Prove Transubtantiation and I will convert

[Steadfast]

It always comes back to that for us, doesn’t it?

The question of authority.

Needless to say, I reject your authority, and, frankly, you’re pretty sad defenders of its claims.

You’ve certainly said nothing in this thread that would incline me to change my mind about it.

You were asked to prove that the ECF’s taught Transubstantiation, you failed and when this was pointed out you went all girly and the burden shifting, histrionics and appeals to controverted authority were on.

Pathetic.

 

[eliasaph99]

It always comes back to that for us, doesn’t it?

The question of authority.

Needless to say, I reject your authority, and, frankly, you’re pretty sad defenders of its claims.

You’ve certainly said nothing in this thread that would incline me to change my mind about it.

You were asked to prove that the ECF’s taught Transubstantiation, you failed and when this was pointed out you went all girly and the burden shifting, histrionics and appeals to controverted authority were on.

Pathetic.

You are truly abrasive and offensive.

A conversation with you is like trying to use sandpaper for chewing gum.

 

[Prayerjohn]

It always comes back to that for us, doesn’t it?

The question of authority.

Needless to say, I reject your authority, and, frankly, you’re pretty sad defenders of its claims.

You’ve certainly said nothing in this thread that would incline me to change my mind about it.

Luke 10:16 “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

He is talk about hearing the Church.

 

[Steadfast]

You are truly abrasive and offensive.

A conversation with you is like trying to use sandpaper for chewing gum.

“If someone is ridiculous, they deserve to be called ridiculous” -Augustine

The point remains, you refuse to take your medicine. The fathers didn’t teach transubstantiation and you just can’t bring yourself to admit it, so instead, like a good Catholic, you triangulate and attempt to shift blame.

When I won’t sit still for that, I get called “abrasive and offensive”.

lol

 

[eliasaph99]

“If someone is ridiculous, they deserve to be called ridiculous” -Augustine

The point remains, you refuse to take your medicine. The fathers didn’t teach transubstantiation and you just can’t bring yourself to admit it, so instead, like a good Catholic, you triangulate and attempt to shift blame.

When I won’t sit still for that, I get called “abrasive and offensive”.

lol

I quite disagree. I think that the quotes by others show a clear teaching of the bread and wine literally becoming the body and blood.

You disagree with this, which is fine. But your manner of voicing your disagreement is uncalled for.

You’re abrasive and offensive tone is nowhere more evident than it is in the reply you have made to me here.

I have not “refused to take my medicine.” I have read the passages, pondered them, and come to a different conclusion than you. I will not admit what I do not believe to be true.

As for your part, I see no evidence that you have done any reflection on what I have said. You have not evaluated my comment to see if perhaps I have made a valid point about your conduct. There is not a shred of evidence of self-examination.

I suggest you reread the posts you have made. In almost all of them in this long thread you have concluded by making some sort of patronizing and antagonistic comment to the party being replied to. A debate does not necessitate the putting down and insulting of the other party. But this is what you have done.

It truly makes for unpleasant reading and reveals your true character.

I am sorry that you are this person and that you have chosen to come here to reveal your true self to us.

 

[Steadfast]

I quite disagree. I think that the quotes by others show a clear teaching of the bread and wine literally becoming the body and blood.

You disagree with this, which is fine. But your manner of voicing your disagreement is uncalled for.

See, this is what I mean, I wonder if you’ve even been reading my responses in this thread. I have REPEATEDLY said that the fathers teach and believe in the bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood. If your church stopped there, without going on to say that this means that the bread and wine cease to exist, then we’d be having a completely different conversation.

You’re abrasive and offensive tone is nowhere more evident than it is in the reply you have made to me here.

And the clear evidence you’ve given that you haven’t even been paying attention to what I’ve said in this thread leads me to no conclusion other than you really should be quiet, sit down and let others, better able to pay attention and deal with what has been actually said interact politely.

You’ve been presumptuous since you entered the discussion, on the one hand modifying your functioning definition of Transubstantiation to include the fathers and on the other in assuming that I do not, in fact, agree that they teach the real presence.

