Transubstantiation

The Eucharist is the heart and soul of the Christian Community

When we ponder the reality of the Church, we need to understand how we are a part of a living reality encompassing those living today, along with those who have been baptised from the time of Pentecost down through time.  The Church includes those living eternally, those singing the praises of God around the heavenly throne.  The Church has always been far greater than its material footprint, its buildings and institutions. The Church is and remains forever the Body of Christ.

It is equally important to remind ourselves of another reality.  Theology did not begin when Martin Luther nailed his theses onto the cathedral door in 1517 and launched the Reformation. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church has faithfully maintained and proclaimed the teachings of the Apostles.  This was carried out under the guarantee given by Jesus to Peter, and so to the Church…  “the gates of hell will not prevail against you”

The theological word for this is Indefectible, meaning that something is not subject to failure or decay, and is free of significant faults in matters of faith. That does not mean it cannot make mistakes, just not in matters of faith.  The church as indefectible meaning it will endure and maintain its essential characteristics. It will get things wrong but not regarding the “teachings of the apostles”.

This is a vital theological teaching because it rests on the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we reject indefectibility, we are saying that since the year 312 (when Constantine converted to Christianity and thus the Roman Empire embraced the Christ, effectively ending pagan control), the universal Church has not been faithful to God’s commissioning.  Has not listened to and been guided by the Holy Spirit.    That is a big call to make.  For 1200 years, Christian leaders were led, not by the Spirit but by who?  Satan?

As we are opening our reflections on the Eucharist, we must keep in mind the historical perspective.  Some things have been consistent, unchanged from the time of Pentecost, and one of those “somethings” is that the bread and wine in the Eucharist are fully, truly the body and blood of Jesus.   This is the way Christians have understood the words of Jesus: “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you cannot have life within you”.

Transubstantiation

 The teachings on transubstantiation are about what has taken place, an attempt to explain in limited human language something that is essentially a mystery.  It uses a human philosophy applied to something the Holy Spirit is doing.   Not the priest. The priest does not bring about this change.  It is the work of God, a divine activity that is made visible through the words and deeds of the priest. The Holy Spirit….let your Spirit come down upon these gifts, so that they may come for us, the Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ (from the Anglican prayer book).

It might not be the final philosophical attempt to explain what happens, but it is a workable attempt, using the Thomist view of Aristotle's ideas about the difference between substance and accidents.  It is not a popular philosophy commonly used today but was radical at the time.  What we do need to keep in mind is that transubstantiation does not attempt to explain the “how” just the “what”.

What Is the Eucharist?

The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word eucharistia, which means “thanksgiving.” The word has been used from New testament times, picking up the actions of the Lord at supper when he took the bread and gave thanks.  The Church thus uses the word "Eucharist" because it directly links the words and actions of Jesus with the words and actions of the priest in the liturgy.  This connection is vital when we consider the Eucharist to be the central act of Christian worship, the ritual of thanksgiving for Christ's sacrifice.

The word Eucharist refers to the entire liturgy of the Eucharist beginning with the welcome and ending with the blessing and dismissal, the sending out of God’s people.  

Who or What Denominations Practice Eucharist?

Those churches of a more evangelical persuasion (or a lower-church tradition) will not use the term Eucharist, as it has too many Catholic connotations. But more mainstream traditions (such as Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, etc.) might still use the term, though many prefer the phrase Holy Communion. Behind the words used sits some important theological choices, decisions that are a part of the theological cauldron that was the Reformation.

Do we receive the Literal Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist?

There are a few sources or streams which feed into the belief that the Eucharist is the literal body/blood of Christ.

Firstly, are the Scriptures. In  John 6:26 Jesus is promising that we would feed upon his literal body. And then in the Synoptics and in 1 Corinthians 11:23, he says, “This is my body.”

By the miracles of the loaves and fishes and the walking upon the waters, on the previous day, Christ not only prepared His hearers for the discourse containing the promise of the Eucharist, but also proved to them that He possessed, as Almighty God-man, a power superior to and independent of the laws of nature, and could, therefore, provide such a supernatural food, His own Flesh and Blood. Jesus had the power and authority to do just that.

Secondly, from the outset, the Church understood, without doubt, that the bread and wine in the Eucharist was the Saviour Jesus Christ’s body and blood.

