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I r o n S h a r p e n s I r o n
TRANSUBSTANTIATION FOR BEGINNERS
By CANON FRANCIS J. RIPLEY
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 7
 July 1993 
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THE earliest text concerning the Real Presence
is found in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, written probably
about A.D. 57, or 27 years after Christ's death. Modern scholars believe
Jesus died in the year 30 and that Saul was converted early in 37.
Some are convinced his conversion was as early as 34. It seems certain
that 1 Corinthians was written after the Passover of 57. This means
the newly converted Saul, now Paul, was plunged into the infant Church
as early as four and not later than seven years after the death of
Christ. He was an eyewitness of the earliest Eucharistic celebrations
or liturgical practices. Consider this in light of what Vatican I
taught about Revelation: "After the Ascension of the Lord the
apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done. They
did this with a clear understanding, which they enjoyed after they
had been instructed by the events of Christ's risen life and taught
by the light of the Spirit of truth" (Decree on Revelation,
19).
Paul's Eucharistic teaching in 1 Corinthians leaves us in no doubt.
"For this is what I received from the Lord and in turn passed
on to you: That on the same night as he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus
took some bread, and thanked God for it, and broke it, and he said,
'This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.' In
the same way he took the cup after supper and said, 'This cup is a
new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial
of me.' Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death. And so anyone who
eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be behaving
unworthily toward the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone is to recollect
himself before eating this bread and drinking this cup, because a
person who eats and drinks without recognizing the body is eating
and drinking his own condemnation" (1 Cor. 11:23-29).
In the previous chapter the apostle wrote, "The blessing-cup
that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread
that we break is communion with the body of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:16).
His words are clear. The only possible meaning is that the bread and
wine at the consecration become Christ's actual body and blood. Evidently
Paul believed that the words Christ had said at the Last Supper, "This
is my Body," meant that really and physically the bread is his
body. In fact Christ was not merely saying that the
bread was his body; he was decreeing that it should
be so and that it is so.
Paul and Christians of the first generation understood the doctrine
in this thoroughly realistic way. They knew how our Lord demanded
faith, as ww read in John 6. Belief in the Eucharist presupposes faith.
The body that is present in the Eucharist is that of Christ now reigning
in heaven, the same body which Christ received from Adam, the same
body which was made to die on the cross, but different in the sense
that it has been transformed. In the words of Paul, "It is the
same with the resurrection of the dead; the thing that is sown is
perishable, what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown
is contemptible, but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is
sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies
the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit" (1 Cor. 15:42-44).
This spiritualized body was a physical reality, as Thomas discovered.
"Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your
hand and put it into my side" (John 20:27). It is this glorious
body which is now, under the appearance of bread, communicated to
us.
We know that Paul writes that he is handing on a tradition which he
received from the Lord. He tells the Galations, "The good news
I preach is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something
I learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11-12).
Likewise to the Philippians: "Keep doing all the things that
you have learned from me and have been taught by me and have heard
or seen that I do" (Phil. 4:9). To the Colossians he writes,
"You must live your whole life according to the Christ you have
received--Jesus the Lord" (Col. 2:6).
If Paul is handing on a tradition, we ask where it comes from. Clearly
it stems from Christ. Paul stresses this over and over. "Through
the good news that we brought he called you to this so that you should
share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Stand firm, then, brothers,
and keep the traditions that we taught you, whether by word of mouth
or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:14-15). In the same way he said to
Timothy, "Keep as your pattern the sound teaching you have heard
from me" (2 Tim. 1:13). The apostle is not referring to just
any kind of tradition. His is a tradition that must be believed because
Christ himself proclaimed it with his own authority. Christ is the
fountainhead of all God's wonderful work. He is the Master, and we
must submit to his teaching. "You call me Master and Lord and
rightly so: So I am" (John 13:14).
