Introduction

Today, we’re going to talk about trans. Transubstantiation.

I am not a trans advocate. Nor am I a transubstantiation advocate. I view it as an error, but a minor one. This issue alone would not keep me out of a church that taught it. However, what does keep me out of Rome, is that Rome anathematizes any Christian who disagrees with transubstantiation. To curse, to excommunicate someone on a debatable matter like this is insane, and is one of the reasons I am not Roman Catholic. I could not be part of a church that anathematizes other Christians who also affirm real presence, but affirm it differently than they do. The distinction is so slight and so subtle that only people who are really into these kinds of debates know the difference. In other words, there is no way I could be in a church that curses Christians for believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in a way other than transubstantiation.

Here’s the distinction. Transubstantiation denies the substance of bread and wine after the consecration. I affirm the substance of bread and wine after consecration, but I also affirm the substance of Body and Blood is truly present in or communicated through the elements. And because I believe this, according to Rome, I am anathema.

Historical Background

From the earliest days of the Church, the Eucharist has always been held in high regard, and viewed in supernatural terms of some kind. I would say real presence was always affirmed, in various ways, with breadth of language to describe the mystery. List of quotes from the early fathers on the Eucharist are easy to find. It should be noted that most of these quotes do not prove transubstantiation, but they do prove real presence of some kind. In any case, a great breadth of language describing what is happening can be found.

Early Fathers

Some early fathers even use the terms figure and symbol.

Tertullian says, “Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, This is my body, that is, the figure of my body.” (Against Marcion, Book 4, Ch. 33)

Macarius of Egypt, a disciple of St. Anthony, says, “in the church bread and wine should be offered, the symbol of His flesh and blood, and that those who partake of the visible bread eat spiritually the flesh of the Lord,” (HOMILY XXVII, 17) This one specifically is indistinguishable from classical reformed language.

Augustine says, “He admitted him to the Supper in which He committed and delivered to His disciples the figure of His Body and Blood.” (Exposition of Psalm 3, 1)

It seems to me that the way most Early Fathers describe the Eucharist could be affirmed by the broadest spectrum of Magisterial Protestants. And it also seems to me that it’s somewhat hard to find early fathers that absolutely affirm something like transubstantiation.

A couple of examples.

Cyril of Jerusalem says, “Having learned these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ.” (Catechetical Lectures, 22.9)

One anonymous source says, “Although the figure of the bread and wine be seen, still, after the Consecration, they are to be believed to be nothing else than the body and blood of Christ.” (De Sacram. iv) This is quoted by Aquinas in his ST as being Ambrose, but I am fairly confident it is not.

Interestingly, the actual Ambrose in his On Mysteries says, “Before the blessing it is called another species, after the blessing the body of Christ is signified.” (De Myster. ix.54)

These statements, excepting the last, are more in line with a transubstantiation view since the bread and wine seem to be entirely denied after consecration.

But there was little debate over the nature of real presence. There were no councils convened to debate the nature of the eucharist, that I know of. No huge schisms over it. There was relative agreement and latitude to describe in various ways what was happening in the Lord’s Supper.

It’s worth noting that Ignatius, in his Letter to the Smyrneans, does say that the heretics abstain from prayer and the Eucharist because they don’t believe the Eucharist is the flesh of Christ. Furthermore, he says to avoid these people. To divide from them, and then he says don’t be divisive. (Ch. 7)

Early Middle Ages

But the first full length treatise on the Eucharist, defending what we could call transubstantiation was in the 9th century by a monk in what is now France, named, Paschasius Radbertus. Another monk countered his work, defending a figurative view. Another monk jumped in. And we have what is now called the Carolingian Eucharist Controversy, which I don’t know much about. But I mention it to draw attention to the fact that debate over this topic doesn’t appear to start until the 9th century. And we don’t have a definitive statement on the issue from a council until the 13th century, as far as I know.

High Middle Ages: The Fourth Lateran Council

The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 convenes and issues a declaration on the Eucharist. I would not call it an ecumenical council, because the East is not represented, but for the Roman Church they consider it ecumenical. From the first constitution of the council, their Confession of Faith, we read this: “His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us.”

Late Middle Ages: Thomas Aquinas

A little later, around the 1260’s and 1270’s, Thomas Aquinas gives more Aristotelian language to describe what’s happening. In his Summa Theologica Third Part, Question 75 he deals in accidens and substance. Aristotelian metaphysical categories. And he affirms that the substance of bread and wine do not remain after the consecration. From article 2: “I answer that, Some have held that the substance of the bread and wine remains in this sacrament after the consecration. But this opinion cannot stand: first of all, because by such an opinion the truth of this sacrament is destroyed, to which it belongs that Christ’s true body exists in this sacrament; which indeed was not there before the consecration.” He enlists the Pseudo-Ambrose here. So, we have this view gaining prominence. That the Eucharist is nothing else than the body and blood of Christ. A positive denial of the bread and wine. It’s only a figure of bread and wine. It’s only the accidens of bread and wine. There is no substance of bread and wine.

The Counter-Reformation: The Council of Trent

And then The Council of Trent in the mid 16th century anathematized anyone who didn’t hold to the Aristotelian formulation.

The Council of Trent defines transubstantiation this way. “If any one says, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms this description (Paragraph 1376).

