On Transubstantiation

Jack is a friend from college and a retired professor from there. He has been reading some of my Catholic essays and books, books by Karl Keating, and others. He is considering Catholicism, although it's been on his mind for some decades, I think. He has another Catholic friend, Jim, who is also a Catholic convert like me, from Evangelicalism.  Jack wrote us both the following query.

What I have so far: 1) On the issue of Transubstantiation, it’s hard to resolve because it’s hard for me even to conceive. To most Protestants, the Eucharist elements are symbols—an abstract concept. To Catholics, the elements are physically unchanged by the priest’s blessing, but are believed to be body & blood in an invisible sense—another abstraction. I can’t see how rational argument can pull this together, since it’s even hard to see the big difference. (I know, you would say it’s a HUGE and OBVIOUS difference; but how to define it?—certainly not in empirical terms!

I replied to Jack in my typically obsessed leave-no-rock-unturned, 1,490 word way (below). I love detail and the paths that get me there. And yet I've left an infinite number of rocks unturned.

Jim, on the other hand is a lot smarter. He answered Jack in 223 words (15% of mine) and perfectly communicated the crux of the issue. I need to hang out with Jim, but he probably doesn't have the time. 

Here's Jim's response:

 One thing I’ll say today Jack about the Eucharist:  in John 6:50-53 or beyond Jesus said, multiple times and in very direct speech that we must “eat his flesh and drink his blood” or “there is no life in us”. A few verses later many of His followers left because it was a “hard teaching”. Would He have let them walk away from salvation because of a confusion?  No!  This is why for 1517 years, give or take 33, EVERYONE in the church taught that the Eucharist was the “body, soul, blood, and divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”. The early Protestants: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli etc. believed it. Luther, bi polar as he was (and he was) grew to hate the hierarchy so much he tried to dismantle the belief from transsubstantiation to consubstantiation.

Descriptitransubstantiation to consubstantiation.

I may have some of my facts off a little but I find the Eucharist, after 41 years as a Catholic, a daily miracle in every Catholic Church in the world. If I don’t accept this on faith then what about all the other miracles: The resurrection, ascension, Saint Thomas’s “my Lord and my God” moment, road to Emmaus, etc. etc. etc.  Did all these not happen?  Are they too difficult to get our heads around?

I wrote more than I thought I would. More later. 

[Jim. More later????  Allow me. Stan.]

My reply to Jack.

There are numerous arguments about the real presence, especially NT Scriptural references by Christ and Paul, and the whole thing about OT types that are made real in the NT. But I think what you’re asking here, Jack, references our human ability to sense the real presence and how we come to “know” through our senses. You’re not asking for the theological arguments. But I must digress...

 First, Catholics believe (by faith) that the bread and wine elements ARE changed, but we can’t SENSE them. We refer to the taste of bread and wine as the "accidents" of the past, not the substantive reality of the present. Theologians such as Thomas Aquinas made a distinction between the "substance" of something and its "accidents".  Where the "substance" reflects God's multi-dimensional reality, and the "accidents" reflects our limited dimensional reality of our universe. 

But that is a semiotic issue and again a theological issue. It does not address directly the issue you raise. (If I understand what you’re raising.) Rather than the word “abstraction” the term “sacramentally” changed, is a better phrase. It literally means that a miracle has occurred and the PHYSICAL sensor thing that is seen, touched, spelled, tasted may seem the same, but the underlying substance is something other than it was before. We see this sacramental miracle in the feeding of the 4,000 and 5,000. To the people on the hillside, what they ate tasted like fish and bread. But clearly it was something more. It was supernatural. Not only did it multiply, but there were baskets left over. When Jesus blesses the bread at Emmaus, he suddenly disappears. But what is left behind….the sacramentally blessed bread, the "accidents" … is still him. He is still "substantively" present. There are physical miracles (the changed elements and his disappearance into a nearby physical dimension….neither of which we can perceive, but the change supernaturally is obvious to our senses.  (But this doesn’t answer what you see today.)

Second, there are what are called “Eucharistic Miracles” where preserved hosts that are in some monasteries and which have been examined by doctors, and which are bloody (type o+) evidently…and are physically evident to our senses today. But that still doesn’t explain what you’re asking.

Third, it’s just not Catholics, however, that believe in Transubstantiation. Orthodox believe it. Anglican believe it. And in a different way, but still supernaturally, Lutherans believe it. They call it consubstantiation. ALTHOUGH there are many division among Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran, so I can’t vouch for all of them.

Fourth, I think the fundamental belief in it (and sorry but this still does not answer your question) is that the NT writers, and the Early Church fathers believed it so strongly that you could not be considered a Christian unless you confessed it. There are secondary NT Scripture passages that point to this, and the writings of the Early Church fathers leave nothing to the imagination of any thing left to interpret. 

