Four Views on the Lord’s Supper: Transubstantiation

While it is odd to begin an article with such large quotes as follows, it seems wise to allow Rome to speak for itself.

“There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation. In which there is the same priest and sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.”[1]

“But since Christ our Redeemer declared that to be truly His own body which He offered under the form of bread, it has, therefore, always been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy council now declares it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. This change the holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation.”[2]

“The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique….In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, od our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained….It is by the conversion of the bread and win into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament.”[3]

Contained therein lies the doctrine of transubstantiation stated, beginning first in the 4^th Lateran Council in 1215. Before a response is offered, we must seek to understand the doctrine. Simply stated, transubstantiation is the doctrine of Rome which declares that during the Eucharist, the physical substance of bread and wine is transformed into the physical substance of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ upon the consecration of the priest. It is through transubstantiation that the real presence of Christ is offered to His disciples.

Among the effects of transubstantiation stands the most prominent: a re-sacrifice of the Savior. While the Catechism does not use the word ‘re-sacrifice’, for indeed it states that “the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice”, the explanation clarifies that “The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross”, and later, “’The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.’ And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner…this sacrifice is truly propitiatory.”[4] The Eucharist, according to the doctrine of Transubstantiation, brings a risen and glorified Christ back to the altar where He is offered once again, though in a bloodless manner.

Protestants have responded in a number of ways and arguments. The first and most obvious is that this doctrine transgresses the Chalcedonian Creed’s formulation of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Christ by mixing the divine and human natures. The ubiquitous presence of the physical body of Christ would require a transference of the omnipresence of the divine nature to the human. Calvin states, “As we cannot at all doubt that it is bounded according to the invariable rule in the human body, and is contained in heaven, where it was once received, and will remain till it return to judgment, so we deem it altogether unlawful to bring it back under these corruptible elements, or to imagine it everywhere present.”[5]

Francis Turretin gives a fuller response. He states, “We deny it [transubstantiation] and maintain that the bread and wine, although they are changed as to use according to the institution of God, yet they always retain their own substance, and that no real change or conversion takes place in reference to them. This we demonstrate by a threefold class of arguments: (1) from the senses; (2) from reason; (3) from faith.”[6] As for his first argument, Turretin argues that four of our senses (sight, touch, taste, and smell) together betray transubstantiation, for we know in eating and drinking that not only is what we are eating NOT flesh and blood, but we positively know that we ARE eating bread and drinking wine.[7] As to reason, Turretin not only argues alongside Calvin that it is nonsensical to declare that a physical body could “be at the same time in more places than one because it would be one and not one, standing apart from itself and exposed to various and contrary motions, which everyone sees to be absurd,”[8] but also that Rome “affirms that the accidents of the bread and wine exist under the subject in which they adhere and by a contrary prodigy the body of Christ exists without its accidents and essential properties.”[9]

As for faith, Turretin provides Scriptural arguments against Transubstantiation as well as theological ones. He states for example, “It overthrows the things signified, despoiling the body of Christ of its quantity and dimensions, and for one introduces a multiple body. It takes away the sacramental analogy because it removes the foundation of the sacramental relation, for when the sign is converted into things signified, all similitude between them ceases.”[10] In essence he here states that transubstantiation nullifies the Eucharist as a sacrament since it nullifies the symbol itself. Turretin also then spends pages laying to rest the Romish argument of historicity, showing that this doctrine was intimated first in the 8^th century at the Second Council of Nicea (787 AD)[11] and showing what the Fathers (Augustine, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Theodoret) meant as they used language of change in their discussions of the Supper.[12]

Much more could be said, but the works of Calvin and Turretin are well worth a deeper study on the topic by an interested reader. It is a good use of one’s mental energy to consider why the Chalcedonian Formulation of the hypostatic union is vital to our salvation and sanctification.