Corporeal Concerns of the Once for All Sacrifice
On the difficulty of transubstantiation and real corporeal Presence in the Eucharist.
“And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”
– Matthew 12:7
Jesus Christ detail in “The Deesis Mosaic“ (13th century AD). Hagia Sophia Church, Istanbul, Turkey.
As I continue this series on Holy Communion and Real Presence, I hope it is clear that I am still in the process of navigating these waters. I have yet to draw a precise conclusion, nor have I been convicted on a particular view per se, despite my intellectual leanings toward real spiritual Presence. Though I am convinced that mystery ought to be emphasized, that metaphysics ought not to be dogmatized, and that memory of Christ’s crucifixion is a consequence of ritualization, there is always room to deepen understanding. I’ve engaged these ecclesiological topics as of late, not only because of my eldership, but because of the state of the Christian world at large, especially Evangelicalism. Communion has become in the Church what kickoff has become in the NFL—a heartless formality—a going through the motions because it was a rule that the league (or covenant) did when it was first established. But I think the testimony of historical Christianity speaks otherwise.
Communion was heavily emphasized as holy and mysterious, as Justin Martyr said, it is “not as common bread and common drink do we receive these” (First Apology, Chapter 66). The bread and wine of thanksgiving is blessed and sanctified by the prayer of His Word (1 Timothy 4:4-5). If a member of the Church community missed Communion, a deacon would bring the consecrated bread and wine to them. That means every Sunday “deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.” (First Apology, Chapters 25, 65) (cf. Acts 6:1-6) The emphasis and seriousness of holy ritual is not at all what we see happening today in modern Evangelicalism—not even close! And as I’ve argued in the past, we are beings of emphasis. But that doesn’t mean the opposing extreme has it right, either.
While every traditional Catholic today would affirm that they “really” and “literally” and “actually” eat and drink Christ’s physical flesh and blood, the earliest Church fathers like Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin, and Clement did not affirm this description. As I pointed out last entry with Clement of Alexandria, different views and explanations on the mystery of Holy Communion vary throughout Church history. Eating the physical flesh and drinking the physical blood of Christ does not seem evident early on. Clement, of course, likens it all as “figurative” and “metaphor” while retaining “the mystery of the bread” (The Paedagogus, Book I, Chapter 6). Irenaeus spoke of the Greeks arresting Christians and partaking in Communion, “imagining that it was actually flesh and blood” and so forced Christians to eat human flesh and drink human blood in mockery (Fragment 13, emphasis added). Justin believed in a “transmutation” of the elements in prayer, but was adamant that it was not cannibalism, for “eating human flesh — we know not”, and that we “partake of the bread and wine”. The point is: real corporeal presence is not at all obvious in the writings of many Ante-Nicene Church fathers. If anything, there seems to be disagreement between the modern testimony of Roman Catholicism and our theological forefathers.
Transubstantiation and cannibalism
That is where, I think, the confusion comes in between Protestants and Catholics. No one was arguing for cannibalism, but it certainly sounds like Catholicism is for it. Most traditional Catholics are vehement and adamant that they physically eat the “whole Christ”, that is the true and actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, based on what they ascribe to be the unanimous testimony of the Church fathers, but firmly hold to a belief that they are not cannibals. One would have to see the dilemma, here. If Communion were truly and fully 1:1 corporeal, as many Roman Catholics advocate, then Communion would indeed be cannibalism—a moral fact all sides want to avoid, and for good moral reason. Cannibalism is an abominable evil, which is not only self-evident but symptomatic of God’s curse (Deuteronomy 28:53). To actually, really, and literally eat His flesh and drink His blood, then, would be cannibalism. There is no way around it. Christ is fully and God fully man. To say that it is not the case doesn’t make the Eucharist any more mystical or mysterious, it just makes it a contradiction, or a smokescreen, or at best, it may set up confusion, a kind of cognitive dissonance that which embraces a pattern for adopting false beliefs as true. Further precedent could be made; for if eating the image of God is advantageous, that is Christ (Colossians 1:15), then why not eat an image of God, say, you or me, who is conforming to Christ’s image? The Holy Spirit indwells us, too, no? In other words, if we can worship images of Christ and the Saints, and consuming Christ physically in Communion is proper worship, why not consume other physical images of God such as His Saints? I don’t even think this is a good argument, but if cannibalism is permitted at the altar, then I really don’t see how the higher form of cannibalism does not entail and permit the lower form. I also think the reason why, say, Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans who believe in real corporeal Presence have not committed such a horrific crime, despite what said belief logically entails, is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work.
