What Divides Protestants and Catholics on the Eucharist?
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DAVENANT DIGESTS WHAT DIVIDES PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS ON THE EUCHARIST? BRADFORD LITTLEJOHN Contents 01 A Difference Worth Dying For Remembering a high-stakes doctrine. 04 What Is in the Cup? What do we mean by ‘bread’ and ‘wine’? 06 Substance and Accidents Understanding the philosophical foundations of Catholic doctrine. 08 A Reasonable Faith Protestants do not preach blind faith. 11 Why It Matters Recovering the meeting place between God and His people. 13 Showing a Better Way Engaging Roman Catholics today. A Difference Worth Dying For THEY ESCORTED THOMAS CRANMER TO THE PULPIT OF ST. MARY’S UNIVERSITY CHURCH IN OXFORD FOR ONE LAST TIME BEFORE HIS EXECUTION, TO READ OUT HIS RECANTATION OF HIS PROTESTANT FAITH. DAVENANT DIGESTS | 1 WHAT WERE THE “PAPISTICAL DOCTRINES” THAT CRANMER WAS CONVINCED WOULD NOT STAND BEFORE GOD’S JUDGMENT SEAT? THOMAS CRANMER Instead, the former Archbishop of Canterbury made this ringing declaration: As for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the bishop of Winchester, which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament, that it shall stand in the last day before the judgment of God, where the papistical doctrines contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show their face.1 Pandemonium ensued. Cranmer was hauled down and dragged to the stake to be burnt, one of hundreds of martyrs in Queen Mary’s Counter-Refor- mation. What was this “true doctrine of the sacrament” worth dying (and killing) for? What were the “papistical doctrines” that Cranmer was convinced would not stand before God’s judgment seat? It may be difficult for us now to appreciate how such a seemingly arcane dis- pute could have been a life-or-death issue. But it is important to remember that the debate over transubstantiation stood at the strategic intersection of many other high-stakes doctrinal issues. At stake was the Roman Catholic theory of salvation as the progressive infusion of grace throughout the life of the believer to counteract the deadly effects of sin; the reception of Christ’s true flesh, and the sacrifice of it by the priest on the altar, was necessary to keep the believer in a state of grace. The rejection of transubstantiation also struck at the roots of Catholic ecclesiology, which elevated the clergy as the authorized dispensers of this grace and made ordinary Christians dependent on their unique and mysterious power. Questions of Christology were also involved, of course, as well as different conceptions of the authority of tradi- tion—which had long taught some form of transubstantiation. We cannot tackle all of these here, but hopefully we can get a better handle on the heart of the debate, and address two common misconceptions. 1. From Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Reprinted in Bradford Littlejohn and Jonathan Roberts, eds., Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions (Moscow, ID: Davenant Press, 2017), 588. DAVENANT DIGESTS | 3 What Is in the Cup? THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT THING TO SAY IS THAT THIS WAS NOT CHIEFLY A DEBATE OVER THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST. This is almost certain to throw some for a loop given the popular representa- tion of the debate. Most of us have heard that whereas the Roman Catholic Church staunchly maintained the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Protestants tended to spiritualize this presence, focusing on the inward communion with Christ by faith. However, the primary point of dispute in the sixteenth century between Protestants and Catholics was not over whether the body of Christ was pres- ent in the Eucharist. Rather, it was over whether bread and wine were present in the Eucharist. This was the straightforward meaning of the term “trans-substantiation.” By virtue of the priest’s words of consecration, the “substance” or fundamental what-ness of the bread was transformed into the substance of Christ’s body, and the wine into the blood. This meant that after the transubstantiation, neither bread nor wine remained in the elements. As Thomas Aquinas (1225– 1274) wrote in his influential treatment of the issue in the Summa, “Some have held that the substance of the bread and wine remains in this sacrament after the consecration. But this opinion cannot stand.”2 Indeed, the Council 2. