Transubstantiation & The Incarnation

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So I was reading something that said that transubstantiation was absurd because it means that, at The Last Supper, JESUS was physically in two places at once so it denies The Incarnation because JESUS was bound by human limitations.
I thought that JESUS walking on water or walking through walls made this seem less plausible of a contradiction but the latter was done after His resurrection and the former just doesn’t seem like the same thing.
So I was wondering if anyone had any (name removed by moderator)ut or Church teachings that could help, Thanks!

GOD please give us wisdom and Strength to know and walk in your ways. Amen.
 
Gmsod said:
So I was reading something that said that transubstantiation was absurd because it means that, at The Last Supper, JESUS was physically in two places at once so it denies The Incarnation because JESUS was bound by human limitations.
I thought that JESUS walking on water or walking through walls made this seem less plausible of a contradiction but the latter was done after His resurrection and the former just doesn’t seem like the same thing.
So I was wondering if anyone had any (name removed by moderator)ut or Church teachings that could help, Thanks!

GOD please give us wisdom and Strength to know and walk in your ways. Amen.
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I believe that St. Augustine said that Our Lord held Himself in His hands.

St. Augustine on the Eucharist - Biblical Catholic
www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/num30.htm
Concerning the Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Eucharist in St. Augustine … institution of the Sacrament our Lord HELD HIMSELF IN HIS OWN HANDS; that the …
 
Gmsod said:
So I was reading something that said that transubstantiation was absurd because it means that, at The Last Supper, JESUS was physically in two places at once so it denies The Incarnation because JESUS was bound by human limitations.
I thought that JESUS walking on water or walking through walls made this seem less plausible of a contradiction but the latter was done after His resurrection and the former just doesn’t seem like the same thing.
So I was wondering if anyone had any (name removed by moderator)ut or Church teachings that could help, Thanks!

GOD please give us wisdom and Strength to know and walk in your ways. Amen.
Click to expand...
“The question whether the same finite being (especially a body) can be at once in two (bilocation) or more (replication, multilocation) totally different places grew out of the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist. According to this Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in every consecrated Host wheresoever located.”

“A mixed mode of location would be that of a being which is circumscriptively in one place (as is Christ in heaven), and definitively (sacramentally) elsewhere (as is Christ in the consecrated Host).”

Siegfried, F. (1907). Bilocation. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02568a.htm
 
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Of course Jesus can be in more than one location at the same time with regard to the Eucharist. Location is an accident. For that matter even some of the saints have been said to have bilocated.

In the Eucharist the accidents are multiplied, but Jesus is neither multiplied nor divided. Each communicant receives the one and only Jesus whole and entire—the same Jesus as every other communicant.
 
Jesus is fully God and fully man. If he was bound by human limitations, then he would not be God. Also, he wouldn’t be able to turn water into wine, multiply loaves and fishes, raise folks from the dead, etc. No one can humanly walk on the water so that is a pretty big deal as well.
 
So did anything change in terms of JESUS’ body and Divinity after the resurrection or is he the same as before but in Heaven, because if so that would make sense.

Thanks for all the replies! God bless
 
Hi. My understanding is that the human Jesus ended his human life after his death on the cross. In orher word, the human Jesus was governed by time and space. After his death, he is fully divine. Thus we can say that he is both human and divine.

This however has got nothing to do with the host because only the substance which we cannot see, changes, not the accident which is still in its original form, that is, bread.
 
Reuben_J said:
In orher word, the human Jesus was governed by time and space. After his death, he is fully divine. Thus we can say that he is both human and divine.
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Jesus was fully human and fully divine from the moment of his conception. He just was in a human body till death and a glorified body after death. He was not “bound by human limitations” while alive except to the extent he permitted this. He could have avoided the entire Passion by striking all his tormentors dead. He chose to go through with it in order to do the will of his Father and save mankind.

The Transfiguration, which happened while Jesus was alive, clearly shows he was not bound by human form. Luke 4:30 where he easily escapes an angry mob also suggests that he had more than human capabilities.
 
Gmsod said:
So I was reading something that said that transubstantiation was absurd because it means that, at The Last Supper, JESUS was physically in two places at once so it denies The Incarnation because JESUS was bound by human limitations.
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Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, but not in the mode of physical being. Rather, He’s present in a sacramental mode. In this mode, He’s present “body, blood, soul, and divinity”, but this does not mean that his flesh is hiding (as physical flesh) within the host or in the chalice.