One of the commonest errors of religious people in our day is to think
that Christ was mainly a preacher, a holy man who went about organizing
public meetings and urging people to repentance. The truth is that
the most important thing Christ did was not to preach or to work miracles,
but to perpetuate his work by gathering disciples around him. He sent
his twelve apostles out to preach. "He summoned his twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits with power to cast them
out and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness . . . These twelve
Jesus sent out instructing them as follows . . . " (Matt. 10:1-4).
The apostles he trained specially for this work. The teaching he gave
them became sacred Tradition.
We discover more about the beginnings and development of Christian
Tradition from what is now known about the roles of Master and pupil
in the Hebrew world. Our Lord was Master, and his followers were his
pupils. They were being trained to hand on the living word which was
to save the world. The disciples not only listened but followed. "Lord
to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we
believe; we know that you are the holy one of God" (John 6:68).
They did not just come and listen and go away, resolving to amend
their lives. They became the personal disciples of Christ, being trained
to carry more than his words to the world, as we shall see.
One of the characteristics of Hebrew schools was that the pupil or
disciple would do anything possible in order to retain fully and exactly
his master's teaching. The ideal of every pupil was to be able to
reproduce this teaching word for word. That ideal often was attained.
This must have been the attitude of the first Christians. They were
lovers of Christ, believers in his Godhead. They passionately wanted
to retain all that God wished them to remember of the saving word.
They had the privilege of receiving personal instruction from the
greatest of all teachers, God himself. They had been told that what
they were being taught was a treasure they had to pass on to succeeding
generations. Theirs was no ordinary schooling. They were filled, absorbed
with love. Above all, the Spirit of God was with them, teaching, guiding,
and inspiring them.
Three of the Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--tell us what
happened at the Last Supper. Each has its own character, mode of writing,
and variants. We do not expect in this type of writing photographic,
meticulous, verbal identity. It is the essential truth that matters.
We shall never understand the New Testament unless we remember that
these written accounts are simply versions of the verbal tradition.
Paul and the evangelists knew what the Christians were doing. The
words of consecration were being said at the Eucharistic meals. It
was easy enough to write them down. There could have been no distortion,
at the most only a simplification. Suppose we had been present with
the apostles in those days between Christ's Resurrection and his Ascension.
We should have heard Christ teaching them. Indeed this was a most
important time of their training. Can we imagine that he would omit
to tell them in detail how they were to carry on doing what he told
them to do at his Last Supper? Christ knew and they knew that this
was to be the very heart of the worship of the Church he founded.
So there is not the slightest doubt that the formulas given us by
the evangelists and Paul were those that were being used by the Christians
as they celebrated the Eucharist. The Gospels faithfully hand on what
Jesus Christ, while still living among men, really did and taught
for their eternal salvation until the day he was taken up to heaven.
Could anything at all be more important than what he did and said
about his body and blood? Our Lord's last meal was a Paschal feast,
or at least a meal in the atmosphere of a Paschal feast, as he said.
We know from Jewish writers how this can easily be fitted in to the
full Jewish rite. The ancient commemorative meal of the Hebrews in
which they recalled how God had freed his people from Egypt, was now
to give place to a commemoration and reenactment of a new and final
reality issuing from the mind and will of the risen Christ.
In the eleventh century Berengarius fell into heresy by failing to
realize this point. His motto was, "I wish to understand all
things by reason." The Eucharist is one of those things which
cannot be understood by reason. Human arguments can never explain
Christ's Real Presence.
John Chrysostom is known as "the Doctor of the Eucharist."
In 398 he became Patriarch of Constantinople. He wrote, "We must
reverence God everywhere. We must not contradict him, when what he
says seems contrary to our reason and intelligence. His words must
be preferred to our reason and intelligence. This ought to be our
behavior to the Eucharistic mysteries too. We must not confine our
attention to what the senses can experience, but hold fast to his
words. His word cannot deceive." Writing of the words of institution
he said, "You may not doubt the truth of this; you must rather
accept the Savior's words in faith; since he is truth, he does not
tell lies."
