For an interesting discussion on the question of 'transubstantiation', go to the Comments at the source, skip down through all the silly nonsense till you get to people like 'gadow' and 'Matt Penfold', then later, 'Piltdown Man'.

Posted by:
gadow |
October 10, 2009 12:59 PM

I agree that transubstantiation is a silly concept, but its not quite as silly as some here seem to think.

The idea tracks back to the Roman philosophy of neo-Platonism (yes,
pre-Christian PAGAN philosophy.) Neo-Platonism made a distinction
between physical characteristics and non-physical characteristics.
Physical qualities -- weight, color, texture, temperature, etc. -- made
up a...

read more»

For an interesting discussion on the question of 'transubstantiation', go to the Comments at the source, skip down through all the silly nonsense till you get to people like 'gadow' and 'Matt Penfold', then later, 'Piltdown Man'.

Posted by:
gadow |
October 10, 2009 12:59 PM

I agree that transubstantiation is a silly concept, but its not quite as silly as some here seem to think.

The idea tracks back to the Roman philosophy of neo-Platonism (yes,
pre-Christian PAGAN philosophy.) Neo-Platonism made a distinction
between physical characteristics and non-physical characteristics.
Physical qualities -- weight, color, texture, temperature, etc. -- made
up a thing's forma, or form. Non-physical qualities -- honor, virtue, truth, etc. -- make up a thing's subtantia,
or substance. The distinction was an important one: you cannot tell
whether a person is honorable (a matter of substance) just by their
physical appearance (meaning its form), nor was a statement true
(substance) just because it looked elegant (form.)

Because many of the early Christian apologists were educated Romans
writing for an audience of educated Romans, this terminology was used
to describe the Christian distinction (by way of Greek gnosticism)
between physical and spiritual.

Transubstantiation is the belief that a thing can change substance without changing form.
For example, when a law-abiding person becomes a criminal, there is an
act of transubstantiation: the person's substance has changed, but not
his form. Christian theology (among most non-Protestant and some
Protestant sects) holds that this is also what happens with the
sacraments: baptism is an act of transubstantiation that changes a
person's allegedly sinful nature into one capable of being sin-free,
and ordination changes a person's soul so that they become usable as
channels of God's grace. There is no change in form, only a change in
substance.

In the eucharist...

read more»

Transubstantiation is the belief that a thing can change substance without changing form.
For example, when a law-abiding person becomes a criminal, there is an
act of transubstantiation: the person's substance has changed, but not
his form. Christian theology (among most non-Protestant and some
Protestant sects) holds that this is also what happens with the
sacraments: baptism is an act of transubstantiation that changes a
person's allegedly sinful nature into one capable of being sin-free,
and ordination changes a person's soul so that they become usable as
channels of God's grace. There is no change in form, only a change in
substance.

In the eucharist, the transformation from bread and wine into body
and blood is one of substance, not of form. The elements still look
like, taste like and otherwise have all of the physical qualities of
what they were before. It is their spiritual nature -- their substantiae -- that are changed, thus trans substantiāre, "to change substance."