I have not “refused to take my medicine.” I have read the passages, pondered them, and come to a different conclusion than you. I will not admit what I do not believe to be true.

If you think I don’t believe the fathers believed and taught the real presence or that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood then you cannot honestly have done this.

As for your part, I see no evidence that you have done any reflection on what I have said. You have not evaluated my comment to see if perhaps I have made a valid point about your conduct. There is not a shred of evidence of self-examination.

I examine myself all the time and i will admit this, I lose patience with people who will not play fairly and that is what I have done here. If I have done you an injustice, I beg your pardon.

I suggest you reread the posts you have made. In almost all of them in this long thread you have concluded by making some sort of patronizing and antagonistic comment to the party being replied to. A debate does not necessitate the putting down and insulting of the other party. But this is what you have done.

I’ve reread the thread repeatedly. I did not become impatient with the dishonesty of the Catholic participants until the last page or so when some were repeatedly implying that I believed in a symbolic view or that the passages from the fathers “clearly” teach transubstantiation and admit the possibility of no other view and the “well the church says so so deal with it” card was played.

It truly makes for unpleasant reading and reveals your true character.

I am sorry that you are this person and that you have chosen to come here to reveal your true self to us.

Well, that saddens me too.

What saddens me most of all is that rather than dealing with me or with what I said, you prefer to retreat behind this attitude of injured dignity.

 

[tizzidale]

Do any of the Lutheran churches adore the Eucharist?

 

[Steadfast]

Do any of the Lutheran churches adore the Eucharist?

I don’t believe so.

 

[eliasaph99]

See, this is what I mean, I wonder if you’ve even been reading my responses in this thread. I have REPEATEDLY said that the fathers teach and believe in the bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood. If your church stopped there, without going on to say that this means that the bread and wine cease to exist, then we’d be having a completely different conversation.

And the clear evidence you’ve given that you haven’t even been paying attention to what I’ve said in this thread leads me to no conclusion other than you really should be quiet, sit down and let others, better able to pay attention and deal with what has been actually said interact politely.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. There is no need for this kind of comment. You are being rude and boorish.

You’ve been presumptuous since you entered the discussion, on the one hand modifying your functioning definition of Transubstantiation to include the fathers and on the other in assuming that I do not, in fact, agree that they teach the real presence.

I did not suggest in either my previous reply, nor in any reply, that you do not believe the Fathers teach the Real Presence. Perhaps you have been so busy insulting people, you have confused me with someone else you wished to throw a barb at.

If you think I don’t believe the fathers believed and taught the real presence or that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood then you cannot honestly have done this.

I examine myself all the time and i will admit this, I lose patience with people who will not play fairly and that is what I have done here. If I have done you an injustice, I beg your pardon.

Although I am not sure of the sincerity of this, based on the above, I will offer my pardon.

Now, for one who has claimed to have been reading so carefully, let me call to your attention my post to which you never responded which makes a particularly salient point.

Steadfast;2980277:

When God became man did He cease to be God?

That is hardly a comparison to the discussion.

God is spirit. Spirit has a wholly different existence than matter and we have very little idea as to the rules under which it operates.

On the other hand, bread is matter. If the bread becomes flesh, it is not bread any longer because flesh and bread are both matter. The only thing which there is to be changed is the matter. Bread does not have a spirit of breadness about it which is changed into a spirit of fleshness.

There is a change from one to the other and the first ceases to be. This is how matter behaves.

Which goes to refute what you are saying in the first paragraph. One must cease to exist, because both are matter. The bread has nothing to offer but the material of which it is composed. It is this which becomes the Body. If not this, then what?

 

[tizzidale]

Just one brief note. The Eastern Orthodox did hold a synod in Jerusalem which used the transub. to describe the Eucharist. I can’t remember the year, but I believe it was the 18th century.

 

[Steadfast]

That is hardly a comparison to the discussion.

God is spirit. Spirit has a wholly different existence than matter and we have very little idea as to the rules under which it operates.