The Anathema Error

Given the mysterious nature of such a great gift, it seems to me Rome goes beyond what we can know or explain about the Eucharist. Instead, Rome goes beyond the mystery of it, declaring the Thomistic/Aristotelian description as an essential article of faith, and anathematizing anyone who disagrees. This is typical of Rome. Making dogma their own opinions, being divisive, splitting up the Church of Christ, being sectarian and the opposite of catholic.

If someone affirms transubstantiation I wouldn’t agree with them, but I certainly wouldn’t anathematize them. I think it’s an error, but not a serious one. I deny transubstantiation because I affirm that the bread and wine remain conjointly with the body and blood of Christ. The Apostle calls it bread and the cup in the context of the Eucharist. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26) Are we going to anathematize the Apostle Paul?

Are all of you Evangelicals going to Rome ready to curse all other Christians who affirm that the bread and wine are truly the body and blood, and also truly bread and wine? Most Roman Catholics don’t even believe in transubstantiation. Are you going to curse them, too? Anathametize them? Stop having communion with them? No, you’re not. Because as a Roman Catholic you delegate all your thinking, all your responsibility, all of your own initiative to other men. You don’t obey Jesus and the Apostles, you obey other men. Protestants have rightly prioritized the authority of Jesus and the Apostles over men.

The Docetic Problem

This issue is inherently mysterious, so I’m prone to not make these issues dogma, especially the way we describe the spatial metaphysics of the elements. It’s such a nerd error, I can scarcely wrap my my mind around it. But if someone wants to explain the spatial metaphysics of the Eucharist in Aristotelian categories, that’s fine. They may be right. I may be wrong. But I would not teach it. I wouldn’t teach it because as I have already said, it attempts to define something that is very difficult to define. I would also add that I think it runs the risk of swerving into Docetic categories. Meaning, because it denies the substance of bread and wine, and relegates the bread and wine to mere appearance or accidens or species, it makes a similar error to the Docetists in the Christological debates of the early church. Docetism denied Christ’s creaturely body, his humanity. It said his body was really illusory. He only appeared to have a body. It denied not only the Scriptural affirmation of Christ’s humanity, but the goodness of God’s created reality, of earthiness. Transubstantiation is identical to this impulse in my mind. It seems more Trinitarian, we might say, to affirm the union of the creaturely and the divine in the sacraments, rather than say the creaturely have no reality or substance to them.

Sacramental Union

At this point, I would align closely with the Magisterial Reformed and Lutheran views of the Eucharist. Even though there are real differences between the Reformed and Lutheran views, I don’t think they are important enough at all to separate over. Ultimately, the spatial metaphysical explanations are largely speculative beyond the language of Scripture. I trash the East quite a bit, but this is a strength of their position in some ways. The East hasn’t parsed out and dissected to death the metaphysics of the spatial realities occurring during the Supper like the West has. And I think that’s good. What is important is actually doing the the Lord’s Supper in memorial of Christ. By doing so we proclaim His death until He comes. His Body and Blood is truly communicated to the faithful despite the metaphysical spatial categories knocking around in their heads.

One useful way of describing the spatial metaphysics is from John of Damascus. I would affirm this passage from his work called The Orthodox Faith:

“The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, “This is My body,” not, this is a figure of My body: and “My blood,” not, a figure of My blood. And on a previous occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eateth Me, shall live.

Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as we believe, doubting nothing. Let us pay homage to it in all purity both of soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire. Isaiah saw the coal. But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity. But a body which is united with divinity is not one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another belonging to the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is not one nature but two.” (De Fide Orthodoxa, Book 4. CHAPTER XIII. Concerning the holy and immaculate Mysteries of the Lord.)

We can think of this idea of sacramental union in a similar way as we think of ourselves or the Church corporately as being united to God through Christ and the Spirit. Our human creatureliness isn’t entirely obliterated, but we do become the body of Christ truly. We are truly united to Christ in baptism, nourished by His word and sacraments, and divinized in a sense. But we are still human. We are still creatures, and not the Creator. I think this theosis doctrine has consonance with a sacramental union view of the Eucharist.

Conclusion

So, to wrap things up, Transubstantiation didn’t develop as dogma until late in the game, but at the same time some kind of belief in Real Presence existed from the beginning. Transubstantiation is not a synonym for Real Presence. Transubstantiation is a sub-set of Real Presence. Underneath the umbrella of Real Presence exists different ways of describing the Real Presence. One of those ways is Transubstantiation. But the Reformed tradition has a way of describing Real Presence. The Lutherans have a way of describing Real Presence. The Eastern Orthodox have a way of describing Real Presence. And the Roman Catholics have a way of describing Real Presence, and they call it Transubstantiation. The Roman way, in my view, goes beyond what we are permitted to make dogma. And so Rome errs significantly, I would say Rome sins, by anathematizing other Christians who talk the same way Paul and the early fathers talk. But even if Rome didn’t anathematize other Christians over transubstantiation, I would still say it is an erroneous view that inclines toward Docetic ways of thinking. And lastly, I love and affirm the magisterial Reformed affirmations of real presence both Lutheran and Reformed. Lastly, I would recommend Rev. Jacob Hanby’s essay at the Theopolis Institute and the conversation being had on this issue at that publication. While I would disagree somewhat with Rev. Matthew Colvin’s essay there, I also think it’s very good, and contains a lot of truth, too.