www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Orthodoxy and Transubstantiation

Greetings. If I may I'd like to start a thread on Eastern Christianity and the Latin dogma of transubstantiation.

In response to my query on transubstantiation, an Orthodox seminary professor recently wrote me the following:

"So we don't say that the very nature of the bread has to be obliterated; rather, while remaining bread, it also becomes Christ's Body - just as the Son of God, while remaining all that He was, assumed human nature in the Virgin's womb; and just as we are called, while remaining fully human, to assume divinity - to become by grace what God is by nature, in the ongoing process of theosis/deification; and just as 'this mortal shall put on immortality' at the Last Day, as St. Paul proclaims."

He also cited Alexander Schmemann in support of this view.

What do you think? Is this typical of Orthodoxy? I would presume that Byzantine Catholics would disagree with this, but please correct me if I'm wrong. From my "Western" point of view, this sure sounds like "consubstantiation."

Fr Alvin Kimel+

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Byzantine Catholics hold the same Faith as the Orthodox regarding the Eucharist. Neither Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation are adequate definitions because the Eucharist is a Mystery. We hold that when we receive Communion it verily is His Body and Blood, period. This whole notion of Mystery runs throughout the Eastern Mindset regarding the Sacraments and is the cornerstone of our paradigm as a Church.

In the Theotokos,

robert Horvath

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Byzantine Catholics hold the same faith as other Catholics regarding the Eucharist (though they may come to this conclusion quite differently)?

I'm not saying your statement is wrong, but for me it seems to imply that BC's don't share the same Faith as other Catholic (Maronite, Armenian, Roman, Coptic, Chaldean, etc.)

Logos Teen

Fr. Kimel:

The problem with both terms is that they depend on a philosophical understanding that is really not present in Orthodoxy or, by extension, in Eastern Catholicism.

St. Justin the Martyr writes: There is nothing here that relates to the nature of the bread or the wine -- a simple statement of fact which is, ultimately, mystery.

We cannot know how this happens. The Latin Church chose to use the term "transubstantiation" to represent the change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Martin Luther, using the philosophy of the Augustinians which differs from that of Aquinas and the Dominicans, chose to teach what Latins call "consubstantiation" -- both the bread and Jesus are fully present. Yet the philosophical underpinnings of these terms are alien to Eastern thinking.

Perhaps the closest we come to something touching on Western philosophy is this statement from Irenaeus in his Against Heresies: where we have a statement which, in effect, says we now have "uncommon bread" -- bread that has been changed.

Edward, deacon and sinner

Bless me a sinner, Reverend Father Kimel!

Well, sometimes one comes across certain Orthodox AND Eastern Catholics (some EC's want to be more Orthodox than the Orthodox you see ) who, in their efforts to maintain a strict separation between Byzantine and Latin theologies, sometimes try too hard . . .

That particular Orthodox seminary professor, however, by his own admission appears to have misconstrued Theosis in his understanding of the Transmutation of the elements during the Eucharistic Canon.

In Theosis, our bodies become truly "deified" and become what they were not before.

They remain our bodies, but they are imbued with Divine attributes and powers.

The model of the Incarnation could very well be an acceptable and good way to discuss what happens at the Transmutation.

But, if so, then we must be consistent and see that what is matter has become transfigured, or transmutated into the Divine/Human reality of OLGS Jesus Christ.

This is why icons of Saints in our Churches resemble the icon of Christ - to underline what happens when we "take on Christ" and become deified in Him, through the Holy Spirit.

There is a sense in which the bread remains so, since there is no change in the characteristics of the bread and wine.

But Christ clearly referred to Himself as the living Bread that came down from Heaven in the beautiful passages of John's Gospel, chapter six.

And the same Greek word for "superessential bread" that Christ used there is again used for "
Bread" in the Lord's Prayer itself.

But if the bread and wine themselves are not transfigured by Transmutation, then how can it be said that we ourselves, body and soul, are transfigured in Christ by means of Theosis?

Alex

Thank you, Fr Edward, for your post. You wrote:
Surely this cannot be quite right. While it is true that as developed by St. Thomas, the doctrine of transubstantiation assumes the Aristotelian distinctions of substance and accidents, yet the concept of "substance" was used to speak of the Eucharist before Aristotle was rediscovered in the West.

After all, what is "substance"? It is what a thing is, its nature, its being. Once the Church began to speak of the change of the bread and wine, one didn't have to be an Aristotelian philosopher to ask the commonsense question, "Well, what are they now?" I believe that Orthodox and Catholic Christians would all agree that the consecrated bread and wine are now the body and blood of our Lord. When I read St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of Damascus, I certainly read these two great theologians as saying that the bread and wine have undergone a transformation that must be called ontological. Do you disagree?