But, in the Incarnation the Second Person of the Trinity became a man without ceasing also to be God.

In the same way the terrestrial elements communicate of the divine attributes in the Eucharist.

The analogy is as perfect as analogies get.

I don’t think it is proper to say of one miracle (the eucharist) that we know how it happens, but that of another (the Incarnation) we do not. Why is the one treatable and the other not?

This seems to be a dodge, and again there is the repeated reference in the fathers to the iconic connection between the meal and the Incarnation.

On the other hand, bread is matter. If the bread becomes flesh, it is not bread any longer because flesh and bread are both matter. The only thing which there is to be changed is the matter. Bread does not have a spirit of breadness about it which is changed into a spirit of fleshness.

I fail to see how this necessarily follows. Do you not say that the bread and wine become the body, blood, soul and divinity?

If the bread becomes not only flesh but the soul and divinity of Christ, and if in the Incarnation, God, a Spirit, became a man without losing His divinity, I just don’t see how it follows that the bread would become the whole Christ and necessarily cease to be bread .

Since we confess the same Christology; i.e. that in Christ the divine and human are inseparable, I may have doubts about the necessity of the use of the expression (“body, blood, soul and divinity”, as though any of them could be separated from any of the others), I certainly admit the truth communicated.

There is a change from one to the other and the first ceases to be. This is how matter behaves.

But we are not talking about ordinary matter.

We are talking, when we refer to Christ, to God in a glorified body, capable of walking through walls, disguising himself so that his close friends could not recognize him, and able to be present everywhere the Eucharist is celebrated even at the same time in many different places.

 

[twosweetgirls]

said gently I’ve read this thread, and I also notice another post in this forum about “proving” something. My thing is, if you (general-termed “you”) believe in Transubtantiation [and anything else about the Catholic faith], great! If you don’t, then find something you DO believe in and go with that.

Pardon if that sounds overly simplistic.

 

[peary]

No, I have asked to be shown that the early church fathers believed in Transubstantiation.

This doesn’t make it wrong, but it does make drawing a line from current Catholic belief to the first centuries of the church somewhat of a, erm, creative undertaking.

**Your point is irrelevent.

Debates over the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament were ignited by the eleventh-century French theologian Berengar of Tours, who denied that there could be a material change at the consecration. The controversy raged for the next two hundred years and culminated in the definition of transubstantiation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Why? Because the term “Real Presence” was bandied about freely and was being used for anything that did not involve the actual body, blood, soul, and Divinity of Christ for describing the Eucharist; in other words, the actual/CORPOREAL presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

The Church has always insisted—despite the difficulties—that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not simply spiritual and subjective. It is objective and corporeal. The Fourth Lateran Council explained that belief with the term “transubstantiation.” As the Oxford Dominican Fr. Herbert McCabe has said, “Transubstantiation is not a complete explanation of the mystery, but it is the best description of what we believe happens at the consecration.”**

Although the word is not used in the Bible (neither is Incarnation or Trinity, by the way, yet Christians believe what those terms mean), transubstantiation tells us exactly what we need to know and accurately reflects the biblical meaning.

 

[Steadfast]

Peary,

With all due respect, we aren’t arguing about whether or how your church came to espouse transubstantiation as its approved theory for explaining the Real Presence.

No one is denying that that is your church’s definition.

What is at question is whether the ECF’s taught it. They do not seem to have done so.

I have made no secret of the fact that I think Transubstantiation properly so called is an unnecessary importation of philosophical terms into what is, after all, a mystery. Mysteries require no explanation.

That’s why we call them mysteries.

 

[eliasaph99]

But, in the Incarnation the Second Person of the Trinity became a man without ceasing also to be God.

In the same way the terrestrial elements communicate of the divine attributes in the Eucharist.

The analogy is as perfect as analogies get.

I don’t think it is proper to say of one miracle (the eucharist) that we know how it happens, but that of another (the Incarnation) we do not. Why is the one treatable and the other not?

Saying what happens and saying how it happens are two different things. To my knowledge, the Church does not claim to know how God carries out the miracle, other than that it is carried out through ordained men. Only that He does carry out the miracle.