Real spiritual Presence, then, seems to offer the best explanation of this holy mystery, the patristic testimonies, as well as Christ’s words: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63) Consider yet another Church father, Tertullian (c. 155–220 AD), who also believed to that effect:
“He says, it is true, that “the flesh profits nothing;” but then, as in the former case, the meaning must be regulated by the subject which is spoken of. Now, because they thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh, He, with the view of ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, “It is the spirit that quickens;” and then added, “The flesh profits nothing,”— meaning, of course, to the giving of life. He also goes on to explain what He would have us to understand by spirit: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” In a like sense He had previously said: “He that hears my words, and believes in Him that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life.” [John 5:24] Constituting, therefore, His word as the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, He likewise called His flesh by the same appellation; because, too, the Word had become flesh, [John 1:14] we ought therefore to desire Him in order that we may have life, and to devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith.” – Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Chapter 37. Emphasis added.)
Tertullian interprets Jesus’ discourse in John 6 to mean something very different than how transubstantiation is commonly understood. He says that when the Jewish people heard Jesus’ teaching, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life”, their hardness of hearts led them to suppose that “He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh”. He, then, highlights that His “word is spirit and life” and by the same title the “Word had become flesh”. The spiritual is emphasized over the physical, as he concludes, that we ought to “devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith.” Can he be any more clear? For the Church fathers to say they are not “really” and “literally” and “actually” eating/drinking Christ’s flesh/blood, or for Clement to call Christ’s flesh/blood “figurative” and “metaphorical” yet refer to it as a “mystery”, what are we to conclude? Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin, and Clement did not believe they were eating and drinking Christ’s material flesh and blood, even though they were eating the bread and wine under the appellation of flesh and blood—a thanksgiving blessed by the Word of God—but instead believed they were quickened by the Spirit who gives life when they partook in Holy Communion. For the most part, they seemed to be more concerned with consuming the Word (and thus the Spirit) in all possible senses (including our sense of reason), rather than just by ear (though, that too). And what does Paul say regarding our vocation? “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14) At bottom, real spiritual Presence seems inescapable, regardless of its metaphysical explanation.
Would the real Presence please stand up?
Now to be fair, unless I’m mistaken, which I could be (I’m just trying to be as charitable as I can), I don’t think that’s what the Roman Catholic Church is truly teaching about transubstantiation necessarily. Traditional Catholics firmly believe in a corporeal, substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They do not believe it is just a spiritual Presence, in the way the Reformed do, and are usually cautious about rhetoric denying such. They affirm Christ is fully present—in body, blood, soul, and divinity—and I think that is another point of confusion. In practice, Roman Catholicism at large teaches that the elements fully change 1:1 into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, when it clearly doesn’t. And I do not think Rome teaches such, either. The appearance (or accidents) of the bread and wine is part of our material reality. It breaks like bread, it crumbles like bread, and it tastes like bread. As I said before, it is hard to say something is absolutely physical, material, or corporeal when there is no way to physically, materially, or corporeally tell if it is! To say otherwise pits faith against reason and renders Communion a holy illusion. So, to be as gracious as I can, it is best to hear it straight from Rome’s mouth—this is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1374)
Even though to eat/drink Christ’s flesh/blood physically is what a Priest reiterates in the words of institution, and it is how it is commonly understood among the laity, I do not think it is how the doctrine is supposed to be understood metaphysically—it is a change in substance, and thus, an ontological consumption, not a material or corporeal consumption necessarily. Having bodily ascended into the heavenly holies, Christ’s flesh/blood is woven into ultimate reality, for “In Him [Christ] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The doctrine teaches there is not a material change, if you will, in the consecrated bread and wine, as in its appearances or “accidents”, but that there is a change in the substance at the bottom level of reality. But again, I’ll press the issue, why is this substance not the Word, the Spirit who gives life? Can we really prove it isn’t? Can flesh not sense flesh? And if you retort, ‘but to truly sense the flesh of Christ one requires a faith in Christ to sense what is behind the curtain’, then you are only proving my point further—it is a spiritual thing. Either way, if my particular (and, perhaps, skewed) understanding of transubstantiation is correct, then I do not think it would be cannibalism.
