Transubstantiation
At the heart of the Romanist system lies the fundamentally false idea that its ministers are a class of priests distinguished from, and superior to, the other members of their Church. Indeed, nothing has exerted a greater influence over the minds of the blinded devotees of Rome to keep them in thrall than the alleged power of the priesthood. Ultimately, the authority of the Papacy may be regarded as depending on this. As antichrist counterfeits everything belonging to Christ through the distortion of the truth, so here we have the most precious doctrines of Scripture concerning the priestly work of Christ and the sacrament of His body and blood perverted by the most blatant and far-reaching error.
James Bannerman (1807-68) wrote, “It is the sin above others of the Church of Rome, that it has assumed to itself that name of Priest, which none in heaven or in earth is worthy to bear but the Son of God, and that its ministers pretend to stand between the creature and the Creator in the exercise of His priestly office among men”. There are a number of strands to the Popish teaching about the priesthood and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper but they centre on two main doctrines which are inextricably linked; firstly, that of transubstantiation and, secondly, that of the sacrifice of the mass. From transubstantiation flows the horrid blasphemy of the worship of the host (the wafer); whilst, from the doctrine of the bloodless sacrifice of the mass, there flows the notion that physical participation in the mass procures actual atonement for sin, and forgiveness. This note only touches on some points in relation to transubstantiation.
The Popish teaching is that the priest actually stands in the place of Christ to perform, by the words of consecration, a miraculous change upon the physical elements of bread and wine – so that they cease to be bread and wine in their actual substance (even though they remain exactly the same in appearance) but become the real body, blood, soul and Divinity of Christ.
The only argument adduced to support this fabulous and monstrous teaching is an appeal to the literal sense of the words, “This is My body”. But clearly the Saviour was using figurative language when referring to the elements of bread and wine. His words mean, “This represents My body”. This can be seen by referring to John chapter 6, where eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ are indisputably used as figurative terms for believing in Him. Furthermore, Romanists themselves have to resort to a non-literal and figurative explanation of the words, “This cup is the new testament in My blood”, because on a purely literal interpretation, the words imply that the cup is the covenant and therefore it would actually be the cup, and not the wine, that would be transubstantiated into the blood of Christ. The literal interpretation is therefore impossible. Furthermore, it is to be remembered that even after the words of consecration, the Saviour referred to the elements of the Supper as “bread” and “wine”, simply because they remained such and had not been transubstantiated at all. We see therefore that all attempts to justify transubstantiation from Scripture are utterly futile.
Again, the idea that the priest affects a miraculous change of substance, which happens to be unobservable to the senses, is not only patently ludicrous but represents a gross mistake with regard to the actual nature of miracles. The miracles wrought by Divine power in Scripture involved an appeal to the testimony of the senses. The water turned into wine in Cana of Galilee was seen and tasted to be wine; it certainly was not wine under the appearance of water. Transubstantiation, however, contradicts the basic sense perception that God has given us. As The Westminster Confession of Faith states, this doctrine “is repugnant not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason; overthroweth the nature of the sacrament; and hath been, and is, the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries.” (WCF 29:6). The glorified body of Christ is in one place only: at the right hand of the Father. And the heavens must contain Him until the great day of judgement, when all the soul-ruining blasphemies of Romanism will be fully exposed and condemned for ever.
AWM