Centuries later Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the scholastic theologians,
taught the same. He said that the existence in the Eucharist of Christ's
real body and blood "cannot be g.asped by the experience of the
senses, but only by the faith which has divine authority and its support."
He put it into his famous verse: "Sight, touch, and taste in
thee are each deceived; the ear alone most safely is believed; I believe
all the Son of God has spoken, than through his own word there is
no truer token."
When Christ himself promised his Real Presence in the Eucharist, many
of his disciples could not accept it. "This is intolerable language.
How could anyone accept it?" (John 6:68). But Peter had the right
mentality. "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of
eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the holy one of
God" (John 6:69).
Here is a grave admonition of Pope Paul: "In the investigation
of this mystery we follow the Magisterium of the Church like a star.
The redeemer has entrusted the word of God, in writing and in tradition,
to the Church's Magisterium to keep and to explain. We must have this
conviction: 'what has since ancient times been preached and received
with true Catholic faith throughout the Church is still true, even
if it is not susceptible of a rational investigation or verbal explanation'
(Augustine)."
But the Pope goes on to say something that is vitally important. He
says that it is not enough merely to believe the truth. We
must also accept the way the Church has devised to express
that truth exactly. Here is what he says: "When the integrity
of faith has been preserved, a suitable manner of expression has to
be preserved as well. Otherwise our usual careless language may .
. . give rise to false opinions in belief in very deep matters."
Pope Paul does not hesitate to declare that the language the Church
has used to describe and explain its teaching has been adopted "with
the protection of the Holy Spirit." It has been confirmed with
the authority of the councils. More than once it has become the token
and standard of the orthodox faith. You have only to read the history
of theology in the fourth and fifth centuries to understand how important
the use of words was in indicating the true nature of Christ in those
times. Then orthodoxy turned upon slight variations in a Greek word.
The Holy Father says that this traditional language must be observed
religiously. "Nobody may presume to alter it at will or on the
pretext of new knowledge. It would be intolerable if the dogmatic
formulae which ecumenical councils have employed in dealing with the
mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity were to be accused of being badly
attuned to the men of our day and other formulae were rashly introduced
to replace them. It is equally intolerable that anyone on his own
initiative should want to modify the formulae with which the Council
of Trent has proposed the Eucharistic mystery for belief."
This is a most important point. We must believe that the Council of
Trent had the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as any general council
has. The Pope then goes on to say that the Eucharistic formulae of
the Council of Trent express ideas which are not tied to any specified
cultural system. Presumably he is refuting the notion that the distinction
we are going to discuss between substance and accidents is peculiar
to scholastic philosophy and would be rejected by other thinkers.
The Pope says, "They are not restricted to any fixed development
of the sciences, nor to one or other of the theological schools. They
present the perception which the human mind acquires from its universal
essential experience of reality and expresses their use of appropriate
and certain terms borrowed from colloquial or literary language. They
are, therefore, within the reach of everyone at all times and in all
places."
It would be hard to overemphasize this point. In particular we might
say that right thought always distinguishes between what a thing is
and what it has. You do not need to be a scholastic philosopher
to make a simple distinction of that sort. The Pope goes on to say
that most things are capable of being explained more clearly, but
explanation must not take away their original meaning. Vatican I defined
that "that meaning must always be retained which Holy Mother
Church has once declared. There must never be any retreat from that
meaning on the pretext and title of higher understanding."
There is particular significance in the fact that the dogmas of Christ's
Real Presence in the Eucharist remained unmolested down to the ninth
century. Even then the molestation was comparatively slight. There
were three great Eucharistic controversies which helped to clarify
the ideas of theologians.
The first was begun by Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century.
The trouble he caused hardly extended beyond the limits of his audience
and concerned itself only with the philosophical question whether
the Eucharistic body of Christ is identical with the natural body
he had in Palestine and now has glorified in heaven.
The next controversy arose over the teaching of Berengarius, to whom
we have already referred. He denied transubstantiation but repaired
the public scandal he had given and died reconciled to the Church.
