No Good Reason Why Letters Shouldn’t Be Submitted in October

Yes but also Paul says he would have been justified in requiring money from them to pay his expenses

Sounds like right-wing anti-democratic Christian nationalism has some potential downsides, who could possibly have guessed?

Btw, what has “changed in the meantime” is first a democratic revolution, second joining a globalist project (the EU) with universalist values (freedom of religion) of the sort now being opposed by Doug’s boys in Moscow and Budapest.

So which side are you on? The side of religious liberty, or the side of Christian nationalism? Only one of these lets you worship as you see fit, and it’s not the one Doug advocates for.

I am looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. This means it will not come about by the institutional church being successful in politics.

You won’t find that around these parts.

When Roman Catholics say the transformed bread and wine are actually the real body and blood of Jesus but retaining the accidents of appearance as bread and wine do they mean?

They mean it is not literally the body and blood of Christ. The Eucharistic elements are “sacramental,” therefore point to something beyond themselves, namely to the spiritual presence and spiritual availability of the incarnate and resurrected Lord who makes his presence known and felt and with whom we can be spiritually (not physically) nourished. They are not merely symbols, therefore, but the means through which we can actually partake of his saving life and death. We feast on him, the bread of life, as we lovingly remember the death he died for us. Something real and special happens when we… Read more »

Thank you. But if I’m understanding you, that doesn’t sound like something it makes sense to call transubstantiation. It just sounds like the spiritual presence of Christ, but no material transformation. It doesn’t sound like what I mean when I say Jesus actually, as in literally physically, rose from the dead.

I actually prefer the term “Transignification” used by the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (cf a good article on the term on Wikipedia). What I would say in answer to your entirely reasonable question is that you cannot divide or separate the body of the transformed, glorious, resurrected physical Lord, from his spiritual presence. They are one. Christ “in you,” the hope of glory. The Catholic Church falteringly tried to understand this mystery with respect to the Eucharist because in the NT Christians understood this to mean a “participation” in the body and blood of Christ–that could cost you your life… Read more »

But doesn’t saying Christ is spiritually but not physically literally present in the Eucharist separate the body of the resurrected Lord from His spiritual presence, as you say we cannot do?

John, thanks. I’d put it this way on a more simplified level because I think it brings us closer to the truth. The bread and wine don’t change molecules for the stuff of human flesh and bone. In the Eucharist God hits the reset button on reality so that the every day elements of food and drink that nourish us become instead, at a deeper level, the locus of Christ’s full, undivided and real presence which in contrast, feeds and nourishes us with the true, everlasting Bread of Life which has come down from heaven. So when we share, participate… Read more »

I agree with sentences 3, 5, and 6. Most Reformed people would. However we would see it as Christ meeting us spiritually rather than God circumventing reality so that it can both be Jesus and not Jesus.

I’m not sure which post you’re referring to. I personally feel that transubstantiation was the wrong route to go down–but Aquinas employed this idea to divert people away from the toe-nail/giblet idea of eating Christ’s actual/non-symbolic flesh and blood. I’ve recommended some useful books in various posts written by contemporary Catholic theologians who give a better, more nuanced understanding of what they call the real presence. It has nothing to do with “circumventing reality” but experiencing it more deeply and richly transformed in the new age of Christ’s resurrection and glory, so in the Eucharist Christ is more fully, incarnationally… Read more »

BTW I am a Roman Catholic whose spiritual life is nourished by the Latin Mass, the monastic Daily Office, and Lectio Divina. There are some aspects of Catholicism that I am at war with, such as Mariology and petitioning saints. But overall the spiritual practices I mentioned above are very nourishing and enriching. I seek reform in the Catholic Church and in my personal life too.

“Reset button on reality

if he is present bodily, than show me the body. If it is the bread and wine yet bread and wine are not materially changed then there is a contradiction. You cannot simultaneously argue for full material presence and only spiritual change.

None of us are arguing it is a memorial.

Thanks Jill. So, per what you quote above transubstantiation does mean that the bread and wine are transformed in material substance, and not only in some way spiritually, into Jesus’ flesh and blood? In which case some Protestants, while they might state it crudely in a way no Roman Catholic ever would, are not so far off?

