Teaching Transubstantiation to a Secularist?

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As someone who came to a understanding of God through a mixture of philosophy, history and even miracles i have been mostly successful in trying to Rationalize God’s existence and even why if God exists why we Catholics partake in certain sacraments. When others in secular society ask questions about God and Catholicism and what we believe i always feel although they are not convinced of it being true they can at least understand it by the time i have explained things, i do so in small bite size pieces of course, as simply as i possibly can. There is one sacrament i have a problem trying to rationalize and that is transubstantiation giving us the Eucharist, the fact that we literally receive the body and blood of Christ. How daunting it must be for someone to have such little understanding of the faith that at the surface it appears us Catholics are in a way practicing cannibalism. Is there a way i can teach transubstantiation, in a way i’m trying to rationalize a miracle which is know is foolish but i’d just like them to understand as it can be such a stumbling block for many. For me it is an act of faith based on all the other evidences, i believe Jesus is truly God, does one need to convince them of all the other more rational evidences before they can understand this sacrament?
 
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I would first start by teaching about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If they have difficulty with that there’s no reason to jump right into the technical terminology. Even some Protestants who believe in the real presence don’t necessarily believe in transubstantiation.

I know you said you are trying to rationalize it. Maybe someone can help with that but I can’t. To me it’s a matter of faith in scripture and in the traditions and teaching of the Church.

The last supper and bread of life discourses. There are his words at the last supper and he repeatedly emphasizes in John 6 bread of life that those who eat the bread are eating his body and Christ is in them. When some who are there say this is hard to take Jesus doesn’t back off the claim even though they leave and no longer follow him.

If people you are trying to convince don’t have faith in that interpretation of the scripture there is no point in explaining apostolic succession and the priests acting in the person of Christ transforming the bread and wine to the body and blood.
 
I haven’t watched the video because of limited data, but here is a written explanation if you would like. We should define two terms here, substance and accidents. Substance is what a thing is. For example, I am a human being. I may be tall or short, ect. ect. ect., but I remain a human being. Accidents are how a substance physically interacts with other substances. For example, an orange interacts with a light ray and makes it bounce towards my eye, and my eye receives it and sends the information to my brain. Although a substance usually is linked to certain accidents, it doesn’t always have to be. So the Eucharist is the substance of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, but it has the accidents of bread and wine. As for the rest, God choses to work a miracle. To change the substance without the accidents is logically possible.
 
Secularist here. That explanation will be of no help persuading me because I don’t think things re made of substance and accidents. They are made of matter. Matter cannot be two different things at the same moment. The idea if a difference between what a thing ‘is’ and how it ‘interacts’ is from 12th century and earlier philosophy. It has nothing to do with reality. You might was well tell me that all things have a ‘god-presence’ or a ‘god absence’ and consecration brings about a ‘god presence’. It’s all just words. Not meaning to disparage Catholic belief here -just explaining the problems faced by Catholics in talking to a secularist like me.
 
At the quantum level aren’t particles potentially capable of two types of behavior at the same time? I get where you’re coming from concerning the words perhaps failing to convey the idea. However, the barrier you’re suggesting seems to be merely a problem with the evolution of language rather than the meaning.
 
They must first grasp the concept of transcendence. If they cannot or will not entertain the transcendent, then they will have a very difficult time understanding the faith at all - let alone the Sacraments.
 
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catholicray said:
At the quantum level aren’t particles potentially capable of two types of behavior at the same time? I get where you’re coming from concerning the words perhaps failing to convey the idea. However, the barrier you’re suggesting seems to be merely a problem with the evolution of language rather than the meaning
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I don’t think they are capable of being two types of totally different things at the same time. And I think if there is a God, and he did inspire both scripture and Church tradition/teaching he would have made the concepts understandable without the need to understand quantum physics. Otherwise there would be little point to the inspiration.
 
po18guy said:
They must first grasp the concept of transcendence. If they cannot or will not entertain the transecdent, then threy will have a very difficult time understanding the faith at all - let alone the Sacraments.
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None of the traditional teaching on transubstantiation (St Thomas etc) as far as I am aware began with ‘transcendence’ before going on to argue about ‘accidents’ and ‘substance’. Or, indeed, in their teaching about the other sacraments.
 
Aquinas adopted Aristotle’s terminology of “substance” and “accidents” as part of his larger project for ironing out the apparently irreconcilable differences between Aristotelian philosophy and the Catholic faith. Nowadays we no longer use these terms, as Aristotle did, to explain the phenomena of the material world.

