Behind transubstantiation there is a balking at the conjunction of God and thing. The thing must surely be absorbed, transmuted if there is to be an operation of God. Such thinking is of a piece with Docetism and its kindred heresies... If God was born into creation as Mary's baby, we cannot say that it was no true baby, that it merely had the accidents of a baby. Similarly it cannot be said that bread and wine must lose their essence if God is to impart Himself in them. -- Dr. Norman Nagel, CTM 1953, p. 637.
What a great insight. I had thought the main weakness of the transubstantiation thing was that it relied on Greek philosophy rather than Scripture to explain how something can look like one thing and be another. This though reveals the weakness of even attempting such an explanation: if God can come among us fully human and fully divine, he can come among us as his body and blood and bread and the fruit of the vine.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great quotation!