Jill, thank you. What I’ve been trying to make clear in my posts is that Protestant notions of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Eucharist being “literal” in the sense (as some of them have cynically argued from the time of the Reformation onwards) that we “literally,” are “really” ingesting therefore Jesus’ hair, limbs, toe nails, etc., as might a cannibal. Over against this I argue that this type of understanding of what we share in at the Eucharist was kicked into touch in the High Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and a few others. They were protesting at… Read more »

Brendan is being unhelpful here and doesn’t even mention Accidens. It is based on the Aristotelian belief that outward reality proceeds from inner true things. So bread is bread because of interior breadness. The accidens is the physical manifestation of the pure breadness. Official RC doctrine states that the substance (breadness) changes into fleshness while the accidens remains bread. Same for the wine but with blood. The other three views are that Christ is spiritually present and we feast upon his body and blood spiritually, his body and blood substance permeates and is around without transmuting the bread and wine,… Read more »

As a Catholic, I suppose you’d expect me to use deception and sleight of hand. But I commend the following books which address the question I had raised, viz., Does the Catholic Church teach that the elements, the bread and the wine, “literally” become the “physical” body and blood of Christ. Note that: literal-physical–as in toe nails, hair and skin and bone, because that’s what physical refers to in connection with the body. The answer, as you inadvertently imply yourself is no. Check out the following volumes:  *Edward Schillebeeckx, THE EUCHARIST (Continue, 2005); *Brett Salkeld, TRANSUBSTANTIATION: THEOLOGY, HISTORY AND CHRISTIAN… Read more »

It should be noted that Edward Schillebeeckx was most definitely on the liberal end of the theological spectrum. He was closer, in spirit, to the PCUSA than to Pastor Wilson’s church.

While his writings on the Eucharist may not be heretical per se, his theological works are held in low regard by most conservative Catholics.

The Vatican’s assessment of him during one of a number of investigations into his writings was that his “own position remained ambiguous on fundamental points of the Catholic faith” (letter from the CDF, November 1980).

That’s a fair comment, John. But his volume, THE EUCHARIST, is still the “go to” book for thinking Catholics of every hue. I was first introduced to it by the Augustinian Friars in Dublin who couldn’t praise highly enough. It’s simply a superb historical analysis of the doctrine in which (here and there) he does not spare the magisterium blushes for getting things arse ways at times.

In which case you have redefined literal

The conversation has spread too wide. I originally made an off the cut comment that many Protestants (and Catholics) think that transubstantiation is about the bread and wine literally changing into Christ’ s flesh and blood, but that’s not the case. Thomas Aquinas introduced this the idea of transubstantiation precisely to guard against this notion. Alas, he was a man of his time and many Catholic theologians today are unhappy with the term. But Aquinas employed it as a means of warding off cannabilistic interpretations of feasting on Christ’s flesh and blood. The Council of Trent also painstakingly stresses that… Read more »

Once again you aren’t even equivocating literal you just redefined it to mean something it doesn’t mean. I know exactly what transubstantiation means, I know there are no toenails involved, and I know that I disagree. I also know that the word literal does not mean physical, it means not figurative, and if there is anything that transubstantiation is it is not figurative.

If you know these things then you are blessed with wisdom and insight, but most evangelicals (and Catholics) don’t know these things. I would want to add that among Catholic theologians there are multiple interpretations of “transubstantiation” (so-called), and in these heady post-Vatican II days there are even scholars who are prepared to cross-swords with Thomas Aquinas and official Church doctrine. There is more latitude than there used to be.

It might be more accurate to say that we’ve moved on to a post-post-Vatican II world. The heady days for Schillebeeckx and Küng were the 1960’s to 1990’s. The Church (and the world at large) is now moving back in a more conservative direction.

While our host here might be more comfortable with some of the theological language used by the most liberal Catholic theologians, I would wager that temperamentally and attitudinally he’d be much more in tune with the most conservative of Catholic theologians.

John who is the “host” you refer to?

Doug Wilson, the proprietor of this blog.

He was just interviewed by Ross Douthat of the New York Times. The discussion was released this morning and began with questions around the understanding of God’s salvific grace from a Calvinist perspective.

Thank you–interest comments!

Nice red herrings you’re frantically waving around there, Brendan. Be a shame if something were to happen to them. The Catholic church indeed teaches justification by works. You ought to try reading your own canons and catechisms sometime. Start with the Council of Trent, Canons on Justification, Canon 9, Canon 14, Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) par. 2010, 2023. To hear the One True Church talk, words don’t actually mean what they say. Which is why you’re here, twisting yourself into pretzels trying to explain why transubstantiation doesn’t actually mean transubstantiation and hope to God nobody notices what a… Read more »

Jill, I’d want to direct you to Hans volume on JUSTIFICATION. The great Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, who was ardently anti- Catholicism, states that Küng has articulated to his satisfaction the compatibility of Catholic with Reformed Protestant views on Justification. (I’m reading the book again at the moment.)

This would be the same Hans Kung who the Vatican officially declared “ha[d] departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore [could] no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function as such in a teaching role” ? Are we not just going in circles here?

Yorba, his censure had nothing to do with Küng’s book on JUSTIFICATION (which upheld the teachings of the Council of Trent and Vatican II on the subject).

Most Evangelicals would prefer to put it that the person justified by faith is pardoned rather than say they are guiltless.

