The symbolic incoherence of transubstantiation

Scriptural sacramentalism puts the spiritual before and above the physical. Transubstantiation does the opposite.

I generally try to find common ground with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, especially here — they are some of the primary vanguard in symbolic theology/reenchantment/ancient-future Christian reformy stuff.

But sometimes I’m thinking about things that intersect with the differences between a Reformed and RC/EO view of the world; and sometimes Roman Catholics providentially ask me about what I’m thinking; and sometimes it seems obvious that such thoughts are well fitted to True Magic readers.

So let me make some remarks about the problem with transubstantiation: namely, that it confuses the ontological order and priority of spiritual and physical.

It wants to say that because we become like Christ in both body and spirit, therefore we must eat Christ both spiritually and bodily.

But there is a clear order and priority to how we become like Christ: first spiritually, then physically. We are made like him spiritually in this life — not perfectly, but truly. We are not made like him physically in this life — we must be resurrected to participate in his glorified human flesh.

To suppose that we become like him spiritually in this life by eating him physically does not make sense. What is born of spirit is spirit; the flesh avails nothing. On the contrary, the body is the substantial form of the spirit. I am not relying on Aristotle here, but rather Genesis 2:7. God forms the man from dirt, and breathes into his nostrils the spirit of life, whereupon the dirt becomes a living soul: a physical instantiation of the spirit within it. In the same way, it is only because we are transformed spiritually that we are eventually transformed physically as well: our resurrection bodies are natural expressions or forms of our renewed spirits. It does not work the other way: trying to transform the spirit by transforming the body is not something scripture ever entertains. But this is what is required by transubstantiation. It assumes we must physically consume Christ’s physical flesh to become more like him. This treats eating as a fundamentally physical pattern — something done with the body that happens to have a spiritual corollary — rather than a fundamentally spiritual pattern — something done with the spirit that naturally has a physical expression. Transubstantiation is therefore a reversed or false symbolism, where the spiritual expresses the physical.

This is an especially perplexing error in view of how Jesus is careful to preempt it when he explains the bread of life discourse to his disciples:

It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life. (Jn 6:63)

John, in general, is careful to illustrate for us the connection between abiding in Christ (and him in us), and consuming Christ (and he us). This is something I expand in my sermon on how Christ consumes us, here:

Repentance, part 13: To consume God, he must first consume us

We all know that we do in fact become part of Christ’s body. He really does eat us. We really do abide in him. Yet no one is silly enough to think that we therefore become part of his human flesh. We understand this spiritually. Yet when it comes to our eating him, so that he abides in us, this spiritual pattern is discarded, and a perverse one invented instead.

The error is even more perplexing because it is so uniquely applied to eating Christ. The very same hermeneutic that gets us transubstantiation is (rightly) rejected in every single other instance where it ought to hold sway. It is never applied consistently. No one thinks, for instance, that we must physically be born a second time (John 3:5). They may push as far as believing in baptismal regeneration — but they are perfectly capable of conceiving of birth as a spiritual pattern in which both childbirth and baptism participate. And even when it comes to Christ eating us, they insist that this language is spiritual. “I will vomit you out of my mouth” (Rev 3:16) must not be interpreted physically. Christ does not physically eat us. We do not physically become part of his human flesh. Yet when it comes to our eating Christ, they instantly wreck the theological symmetry in favor of a woodenly literal interpretation that makes a mockery of scripture’s symbolic realism. “Eat my flesh” must all of a sudden be physical. It is the most absurd kind of special pleading, propped up by the most absurd ontological reaching, to explain away the fact that we are, quite obviously, actually eating bread and wine.

Scripture, however, furnishes us with quite sufficient sacramental examples to understand that no change is required to the bread and wine for us to spiritually consume Christ through them. He gives himself to us spiritually, through his Spirit, when we eat — he does not give himself physically in the bread, for we do not receive him physically until the resurrection, and then all at once, in the twinkling of an eye.

One further thought: this is speculative because I’m not familiar with Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox covenant theology; in fact, my speculation is fueled by the fact that I’ve never even heard of such a thing. My suspicion, therefore, is that this collapsing of the spiritual and physical is a result of having no category to properly connect and distinguish them. So it gets punted into an ontological puzzle as a matter of default. But under a Reformed view, covenant precedes creation — so it is natural to see physical things as covenantally orchestrated representations of spiritual things. In other words, what makes the bread participate in Christ is not some inexplicable ontological connection, but a covenantal one. This does not mean its participation is artificial or unnatural; on the contrary, it means that nature itself is covenantally designed and connected to spiritual realities.