Thirdly, there are many quotes from early church believers which can be wielded to teach that the church has always believed in the Real Presence of Christ. And it seems to have gone mostly unchallenged until a debate in 831 AD between a couple of monks named Rabanus and Ratramnus.

As is typically the case, when a controversy arises, the church's position becomes more solidified. The theology grows out of the need to respond to the challenges brought about by the possibility of heresy.  Eventually Aquinas brought about a full-fledged doctrine of transubstantiation that became definitive.

This was the theological/philosophical background to the Church’s understanding of the Real Presence in the Eucharist.  It developed out of a process of combining Scripture and tradition and transubstantiation became the standard way the Real Presence was presented.  Note:  it was never about the how. That was a mystery.  It was a way of stating what happened.

How Is This Different from Communion?

From a Catholic perspective, there is a significant difference between the Eucharist and Communion.  The Eucharist is the full liturgy, including the reception of Holy Communion.   It is everything leading up to receiving Holy Communion and everything that comes in the remainder of the liturgy.   It is about joining in with the “giving thanks” (eucharist in the Greek) offering at the Last Supper.

Communion, on the other hand, stresses  the act of sharing the host among the congregation, when those present partake of the body and blood of Christ.

There are two core elements in the Eucharist:

The internal – the spiritual activities that are going on in the heart and mind of the individual participating in the offering, an inner spiritual activity that is expressed and deepened by external participation (vocal responses, singing, postures, etc.). This is the very essence of what it means to ‘celebrate the Eucharist.’  Both internal and external participation are necessary, since each one deepens and reinforces the other.

For some outside observers, the Eucharistic Prayer is all about watching the priest go through the ritual and then the congregation wandering up and receiving Holy Communion. What they do not understand is the need to offer themselves with Christ to the Father in the Spirit during the Prayer.

What they do not understand is that the participation by the people in their prayers and responses (Introductory Dialogue, Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation and Great Amen) are the outward signs of their participation in the entire Prayer.”

The Eucharist is also different to Holy Communion in that a Protestant does not believe that the actual blood and body of Christ are offered through transubstantiation. They would either believe that Christ is spiritually present or that He is symbolically present in the observance of Holy Communion.

The Roman Catholic View: Transubstantiation

The Roman Catholic view on what happens in the Eucharist to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is called transubstantiation.

That is when the priest elevates first the wafer and then the chalice of wine mixed with water and rehearses the institutional narrative, the story of the Last Supper – this is my body…this is my blood. The bread and the wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Trans means “change” and substantiation means “substance.” 

There is a change in the substance of the elements used in the Eucharistic celebration.

In Catholic theology, it's not the form of the bread and the wine that changes.

The bread still looks like bread and tastes like bread. The wine smells like wine, tastes like wine. There is no change that's perceptible to us as human beings.

What has changed is the essence, the very nature, the substance of the bread and wine. They are no longer bread and wine, though it still has the form of bread and wine. Now they are the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Their substance has been changed.

This is then received into the life of a Catholic when he or she consumes the Eucharistic elements. By this means, God pours out or imbues a grace into the Christian’s life the gift of salvation.

Martin Luther’s View: Consubstantiation

A second historical view is that of Martin Luther, called consubstantiation, though that was not a term that he himself used. By consubstantiation, we mean that Jesus Christ is present in, with, and under the bread and the wine whenever the Lord’s Supper is celebrated.

Luther clearly distinguished his view from transubstantiation. There is no mystical change in the substance of the bread and the wine. However, when the church celebrates the Lord’s Supper, Christ is present in, with, and under the elements of the bread and wine.

How is that possible?

The theological argument is that Jesus Christ is not confined in heaven. He is not confined to the right hand of the Father in heaven, but he is everywhere present. Thus when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, he can be with the bread and the wine. He can be in, with, and under the elements.  That is consubstantiation.

An analogy that is generally used to explain this that of a sponge and water. Wherever a sponge is soaked with water, there is the water. And wherever the water is, it is there contained, soaked up by the sponge. The sponge is not the water, the water is not the sponge but the two are there together.  This analogy is used in explaining the Lutheran view of consubstantiation.

Huldrych Zwingli’s View: A Memorial

A third view is that of Huldrych Zwingli.  This is the memorial view. What is most important about the Lord’s Supper is Christ's command to do this, to celebrate the Lord's supper in remembrance of him—his death on behalf of our sins.

