 
justinthemartyr said:
These quotes from St Augustine are out of context.

And, even if this one man did not get it correctly as the church had always taught, he is just one man and not the final authority on this matter. The majority voice of the other bishops in union with the successor of st peter is the authority God speaks through.
St Augustone got it wrong on a few matters.
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How are they out of context. They are from his tractates specifically dealing with John 6. I have read the complete document from which each quote is taken. I think they fairly reflect the view he expressed there.
 
mathematician said:
Yes, precisely, it wants to explain a mystery. The Incarnation is a mystery, but thankfully it hasn’t occurred to them that we need an “explanation” for it yet.
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And I for one am quite happy to leave how the Real Presence is there as a mystery that we don’t need to understand. Jesus will be present in whatever way He intended whatever we believe about it.
 
mathematician said:
Yes, precisely, it wants to explain a mystery. The Incarnation is a mystery, but thankfully it hasn’t occurred to them that we need an “explanation” for it yet.
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Boy I hate to be the barrier of news to you, The Roman Catholic church has given an explanation to the incarnation, again to protect it against hereies. It is called the “Hypostatic Union”
 
Mickey said:
You can have both my brother in Christ!

Jesus Christ was human (physical) and divine (spiritual). These natures were inseparable.
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Hey Mickey I concurr with the Physical and divine properties in the Eucharist, and I take Spirit to mean the 3rd person of Blessed trinity, although I might be mistaken but, spiritual from Sycarl has symbolic connotations to it, this is where I dont agree.
 
St Augustine is correct in his final analysis. read on.

“Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands” (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).

“I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ” (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).

…

“What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction” (ibid., 272).
 
SyCarl said:
I have seen a number of quotes from Augustine posted in the past. Unfortunatley many of the whole documents from which the quotes are taken note available on line to see the context. I know that the Church Fathers spoke are supportive of the Real Presence. I feel however that many of their writings are not contrary to that presence being spiritual rather than physical. To me spiritual is just as real as physical.
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I would agree, to a degree. Spiritual, when referring to the “glorifed” body of Christ is yet physical in nature, not as we are specifically, but as christ was to Thomas and is to this very day, bodily.

Christ never ceased to be bodily present, even if it is said to be glorified, and spiritual, it is still His body, truly, and nothing less than that.

Therefore when we partake of the body and blood of christ(glorified) we are partaking of His actual glorified Body and Blood.

why else would the seeming elements of bread and wine change into actual, physical flesh and blood to a doubting priest on certain occassions at the moment of the words of consecration?
 
Mickey said:
If that is what Sylcarl means, then I do not agree either. Symbolic is not an Apostolic understanding.
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I am not speaking of a merely symbolic representation though there is some patristic support for such a view from men such as Eusebius.

For an eastern writer I have read John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Gospel of John. (in this case #44-47) He is certainly a believer in the Real Presence but to me even he talks in the language of spiritual food and a mystery. He doesn’t talk of a physical transformation. As I said earlier, I am perfectly willing to agree with the Real Presence being a mystery that we can’t really explain.
 
justinthemartyr said:
I would agree, to a degree. Spiritual, when referring to the “glorifed” body of Christ is yet physical in nature, not as we are specifically, but as christ was to Thomas and is to this very day, bodily.

Christ never ceased to be bodily present, even if it is said to be glorified, and spiritual, it is still His body, truly, and nothing less than that.

Therefore when we partake of the body and blood of christ(glorified) we are partaking of His actual glorified Body and Blood.

why else would the seeming elements of bread and wine change into actual, physical flesh and blood to a doubting priest on certain occassions at the moment of the words of consecration?
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Pope Gelasius spoke in words that would seem to be contrary to transubstantiation. I am sore that I don’t have access to the full work the quote is taken from and am relying on Philip Schaff’s history.
“The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine-nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the performance of the mysteries.”
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Once again, I am glad that it is the Church, the Body of christ who is the authority on these matters. Thank God Christ speaks with the voice of His one church, what a gift.

Even if a pope says something contrary, that does not in any way change what is officially taught by the church. He would have had to of declared it from the chair of peter(ex cathedra), and he nor any other has done this to oppose the teaching on the Eucharist.
 
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