That said, if real spiritual Presence is, indeed, true, then the spiritual cannot be fully disengaged from the physical. Christ is not a spirit being. He is fully man. God Himself, who is Spirit, fully assumed flesh in His incarnation and ascension. He ascended to the right hand of the Father in the flesh—He is fully God physically somehow. Human nature is uplifted to the heavenly holies. So, there is a physicalness to it, perhaps in effect (i.e., congregants fell ill and died for abusing Communion, 1 Corinthians 11:28-30), but not in the way we typically think of physical—though I’m all ears for understanding this further.
So, despite my desire to avoid confusion and contradictions, I do not think I can rule out transubstantiation wholesale for those reasons, even though it goes against my intuition and better judgment—not in process, but in material. Communion is a holy mystery. But I do have my concerns about how real corporeal Presence translates into ecclesiology.
Four concerns with corporeal Presence
Concern 1: Cannibalism. It should be obvious by now that one of my biggest stumbling blocks with believing in Real Presence, particularly the Thomistic approach transubstantiation, is the necessity to affirm the fully corporeal consumption of Christ’s flesh/blood yet deny it is an act of cannibalism without it being a flat out contradiction. If Christ’s flesh/blood only appear as bread/wine, as if to mask its true form, then I don’t see how it is not cannibalism. A mystery can be a paradox, but that does not entail confusion or a contradiction in terms.
Concern 2: Bodily functions. How exactly are we physically eating Christ? If Christ is eaten bodily, do we digest and defecate Christ? I don’t mean to sound profane, but it is an actual point of consideration that cannot be ignored if Christ is corporeally eaten and imbibed in the Eucharist.
Concern 3: Repetitive sacrifices. Those who affirm in real corporeal Presence typically believe a person receives grace, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in the Eucharist, regardless of what they believe so long as they are confirmed. But if the Eucharist forgives any sin committed throughout the week, and it is a mortal sin to miss the Eucharist, then is the Eucharist not a new repetitive propitiatory sacrifice that begins each week? One must wait to be forgiven and avoid Purgatory, and either cannot or is encouraged not to go directly to the Father for forgiveness. Is this not strikingly similar to the shadow of the old sacrificial system re-presented in the new covenant as the substance? It certainly smells like it. If re-presenting Christ’s corporeal crucifixion was necessary to consume for salvation through the Eucharist, then the Eucharist appears like a new sacrifice and a new work of the law (Galatians 2:18). It really feels like that weighty yoke loosened long ago (Acts 15:7-11). Of course, as I mentioned in my last entry, repeated propitiatory sacrifices have ceased according to Hebrews, and I personally do not believe any sacrifice can forgive sins independent of Christ’s once for all sacrifice, nor do I believe Communion can forgive sins in itself—as if the act of eating/drinking is propitiatory (Romans 14:17). What do the apostles say? The new covenant does not require repeated propitiatory sacrifices. The veil is torn. It is finished.