The third big controversy was at the Reformation. Luther was the only
one among the Reformers who still clung to the old Catholic tradition.
Though he subjected it to much misrepresentation, he defended it most
tenaciously. He was diametrically opposed by Zwingli, who reduced
the Eucharist to an empty symbol. Calvin tried to reconcile Luther
and Zwingli by teaching that at the moment of reception the efficacy
of Christ's body and blood is communicated from heaven to the souls
of the predestined and spiritually nourishes them.
When Photius started the Greek Schism in 869, he still believed in
the Real Presence. The Greeks always believed in it. They repeated
it at the reunion councils in 1274 at Lyons and 1439 at Florence.
Therefore it is evident that the Catholic doctrine must be older than
the Eastern Schism of Photius.
In the fifth century the Nestorians and Monophysithes broke away from
Rome. In their literature and liturgical books they preserved their
faith in the Eucharist and the Real Presence, but they had difficulty
because of their denial that in Christ there are two natures and one
Person. Thus the Catholic dogma is at least as old as the Council
of Ephesus in 431. To establish that the truth goes back beyond that
time one need only examine the oldest liturgies of the Mass and the
evidence of the Roman catacombs. In that way we find ourselves back
in the days of the apostles themselves.
The three controversies just mentioned helped considerably to formulate
the dogma of transubstantiation. The term itself, transubstantiation,
seems to have been first used by Hildebert of Tours about 1079. Other
theologians, such as Stephen of Autun (d. 1139), Gaufred (d. 1188),
and Peter of Blois (d. 1200), also used it. Lateran IV in 1215 and
the Council of Lyons in 1274 adopted the same expression, the latter
being in the Profession Faith proposed to the Greek Emperor, Michael
Palaeologus.
Trent was, of course, the council which was summoned specially to
refute the errors of the Reformation. After affirming the Real Presence
of Christ, the reason for it, and the preeminence of the Eucharist
over other sacraments, the council defined the following on October
11, 1551: "Because Christ our Redeemer said it was truly his
body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always
been the conviction of the Church, and this holy council now declares
that, by the consecration of the bread and wine a change takes place
in which the whole substance of bread is changed into the substance
of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine
into the substance of his blood. This change the Holy Catholic Church
fittingly and properly names transubstantiation."
The following canon also was promulgated by the Council: "If
anyone says that the substance of bread and wine remain in the holy
sacrament of the Eucharist together with the body and blood of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and extraordinary change
of the whole substance of the bread into Christ's body and the whole
substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread
and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church has most fittingly
called transubstantiation, let him be anathema."
Let us try to analyze this idea. We speak of the conversion of bread
and wine into Christ's body and blood. What do we mean by conversion?
We mean the transition of one thing into another in some.aspect of
being. It is more than mere change. In mere change one of the two
extremes may be expressed negatively, as for example the change of
day and night. Night is simply the absence of the light of day. The
starting point is positive, while the target, so to speak, is negative.
It can be the other way about when we talk of the change of night
into day.
Conversion is more than this. It requires two positive extremes. They
must be related to each other as thing to thing. For true conversion
one thing must run into another thing. It is not just a question of
water, for example, changing into steam. Moreover, these two things
must be so intimately connected with each other that the last extreme,
let us call it the target of the conversion, begins to be only as
the first, the starting point, ceases to be. An example of this is
the conversion of water into wine at Cana. This is far more radical
than the change of water into steam.
A third element is required. There must be something which unites
the starting point to the target, one extreme to the other, the thing
which is changed to that into which it is changed. At Cana, what was
formerly water is now wine. Conversion must not be a kind of sleight
of hand, a conjuring trick, an illusion. The target, the element into
which the change takes place, must newly exist in some way just as
a starting point. The thing which is changed must in some manner really
cease to exist. Thus at Cana wine did not exist before in those containers,
but it came to exist. Water did exist, but it ceased to exist. But
the water was not annihilated. If the water had been annihilated,
there would not have been a change but a new creation. We have conversion
when a thing which really existed in substance acquires an altogether
new and previously non-existing mode of being.