The union of God with a Human Body is the hypostatic union. It is theologically treated. I don’t pretend to have expansive knowledge on it other than to say that it is different than the Eucharist. Related to be sure, but different.

Above you have said, “In the same way…”. Except that when God became man, He underwent all that man underwent by becoming man. The Eucharistic Miracle cannot be in the same way, unless you are suggesting that at communion God becomes bread for us. Surely this is not what you are suggesting.

This seems to be a dodge, and again there is the repeated reference in the fathers to the iconic connection between the meal and the Incarnation.

I fail to see how this necessarily follows. Do you not say that the bread and wine become the body, blood, soul and divinity?

If the bread becomes not only flesh but the soul and divinity of Christ, and if in the Incarnation, God, a Spirit, became a man without losing His divinity, I just don’t see how it follows that the bread would become the whole Christ and necessarily cease to be bread.

Since we confess the same Christology; i.e. that in Christ the divine and human are inseparable, I may have doubts about the necessity of the use of the expression (“body, blood, soul and divinity”, as though any of them could be separated from any of the others), I certainly admit the truth communicated.

I’m not dodging anything. It would be better if you would stop suggesting that I am. It is quite irritating.

The soul and divinity are attached to the flesh of Christ. Because the bread becomes Christs flesh, the soul and divinity are necessarily present.

But we are not talking about ordinary matter.

We are talking, when we refer to Christ, to God in a glorified body, capable of walking through walls, disguising himself so that his close friends could not recognize him, and able to be present everywhere the Eucharist is celebrated even at the same time in many different places.

We are talking about ordinary matter in the case of the bread before consecration. It is only bread. What it offers is matter, which becomes the glorified body of Christ.

Are you suggesting that it becomes glorified bread?

 

[Steadfast]

Elisaph,

The purpose of this thread has been accomplished. Proof for the ECF’s espousal of transubstantiation was requested and it was not located.

I admit that this does not invalidate either the fathers or transubstantiation. Neither end has ever been in view, really.

I said that “seemed” to be a dodge, I didn’t say it was one. Please forgive me if I came across that way.

The last thing I’m prepared to say in this thread is to give you some satisfaction on the incarnational point: In Christ God became an ordinary man (like us in all things save for sin), as a type, the ordinariness of the bread is irrelevant.

Regards, and I beg your pardon again for any impatience on my part or any insult you may have taken from me and I covet your prayers for me and mine.

 

[peary]

**The earliest text concerning the Real Presence is found in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, written probably about A.D. 57.

Paul’s Eucharistic teaching in 1 Corinthians leaves no doubt. “For this is what I received from the Lord and in turn passed on to you: That on the same night as he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it, and broke it, and he said, ‘This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, ‘This cup is a new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.’ Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death. And so anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be behaving unworthily toward the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone is to recollect himself before eating this bread and drinking this cup, because a person who eats and drinks without recognizing the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation” (1 Cor. 11:23-29).

In the previous chapter the apostle wrote, “The blessing-cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is communion with the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:16). His words are clear. The only possible meaning is that the bread and wine at the consecration become Christ’s actual body and blood. Evidently Paul believed that the words Christ had said at the Last Supper, “This is my Body,” meant that really and physically the bread is his body. In fact Christ was not merely *saying *that the bread was his body; he was decreeing that it should be so and that it is so.

Paul and Christians of the first generation understood the doctrine in this thoroughly realistic way. They knew how our Lord demanded faith, as ww read in John 6. Belief in the Eucharist presupposes faith. The body that is present in the Eucharist is that of Christ now reigning in heaven, the same body which Christ received from Adam, the same body which was made to die on the cross, but different in the sense that it has been transformed. In the words of Paul, “It is the same with the resurrection of the dead; the thing that is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible, but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit” (1 Cor. 15:42-44). This spiritualized body was a physical reality, as Thomas discovered. “Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand and put it into my side” (John 20:27). It is this glorious body which is now, under the appearance of bread, communicated to us.