The Eastern Fathers were more than capable of using ontological language to speak of these matters. After all, it was the East that decided that the Church may employ sophisticated philosophical categories to speak of matters of divine revelation. I immediately think of Origen, Clement, Athanasius, the Cappadocians. Not until Augustine did the West have anyone who could match these men in intellectual power, sophistication, and creativity. The watershed moment, of course, occurred in A.D. 325 when the Fathers of Nicaea affirmed Jesus Christ as homoousios with the Father.

But I have wondered why the Eastern Fathers never got around to using ousia language to speak of the Eucharistic change and presence. Perhaps it's simply an historical anomaly: They never needed to utilize such language because the East never had to confront the symbolic teaching of a Berengar. Thus it was sufficient to assert that the Holy Gifts are the body and blood of Christ. (But of course, this claim implies a commonsense understanding of "substance" or "being.") In his book Byzantine Theology John Meyendorff suggests that Byzantine theologians would have considered metousiosis as incompatible with a proper understanding of the Eucharist:
But I am not persuaded. Meyendorff does not cite a single Byzantine theologian who criticized the developing Latin doctrine of transubstantiation. (Is anyone aware of anyone?) But we do know that by the 17th century, when Orthodoxy was confronted with the heretical eucharistic teachings of the Reformation in the person of Cyril Lucar, it availed itself, with qualification, of the eucharistic doctrine of the West in order to clarify its emphatic rejection of Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther. We see this adoption of Western vocabulary in the Confession of Mohila, the Confession of Dositheus, and the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem. These theologians certainly did not understand themselves as accomodating to the West, nor did they find this language as inappropriate to their understanding and experience of the Divine Liturgy. For 300 years subsequently, the East seemed comfortable in employing the vocabulary and distinctions of metousiosis and "appearances" when it deemed it desirable to do so, though never to the exclusion of other language. Even as late as 1961 one of the foremost Greek theologians, Panagiotes Trembelas, wrote in his Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church:

But during the past thirty years, we have seen a change in Orthodox thinking, at least in English-speaking countries, and now transubstantiation is dismissed as alien to Orthodox experience and theology.

But before Orthodox believers simply follow Schmemann and Meyendorff on this point, perhaps they might want to ask if the Iconoclastic Controversy might have some relevance here. But I'll save that for another post.

In Messias,
Alvin+

Dear Fr. Kimmel,

This position, that the bread and wine are joined with the body and blood of our Saviour in the symbol of the eucharist, is indeed the Orthodox belief. This is a parallel to the symbol of the incarnation.

I use symbol in the following way: two very real constituent parts joined to make one new, and very real (and potent) symbol.

I have been serving and studying for many years and have never heard differently from an Orthodox teacher.

I agree that in The Eucharist, by Fr. Schmemann, he supports this. I just reread parts of the book because of an ongoing discussion with Alex et. al., but did not find his explicit reference to it. What I did find is his explicit support for the belief that Christ's presence with us is far from limited to the chalice and diskos.

In Christ,
Andrew.

A quick follow-up to my previous post. The response of the late 17th century Patriarchs to the bid of the Anglican Non-Jurors to enter into union is very interesting. The Non-jurors insisted that they could not accept the Latin doctrine of transubstantiation, but they were equally emphatic that the consecrated elements were the Body and Blood of Christ--they clearly distinguished themselves from Calvin and Luther.

The Orthodox patriarchs, on the other hand, were insistent that the Orthodox understanding of metabole was identical to metousiosis, and thus decisively rejected the Nonjuror position. Perhaps the Nonjuror understanding was too "mystical" for them.

For an interesting discussion of this period of history, see:
Nonjurors [justus.anglican.org]

quotes:

"Latins interpret the Sacraments in a legal and philosophical way. Hence, in the Eucharist, using the right material things (bread and wine) and pronouncing the correct formula, changes their substance (transubstantiation) into the Body and Blood of Christ. The visible elements or this and all Sacraments are merely "signs" of the presence of God.

The Orthodox call the Eucharist "the mystical Supper." What the priest and the faithful consume is mysteriously the Body and Blood of Christ. We receive Him under the forms of bread and wine, because it would be wholly repugnant to eat "real" human flesh and drink "real" human blood."

With Catholics, this sacrament is performed, in essence, by the priest alone, in accordance with the right belonging to him, at the time when he, all but becoming identified with the Lord Himself, pronounces the "words of institution". In the Orthodox understanding, these words also have a great significance, but the sacrament of the changing of the bread and wine into the Lord's Body and Blood is performed by the prayer of the whole Church, in the course of the whole Liturgy, and is only completed by the invocation of the Holy Spirit.