Transubstantiation is unique. It is not a simple conversion. It is
a substantial conversion. One thing is substantially or essentially
converted into another thing. There is no question here of a merely
accidental conversion, like water into steam. Nor is it something
like the metamorphosis of insects or the transfiguration of Christ
on Mount Tabor. There is no other change exactly like transubstantiation.
In transubstantiation only the substance is converted into another
substance, while the accidents remain the same. At Cana substance
was changed into substance, but the accidents of water were changed
also into the accidents of wine.
The doctrine of the Real Presence is necessarily contained in the
doctrine of transubstantiation, but the doctrine of transubstantiation
is not necessarily contained in the Real Presence. Christ could become
really present without transubstantiation taking place, but we know
that this is not what happened because of Christ's own words at the
Last Supper. He did not say, "This bread is my body," but
simply, "This is my body." Those words indicated a complete
change of the entire substance of bread into the entire substance
of Christ. The word "this" indicated the whole of what Christ
held in his hand. His words were so phrased as to indicate that the
subject of the sentence, "this," and the predicate, "my
body," are identical. As soon as the sentence was complete, the
substance of the bread was no longer present. Christ's body was present
under the outward appearances of bread. The words of institution at
the Last Supper were at the same time the words of transubstantiation.
If Christ had wished the bread to be a kind of sacramental receptacle
of his body, he would surely have used other words, for example, "This
bread is my body" or "This contains my body."
The revealed doctrine expressed by the term transubstantiation is
in no way conditioned by the scholastic system of philosophy. Any
philosophy that distinguishes adequately between the appearances of
a thing and the thing itself may be harmonized with the doctrine of
transubstantiation. Right thinking demands that one makes a distinction
between what a thing is and what it has. That is part
of ordinary common speaking. we say, for example, that this is iron,
but it maybe cold, hot, black, red, white, solid, liquid, or vapor.
The qualities, actions, and reactions do not exist in themselves;
they are in something. We call that something the substance.
It makes a thing what it is. When we talk about transubstantiation
we are using the word substance in that sense. It is unfair for people
who do not want to accept this doctrine to invent their own definition
of substance and then to tell us we are wrong.
All that substance sustains, the things which inhere in it, we call
by the technical name of accidents. We cannot touch, see, taste, feel,
measure, analyze, smell, or otherwise directly experience substance.
Only by knowing the accidents do we know it. So we sometimes call
the accidents the appearances.
At Mass the priest does exactly what Christ told him to do at the
Last Supper. He does not say, "This is Christ's body," but
"This is my body." These words produce the whole substance
of Christ's body. In the same way the words of consecration produce
the whole substance of Christ's blood. They are Christ's body and
blood, as they are now living in heaven. There, in heaven, his body
and blood are united with his soul and Godhead. The accidents or appearances
of his human body are in heaven too. They are present, therefore,
in the Holy Eucharist. For want of a better term we speak of them
as following the substance. By the words of consecration the substance
is immediately and directly produced. The personal accidents of Christ,
his appearances, are there by what the theologians call "natural
concomitance."
Every raindrop that falls contains the whole substance of water. That
same entire substance is present in the tiniest particle of steam
which comes from the kettle on the hob. The entire substance of Christ
is present in each consecrated host, in a chalice of consecrated wine,
in each crumb that falls off the host, and in each drop that is detached
from the wine.
But we must not imagine that Christ is compressed into the dimensions
of the tiny, circular wafer or a grape. No, the whole Christ is present
in the way proper to substance. He can be neither touched nor seen.
His shape and his dimensions are there, but they are there in the
same way as substance is there, beyond the reach of our senses.
When the priest at Mass, obeying Christ, speaks the words of consecration,
a change takes place. The substance of bread and the substance of
wine are changed by God's power into the substance of Christ's body
and the substance of his blood. The change is entire. Nothing of the
substance of bread remains, nothing of the substance of wine. Neither
is annihilated; both are simply changed.