Paul writes that he is handing on a tradition which he received from the Lord. He tells the Galations, “The good news I preach is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11-12). Likewise to the Philippians: “Keep doing all the things that you have learned from me and have been taught by me and have heard or seen that I do” (Phil. 4:9). To the Colossians he writes, “You must live your whole life according to the Christ you have received–Jesus the Lord” (Col. 2:6).

There is not the slightest doubt that the formulas given us by the evangelists and Paul were those that were being used by the Christians as they celebrated the Eucharist. The Gospels faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while still living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day he was taken up to heaven.

In the eleventh century Berengarius fell into heresy by failing to realize this point. His motto was, “I wish to understand all things by reason.” The Eucharist is one of those things which cannot be understood by reason. Human arguments can never explain Christ’s Real Presence.**

 

[peary]

**There were three great Eucharistic controversies which helped to clarify the ideas of theologians and which led to the term ‘transubstantiation.’

The first was begun by Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century. The trouble he caused hardly extended beyond the limits of his audience and concerned itself only with the philosophical question whether the Eucharistic body of Christ is identical with the natural body he had in Palestine and now has glorified in heaven.

The next controversy arose over the teaching of Berengarius. He denied transubstantiation but repaired the public scandal he had given and died reconciled to the Church.

The third big controversy was at the Reformation. Luther was the only one among the Reformers who still clung to the old Catholic tradition. Though he subjected it to much misrepresentation, he defended it most tenaciously. He was diametrically opposed by Zwingli, who reduced the Eucharist to an empty symbol. Calvin tried to reconcile Luther and Zwingli by teaching that at the moment of reception the efficacy of Christ’s body and blood is communicated from heaven to the souls of the predestined and spiritually nourishes them.

When Photius started the Greek Schism in 869, he still believed in the Real Presence. The Greeks always believed in it. They repeated it at the reunion councils in 1274 at Lyons and 1439 at Florence. Therefore it is evident that the Catholic doctrine must be older than the Eastern Schism of Photius.

In the fifth century the Nestorians and Monophysithes broke away from Rome. In their literature and liturgical books they preserved their faith in the Eucharist and the Real Presence, but they had difficulty because of their denial that in Christ there are two natures and one Person. Thus the Catholic dogma is at least as old as the Council of Ephesus in 431. To establish that the truth goes back beyond that time one need only examine the oldest liturgies of the Mass and the evidence of the Roman catacombs. In that way we find ourselves back in the days of the apostles themselves.

The term itself, transubstantiation, seems to have been first used by Hildebert of Tours about 1079. Other theologians, such as Stephen of Autun (d. 1139), Gaufred (d. 1188), and Peter of Blois (d. 1200), also used it. Lateran IV in 1215 and the Council of Lyons in 1274 adopted the same expression, the latter being in the Profession Faith proposed to the Greek Emperor, Michael Palaeologus.

Trent was, of course, the council which was summoned specially to refute the errors of the Reformation. After affirming the Real Presence of Christ, the reason for it, and the preeminence of the Eucharist over other sacraments, the council defined the following on October 11, 1551: “Because Christ our Redeemer said it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church, and this holy council now declares that, by the consecration of the bread and wine a change takes place in which the whole substance of bread is changed into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the Holy Catholic Church fittingly and properly names transubstantiation.” **

 

[porthos11]

agangbern:

I would like to read where Cyril said otherwise. Can you please give the link?

Posted earlier:

“The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ” (Catechetical Lectures 19:7 [A.D. 350]).

“Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the body and blood of Christ. . . . [Since you are] fully convinced that the apparent bread is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and that the apparent wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so, . . . partake of that bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul” (ibid., 22:6, 9).

 

[DCD]

All of those could just as easily be teaching the common Lutheran view or consubstantiation.

I was asking for evidence of Transubstantiation proper, where, when the priest says “hoc est corpus meum” the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine at all but are completely changed such that all that is left are the body and blood of Christ with only the appearance of bread and wine remaining.

Steadfast,

After we finish with this question, do you want the same kind of evidence for the Trinity?

Peace,
David