So… no: Jesus is not “physically in two places at once”.
 
You have to give credence to him being fully human. He is human like all of us (except sin). His miracles are not from his human power but from God (his divinity).

When we talk about Jesus, we are referring to him as both fully man and fully divine, because he has both attributes, the attributes of the Son of the Holy Trinity. His human form nevertheless was spent in the thirty three years or so of his earthly life but since he is divine, he is the same yesterday, today and forever will be.
 
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I don’t disagree with this second post you made, it’s just important to understand that since Jesus was God, any human limitations he had came from his own voluntary acceptance of them. He had capabilities that he chose not to use in order to carry out his father’s plan.

Therefore, if he wanted to be in two places at once physically, he was capable even before death. To the extent he did not do so, it was a voluntary choice on his part. He was still fully divine at that time.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I don’t disagree with this second post you made, it’s just important to understand that since Jesus was God, any human limitations he had came from his own voluntary acceptance of them. He had capabilities that he chose not to use in order to carry out his father’s plan.
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Not sure about this. If Jesus’s letting go of his divine perogatives occurred at the moment of incarnation (which is a greater letting go than still keeping the creditcard hidden in the sole of my shoe even if I never used it) … then this may not be the whole answer. The Father may be more “actively” involved.
 
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I think John 14:9-11 explains it (“I am in the Father and the Father is in me” etc) and note that Jesus is telling the disciples this BEFORE his death.

This whole discussion stemmed from the comment by ReubenJ that Jesus somehow wasn’t “divine” till after the resurrection, that Jesus was before his death bound by physical limitations. Jesus as God wasn’t bound. He did miracles and could have thrown himself off the temple without injury when the Devil tempted him. He didn’t do it because it wasn’t his Father’s will. “Not my will but yours be done.”

And yes, the Father was involved…he and Jesus were part of each other and Jesus used his own human body and human will to carry out the Father’s will.
 
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Yup. Jesus was obedient because He was the Son, and Jesus stuck to the plan of when to do miracles and when not to do miracles. But being obedient, and working according to reason and logic of a plan, is not being incapable of doing things.

(To do exactly what you mean to do, and not to do anything else, is to demonstrate an incredible freedom of will and power.)

And God is everywhere as well as beyond all time/space, so it’s not too surprising that God made man can hold Himself in His own hands. (It’s hard to say how He did it, but it’s clearly within His capabilities.)

But yes, sacramental presence is real, but it’s not the same as being physical or material. That’s a really complicated theological topic and a mystery; and most of the time it doesn’t come into play, but this is one of the cases when it does.

I know there’s an old theology class talk by the Servant of God Fr. Hardon on this topic, which he did for some nuns, but the sound is really bad and the theology went over my head fairly often. I’m going to have to find and download it again, and then see if I can improve the sound any. Maybe then I’ll understand it a little better…
 
Here is the answer:

God is 🙂

OMNIPOTENCE. The almighty power of God. He can do whatever does not deny his nature or that is not self-contradictory. Since God is infinite in being, he must also be infinite in power. (Etym. Latin omnis, all + potentia, power: omnipotens, all-powerful.) Fr Hardon’s Catholic Dictionary

OMNISCIENCE. God’s knowledge of all things. Revelation discloses that the wisdom of God is without measure (Psalm 146:5). And the Church teaches that his knowledge is infinite.

The primary object of divine cognition is God himself, whom he knows immediately, that is, without any medium by which he apprehends his nature. He knows himself through himself.

The secondary objects of divine knowledge are everything else, namely the purely possible, the real, and the conditionally future. He knows all that is merely possible by what is called the knowledge of simple intelligence. This means that, in comprehending his infinite imitability and his omnipotence, God knows therein the whole sphere of the possible.

He knows all real things in the past, present, and the future by his knowledge of vision. When God, in his self-consciousness, beholds his infinite operative power, he knows therein all that he, as the main effective cause, actually comprehends, i.e., all reality. The difference between past, present, and future does not exist for the divine knowledge, since for God all is simultaneously present.

