One of the frequent claims made by Protestants and skeptics of Catholic eucharistic doctrine is that it’s just too complicated. The doctrine of transubstantiation is too much for the human mind to grasp. It’s just ridiculous to believe that bread and wine are completely transformed into the substance of flesh and blood. The bread and wine are clearly still there, for crying out loud. Occam’s razor points to a simpler solution.
Eucharistic theology is not meant to be easy. The early Church writer Pseudo-Dionysius found that it is, in fact, impossible to sufficiently explain the truths surrounding the divine essence. But even if theology were meant to be comprehensible, Protestants would be at a loss, for the only thing less sensible than transubstantiation is its alternatives.
Whereas all too many Protestants now dismiss the Eucharist as merely a symbol, the original Reformers and many of the more orthodox Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Irvingians, Presbyterians, Anglicans, etc.) hold to some version of the theological concept of consubstantiation. This theology seeks to reconcile the physical “breadlike” properties of the post-consecration Eucharist with Jesus’ insistence that this substance is his body.
Consubstantial means “of the same substance.” The idea is that the Eucharist is two things simultaneously, fully Christ and fully bread. When we put it this way, it instantly brings to mind another similar doctrine, the theology of the hypostatic union, by which Christ incarnated is fully man and fully God. The Arian heresy argued that Christ himself was something along the lines of “just a symbol”— just a created fleshly being who serves as a representative from God to men. The modern orthodox Protestants respond to eucharistic Arianism the same way the early Church responded to Christological Arianism in the Nicene creed: Just as Christ is consubstantial with the Father, the bread is consubstantial with Christ.
Protestants disputing transubstantiation can say what they will in favor of consubstantiation, however they may define it—but one thing they can’t say is that it’s more rational or more simple than Catholic eucharistic dogma. After all, if consubstantiation means consubstantial—and it does—and if God is consubstantial with Christ—and he is—and if Christ is consubstantial with a piece of bread—which he is not—then a piece of bread would be something of a Fourth Person of the Trinity. And that’s going to require a lot more mental legwork to explain than the simple, albeit mysterious, dogma of transubstantiation.
Now, the Trinity is a mystery of faith that is almost impossible to grasp. But the various creeds dogmatically assert that the three persons therein are consubstantial. The Athanasian creed—which most orthodox Protestants profess—says specifically that “we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” It is precisely the fact that the three persons are identical in their substance that makes them one God. So if something else were to become consubstantial with any person of the Trinity, it would become God. Humans, by contrast, become the body of Christ in the Church, and so we “become” God through a process called theosis, or participation in the life of Christ by grace. But there’s a major difference between theosis and consubstantiation. Theosis is a perfection of our human nature to (in a manner of speaking) make us “gods, sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6; see John 10:34),” but consubstantiation specifically does not change the nature of bread. It is not any closer to the platonic form of bread—as anyone who has eaten stale matzoh knows well—yet, according to the teaching, it is fully God while still retaining its bread-nature. The bread is consubstantial with the Son, and therefore with the Father, and therefore with the Holy Spirit. How can it be called anything but a second Incarnation?
There is a way of working around this issue: by claiming that Jesus is only spiritually consubstantial with the bread. This, however, runs up against other significant problems. First of all, saying that Jesus’ soul can be present without his body is problematic to begin with. Jesus is a man, which means he has a human soul. Protestants profess this, too, when they recite the Athanasian creed. The soul and the body are a union for human beings (Gaudium et Spes 14). The soul is not a free-floating entity that can be supported by any kind of physical object. But even if humans were spiritual beings who only possess our bodies—as the Gnostics taught—it would still be hard to make the case for Christ being spiritually present in a piece of bread. But even if we take this case for granted, a spirit “present” in an object is not at all “consubstantial” with the object. A human is not fully body and fully soul, but a unity of the two. We are not, for instance, consubstantial with the Holy Spirit merely because he is present in us.
Detractors of transubstantiation can accuse us of cannibalism if they like, but railing at us for creating a stumbling block with our overly confusing eucharistic theology is unjust. Actually, I think Protestants really have the opposite problem with transubstantiation. The problem with it is not that it’s abstruse and philosophical, but rather that it’s incredibly simple. All it requires is the unassuming faith of a child. The only explanation needed is “ecce agnus dei.” The Protestant view—meant to appeal to the intellect—is truly the head-scratcher.