What the elements—the bread and the cup of wine—really do for us is help us to remember that Christ's body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a time to remember and reflect on what Christ has done through his death. The bread and wine are merely an aide memoire.

John Calvin’s View: Spiritual Presence

A fourth view is that of John Calvin, usually called the spiritual presence view. It's not transubstantiation, and it's not consubstantiation. And it goes beyond Zwingli’s memorial view.

For John Calvin, there are symbols that are very powerful.  The bread and the wine He says are symbolic—they are signs—but they're not empty signs.  They really do render that which they portray, so they render to us the presence of Jesus Christ and his salvific benefits: all the work of salvation that he has accomplished on our behalf.

How is this possible?

Calvin explained it in two ways, always affirming that it is a mystery.

1.      It could be that when the church celebrates the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit raises up the church so the church ascends to fellowship with Christ, commune with Christ who is in heaven.

2.      Another possibility is that the Holy Spirit causes Christ to descend to fellowship and commune with the church as it celebrates the Lord’s Supper.

In either case, there is a spiritual presence of Jesus Christ. It goes beyond just mere memorial.  Christ is present with all his salvific benefits when the church celebrates the Lord’s Supper. But the bread and wine do not move beyond the state of being symbols for the congregation to unite them spiritually with the saving works of Jesus.  They remain bread and wine.

Some historical background

The term transubstantiation was decided upon at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of the Lateran (1215) as the only term which completely and accurately describes the mystery of the Real Presence.  But that is the first time it was used as an official, formal theological word.  The theology it is explaining has been around from the opening days of the Church.

Ignatius of Antioch, writing in about AD 106 to the Roman Christians, says: "I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.

Writing to the Christians of Smyrna in the same year, he warned them to "stand aloof from such heretics", because, among other reasons, "they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again

The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 spoke of the bread and wine as "transubstantiated" into the body and blood of Christ: "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 transubstantiated, by God's power, into his body and blood".

 It was not until later in the 13th century that Aristotelian metaphysics was accepted and a philosophical elaboration in line with that metaphysics was developed, which found classic formulation in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas".

Consubstantiation (con - with, and substantation - substance) a term commonly applied to the Lutheran concept of the communion supper, though some modern Lutheran theologians reject the use of this term because of its ambiguity. The idea is that in the communion the body and blood of Christ and the bread and wine coexist in union with each other.

The doctrine of transubstantiation is the result of a theological dispute started in the 11th century when Berengar of Tours denied that any material change in the elements was needed to explain the Eucharistic Presence, thereby provoking a considerable stir.

Berengar's position was never diametrically opposed to that of his critics, and he was probably never excommunicated, but the controversies that he aroused forced people to clarify the doctrine of the Eucharist. The earliest known use of the term "transubstantiation" to describe the change from bread and wine to body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist was by Hildebert de Lavardin, Archbishop of Tours, in the 11th century. By the end of the 12th century the term was in widespread use.

Anglican eucharistic theologies universally affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though Evangelical Anglicans believe that this is a pneumatic presence, while those of an Anglo-Catholic churchmanship believe this is a corporeal presence. To explain the manner of Christ's presence, some High-Church Anglicans, however, teach the philosophical explanation of consubstantiation, associated with the English and, later, erroneously with Martin Luther, though Luther and the Lutheran churches rejected the doctrine of consubstantiation and promulgated instead their dogma of the sacramental union.

In the Greek Orthodox Church, the doctrine has been discussed under the term of metousiosis, coined as a direct loan-translation of transubstantiation in the 17th century.

 In Eastern Orthodoxy in general, the Sacred Mystery (Sacrament) of the Eucharist is more commonly discussed using alternative terms such as "trans-elementation", metastoicheiosis), "re-ordination" metarrhythmisis), or simply "change" metabole. 

The Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches, along with the Assyrian Church of the East, agree that in a valid Divine Liturgy bread and wine truly and becomes the body and blood of Christ.

In Orthodox confessions, the change is said to start during the Liturgy of Preparation and be completed during the Epiklesis – the calling down of the Holy Spirit on the bread and the wine.

However, there are official church documents that speak of a "change" (in Greek or "metousiosis "of the bread and wine. Met-ousi-osis is the Greek word used to represent the Latin word "trans-substanti-atio", as the Greek  (meta-morph-osis) corresponds to Latin "trans-figur-atio".