You need to check out Catholic theologian Hans Küng’s acclaimed volume, JUSTIFICATION (Westminster/ J Knox Press, 2004). Here he provides conclusive evidence that the RC Church teaches justification by faith alone. He dedicated the book to Protestant Reformed theologian Karl Barth who wrote the Forward in which he states that Küng’s articulation of the Catholic doctrine of justification is compatible with his own reformed understanding. Barth, an actually anti-Catholicism theologian, highly praised the book which he found chastening and humbling. Now here’s the thing: the default position of unregenerate” Catholics and Protestants— and all religious peoples such as Judaism, Hinduism,… Read more »

James Akin proposed a harmonization of “faith alone” with Catholic theology in a short article back in the early days of the internet. He distinguishes fides formata (faith formed by charity) from fides informis (faith unformed by charity, which is the kind described in James 2:19).

A Catholic would thus reject the idea of justification sola fide informi but wholeheartedly embrace the idea of justification sola fide formata. Adding the word formed to clarify the nature of the faith in sola fides renders the doctrine completely acceptable to a Catholic.

http://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/justification-by-faith-alone-1153

Love this! Thanks.

It’s an improvement, perhaps, when Catholics engage in civil dialogue over transsubstantiation rather than burning their opponents at the stake as they did in centuries past—even if their civil dialogue is occasionally disingenuous and misleading. Moving in the right direction.

Thus speaks a Banner of Truth reformer. Be humble now. In England Protestants burned Catholics before the evil papists returned the compliment.

These “no quarter” hypocrites would burn us all again if they could.

Sounds like they’ll first have to fight the Qatari military in their own backyards, tho.

Not so. Thomas Bilney was burned for “heresy” in Norfolk in 1531. Patrick Hamilton met the same fate even earlier in 1528 in Saint Andrews.

Hamiton was burned in Scotland, I was talking specifically about England. You are right about Bilney though–but only just. Once Henry VIII passed the Act of Supremacy in 1535 Catholics started to protest. In the 16th-17th centuries about 600 Catholics were executed for treason in Britain, about 280-300 Protestants died in the same period under Catholic rule.

Henry was an equal-opportunity oppressor. He persecuted Protestants (“Lutherans”) as vigorously as those Roman Catholics who opposed his ever-evolving religious proclivities. Nice hair-split regarding the oppression in Scotland, as if the contemporary religious atmosphere was any different between the two kingdoms. We could also make mention of the often-lethal suppression of the Lollards, which had been going on sporadically since Henry V’s day a century earlier. By the way, what precisely was the English crown’s (mainly Elizabeth’s) motive for its harsh policies toward some Roman Catholics?

Yes, Henry executed anybody that got in his way–irrespective of their faith. I deliberately referred to England because that’s where the greater preponderance of heresy hunting and executions took place–few Protestants faced death under Catholic rule in Scotland during the 16-17C. And yes, some Lollards (again small numbers) suffered the death penalty under Catholic rule before the Reformation, but that I think is different from the levels of retribution that accompanied the reigns of Henry, Mary and Elizabeth in particular. Most of the persecution under Elizabeth mainly had to do with the threat of invasion from Spain and fears that… Read more »

The popes had also put Elizabeth under outlaw, excommunicating her and declaring her illegitimate, creating tacit encouragement to those minded to assassinate her and replace her with a Roman Catholic successor. She and her chief of security dealt with a number of such plots. This poisonous atmosphere, exacerbated by Spain’s Philip II’s efforts to invade and overthrow her via the Armada, the machinations around Mary Queen of Scots, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, created great suspicion and antipathy toward Roman Catholics in England in the 17th century. It was intensely patriotic in England then to oppose international Roman Catholicism.… Read more »

This discussion has been an excellent case study indicating why — if either institution is to thrive — the walls of separation between church and state must be very, very high indeed: the never-ending “no you started it!” cycles of repression and death can never end with such a wall being erected.

This was certainly the history that motivated the Founding Fathers of the USA to propose — for the first time in recorded history — a secular nation-state based on consent of the governed, with sharply divided powers and many overlapping checks and balances.

But notice again, that burnings were not done by protestants in England. Henry XIII burned heretics after he broke from Rome, but that was only for professing protestant doctrine. Roman Catholics were killed, but not burned, since he viewed their crime to be treason, not heresy.

No, protestants didn’t burn Catholics. Give me a single name. Catholics were killed sometimes, but not burned•

Also, was there a complete Catholic English Bible from the original languages before Douay-Rheims (1609, NT 1589)? Or were there only portions (for example, the lections), and only from the Vulgate Latin?

Fascinating. I always tell Greek and Hebrew students that there’s no “English” word behind the original–which is why translation can be a moral test as much as anything else.