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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of the Church, Part 9. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been talking
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about the Lord's Supper, and last time we surveyed biblical data concerning the Lord's Supper. Now, obviously, there are different interpretations of these passages on the part of different confessions, confessions within Christendom. Some understand the Lord's Supper in a sacramental sense. They hold that these passages indicate that the Lord's Supper is in some sense a special means of God's grace. Others, however, think of the Lord's Supper merely as a sort of memorial meal that is done in remembrance of Christ and. And his death. So let's look today at some of the various theological interpretations of the practice of the Lord's Supper. First, the strongest, and I think we can say the most radical interpretation of the Lord's Supper is the doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine is taught in the Roman Catholic Church. Church. According to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the wine and the bread consecrated by the priest are actually turned into the body and blood of Christ. Now, you might say, well, it certainly doesn't look that way if you were to analyze these elements chemically, it's just bread and wine. It's not blood in human flesh that is there. But here, Catholic theologians have distinguished along the lines of classical Aristotelian metaphysics between a substance and its accidents or contingent properties. The substance of a thing is. Is the thing itself. For example, I am essentially a human being, but I have a certain weight, a certain skin color, a certain number of hairs on my head, a certain height. And these are all accidental properties which I possess. They are not essential to me. And in transubstantiation, the claim is that what happens is, is that the substance of the bread and wine actually become the substance of Christ's body and blood. The bread and the wine actually become Christ's flesh and blood in a literal sense. But the accidents of the bread and the wine remain so that it looks to all appearances, like bread and wine, because the color, the taste, the consistency, the porousness, the liquidity, and the other properties of the bread and the wine are held constant even though it has undergone a substantial change. So in the doctrine of transubstantiation, we have the very radical view that the elements of the Eucharist, or that is to say, the Lord's Supper, are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, even though they retain the accidental properties of bread and wine. So transubstantiation is the most radical view of the Lord's Supper. The elements of the bread and the wine are turned into the flesh and the blood of Christ and then taken by the communicant as such. This is a means of grace, for you are receiving the body and blood of the Lord. This is a sacrament whereby you receive the grace of God. So the Second Vatican Council, in their document the Church Section 11, says that the eucharistic sacrifice is, and I quote, the fount and apex of the whole Christian life. Now, that is a very strong statement. The fount, that is to say the source, the apex, that is to say the pinnacle of the whole Christian life, is found in. In the Mass, in the Eucharistic sacrifice. This becomes the center of the Christian life because you are receiving Christ in taking it. Now, this occasions a question. When the communicant takes the blood and the body of Christ and eats them and digests them, then why isn't the blood and the body of Christ, so to speak, used up after a while? Is there a sort of infinite blood and body to be consumed? Remember, we're talking about the human nature of Christ, not the divine nature. In his divine nature, the second Person of the Trinity is immaterial. He doesn't have a body or blood. So we're talking about the human nature of Christ. So as the communicant eats the body of Jesus and drinks his blood, we might wonder, well, why isn't it all consumed by now? Why isn't he eaten up? I asked this question once of a Fordham University philosopher who is a priest. And. And he said, oh, you don't consume the substance in the Lord's Supper. You only consume the accidents. It was as if a veil fell from my eyes. I suddenly understood. When the communicant takes the elements in, he doesn't really consume or digest the body and blood of Christ. He only consumes the accidents. And. And that's why they're not used up. Now, that puts a rather different perspective on transubstantiation. I remember talking to a young Catholic woman once who said to me that she liked the doctrine of transubstantiation because it made her feel so close to Christ because she was actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It was such an intimate union with Christ. Well, that's not really true. On the classic doctrine. She is really only consuming the accidents of the bread and the wine, not the substance of the Lord's body and blood. Let me say a word now about the history of the doctrine of transubstantiation Early Church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian used language of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Now that isn't necessarily to say that they believed in transubstantiation or Christ's physical, bodily presence in terms of the body and blood of Christ. The Church. Father Cyprian at least took these elements of the bread and the wine to be at best symbolic of the body and blood. They weren't transformed into the body and blood of Christ, they were merely symbolic. But then, during the third century after Christ, and especially in the east, in the Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire, the view of the elements as signs, types or figures gave way to a substantial identification of the elements with the body and blood of the Lord and an actual change of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria, for example, asserts that the elements are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. An especially important figure is Saint John of Damascus or John Damascene, whose dates are 675 to 749. In John Damascene we have the full fledged doctrine of of transubstantiation. He denies that there is any sort of dual reality of bread and wine on the one hand, along with the body and blood on the other. Rather, the elements are actually changed into and become the body and blood of Christ. By contrast, in the West, Augustine and most of the Western theologians tended to be symbolists. There isn't an actual transubstantiation taking place, but these elements represent the body and blood of Christ. But in the east the view of transubstantiation gained ground and later, as we'll see, the was ratified as official Roman Catholic doctrine. The controversy between a symbolic understanding and a substantial understanding of the elements occurred again in the 9th and in the 11th centuries and they became a matter of considerable theological dispute. In the 9th century, Rabbarus and Ratramnus disputed the the nature of the elements. That was around the year 860. Radbertus was a realist and held that the elements really were the body and blood of the Lord. By contrast, Ratramnus said that these were merely symbols of the body and blood of the Lord. This controversy broke out again in the 11th century, this time between L' Enfranc around 1089 and Berengarius around 1088. Lanfranc was a realist who believed in the transformation of the elements into the body and blood of Christ, while Berengarius was the Symbolist in this dispute. So the debate between symbolists and realists has cropped up historically in the Roman Catholic Church periodically. But in the year 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council promulgated transubstantiation as official Catholic doctrine. The council declared that the substance of the bread and and wine literally become the flesh and blood of Christ. And so that became official Roman Catholic doctrine. There is one other aspect of the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper that we'll want to look at next time, and that is the extent to which the Eucharist is a repetition of. Of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is the body and blood of Christ being offered again to God as a sacrifice for the sins of the people. As we'll see, there is again ambiguity on this question in Roman Catholic doctrine. Until then, I wish you Godspeed.