Examples of official documents of the Eastern Orthodox Church that use the term "transubstantiation" are the Longer Catechism of The Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (question 340) and the declaration by the Eastern Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem of 1672.

Anglicanism: Elizabeth I, as part of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, gave royal assent to the 39 Articles of Religion, which sought to distinguish Anglican from Roman Church doctrine. The Articles declared that "Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions."

The Elizabethan Settlement accepted the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, but refused to define it, preferring to leave it a mystery. Indeed, for many years it was illegal in Britain to hold public office whilst believing in transubstantiation, as under the Test Act of 1673.

Archbishop John Tillotson decried the "real barbarousness of this Sacrament and Rite of our Religion", considering it a great impiety to believe that people who attend Holy Communion "verily eat and drink the natural flesh and blood of Christ. And what can any man do more unworthily towards a Friend? How can he possibly use him more barbarously, than to feast upon his living flesh and blood?" (Discourse against Transubstantiation, London 1684, 35). In the Church of England today, clergy are required to assent that the 39 Articles have borne witness to the Christian faith.

Reformed Churches: Classical Presbyterianism held Calvin's view of "pneumatic presence" or "spiritual feeding", a Real Presence by the Spirit for those who have faith. John Calvin "can be regarded as occupying a position roughly midway between" the doctrines of Martin Luther on one hand and Huldrych Zwingli on the other. He taught that "the thing that is signified is effected by its sign", declaring:

"Believers ought always to live by this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be convinced that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For why should the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, unless it was to assure you that you really participate in it? And if it is true that a visible sign is given to us to seal the gift of an invisible thing, when we have received the symbol of the body, let us rest assured that the body itself is also given to us."

Methodism: Methodists believe in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine while, like Anglicans, Presbyterians and Lutherans, rejecting transubstantiation. According to the United Methodist Church, "Jesus Christ, who 'is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being' (Hebrews 1:3), is truly present in Holy Communion."[ While upholding the view that scripture is the primary source of Church practice, Methodists also look to church tradition and base their beliefs on the early Church teachings on the Eucharist, that Christ has a real presence in the Lord's Supper. The Catechism for the use of the people called Methodists thus states that, "[in Holy Communion] Jesus Christ is present with his worshipping people and gives himself to them as their Lord and Saviour".

The Eucharist? We call that Jesus.

For the Orthodox churches, the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, but do not believe in the transubstantiation. What they believe is that it is a mystery. In other words, “It is the body of Christ”.

The Council of Trent summarises the Catholic faith by declaring:

Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change 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 has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”

By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity.

In other words, Roman Catholics believe that transubstantiation is the “change” that occurs in the “whole substance” of the bread and wine set apart for the Eucharistic mystery. This is a change that takes place at the words of institution or consecration (i.e. “This is My Body,” etc.).

The key point of emphasis in the Eastern tradition, then, is that a change does take place.  While the mechanics of the how remain a mystery, there is one certain Truth:  a change to the bread and wine does take place.  It is the Body and Blood of Jesus. 

But truly and really, after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body itself of the Lord, Jesus of Nazareth who was born in Bethlehem of the ever-Virgin, was baptised in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, was received up, sits at the right hand of the God and Father, and is to come again in the clouds of Heaven; and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true Blood itself of the Lord, Which as He hung upon the Cross, was poured out for the life of the world.    Orthodox Confession of Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1672)

A final word on transubstantiation

In the exposition of the faith by the Eastern Patriarchs, it is said that the word transubstantiation is not to be taken to define how the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord; for this none can understand but God; but only thus much is signified, that the bread truly, really, and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord.

In like manner John Damascene, treating of the Holy and Immaculate Mysteries of the Lord, writes thus: “It is truly that Body, united with Godhead, which had its origin from the Holy Virgin; not as though that Body which ascended came down from heaven, but because the bread and wine themselves are changed into the Body and Blood of God.

But if thou seekest after the manner how this is, let it suffice thee to be told that it is by the Holy Ghost; in like manner as, by the same Holy Ghost, the Lord formed flesh to himself, and in himself, from the Mother of God; nor know I aught more than this, that the Word of God is true, powerful, and almighty, but its manner of operation unsearchable.”  Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church by St. Philaret (of Moscow (1830)