Doctrines of "The Real Presence" in the Eucharist

chevyontheriver

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So is a Aristotelian framework required and is that the only way it had to be defined?

From my reading of Wikipedia, the term began being used in the 12th century and more formally defined at the Fourth Lateran Council. But it was nailed down first by Aquinas and at Trent.
Transubstantiation - Wikipedia
There isn’t a perfect philosophy. Thomism, a variant of Aristotelianism, is recommended for Catholics but not actually required. My point was that transubstantiation is an Aristotelian concept that rather obviously won’t make sense to people who aren’t able to think as Aristotelian.

So you don’t have to be an Aristotelian but it’s on you to have a workable philosophical system. Those without a conscious philosophical system are subject to all sorts of muddy thinking. And even the best philosophical systems get muddy once in a while. So have your own philosophy and define the real presence within that philosophy if you want to. It might not make sense to an Aristotelian.
 
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chevyontheriver

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Yes, this is where I get stuck on transubstantiation. I'm not persuaded that things have "substance" (beyond just the atoms they're made of and the language we use to describe them), so it's not meaningful to me to talk about whether the substance changes.
See. It’s a philosophical problem. Transubstantiation is a philosophical term to explain the real presence. The Catholic Church says it is an adequate explanation. It just doesn’t work outside of a particular philosophy.
 
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Albion

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See. It’s a philosophical problem. Transubstantiation is a philosophical term to explain the real presence.
Maybe it could be put that way, but it's also a different concept which, arguably, still retains the belief in Real Presence.

Transubstantiation adds the notion that the bread and wine altogether cease to exist as the presence of Christ replaces it. "Trans (of) substance."

This was appealing to the super-mystical, magic-oriented age during which it originated because it defies Aristotle's explanation of reality, not that it agrees with it or perpetuates Aristotle.

It just doesn’t work outside of a particular philosophy.
True. And that particular philosophy is an inverted version of Aristotle's teaching.

Aristotle taught that the substance of a thing would remain the same even if the accidents changed. Transubstantiation teaches that the substance changes but the accidents (taste, appearance, feel, etc.) remain unchanged!

Because the great Aristotle said this latter development could not happen, the fact that God was believed to do it on the altar, it made the miraculous nature of the Eucharist even more impressive to the mind of Medieval Christians.
 
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MarkRohfrietsch

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Catholics and Lutherans ‘supposedly’ already solved justification.
Supposedly, the non-confessional ones, and there have since been retractions on both sides. Mind you, if your Church wants to be in unity with the ELCA/ELCIC; you can have them. We wont.
 
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chevyontheriver

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Supposedly, the non-confessional ones, and there have since been retractions on both sides. Mind you, if your Church wants to be in unity with the ELCA/ELCIC; you can have them. We wont.
The only two kinds of Lutherans worth being in unity with are LCMS and WELS. And there is at least one independent Lutheran congregation I came across that looked good. I ran into the other kind of Lutherans at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul and they were off putting in their antiCatholicism based on us not ordaining women and favoring abortion. It’s when I realized that ecumenism really is a dead thing. At least any good ecumenism. A requiem is in order.
 
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MarkRohfrietsch

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The only two kinds of Lutherans worth being in unity with are LCMS and WELS. And there is at least one independent Lutheran congregation I came across that looked good. I ran into the other kind of Lutherans at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul and they were off putting in their antiCatholicism based on us not ordaining women and favoring abortion. It’s when I realized that ecumenism really is a dead thing. At least any good ecumenism. A requiem is in order.
It is sad to see some Catholics falling for the same "woke" secularism like in Germany. This can greatly harm the dialogues that have been on going between the CC and the LCMS in the US, LCC here in Canada, and globally with the ILC and the Vatican. Certainly, along side with the Real Presence, we also shared Biblical moral teachinigs regarding male only ordination, sexuality and sanctity of life by holding God's justice above "social justice".
 
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Root of Jesse

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Corpus Christi - Eucharist, The Body of Christ - Crossroads Initiative

On Holy Thursday, the night before he died, the Lord Jesus made some startling changes in the ritual of the Passover meal. Instead of being content with the traditional Jewish table blessing over the bread, Jesus proclaimed “take and eat for this is my body.” Over the third cup of wine, known as the cup of blessing, he said “take and drink for this is my blood.” Then he commanded the disciples “do this in memory of me.”