 So, after all that, which is a lot and worthy of believe in my mind, that leaves the human, sensory issue, which is what you ask, if I understand it. 

Fifth, and this is my best answer to you on this. Like “presumption of salvation” it’s a matter of faith, based on so much of everything else that is said without analogy or metaphor and we take as literally true, although out senses seem to defy what God tells us. Do we believe in heaven? Well, have you seen it, or is it just an abstraction. Do you believe you have been saved or will be saved from hell? What physical evidence do you have? [I hope your answer is not the movie “Heaven Is For Real (2014).”  It was a bad movie.]  Do we believe that Jesus walked on Earth and was the Son of God? Prove it, with physical evidence available today. (Yes, I edited and published a book about that with a lot of good evidence I think) but ultimately I can’t walk outside and point to the granite rock and say, “See, there it is.”   There are perhaps a 100 things we take as true as Christians based on the preponderance of related evidence and because of the preponderance of A through M, we believe N through Z. Faith is not blind but based on the extrapolation of reliable evidence we can sense. 

You’ve ready my story about reading John 6 and believing in the real presence. I think John 6 is the best argument (the whole chapter, not just the Eucharistic stuff. You have the miracle on the hillside, and in the boat…in which John tells you, “Look, these things happened. Our senses cannot make sense of them. But they happened. So, in this third part of the chapter I’m going to tell you something else that Christ told us 20 or so times (literally and in metaphor), although our senses tell us something different. But because he said it, so literally,  you better believe it, or you do not have eternal life. He says that. He lays it out in John 6. It’s pretty black and white. (See also this post: John 6 Commentary. )

When I was considering becoming Catholic I did not believe all the stuff taught by the Church about Mary. But ultimately I came into the church because of the preponderance of other evidence, and then, I came to understand Mary. Today I have no problem and can even argue the Mary stuff like I did the Eucharist.  Like Deacon Alex Jones says in DINNER WITH ALEX JONES in answer to Mike Allie about understanding these things, “Start in Genesis. Don’t jump to Revelations.” Give God time to work on your heart and increase your faith. 

Sixth. While my fifth point above, is the best argument I have, here’s the icing on the cake-argument for me. Do you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a woman, walked and lived as a human on Earth for 30 or years, was crucified, died, and was buried, and then rose from the dead and ascended to heaven?   Clearly the Apostles believed those things. They believed Jesus was God. AT THE SAME TIME what did the first century Palestinian pagans see? What did the Pharisees and others see? Did they see God, or did they see just a man. You have in the physical body of Jesus Christ a God-Man, both, equal, fully. I think you believe that. But even his Apostles most of the time, simply saw a man. They didn’t see God. In EXACTLY the same way that Jesus was the REAL PRESENCE of God on Earth, but he appeared in his "accident" nature as only a human being…in the same way you have the Eucharist. Are you going to see Jesus the man, or God. Are you going to see Bread and Wine or Jesus?

Another example, but same sort of thing. Dr. Ray Guarendi in his DVD I produced WHY BE CATHOLIC tells a funny supposed story of medical researchers with an electronic microscope who are able to peer into Mary’s womb when she was pregnant with Jesus. They see an embryo. The first guy looks through the microscope (actually looks at the video display because electron microscopes don’t use light and lenses) and says, “Guys, look what I see. It’s not a human embryo, it’s…. G O D.”  Now, had such a thing been possible, that would NOT have happened. Why? Because our five (actually six) senses cannot sense the other dimensions of reality (somewhere between 10 and 26 dimensions) in which God exists. Our senses are limited just like our human eyes cannot see into the ultraviolet range like some birds can. Birds can see a small insect high in a tree because they see ultraviolet light given off by the bug that we can't see. 

I refuse to be a materialist, if for not other reason than I know the portion of the universe that I can sense is tiny compared to all that is real. JUNK DNA?  DARK MATTER? That’s all the silly ramblings of people who because of human pride cannot believe in the things that are beyond their physical senses.  We don’t  understand “JUNK DNA” or the “DARK MATTER” that makes up most of our DNA and the mass of the universe, but I believe they have purposes.

Dr. Ralph Miller, head of the physics department at Greenville College when I was a physics major there told the story of a young freshman who had to take a physics course. There was a lab experiment she participated in that involved burning a chemical in an arc and photographing the emissions from the burning. They got everything all set up and then Dr. Miller told the students they had to leave the room because the sound was going to be too loud for their ears, the spark (like a welding torch) would blind them, and the fumes given off were toxic. The girl immediately decided she didn’t like physics because she couldn’t see it, hear it, or smell it.  

Such is the universe that God has created, for our benefit and wonder. A mystery.