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III Q. 75 a. 2, resp. (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4075.htm) 4 | DAVENANT DIGESTS HOWEVER, THE PRIMARY POINT OF DISPUTE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY WAS NOT OVER WHETHER THE BODY OF CHRIST WAS PRESENT IN THE EUCHARIST. RATHER, IT WAS OVER WHETHER BREAD AND WINE WERE PRESENT IN THE EUCHARIST. THOMAS AQUINAS of Trent went so far as to insist that anyone who affirmed that bread and wine remained, as Protestants consistently did, were to be condemned of heresy: If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood — the species Only of the bread and wine remaining — which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anath- ema.3 Now, obviously this did not mean the bread became actually fleshy and the wine became actually bloody — thank goodness! Aquinas wrote that divine providence has wisely chosen to hide the substance of the body and blood 3. Session XIII, Canon 2. (http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch13.htm). See also Reformation Theology, 389–400. DAVENANT DIGESTS | 5 under the “accidents” of bread and wine, since “it is not customary, but hor- rible, for men to eat human flesh” and the sacrament “might be derided by unbelievers if we were to eat our Lord under his own species.”4 Substance and Accidents SO WHAT IS THIS DISTINCTION OF SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS? TO PUT IT IN LAYMAN’S TERMS, THE “ACCIDENTS” ARE ALL OF THE OUTWARD QUALITIES OF A THING, THE WAYS IN WHICH IT MANIFESTS ITSELF TO US. These can usually undergo a certain degree of change without the thing itself ceasing to be what it is (for example, the bread may become stale or moldy and still be, for a time at least, bread). The “substance” is, as I called it above, the “fundamental what-ness,” that which essentially makes the thing what it is and which persists through changes. This distinction derives from Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), but we would be mistaken in thinking (as Protestants have often wrongly charged Catholics) that the doctrine of transubstantiation relied on Aristotelian phi- losophy — that it was, perhaps, an example of the unhealthy intrusion of philosophy into theology. 4. ST III Q. 75 a. 5, resp. (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4075.htm) 6 | DAVENANT DIGESTS WHATEVER ELSE WE MIGHT THINK ABOUT TRANSUBSTANTIATION, WE SHOULD NOT FALL PREY TO THE CLAIM THAT THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IF YOU WANT TO TAKE CHRIST’S PRESENCE IN THE EUCHARIST SERIOUSLY. On the contrary, transubstantiation clearly inverts the Aristotelian categories that it draws on. For Aristotle, it made perfect sense to speak of a substance remaining the same while the accidents changed (within certain limits, at least), but no sense at all to speak of a substance changing while the accidents remained the same — as transubstantiation asserted. Substance and accidents for Aristotle were not two separable variables, but two components of a thing that always went together. Indeed, it was precisely by observing the accidents of a thing that we formed our initial determina- tion of what kind of substance it was. Aquinas, at least, was well aware of his departure from Aristotle at this point, and insisted that the transformation in question was “entirely supernatural, and effected by God’s power alone.”5 Whatever else we might think about transubstantiation, we should not fall prey to the claim that this is what you have to believe if you want to take Christ’s presence in the Eucharist seriously. 5. ST III Q. 75 a. 4, resp. (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4075.htm). DAVENANT DIGESTS | 7 Indeed, the English theologian Richard Hooker insisted that the Reformed, the Lutherans, and indeed Roman Catholics were all agreed “concerning that which alone is material [i.e., important], namely a real participation of Christ and of life in his body and blood by means of this sacrament.” Indeed, all agreed that “the soul of man is the receptacle of Christ’s presence,” so that the only real debate concerned whether Christ makes himself present “within man only” (as the Reformed say) or is also somehow “externally seated in the very consecrated elements themselves”6—whether in some indefinable way (as the Lutherans say), or via transubstantiation (as the Catholics say). A Reasonable Faith THE SECOND THING WE MUST UNDERSTAND IS THAT, CONTRARY TO MANY MODERN ACCOUNTS, IT WAS THE CATHOLICS, NOT THE PROTESTANTS, WHO PREACHED A PARTING OF NATURE AND GRACE, FAITH AND REASON — AT LEAST ON THIS KEY ISSUE. It has become common today to assert that in the Reformation period, Ro- man Catholics insisted on the necessity of a reasonable faith (a collaboration 6. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity V.67.2 (https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hooker-the-works-of-richard- hooker-vol-2). 8 | DAVENANT DIGESTS between philosophy and theology), while Protestants camped out on the mere literal words of Scripture. Similarly, it is asserted that Catholics taught the “sacramentality of the world,” asserting that mere material creatures served as vehicles and vessels of God’s grace, while the Reformers drove a wedge be- tween the material and the spiritual.