CORPUS CHRISTI & THE EUCHARIST
Obedient to the wishes of the savior, we remember and reenact this solemn moment in a special way each Holy Thursday and Feast of Corpus Christi, but more frequently in every Mass. Indeed the Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation — namely, that in the Eucharist, the communion wafer and the altar wine are transformed and really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Have you ever met anyone who has found this Catholic doctrine to be a bit hard to take?

If so, you shouldn’t be surprised. When Jesus spoke about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in John 6, his words met with less than an enthusiastic reception. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (V 52). “This is a hard saying who can listen to it?” (V60). In fact so many of his disciples abandoned him over this that Jesus had to ask the twelve if they also planned to quit. It is interesting that Jesus did not run after his disciples saying, “Don’t go – I was just speaking metaphorically!”

THE EARLY CHURCH’S UNDERSTANDING
How did the early Church interpret these challenging words of Jesus?


Here’s an interesting fact. One charge the pagan Romans lodged against the Christians was cannibalism. Why? You guessed it. People heard that this sect regularly met to feast on the flesh and blood of a man called Jesus. Did the early Christians say: “wait a minute, it’s only a symbol!”? Not at all.

When trying to explain the Eucharist to the Roman Emperor around 155 AD, St. Justin did not mince his words: “For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from him . . . is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”

REAL PRESENCE – TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Not many Christians questioned the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist till the middle ages. In trying to explain how bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, several theologians went astray and needed to be corrected by Church authority.

Then St. Thomas Aquinas came along and offered an explanation that became classic. In all change that we observe in this life, he teaches, appearances change, but deep down, the essence of a thing stays the same. Example: if, in a fit of mid-life crisis, I traded my mini-van for a Ferrari, abandoned my wife and 5 kids to be beach bum, got tanned, bleached my hair blonde, spiked it, buffed up at the gym, and took a trip to the plastic surgeon, I’d look a lot different on the surface. But for all my trouble, deep down I’d still substantially be the same ole guy as when I started.

St. Thomas said the Eucharist is the one instance of change we encounter in this world that is exactly the opposite. The appearances of bread and wine stay the same, but the very essence or substance of these realities, which can’t be viewed by a microscope, is totally transformed. What was once bread and wine are now Christ’s body and blood. A handy word was coined to describe this unique change. Transformation of the “sub-stance”, what “stands-under” the surface, came to be called “transubstantiation.”

TRANSFORMATION BY SPIRIT & WORD
What makes this transubstantiation happen? The power of God’s Spirit and Word. After praying for the Spirit to come (epiklesis), the priest, who stands in the place of Christ, repeats the words of the God-man: “This is my Body, This is my Blood.” Sounds to me like Genesis 1: the mighty wind (read “Spirit”) whips over the surface of the water and God’s Word resounds. “Let there be light” and there was light. It is no harder to believe in the Eucharist than to believe in Creation.

But why did Jesus arrange for this transformation of bread and wine?

Because he intended another kind of transformation. The bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ which are, in turn, meant to transform us. Ever hear the phrase: “you are what you eat?” The Lord desires us to be transformed from a motley crew of imperfect individuals into the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi), come to full stature.

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS
Evangelical Christians speak often of an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus. But I ask you, how much more personal and intimate can you get? We receive the Lord’s body into our physical body that we may become him whom we receive!

It is this astounding gift that we remember and celebrate on the first day of the sacred Triduum, Holy Thursday, and on the feast traditionally celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi.
 
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Albion

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Thank you for you opinion -- not.

The subject of the thread is "doctrines of the real presence in the eucharist"; that is what I am discussing.
What your posts have actually been dealing with is Transubstantiation versus the Eucharist as mere symbolism. All the Christian denominations which believe in the Real Presence but neither of the above views have been ignored.
 