With the help of scholastic concepts, Catholic doctrine also attempts to explain the eucharistic miracle itself too rationalistically. According to this explanation, only the appearance of bread and wine remains unchanged, but their essence (substantia) is changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The Orthodox ecclesiastical consciousness reverently refrains from such a rationalistic penetration into the mystery. In it, the conviction prevails that the bread and wine, remaining themselves in appearance, at the same time become the Body and Blood of the Lord, just as red-hot iron becomes fire, and just as the Lord Jesus Christ is simultaneously God and man.

Concerning this, Father Michael Pomazansky, in his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (page 183 [pages 279-280 in the English edition]) writes thus:

"...the consecrated Gifts 1) are not only signs or symbols, reminding the faithful of redemption, as the reformer Zwingli taught; and equally, 2) Jesus Christ is present in them not only by His "activity and power" ("dynamically"), as Calvin taught; finally, 3) He is present not in the sense only of "penetration", as the Lutherans teach (recognizing the co-presence of Christ "with the bread, under the bread, in the bread"); but the consecrated Gifts in the sacrament are changed or (a later term) transubstantiated into the true Body and true Blood of Christ, as the Saviour said: "For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed" (John 6:55)."

Further, Father Michael Pomazansky cites words from the "Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs" (eighteenth century):

'We believe that in this sacred rite our Lord Jesus Christ is present not symbolically (typikos), not figuratively (eikonikos), not by a superabundance of grace, as in the other sacraments, not by a descent alone, as certain Fathers say about baptism, and not through a "penetration" of the bread, so that the divinity of the Word would "enter" into the bread offered for the Eucharist essentially, as the followers of Luther rather artlessly and unworthily explain: but truly and actually, so that after the consecration of the bread and wine, the bread is changed, transubstantiated, converted, transformed into the actual true Body of the Lord, which was born in Bethlehem of the Ever-Virgin, was baptized in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, resurrected, ascended, sits at the right hand of the God the Father, and is to appear on the clouds of heaven; and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the actual true Blood of the Lord, which, at the time of His suffering on the Cross was shed for the life of the world. Again we believe that after the consecration of the bread and wine, the very bread and wine no longer remain, but the very Body and Blood of the Lord, under the appearance and form of bread and wine' (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, page 183 [page 280 in the English edition]).

With Roman Catholics, the Mass, in which the bloodless sacrifice is offered, is performed in a two-fold manner: either it is served aloud, with singing and playing on an organ, or it is read through in a whisper, secretly. And since there can be several altars in Catholic churches at the same time, so-called "low" Masses are often performed simultaneously with that which is served aloud on the main altar. There were no "low" Liturgies in Christian antiquity whatsoever, and the simultaneous serving of several liturgies in one church was not allowed.

The very transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, according to Catholic teaching, takes place not during the blessing of them and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, as the Orthodox Church teaches and as the ancient copies of the liturgies testify (in the Catholic Mass, in general, there is no priest's prayer concerning the invocation of the Holy Spirit), but during the pronunciation of the words: "take, eat", "drink ye all of it."

At the Mystical Supper, as the evangelists recount, the Lord at first rendered thanks, then blessed the offered bread and wine and only afterwards pronounced the words, "take, eat�" From this, it becomes clear that the transubstantiation was performed by prayer and blessing, while the words "take, eat�" signify a simple invitation to the apostles to approach and receive the Holy Gifts and indicates the mystical significance of the Eucharist.

A substantial deviation from Orthodoxy lies also in the fact that the laity are deprived of the holy Chalice, that is, they are deprived of communion of the immaculate Blood of Christ, contrary to the Lord's direct words: "drink ye ALL of it". This innovation was first allowed in the West in the twelfth century, with the aim of showing the superiority of the clergy over the laity in the very communion; later it was confirmed at the Council of Trent. In justification of their deviation, Roman Catholic theologians thought up some pretexts, such as, "there is no necessity for the laity to commune of the Holy Blood separately because where the Body is given, there the Blood is given", or "when there is a multitude of communicants, it is easy to jostle and spill the Chalice."

The Lord's words,"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (John 6:53), confirm the correctness of the Orthodox method of performing the sacrament - under both species. The teaching on the necessity for everyone to commune under two species is also clearly expressed in the apostolic epistles (see, for example, I Corinthians 10:16-17 and 11:26-30). And the patristic works testify against the Roman practice. Saint John Chrysostom (fourth century) says, "we are all equally counted worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ - not as happened in the Old Testament: the priest would eat some parts of the sacrifice and the people would eat other parts. Now it is not so, but one Body and one Cup is offered to everyone.."