If we are trying to explain to a nonscientist why we see the flash of lightning before we hear the thunder, or how a cow turns grass into milk, or why a can goes rusty if we leave it out in the rain, we no longer explain those things in terms of “substance” and “accidents”. But Aristotle did, which is why Aquinas decided he needed to explain the Eucharist, too, using the same Aristotelian terminology.

When we try and use the terms “substance” and “accidents” to explain the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist to a nonbeliever, we run into the difficulty that we first have to explain what the two words themselves mean. The trouble is that in our present-day world these terms are now used only in connection with the Eucharist.
 
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FiveLinden said:
The idea if a difference between what a thing ‘is’ and how it ‘interacts’ is from 12th century and earlier philosophy.
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Ok, it started with Aristotle, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong. There is no contradiction in the concept that a substance can have different physical effects than normal. If it is not a contradiction, then an omnipotent being can cause it to happen.
 
FiveLinden said:
I don’t think they are capable of being two types of totally different things at the same time. And I think if there is a God, and he did inspire both scripture and Church tradition/teaching he would have made the concepts understandable without the need to understand quantum physics. Otherwise there would be little point to the inspiration.
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First, I think you’re conflating the issue. Scripture and Tradition offer much that is easily accessible by mere human reason. I see no reason to assume that God is comprehensible by human reason alone. If he were then logically one could argue that God is not higher than man. Further I am not suggesting quantum physics is the key to unlocking understanding God. I’m saying that it gives us a reason not to discount what we have received in the teaching concerning the Eucharist and transubstantiation. Then we are back to the idea that I am trying to share. It does seem to me that your position is a matter of disputing words rather than the concept and idea behind them but I digress.
 
While I am an agnostic, I really have no problem with the Catholic belief of what happens to the Eucharist. I don’t believe it but accept that you do regardless of “accidents”. It is ultimately a faith issue. I feel the same about prayer, Jewish circumcision or resurrection. It is outside of science, faith based and beyond my ken. I’m fine with that!
 
If the other person in Christian, I’ll say something like “we Catholics take ‘this is My Body’ literally”.
 
Aristotle and Aquinas also believed the corporeal/physical things of the universe we live in are also made out of matter. But not matter alone, but form and matter which are the fundamental constituents of the things in the observable corporeal/physical creation that things are made out of. In Aquinas’ explanation of the eucharist and the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ using the Aristotelian metaphysical/philosophical concepts, the only matter in the eucharist is that of the body and blood of Christ. The appearances or accidents which are accidental forms of the bread and wine remaining after transubstantiation are without matter by a divine miracle. The matter of the bread and wine before transubstantiation is changed by divine power into the matter of Christ’s body and blood by the miracle of transubstantiation. Matter is understood differently in Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics/philosophy than in what modern science may understand or define it whatever that definition or understanding may be.
 
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I think part of the problem is there are no other examples of something’s accidents not matching its substance. Because there is only this one very special case of that, no one can explain what a substance is without referring to its accidents.

It’s not that non-believers don’t get what believers are trying to say. Any kid who has ever played Hot Lava gets the premise, but we’re never given anything to hang our hat on to show its cogency.
 
Paddy1989 said:
As someone who came to a understanding of God through a mixture of philosophy, history and even miracles i have been mostly successful in trying to Rationalize God’s existence and even why if God exists why we Catholics partake in certain sacraments. When others in secular society ask questions about God and Catholicism and what we believe i always feel although they are not convinced of it being true they can at least understand it by the time i have explained things, i do so in small bite size pieces of course, as simply as i possibly can. There is one sacrament i have a problem trying to rationalize and that is transubstantiation giving us the Eucharist, the fact that we literally receive the body and blood of Christ. How daunting it must be for someone to have such little understanding of the faith that at the surface it appears us Catholics are in a way practicing cannibalism. Is there a way i can teach transubstantiation, in a way i’m trying to rationalize a miracle which is know is foolish but i’d just like them to understand as it can be such a stumbling block for many. For me it is an act of faith based on all the other evidences, i believe Jesus is truly God, does one need to convince them of all the other more rational evidences before they can understand this sacrament?
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Here’s Paul’s approach.

1 Corinthians 15:13-23

History shows what Paul stated here. Lots of eye witnesses confirm it. He rose from the dead…He can do anything He wants.
 
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