“For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself…. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 9:24-26, 10:10-14. Emphasis added)
Notice the emphasis is on what Christ “had” done and “has” perfected on the cross for those who are presently being sanctified. It cannot be a new sacrifice—forgiveness is always in relation to what Christ did, in remembrance of His crucifixion. Now, Catholicism does not teach it is a new sacrifice per se, but a re-presentation or manifestation of Christ’s crucifixion now consumable. So, it begs a clarifying question: Are we forgiven because of what Christ did or for what Christ is doing or for what Christ is going to do? To be fair, the did is the doing for what He is going to do. Christ died so that we can directly ask the Father for forgiveness, so that on that Day we may be saved. We still have to repent of our sins (Luke 13:3). We still have to forgive others their trespasses lest God not forgive our trespasses (Matthew 6:15). So, there is precedent for thinking in these terms of on-going propitiation. But that is not my concern. My concern is that this Eucharistic process, in particular, runs parallel to the Mosaic sacrificial system, where the emphasis of a, potentially, faithless ritual of eating/drinking is placed over and above the emphasis of God’s immediate forgiving power through the Holy Spirit. We have direct access to the Father through the Spirit of Christ who indwells those who believe (Ephesians 2:18; Matthew 6:6-9, 12)—a fact Pope Francis acknowledged and implemented during the pandemic: a Catholic could freely ask God to forgive them without the need to confess to a Priest. Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24) He did not say, “Do this to make it me” or “to forgive sins”. That is not to reject Real Presence, it is to say that the purpose of ritualization is to remember. Christ says “do” this, meaning the action itself, in order to bring to collective remembrance of His once for all sacrifice. It is about the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice as opposed to re-presentation of Christ’s actual sacrifice. A ritual is to remember, it is not a way to be forgiven. The ritual of Communion cannot be a new propitiatory sacrifice of any kind, it points to the propitiatory sacrifice Christ already made on the cross, the sacrificial Spirit of whom indwells believers, for by a single offering Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified through His Holy Spirit. His sacrifice is in you already.
Concern 4: No forgiveness for mortal sins. To affirm the whole Christ in body, blood, soul, and divinity has a number of effects on the relationship between ecclesiology and soteriology. A fully corporeal Christ 1:1 in the Eucharist means it is the crucified Christ on the altar. For this reason, some high church ecclesiologies teach the bread and wine is a literal sacrifice—the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross that forgives sin. But the soteriological implication of this has me a bit perplexed. If Real Presence is truly, really, and substantially the blood and body of Christ, and you receive Christ regardless of faith, why do the elements not propitiate mortal sins? In Catholicism, for instance, the Eucharist forgives venial sins, but it does not forgive mortal sins. Why? Why would Christ’s sacrifice only forgive venial sins and not mortal sins? Especially when the context of the passage in John 6:53-54 teaches just the opposite, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (v.53) and “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (v.54). But if we are to take this passage in the way prescribed by Roman Catholicism, that Holy Communion propitiates lesser sins and spares one from suffering in Purgatory, then I don’t see how it cannot forgive greater sins if Christ teaches that mortal sins are forgiven, too. You are saved by eating the bread/body and wine/blood, and you are condemned if you don’t. It is His flesh and blood from Calvary, the very flesh and blood that redeems and saves the world from condemnation.[1]
Ultimately, if the Eucharist is a corporeal sacrifice that forgives any sin committed throughout the week, no matter how subtle, through the faithless act of eating and drinking, then I don’t see how it is not a new sacrifice. On this matter, please read my previous article Reflections on Communion: On the Body of Christ unifying the Temple and sacrifices.
Final remark
If you’ve learned anything from this series, it is that Real Presence is very complicated. As it should be—can we really expect anyone to explain how the heavenly things work with earthly language? Or even with a tongue of angels? (1 Corinthians 13:1) God has a name written on His crown that no one knows but himself (Revelation 19:12). God has His own divine language for goodness sake. If Holy Communion is the Word, if it is God, then metaphysics is far too low a resolution.
Look—at the end of the day, I believe that God will reconcile all sincere believers, and that He is currently using our humanly disputes as iron would sharpen iron, not in the beatific way of incarnate unity, but as through Joseph, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:20) One will be right, and many will be wrong, but God will save all who bear a repentant heart—our true sacrifice.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)
I look forward to our future together.
With rose-coloured goggles strapped firmly to my sockets.
Matlock Bobechko | November 7, 2023 – 9:00 AM EST
Notes
[1] Each Eucharistic sacrifice forgives venial sins committed throughout the week—it is required participation in order to have eternal life and to avoid Purgatory—yet it is a mortal sin to miss partaking in the Eucharist. It is a mortal sin to miss the Eucharist, but the Eucharist does not forgive mortal sins. The consequences for participating or not participating in Communion seems a bit disproportionate, and at odds with the soteriological contrast made in Scripture (John 6:53-54). Christ is the the Tree of Life. Christ is the water from the wilderness rock. Christ is the lamb of life whom the family ate so that death would pass over. So again, I ask: If Christ is truly the Tree of Life from which the fruit produces eternal life, why does the bread of His body and blood of His vine not forgive sins that lead to death?