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HamtramckSteve
Guest
You’re very welcome. I’m just passing along what I’ve picked up here and there over the years.
The Eucharist and Transubstantiation (Split from "Protestants do not really believe...")
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justasking4
Guest
Are you saying the bread is literally- actually a body? If yes, then what characteristics of a body does it have?
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HamtramckSteve
Guest
I’m not the one saying it; those are Paul’s words.
But, yes, those passages do seem fairly clear that if one partakes of the eucharist without recognizing it as the body, it can be deadly.
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RyanML
Guest
When we speak of the Body of the Lord in the Eucharist, we mean his resurrected and glorified body. And he is truly but sacramentally present, meaning he is present but not in the sense form that you or I are physically present. You ask for bodily characteristics, but the risen body of the Lord has many “unnatural” characteristics to it. Remember Our Lord was able to walk through walls after the resurrection.
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nuntym
Guest
sigh You know what justasking4? I don’t think you will do anything but ask, as your handle name says, not to get answers, but to avoid them. You do not answer any of the questions we pose that will give you the answers to what you are asking, in spite of us trying to answer each and every one of yours.
This will be the last time I will try to answer your questions justasking4, until you try answering the questions I and the others have given you.
What happens during the consecration of bread and wine during the Holy Mass is what is called Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the change of the *substance * of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurring in the Eucharist.
“Substance” here, a philosophical term, means what something is in itself. A hat’s shape is not the hat itself, nor is its color the hat, nor is its size, nor its softness to the touch, nor anything else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the “substance”) has the shape, the color, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them. While the appearances, which are referred to by the philosophical term accidents, are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not.
When at his Last Supper, Jesus said: “This is my body”, what he held in his hands still had all the appearances of bread: these “accidents” remained unchanged. However, we believe that, when Jesus made that declaration, the underlying reality (the “substance”) of the bread was converted to that of his body. In other words, it actually was his body, while all the appearances open to the senses or to scientific investigation were still those of bread, exactly as before. The Church holds that the same change of the substance of the bread and of the wine occurs at the consecration of the Eucharist.
Because Christ, risen from the dead, is living, when the bread is changed into his body, not only his Body is present, but Christ as a whole, i.e. body and blood, soul and divinity. The same holds for the wine changed into his Blood.
In accordance with this belief that Christ is really, truly and substantially present under the remaining appearances of bread and wine, and continues to be present as long as those appearances remain, the Catholic Church preserves the consecrated elements, generally in a church tabernacle, for administering Holy Communion to the sick and dying, and also for the secondary, but still highly prized, purpose of adoring Christ present in the Eucharist.
This will be the last time I will try to answer your questions justasking4, until you try answering the questions I and the others have given you.
I am almost directly quoting from this Wikipedia article:
What happens during the consecration of bread and wine during the Holy Mass is what is called Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the change of the *substance * of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurring in the Eucharist.
“Substance” here, a philosophical term, means what something is in itself. A hat’s shape is not the hat itself, nor is its color the hat, nor is its size, nor its softness to the touch, nor anything else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the “substance”) has the shape, the color, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them. While the appearances, which are referred to by the philosophical term accidents, are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not.
When at his Last Supper, Jesus said: “This is my body”, what he held in his hands still had all the appearances of bread: these “accidents” remained unchanged. However, we believe that, when Jesus made that declaration, the underlying reality (the “substance”) of the bread was converted to that of his body. In other words, it actually was his body, while all the appearances open to the senses or to scientific investigation were still those of bread, exactly as before. The Church holds that the same change of the substance of the bread and of the wine occurs at the consecration of the Eucharist.
Because Christ, risen from the dead, is living, when the bread is changed into his body, not only his Body is present, but Christ as a whole, i.e. body and blood, soul and divinity. The same holds for the wine changed into his Blood.
In accordance with this belief that Christ is really, truly and substantially present under the remaining appearances of bread and wine, and continues to be present as long as those appearances remain, the Catholic Church preserves the consecrated elements, generally in a church tabernacle, for administering Holy Communion to the sick and dying, and also for the secondary, but still highly prized, purpose of adoring Christ present in the Eucharist.
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justasking4
Guest
Here is what a Greek scholar says how the word “body” is used in this passage:
The word só̄ma is used symbolically of Christ’s body. On the night on which He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus, in instituting the memorial feast of the sacrifice of His body and the shedding of His blood, said of the bread which He took and broke and gave to His disciples, “this is My body” (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24). Similarly Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, says of the bread which is broken at the Lord’s Supper, “Is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). Then in 1 Cor. 11:27 he describes the person who eats the memorial bread unworthily as “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” and says that a man eats and drinks judgment unto himself “if he discern not the body” (a.t. [1 Cor. 11:29]). Those who partake of the elements of the Lord’s Supper must recognize the reality which they signify.
Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary : New Testament (electronic ed.) (G4983).
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justasking4
Guest
What question of yours did i not answer?
You do realize that needing Greek philosphy to understand the Lord’s supper is alien to the NT. Certainly the apostles did not understand it this way.
Does this mean the bread is changed into God?
Where in Scripture do we see anyone adoring Christ in the Eucharist?