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Albion

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Of course, during Catholic communion the priest holds up a wafer for all to see, saying that it's Christ's body. So everyone just looks at a cracker being held by the priest and thinks about Christ.
Well, I don't approve of using words that belittle or satirize the practice, even if I do not personally approve of the idea of displaying the host for the purpose of congregational worship, as is also done during the ceremony called Solemn Benediction.

Why didn't Jesus hold out His arm and tell the disciples to take a bite? Why didn't He cut Himself and tell them to drink His blood?
Most likely because the presence was mystical, spiritual, if nonetheless real. It is not realistic so think that only if Christ cut off a finger and had a disciple chew on it would he be able to convey his essence to his people.

If I hold up some bread and say that it's part of my body and hold up a glass of wine and say that it's my blood, either I'm crazy or I mean it symbolically.
That's not at all true. However, I can see that it's not going to be possible to get you to consider the POV that's held by at least half of the Protestant faithful.

BTW, when I was an elder in my church -- I've since retired -- I made the bread for communion. (I didn't like the "white bread" crackers that were being used to remember the Lord.) I didn't think I was playing God, somehow mystically creating the body of the Lord. I was creating bread to remember His sacrifice of His life for all who believed in Him.
Of course you were not doing that. The bread is just bread prior to the service. I thought everyone knew that, regardless of what he or she might think happens during the worship.
 
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GreekOrthodox

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Root of Jesse, what does the priest do with the host for the Corpus Christi festival? Orthodox don't have anything exactly similar, but on Holy Thursday the priest consecrates an extra section of the bread and some of the consecrated wine is poured over it. This is dried out and then can be used by the priest for the year for hospital visits or other emergencies during the next year.
 
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MarkRohfrietsch

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Root of Jesse, what does the priest do with the host for the Corpus Christi festival? Orthodox don't have anything exactly similar, but on Holy Thursday the priest consecrates an extra section of the bread and some of the consecrated wine is poured over it. This is dried out and then can be used by the priest for the year for hospital visits or other emergencies during the next year.
While not every Church does this, it is not uncommon for more traditional Lutheran Churches to consecrate bread and wine on Maundy Thursday to be used at a pre-consecrated Mass on Good Friday. We may do this next year as we have a black and gold veil, burse and pall to match our black and gold paraments.
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GreekOrthodox

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While not every Church does this, it is not uncommon for more traditional Lutheran Churches to consecrate bread and wine on Maundy Thursday to be used at a pre-consecrated Mass on Good Friday. We may do this next year as we have a black and gold veil, burse and pall to match our black and gold paraments.
View attachment 300394

I grew up LCMS and I remember that we had Maundy Thursday, then a Tre Ors (three hours service from noon to 3) and a 7pm evening service on Good Friday. Dont think we ever had communion during the Triduum.
 
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o_mlly

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There isn’t a perfect philosophy. Thomism, a variant of Aristotelianism, is recommended for Catholics but not actually required. My point was that transubstantiation is an Aristotelian concept that rather obviously won’t make sense to people who aren’t able to think as Aristotelian.

So you don’t have to be an Aristotelian but it’s on you to have a workable philosophical system. Those without a conscious philosophical system are subject to all sorts of muddy thinking. And even the best philosophical systems get muddy once in a while. So have your own philosophy and define the real presence within that philosophy if you want to. It might not make sense to an Aristotelian.
We always get in trouble when we claim to explain a mystery.

Personally, I favor combining the reflections of John Chrysostom, St. Augustine and, soon to be Blessed, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. At Eucharist, we experience a moment in eternity: Christ's sacrifice, once and for all, is made present.

In reflecting on the Cana miracle, Chrysostom and Augustine note that in eternity the water is wine as all moments, past and future, in eternity are present. Sheen reflects on how in the natural order, the hierarchy of living things transforms the lower into higher forms in order that the lower might share life more abundantly. In the Eucharist, the bread and wine that the living Christ consumed, and in consuming transformed them into Himself, is made present to us as His body, blood, soul and divinity for us to consume that we might have life everlasting.

John Chrysostom (Homily 22 on John's Gospel) says,"But now to show that it is He who transmutes water in the vine plants, and who converts the rain by its passage through the root into wine, He effected that in a moment at the wedding which in the plant is long in doing."

