TRANSUBSTANTIATION THRIVES ON HOW WE MISTAKE WORDS FOR REAL THINGS

The doctrine of transubstantiation says bread and wine can be changed into the body and blood of Jesus without any change seeming to have taken place.  It is as meaningless as talk about square triangles. Take the bread.  Bread is a summary word for the physical components that make it up. We call the mixture of flour and butter and water that is heated in the oven bread. Bread is a label that we put on the materials. It is an abstract label. It's just a name. The Church mistakes the name for substance which is thought to be separable from the physical components. The Church commits the error of reification - that is, it mistakes an abstract idea for a material or real thing. Transubstantiation leads to the grossest form of idolatry. It is bad enough to worship a statue because you think a spirit lives in it but it is worse to say the idol is not stone or whatever it is made of but the body of a God. To say it is the body is to go as close as you can go to worshipping stones and sticks. That is because it makes no sense to say bread is now Jesus and isn't bread anymore. Transubstantiation is the ultimate in human degradation - and it is worsened again when it is food and drink that is the idol not a golden statue! No idolater has ever worshipped gold just as a thing but because they thought there was a God in it. Catholicism is extreme idolatry.
 
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The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/



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