Since little children cannot receive solid food, Catholics, hav-ing taken the Chalice away from the laity, by this very thing have altogether deprived infants of holy communion. This deviation appeared no earlier than the twelfth century. Roman theologians adduce the following grounds: One ought to approach communion with a consciousness of the importance and significance of this sacrament and after proper preparation; in Sacred Scripture there is no command to commune infants; for the salvation of children, baptism alone is sufficient. But communion of the Body and Blood of Christ serves for us as a means to union with Christ, the Source of our spiritual life, received in the sacrament of Baptism. Catholics bar the way for infants to the closest intercourse with Him, Who once said "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not" (Mark 10:14).

With Catholics, the Eucharist is performed not on leavened bread, as with us, but on unleavened, despite the fact that the very word "artos", which is used in the Greek text of the Gospel in the narration on the institution of the sacrament, signifies precisely leavened, fermented, risen bread. Catholics cite the fact that the Saviour allegedly performed the Mystical Supper on the first day of unleavened bread, and consequently on the unleavened bread (wafers) used by virtue of the prescriptions of Judaic law. However, from the Evangelist John's narration, it follows that Christ performed the Mystical Supper a day before the onset of the Judaic feast of Pascha (John, Chapter 13); otherwise, how then on the next day could the Sanhedrin have judged Him, Joseph of Arimath�a have bought the winding sheet and the myrrh-bearers have bought the aromatics? Since unleavened bread had a ritual significance with the Jews, Christ, having performed the Mystical Supper on leavened bread, underscores by this that He is abro-gating the Judaic ritual law.

The use of unleavened bread, which was confirmed in the West in the eleventh century, led it as well to certain other deviations from the tradition of the ancient Church. Since unleavened bread does not require special preparation at the Liturgy, its whole first part - the proskomedia - was lost. In this way, Western Christians are deprived of the ancient church custom of commemorating before Christ's Sacrifice all the members of the Church, living and dead, and of praying that their sins would also be washed away by the true Blood of Christ, just as the particles of the prosphoras taken out for them are washed in the holy eucharistic Chalice. And when the communion of the laity takes place at the Catholic Mass, the priest, besides the main unleavened bread, from which he himself communes, consecrates others as well, little ones, one for each communicant. This custom contradicts the very concept of the unity of the eucharistic Sacrifice; communion from one bread has, according to the teaching of the Word of God, a profound dogmatic and moral significance: "For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread" (I Corinthians 10:17).

To me, Irenaeus' explanation is "most Orthodox." I think that Alex has, in effect, said the same thing. I especially like the comparison with the transfiguration of human lives into consecrated lives as we find in the holy icons.

In Christ,
Andrew.

Hello:

I am surprised to read this. We Catholics believe that the Incarnate Word, Our Lord and God Jesus Christ is FULLY present in the Eucharist.

His full Divinity and His full Humanity are there, and the bread and wine are no more.

When I attend the Divine Liturgy, I hear the Epiklesis praying for the holy gifts to be CHANGED INTO the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ.

My interpretation of these words is consistent with the Catholic theology that can be summarized by the word "Transubstantiation".

Shalom,
Memo.

If I may raise an unrelated point, why are there two threads about the same topic in different sections of this forum? East and West and Byzantine Faith and Worship both have topics on Transubstantiation, and as far as I can tell, they don't deal with different things.

I'm afraid that the fault for starting a new thread on transubstantiation is my fault. I did not see the thread in the other forum.

Bless me a sinner, Father Kimel,

You are forgiven.

Do you know any Anglicans who belong to the Antiochian Orthodox "Rite of St Tikhon?"

Oh yes, I'm one of the posters here that is best known for being on topic at all times . . .

Alex

But nowadays I don't think many modern Orthodox theologians and Bishops would say that a Eucharist is invalid when it is performed with unleavened bread. And this practice is not exclusive of the Latins, but it's also present in the Armenian Liturgy where unleavened bread is consacrated, but the use of unleavened bread was not condemned in a fierce way as its use by the Latins.

Maybe communion under bread only, as it is done in the Latin Church, could be seen in a more positive way, because it reflects very much the faith of the Western Church in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Maybe that was not the prupose at first, but the fact that Protestants re-introduced communion under both species as obligatory, in order tio deny the reality of the Eucharist, strenghten the possitions of the Latin traditionalists against the use of communion under both species in the Western Rite.

It is my understanding that the fact that infants are deprived of Holy Communion in the Latin Church, is due to rationalism and intellectual views more than any other reason. According to them children who are below 7 are inocent and don't need to receive communion or confess their sins. I don't think this practice is wrong in itself, but it leads to serious misunderstandings about the Sacramente of the Eucharist, so people believe that the sacrament is the "first communion" (or first communion has become like another sacrament, clearly an innovation) which is separated from chrismation of baptism. Rationalism also influenced the Sacrament of chrismation in modern times, so that many modern post-Vatican II Bishops no longer administer this sacrament to babies, so, thousands of Latin christians are taking the Eucharist without beign chrismated (was the order of the sacraments altered?)