Transubstantiation for Dummies

[codebilly]

Forgive the title, but I am one of them. I don’t pretend to understand Aquinas and I don’t even care to. So here is Transubstantiation for the “rest of us”.

Protestants object to “real presence and real body and blood”.

So here are the questions as answered by a protestant believer.

Do you believe you have a body? - YES

Do you believe you have a soul? - YES,

Is the body comprised of matter? - YES

Is the soul comprised of spirit? - YES

Is the spirit present/with in the body? - YES

Then spirit can be somehow combined with matter by the power of God ? - YES

So God could have the power to make His physical presence one with bread? - Errr … Um . I suppose yes.

Then Jesus could mysteriously be present in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist? – Um No …

Why do you say no? - BECAUSE that’s what the Catholic Church teaches.

 

[Eucharisted]

The reason most Protestant disbelieve in the Eucharist is because they don’t believe bread and wine can become Jesus Christ. Its not a matter of how, its a matter of what.

 

[promethius]

I generally have an easier time with just one question: “Did Jesus say that if you don’t eat His Body and drink His Blood, that you would not have eternal life?”

They should answer yes. When they do, then you point out that the transubstatiation MUST occur, or that anyone who didn’t eat Jesus (literally) had no salvation. Ultimately, there’s no real way to justify the idea that transubstantiation is real and still remain in biblical terms.

If they play too much in the way of mental hopscotch, throw them a curve ball… why did God deem it important for the Jews to consume the flesh of the passover sacrifice, Christ apparently deems it important, and yet protestants have chosen to consider it UNimportant. It seems to me they think that Christ as the final passover sacrifice could somehow invalidate the ritual and contradict what God had laid out as the sacrament. That is ludicrous, as we know God does not contradict Himself.

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Forgive the title, but I am one of them. I don’t pretend to understand Aquinas and I don’t even care to. So here is Transubstantiation for the “rest of us”.

Protestants object to “real presence and real body and blood”.

So here are the questions as answered by a protestant believer.

Do you believe you have a body? - YES

Do you believe you have a soul? - YES,

Is the body comprised of matter? - YES

Is the soul comprised of spirit? - YES

Is the spirit present/with in the body? - YES

Then spirit can be somehow combined with matter by the power of God ? - YES

So God could have the power to make His physical presence one with bread? - Errr … Um . I suppose yes.

Then Jesus could mysteriously be present in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist? – Um No …

Why do you say no? - BECAUSE that’s what the Catholic Church teaches.

Your argument here is pretty good. In effect, it is a metaphor, not a syllogism. But it has syllogistic value. In other words, “If God can do THIS mystical thing, then why couldn’t God do THAT mystical thing?”

God isn’t merely IN the bread, like a soul in the body at some mystical point of contact, such that the body still looks and feels like a body after the soul departs from it. Instead, in some mystical way, the bread and wine ARE the sacrificed body and blood of Christ, after consecration.

 

[grannymh]

Forgive the title, but I am one of them. I don’t pretend to understand Aquinas and I don’t even care to. So here is Transubstantiation for the “rest of us”.

So God could have the power to make His physical presence one with bread? -

The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is substantially present under the appearances (signs) of bread and wine.

 

[Mandelbrot]

I think I have been missing a huge point here; my thought is now that you can experience communion where transubstantiation has occurred in many contexts, not just during a formal church service, be that RC or other. Donald Nicholls in The Testing of Hearts describes it in such a way when his dad shares an apple with him that you can experience it vicariously even. I cannot read that passage without something changing inside me. Each time.
Love to all

 

[JonNC]

Forgive the title, but I am one of them. I don’t pretend to understand Aquinas and I don’t even care to. So here is Transubstantiation for the “rest of us”.

Protestants object to “real presence and real body and blood”.

So here are the questions as answered by a protestant believer.

Do you believe you have a body? - YES

Do you believe you have a soul? - YES,

Is the body comprised of matter? - YES

Is the soul comprised of spirit? - YES

Is the spirit present/with in the body? - YES

**Then spirit can be somehow combined with matter by the power of God ? - YES

So God could have the power to make His physical presence one with bread? - Errr … Um . I suppose yes.

Then Jesus could mysteriously be present in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist? – -]Um No /-]… **

-]Why do you say no? - BECAUSE that’s what the Catholic Church teaches./-]

Yes! Amen.

I could use this, as a Lutheran, to defend the Sacramental Union, as well.

Jon