In De Trinitate, Augustine says that miracles are the accelerating of events that occur in nature over time. Significantly, he begins his explanation by saying that God draws the rainwater through the roots to the branches of the vine and makes wine. Christ's changing of the water into wine at Cana is the same process done with "unusual speed" (De Trin. III, 5).​

And Fulton J. Sheen, (Life of Christ) reflects on the Last Supper:
Everything in nature has to have communion in order to live; and through it what is lower is transformed into what is higher: chemical into plants, plants into animals, animals into man. And man? Should he not be elevated through communion with Him Who “came down” from heaven to make man a partaker of the Divine nature? …

When Our Lord, after He changed the bread and wine to His Body and Blood, told His Apostles to eat and drink, He was doing for the soul of man what food and drink do for the body. Unless the plants sacrifice themselves to being plucked up from the roots, they cannot nourish or commune with man. The sacrifice of what is lowest must precede communion with what is higher. First His death was mystically represented; then communion followed. The lower is transformed into the higher; chemicals into plants; plants into animals; chemicals, plants, and animals into man; and man into Christ by communion. Animals have life more abundantly than plants; man has life more abundantly than animals. He said that He came to give a life beyond the human. As the oxygen could not live the more abundant life of the plant, unless the plant came down to it, so neither could man share Divine Life unless Our Lord came down to give it.
 
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The Liturgist

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Well, I don't approve of using words that belittle or satirize the practice, even if I do not personally approve of the idea of displaying the host for the purpose of congregational worship, as is also done during the ceremony called Solemn Benediction.


Most likely because the presence was mystical, spiritual, if nonetheless real. It is not realistic so think that only if Christ cut off a finger and had a disciple chew on it would he be able to convey his essence to his people.


That's not at all true. However, I can see that it's not going to be possible to get you to consider the POV that's held by at least half of the Protestant faithful.


Of course you were not doing that. The bread is just bread prior to the service. I thought everyone knew that, regardless of what he or she might think happens during the worship.

In the Assyrian Church of the East the baking of the sacramental bread is itself a sacrament called Malka, meaning “King”, and dough from the previous liturgy is mixed in.

This may be related to the belief of Theodore of Mopsuestia, who the Assyrians venerate as Mar Theodore the Interpreter and regard with the same authority Eastern Orthodox grant his close friend St. John Chrysostom, and Roman Catholics ascribe to Augustine or Aquinas, that in the Liturgy of Preparation (Prothesis) the bread becomes the dead body of Christ, which is then resurrected during the Epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit which follows the Institution Narrative in the Byzantine Rite, but usually precedes it in the Western Rites - note that one of the three Assyrian liturgies, and the one most often used, the ancient 2nd century Liturgy of Addai and Mari, usually lacks a discrete institution narrative).
 
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The Liturgist

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While not every Church does this, it is not uncommon for more traditional Lutheran Churches to consecrate bread and wine on Maundy Thursday to be used at a pre-consecrated Mass on Good Friday. We may do this next year as we have a black and gold veil, burse and pall to match our black and gold paraments.
View attachment 300394

I love Presanctified Liturgies!
 
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MarkRohfrietsch

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I grew up LCMS and I remember that we had Maundy Thursday, then a Tre Ors (three hours service from noon to 3) and a 7pm evening service on Good Friday. Dont think we ever had communion during the Triduum.
This year we did the Vigil on Saturday night; it was a long service but very beautiful; the transition from darkness to light was very moving. Good Friday was the Adoration of the Holy Cross, followed by the stripping of the altar.
 
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So is a Aristotelian framework required and is that the only way it had to be defined?

The Catholic distinctive tends to be that after the consecration there is no more bread and wine, and that what looks like bread and wine is in fact Christ's body and blood. I'm not sure you need an Aristotelian framework for that. It has never been explicitly tied to Aristotle, but his metaphysics is in the background.

From my reading of Wikipedia, the term began being used in the 12th century and more formally defined at the Fourth Lateran Council. But it was nailed down first by Aquinas and at Trent.
Transubstantiation - Wikipedia

Here is Trent:

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.
Here is Paul VI:

As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new "reality" which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical "reality," corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
See also the General Synod on the Eucharist.
 
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