A. The Romanist view.
The Romanist view,—that the bread and wine are changed by priestly consecration into the very body and blood of Christ; that this consecration is a new offering of Christ's sacrifice; and that, by a physical partaking of the elements, the communicant receives saving grace from God. To this doctrine of “transubstantiation” we reply:
(a) It rests upon a false interpretation of Scripture. In Mat. 26:26, “this is my body” means: “this is a symbol of my body.” Since Christ was with the disciples in visible form at the institution of the Supper, he could not have intended them to recognize the bread as being his literal body. “The body of Christ is present in the bread, just as it had been in the passover lamb, of which the bread took the place” (John 6:53 contains no reference to the Lord's Supper, although it describes that spiritual union with Christ which the Supper symbolizes; cf. 63. In 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, κοινωίαν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ is a figurative expression for the spiritual partaking of Christ. In Mark 8:33, we are not to infer that Peter was actually “Satan,” nor does 1 Cor. 12:12 prove that we are all Christs. Cf. Gen. 41:26; 1 Cor. 10:4).
Mat. 26:28—“This is my blood ... which is poured out,” cannot be meant to be taken literally, since Christ's blood was not yet shed. Hence the Douay version (Roman Catholic), without warrant, changes the tense and reads, “which shall be shed.” At the institution of the Supper, it is not conceivable that Christ should hold his body in his own hands, and then break it to the disciples. There were not two bodies there. Zwingle: “The words of institution are not the mandatory ‘become’: they are only an explanation of the sign.” When I point to a picture and say: “This is George Washington,”I do not mean that the veritable body and blood of George Washington are before me. So when a teacher points to a map and says: “This is New York,” or when Jesus refers to John the Baptist, and says: “this is Elijah, that is to come” (Mat. 11:14). Jacob, The Lord's Supper, Historically Considered—“It originally marked, not a real presence, but a real absence, of Christ as the Son of God made man”—that is, a real absence of his body. Therefore the Supper, reminding us of his body, is to be observed in the church “till he come” (1 Cor. 11:26).
John 6:53—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” must be interpreted by verse 63—“It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” 1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of [marg. [pg 966] ‘participation in’] the body of Christ?”—see Expositor's Greek Testament, in loco; Mark 8:33—“But he turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan”; 1 Cor. 12:12—“For the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.” cf. Gen. 41:26—“The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one;” 1 Cor. 10:4—“they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.”
Queen Elizabeth: “Christ was the Word that spake it: He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it.” Yes, we say; but what does the Lord make it? Not his body, but only a symbol of his body. Sir Thomas More went back to the doctrine of transubstantiation which the wisdom of his age was almost unanimous in rejecting. In his Utopia, written to earlier years, he had made deism the ideal religion. Extreme Romanism was his reaction from this former extreme. Bread and wine are mere remembrancers, as were the lamb and bitter herbs at the Passover. The partaker is spiritually affected by the bread and wine, only as was the pious Israelite in receiving the paschal symbols; see Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 25, 42.
E. G. Robinson: “The greatest power in Romanism is its power of visible representation. Ritualism is only elaborate symbolism. It is interesting to remember that this prostration of the priest before the consecrated wafer is no part of even original Roman Catholicism.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:213—“The pope, when he celebrates the communion, always stands in exactly the opposite direction [to that of modern ritualists], not with his back but with his face to the people, no doubt following the primitive usage.” So in Raphael's picture of the Miracle of Bolsina, the priest is at the north end of the table, in the very attitude of a Protestant clergyman. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“The unity of the bread, of which each enjoys a part, represents the unity of the body of Christ, which consists in the community of believers. If we are to speak of a presence of the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper, that can only be thought of, in the sense of Paul, as pertaining to the mystical body, i. e., the Christian Community. Augustine and Zwingle, who have expressed most clearly this meaning of the Supper, have therefore caught quite correctly the sense of the Apostle.”
Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 40-53—“The phrase ‘consecration of the elements’is unwarranted. The leaven and the mustard seed were in no way consecrated when Jesus pronounced them symbols of divine things. The bread and wine are not arbitrarily appointed remembrancers, they are remembrancers in their very nature. There is no change in them. So every other loaf is a symbol, as well as that used in the Supper. When St. Patrick held up the shamrock as the symbol of the Trinity, he meant that every such sprig was the same. Only the bread of the daily meal is Christ's body. Only the washing of dirty feet is the fulfilment of Christ's command. The loaf not eaten to satisfy hunger is not Christ's symbolic body at all.” Here we must part company with Dr. Fox. We grant the natural fitness of the elements for which he contends. But we hold also to a divine appointment of the bread and wine for a special and sacred use, even as the “bow in the cloud” (Gen. 9:13), because it was a natural emblem, was consecrated to a special religious use.
(b) It contradicts the evidence of the senses, as well as of all scientific tests that can be applied. If we cannot trust our senses as to the unchanged material qualities of bread and wine, we cannot trust them when they report to us the words of Christ.
Gibbon was rejoiced at the discovery that, while the real presence is attested by only a single sense—our sight [as employed in reading the words of Christ]—the real presence is disproved by three of our senses, sight, touch, and taste. It is not well to purchase faith in this dogma at the price of absolute scepticism. Stanley, on Baptism, in his Christian Institutions, tells us that, in the third and fourth centuries, the belief that the water of baptism was changed into the blood of Christ was nearly as firmly and widely fixed as the belief that the bread and wine of the communion were changed into his flesh and blood. Döllinger: “When I am told that I must swear to the truth of these doctrines [of papal infallibility and apostolic succession], my feeling is just as if I were asked to swear that two and two make five, and not four.” Teacher: “Why did Henry VIII quarrel with the pope?” Scholar: “Because the pope had commanded him to put away his wife on pain of transubstantiation.” The transubstantiation of Henry VIII is quite as rational as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Eucharist.