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HamtramckSteve
Guest
Amen! Sounds like not only a Greek scholar, but a Catholic to boot!
“Those who partake of the elements of the Lord’s Supper must recognize the reality which they signify.”
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RyanML
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nuntym
Guest
Philosophy is needed only to describe in detail and clarify what Transubstantiation entails. But the idea itself, that the Bread and Wine is changed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is evident in reading the Last Supper narratives, John chapter 6, and 1 Corinthians chapter 13. As Rolltide pointed out earlier, the people that directly succeeded the apostles, St. Ignatius of Antioch (Patriarch of Antioch, a disciple of St. John himself, no less!), St. Iraneus, St. Justin the Martyr, and others, writing around 70-100 years after Jesus’s death, all testify that this belief in the Bread of Life is the true teaching of the apostles of Jesus (see here)
But of course, the testimony of those people you will not honor, because they are not in the Bible, in spite of the fact that they were taught by the apostles themselves, right?
YES!
I admit, I don’t know any instance in the New Testament of the Eucharist as being adored as it is today, but it is a natural progression of theology if the Eucharist really does contain the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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sandusky
Guest
What is the identity of “THE BODY” which is not being discerned in that passage?
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HamtramckSteve
Guest
The question isn’t “What” but “Who.”
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sandusky
Guest
Who is it, and how do you know?
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HamtramckSteve
Guest
It’s Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord. I know this because I have faith. I could go into a longer explanation of how I know, but that’s a nice, concise summary.
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sandusky
Guest
So you have no idea from the passage itself that it’s Jesus?
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Jack_245814
Guest
Hey just realized the post I made on pg. 2 . . . everything I had said was already said, in more detail and to a greater extent, by another poster! :blushing:
Sorry for the redundancy everyone; I should’ve read the thread before posting, instead of just sorta skimming.
Also:
justasking4:
John 1:1 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Greek word for “Word” is logos, the root of our word “logic”: it means much more than simple speech, but signifies reason itself (I’ve read it explained as “speech within yourself”). Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I love that passage; it makes more sense to me if you understand John as speaking not of a simple “word” but of the Greek philosophical concept.
Christianity isn’t an enemy of science; mathematics and the study of Nature (chemistry, physics, etc.) are manifestations of God in my book, as this passage beautifully attests to.
Greek philosophy was all over the Roman empire (though it was the Greeks’ fault of course), and influenced both the Catholics and the Gnostics in different ways. To deny that Greek philosophy had any influence (if not a notable one) on the way the gospels developed would be like arguing that the fact that the bible takes place in a hot, arid region is totally inconsequential to its study. The bible was not created in a vacuum, and you have to realize there was much more going on during its creation - most of which was probably assumed by its writers - than is actually written.
*I’m assumin’ they’re educated, at least the gospel-writers, since they could obviously read and write; please correct me if I’m wrong.
Sorry for the redundancy everyone; I should’ve read the thread before posting, instead of just sorta skimming.
Also:
The apostles show a familiarity with Greek philosophy in at least one point that immediately comes to mind (I’m sure there are others, given that they were educated Jews* of the hellenized Near East):
John 1:1 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Greek word for “Word” is logos, the root of our word “logic”: it means much more than simple speech, but signifies reason itself (I’ve read it explained as “speech within yourself”). Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I love that passage; it makes more sense to me if you understand John as speaking not of a simple “word” but of the Greek philosophical concept.
Christianity isn’t an enemy of science; mathematics and the study of Nature (chemistry, physics, etc.) are manifestations of God in my book, as this passage beautifully attests to.
Greek philosophy was all over the Roman empire (though it was the Greeks’ fault of course), and influenced both the Catholics and the Gnostics in different ways. To deny that Greek philosophy had any influence (if not a notable one) on the way the gospels developed would be like arguing that the fact that the bible takes place in a hot, arid region is totally inconsequential to its study. The bible was not created in a vacuum, and you have to realize there was much more going on during its creation - most of which was probably assumed by its writers - than is actually written.
*I’m assumin’ they’re educated, at least the gospel-writers, since they could obviously read and write; please correct me if I’m wrong.
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Jack_245814
Guest
Ergh the more I read what I wrote about John 1:1 the less happy I am with it . . . sounds a little Gnostic-ish.
Anyway what I said about Greek philosophy being integral to the hellenic world still applies. Even if the four evangelists weren’t educated, greek philosophy still would have influenced the way they saw the world in subtle ways, just like many people today are influenced by post-modernism, but have never heard the term.
Anyway what I said about Greek philosophy being integral to the hellenic world still applies. Even if the four evangelists weren’t educated, greek philosophy still would have influenced the way they saw the world in subtle ways, just like many people today are influenced by post-modernism, but have never heard the term.
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HamtramckSteve
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You lost me now. What exactly are you fishing for?
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sandusky
Guest
I’m sorry; I’m asking, what, in the text, indicates to you that the body that is not being rightly discerned is that of Christ’s in the bread?
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HamtramckSteve
Guest
Well, the text itself tells me that…
Here’s the KJV: 29For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
NIV: 29For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
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