By the same knowledge of vision, God also foresees the future free acts of the rational creatures with infallible certainty. As taught by the Church, “All things are naked and open to His eyes, even those things that will happen through the free actions of creatures” … Fr Hardon’s Catholic Dictionary

SIMPLY STATED: TIME does not exist for God. for whom everything is present; Jesus while a true man [human nature] was ALSO and at the same time also GOD, [Divine Nature] retaining His Divine Nature at all times.

So only for a True GOD was this a possibility & a REALITY

GBY
Patrick
 
Well, if we are only thinking in terms of the laws of nature and human limitations which are subject to those laws, then we can’t even speak of the incarnation of Jesus who was conceived in the virginal womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit without the seed of man. What we are dealing with in transubstantiation is a supernatural miracle performed by God’s infinite power inexplicable by appeal to the laws of nature which laws of nature are suspended in the wondrous miracle of the eucharist as those laws of nature are suspended in every miracle performed by God. God is the author and creator of the creation and of the laws he has implanted in things. God’s infinite power is not limited or subject to his finite creation but his creation is subject to him and he can obviously cause things in creation such as miracles without recourse to the natural order of things or the very laws he himself has implanted in things.

An appeal to ‘because Jesus was bound by human limitations’ is not going to explain Jesus walking on water, making the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute talk, curing all manner of diseases, the dead being raised to life, feeding the mulititude with a few loaves of bread and a few fish, Jesus walking through closed doors, all the miracles Jesus performed. God also performed many miracles in the Old Testament. The piece that you read that said that transubstantiation is absurd is really saying that miracles are absurd and that God cannot perform miracles and is somehow subject to his own creation which itself is absurd. The miracle of the eucharist and transubstantiation tells us that what God can do with the things he has created is far beyond what we naturally and normally observe in creation.

The piece that you read that said ‘transubstantiation is absurd because…’ would not only apply to the Last Supper but now and throughout the whole history of the Church’s celebration of the eucharist. For we believe that Jesus bodily ascended into heaven after his resurrection and that without leaving heaven he becomes bodily present in every consecrated host throughout the whole world. But the real and substantial bodily presence of Jesus in the eucharist is present in the eucharist not after its natural mode of existing according to dimensive quantity as he is in heaven, but after the manner of substance unaffected by dimensive quantity or extension. Philosophically, the sacramental manner of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist is not technically in a place because every body occupying a place is in the place according to the manner of its dimensive quantity or extension. But the body and blood of Christ are in the eucharist not in its natural mode of dimensive quantity or extension which in philosophy is an accident, but after the manner of substance without the effect of extrinsic dimensions or extension.
 
Though he was in the form of God He did not consider divinity as something to be grasped but instead emptied himself, took the form of a slave and became as we are.

Jesus’s Kenosis was deeper than your interpretation seems to allow.
It may well be more subtle than you suggest. I get it you disagree.
 
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Jesus may well be present in accord with the deepest possibilities of nature.
Entanglement physics experiments appear to demonstrate that the everyday experience that identity requires matter be contiguously united in the same place is not actually a universal truth.
…then we can’t even speak of the incarnation of Jesus who was conceived in the virginal womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit without the seed of man.
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It may be possible by the inherent powers of nature, though extremely rare…such a coincidence is still a miracle in my book. It may well happen in 1 in a billion births by mechanisms we are not yet aware of and the mother of course never believed or examined to find out how (eg one ovary, one testicle). We simply do not know with absolute certainty human nature can never act in such a parthogenetic manner.

Obviously God is master of the created world not vice versa. That is not really the argument of our protagonists. What they argue is that there are some things even God cannot do respecting His own Truth.
God cannot move any object He makes immovable. God cannot make three be one (not even the Trinity is such a case), He cannot make my mother not to be my mother.

The real question is whether an understanding of the Eucharist such that we conclude Jesus physically lifted himself above his own head at the last supper (or multi-locates) is a similar logical impossibility…or perhaps our language/understanding is somehow causing the difficulty.
 
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I would say: Stop reading such utter and complete nonsense. Sounds like Watchtower blather. Jesus is sacramentally present in the Eucharist. At best, such “writing” is nonsense and a waste of time. At worst, it is part of a spiritual attack on your faith.

Read that which builds you up. The lives of the Saints, some of whom gave their lives for the sake of the Eucharist.
 
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