Transubstantiation is a Catholic doctrine stating that during their “eucharist” (the consumption of the bread and the wine of communion) the bread and wine actually transform into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, while retaining the appearances of bread and wine; it is believed to occur at the moment of the consecration of the bread and wine by a priest. The term “transubstantiation” is a Latin-based word, meaning “change of substance”.
Their understanding of this process is more complex and detailed than just that, however. According to church doctrine, the ‘substance’ is specific to their idea about the ‘body’, that the ‘substance’ of bread is completely changed to the ‘substance’ of flesh, but that the appearance of the bread remains the same, along with the taste, the texture, etc. The same goes also for the blood. They say this is a ‘mystery’, and that “Jesus” is fully present with them in the bread and in the wine.
This is a doctrine that developed over a very long period of time. It is certainly not original to the Jewish congregations of the book of Acts, nor to the first-century Jewish/Gentile congregations of the Bible. In fact, the word ‘transubstantiation’ was not widely used until the 12th century. It was the “Fourth Lateran Council” that made the doctrine official, which did not occur until 1215 A.D.. Later that century, Thomas Aquinas took the idea even further to its final understanding by using Aristotle’s commentary on metaphysics and ‘substance and accidents’ in order to describe the transformation, no doubt trying to appeal to the reasoning of mankind. The Greek form of the word is “metaousiosis”, which is strikingly familiar to “homoousia”. The point of that is this: homoousia is the Catholic trinitarian assertion that The Father and the The Son are just that, homoousia, which means that they are the ‘same substance’. And metaousiosis is ‘transubstantiation’, where ousiosis is the substantiation of “jesus” into the bread. So, if the Father and the Son are the same substance, and the ‘subtance’ of jesus is transformed into bread, then is not the Father also? So, effectively, the communicants are thus eating God in their eucharistic ritual! These two words prove that the trinitarian doctrine is denying ‘Jesus’ of his flesh-and-bone body, or denying God of being a distinct, spiritual being, because they are asserting that the one and the same ‘substance’ is eaten by mankind.
This doctrine is a major indicator that the Catholic church went way off course, a long, long time ago. It is an egregious violation of scripture, in many ways.
First, eating in the biblical mindset is a form of destruction. Several of the prophets use the idea of eating to communicate destruction; when the priest and the supplicant eat the sacrifice, the sin of the supplicant who brought the sacrifice is destroyed, because the sin was placed on that sacrifice by the supplicant when he laid his hands on the sacrifice.
Further, God defines what is food for mankind. Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 clearly tell us what we are to eat. The flesh of any man is not permitted. In fact, eating the flesh of a man was seen as a very harsh form of punishment, where cannibalism is the result of disobedience to God, the outpouring of His Wrath, and a last-ditch effort to stay alive during that wrath. God told Israel that if they ever veered off the course of His Torah that they would suffer the punishment of having to eat their own young. [Deut 28, fulfilled in Jer 19:9 and Lam 4:10] The eating of human flesh is thus sinful, and a result of sin.
Still further, there is an explicit command in the Torah not to consume/imbibe blood. The eucharist of Catholicism insists that what they are drinking, the moment they partake, is actually the blood of Jesus. This is a gross violation of The Word of God, on the plainest and easiest level of interpretation, yet for 1,000 + years, half the world believes this is right and good, in spite of the clear violation of a very simple text of Scripture.
In Genesis 9:4, God was instructing all of mankind to begin to eat meat, after the flood. Perhaps He anticipated the temptation to drink the blood when the animal was slain, so in the mandate to eat meat, God explains that they should not do so:
“Only flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat.”
When God set up the requirements of sanctification in Leviticus, echoed in Deuteronomy, He expressly told our Jewish people not to consume blood. It is classified as an abomination, when God says He will : “set My face against that soul that eats blood” in Leviticus 17, and calls all the acts of those chapters abominable just a little later.
Lev 17:10
“And whatever man there is of The House of Yisra’el, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eats any manner of blood, I will set My face against that soul that eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the Altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. Therefore I said unto The Sons of Yisra’el: ‘No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger [gentile] that sojourns among you eat blood’.”
The echo in Deuteronomy 12:23 reads this way:
“Only be steadfast in not eating the blood; for the blood is the life; and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out upon the earth as water. You shall not eat it; that it may go well with you, and with your children after you, when you shall do that which is right in the eyes of יהוה .”
This is not a statute that was limited to the Jewish people in pre-Yeshua days, either. In fact, the Jewish leaders of the Congregations of Messiah said quite the contrary, about Gentiles who were coming into the faith at their word, including Paul:
Acts 15:19
“Because of this, I say do not trouble those who turn to God from among the Gentiles. But let us send word to them that they [gentiles] abstain from defilement by sacrifices to idols, and from fornication, and from creatures strangled, and from blood.”
James is citing Leviticus 17, and several other chapters from that book, to establish the minimum Torah commandments that must be obeyed by Gentiles who were beginning to trust in Yeshua. Verse 20 is the suggestion, and verse 29 is the affirmation that they actually did what James recommended, by the Spirit of God, agreeing with His Torah.
So, the very idea of “metaousiosis” is an abomination to God, but the priests/popes would tell us we are just unable to ‘see’ this ‘miracle.’
It is no secret that catholic doctrine has indeed veered off of God’s path, violating even the simplest of scripture, especially in regard to this. So, how did they get there? They use scriptural gymnastics to justify their doctrine, and they managed to convince people that what they are saying is true, by simply saying ‘it is a mystery that the heathen will not understand’. They are twisting the scriptures, to their own destruction.