The appearances of bread and wine remain. We know that by our senses.
We can see, touch, and taste them. We digest them when we receive
Communion. After the consecration they exist by God's power. Nothing
in the natural order supports them because their own proper substance
is gone. It has been changed into Christ's substance. They do not
inhere in the substance of Christ, which is now really present. It
is not strictly true to say that Christ in the Eucharist looks
like bread and wine. It is the appearances of bread and
wine that look like bread and wine. The same God who originally gave
the substance of bread power to support its appearance keeps those
appearances in being by supporting them himself.
Christ is present as substance. That is the key to a right understanding
of this mystery. He does not have to leave heaven to come to us in
Communion. There is no question of his hopping from host to host or
rushing from church to church to be present in each for a little while.
When we receive Communion we are not given a particle of Christ's
body of the same dimension as the small wafer the priest puts on our
tongue. Those who imagine otherwise have failed to g.asp the meaning
of substantial presence.
Many of the Fathers of the Church warned the faithful not to be satisfied
with the senses which announce the properties of bread and wine.
Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) said, "Now that you have had this
teaching and are imbued with surest belief that what seems to be bread
is not bread, though it has the taste, but Christ's body, and what
seems to be wine is not wine, even if it appears so to the taste,
but Christ's blood."
John Chrystostom (d. 407) said, "It is not the man who is responsible
for the offerings becoming Christ's body and blood, it is Christ himself,
who is crucified for us. The standing figure [at Mass] belongs to
the priest who speaks these words, the power and the grace belong
to God. 'This is my body,' he says. This sentence transforms the offerings."
Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) wrote, "He used a demonstrative
mode of speech, `This is my body' and 'This is my blood,' to prevent
your thinking that what is seen is a figure; on the contrary what
has truly been offered is transformed in a hidden way by the all-powerful
God into Christ's body and blood. When we have become partakers of
Christ's body and blood, we receive the living giving, sanctifying
power of Christ."
Berengarius, recanting from his error, made on oath a profession of
faith to Pope Gregory VII:
"With my heart I believe, with my mouth I acknowledge, that the
mystery of the sacred prayer and our Redeemer's words are responsible
for a substantial change in the bread and wine, which are put on the
altar, into Jesus Christ our Lord's own, true, life-giving flesh and
blood. I acknowledge, too, that they are, after consecration, Christ's
true body which was born of the Virgin, which hung on the cross as
an offering for the salvation of the world and which is seated at
the right hand of the Father, and Christ's true blood which flowed
out of his side: they are not such simply because of the sacrament's
symbolism and power, but as constituted by nature and as true substances."
It may be as well to quote here the explanation of a leading modern
theologian. Louis Bouyer, a priest who was formerly a Lutheran minister
and has for many years been one of the leading Catholic lecturers
and writers, says, "Transubstantiation is a name given in the
Church . . . Although Tertullian had already used the word, Christian
antiquity preferred the Greek expression metabole, translated
into Latin by conversio.
"The word transubstantiation came to be used by preference during
the Middle Ages, both as a reaction against certain theologians like
Ratramus, who tended to see in the Eucharist only a virtual and not
a real presence of the body and blood of the Lord, and against others
like Paschasius Radbertus, who expressed his presence as if it were
a question of a material and sensible one.
"To speak of transubstantiation comes down then to stating that
it is indeed the very reality of the body of Christ that we have on
the altar after the consecration, yet in a way inaccessible to the
senses and in such a manner that it is neither multiplied by the multiplicity
of the species, nor divided in anyway by their division, nor passible
[subject to suffering] in anyway whatsoever.
In conclusion we cannot do better than quote the words of the Imitation
of Christ: "You must beware of curious and useless searching
into this most profound sacrament. He who is a scrutineer of majesty
will be overwhelmed by its glory."
Canon Francis J. Ripley has been a priest for more
than half a century and is a well-respected apologist for the faith.
He resides in the Archdiocese of Liverpool.
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