Peter warned us about these very things, the seeds of which were already germinating in his day:
“…our beloved brother Paul [Pavlos] also, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his letters he speaks concerning these matters, in which there are certain things so hard to be understood that those who are ignorant and unstable twist their meaning, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, my beloved, seeing that you know these things beforehand, beware, lest you follow the error of those without Torah, and fall from your own steadfastness.” 2 Peter 3:15-17
Even in the Greek, that last bolded phrase is critical, “those OUTSIDE of the Torah”, which is the Gentile community that will not come into obedience to God, because they are twisting the scriptures! Anyone who walks in disobedience to God’s commandments is outside of the Torah! And certainly this doctrine of magic change by the priests to turn the sacraments into human meat and blood is outside of the Torah!
So, what scriptures are they twisting?
First, they twist the words of Yeshua, the ‘other scriptures’ mentioned beyond Paul’s letters above. Yeshua said in Yokhanan [John] 6:51:
“I am the living bread because I came down from Heaven; if any man eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is my body, which I am giving for the sake of the life of the world.” The [religious] Jews argued one with another, saying, “How can this man give us his body to eat?” Yeshua said to them. “Amein, Amein, I say to you, unless you eat the body of The Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves; he who eats of my body and drinks of my blood has Life Eternal, and I will raise him at the last day. For my body truly is the food, and my blood truly is the drink. He who eats my body and drinks my blood will abide with me, and I with him. Just as The Living Father sent me, and I am living because of The Father, so whoever eats of me will also live because of me. This is the bread which came down from Heaven; it is not like that manna which your forefathers ate and died; he who eats of this bread shall live forever.”
And yes, many Jews there ‘turned away’ from following Him, because they would NOT accept the idea of eating human flesh and drinking human blood, because they were Jewish and knew better, upon the plain reading of the Torah! But, that does not consider Yeshua’s own explanation to those who stuck around through the intuition that something was different about this man. And it was not that He was God, it was that He was a man who was perfect, sent from God, according to His own words!
Yeshua’s explanation of these very words above went this way:
John 6:61
“Yeshua knew in Himself that His Torah Students [Talmidim, “disciples”] were murmuring about this; so He said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you should see The Son of Man ascending to the place where He was before? It is The Breath/Spirit [ HaRu’akh ] that gives life; the body is of no account; the words which I have spoken to you are Ru’akh [Breath/Spirit] and Khayim [Life]. But there are some of you who do not trust.” For Yeshua knew for a long while who were those who did not trust, and who was to betray Him. And He said to them, “For this reason I have told you that no man can come to me unless it is given to him by My Father.” Just because of this saying a great many of His talmidim turned away and did not walk with Him.”
“So Yeshua said to His twelve, “What, do you also want to go away?” Simon Peter [Shimon Kefa] answered, saying, “My Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of Life Eternal [Khayei Olam]. And we have believed and known that you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.””
This is the part that is so plain to see, that gets twisted by catholic doctrine. Yeshua was making a very critical point. Yes, He is the bread that came down from Heaven; and yes, He is FLESH AND BLOOD, and NOT the ‘same substance’ as the Father bodily. But, when He said, ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood’, He was talking about us partaking of The Word, HIS WORDS, since He is The Word of God in a flesh and bone body. He said it: “the WORDS which I have spoken are SPIRIT and LIFE.”
This encounter happened in the Passover season a year before He was betrayed. In the next Passover season, Yeshua is finally betrayed, right after He shared the bread and the cup:
“While they were eating [The Passover meal], Yeshua took bread and blessed it, and He broke it, and gave it to His Talmidim, and He said, “Take, eat; this is my Body.” Then He took the cup and gave thanks, and gave it to them and said, “Take, drink of it, all of you. This is my Blood of the Renewed Covenant which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, from now on I shall not drink from this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it anew with you in The Kingdom of God.” And they sang the Hallel, and went out to The Mount of Olives.” ~ Matt 26:26-30
So, Yeshua is sitting at a Passover Seder, giving Matzah to His disciples, and saying, this [matzah] is my Body, and this [wine] is my blood; and after He gave it, He said, “I will not drink from this fruit of the vine until…” So, AFTER He had blessed the cup and began to distribute it, He called it The Fruit of the Vine: wine!
And Paul instructs us that when we do the Passover Seder, that we remember Yeshua’s death, until He returns to have the Passover with us again! The Words that He said at the Seder are now part of our Seder. They are Spirit. And they are our Life!
It is our belief and trust in the fact that if we also keep the Passover Seder, and partake of that same bread and that same cup, while remembering what Yeshua said over that same bread and that same drink, then we also shall have Life Eternal, because of our trust in HIS WORDS. We have the advantage also of looking back on His death at Passover, His burial on Unleavened Bread, and His resurrection on Firstfruits to help assist us in understanding the deep, deep meaning of His WORDS. It is our trust in the promise that He would die for our sins and rise from the dead that is our actual, literal, spiritual ‘consumption’ of His Body and His Blood! Nowhere in scripture is there any indication that we are actually eating flesh and blood. Everywhere in scripture shows that we are not, because the idea of consuming human blood is repugnant, abominable, but that we are partaking of His Words along with the elements of the Passover, and by trusting in His promise, we are thus saved and given life eternal.
The catholic idea of homoousia denies Yeshua of a human body and blood. But they want to claim to consume it in defiance to God and His Word anyway. No. We are partaking of His Words, and we participate in His Death in a spiritual way, in order that we might have Life Eternal.