THE DOCTRINE OF BREAD AND WINE TURNING INTO JESUS EVEN IF POSSIBLE DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE

The Roman Catholic Church says that God can turn bread and wine into his Son Jesus. The result is that they are not bread and wine at all any more but Jesus. This doctrine is called transubstantiation. It is sometimes called the Real Presence. The Real Presence means Jesus's presence in its fullest sense body, blood, soul and divinity.
 
God performs this change when the Catholic priest blesses bread and wine on the altar at Mass.

The look, smell, weight, colour and taste do not change but the underlying reality does. This gives rise to three miracles: One is the change of bread into the body and the blood of Jesus. Two is how this is done without anything physically changing.  Three is that it is a miracle for bread and wine to be alive.  They become a living being.  The multiplication of miracles shows that there is something wildly superstitious and credulous about all that.
 
Protestants disagree with all that. For them there is still bread and wine. Michael J Langford wrote, "It is worth insisting at this point that there is no need for Roman Catholics and other Christians to be divided on this matter, despite the controversy which has raged over 'transubstantiation' (the Roman Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine become in substance the body and blood of Christ). Recent studies have shown how much this old controversy is based on misunderstanding. The thing to remember here is that the definition of the doctrine is in Latin and there has been a tendency to use inappropriate English words in the translation. Thus while the doctrine asserts that there is a change in substance, it also asserts that the 'accidents' of sight, taste, touch, etc., are unchanged. In Modern English, it is precisely these things that signify the physical nature of something, so that it would be more accurate to say that the bread and wine were physically unchanged than to say that they were changed" page 69, Unblind Faith, Michael J Langford, SCM Press, London, 1982). Is a change that is not physical a change at all in relation to this doctrine? If there is no physical change, it follows that we cannot hold that God is veiling the true appearance of the body and blood from us by making us perceive them as just the same. That would be an invisible physical change. In reality, the Catholics are just pretending the bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus and using fancy terms to hide that.
 
The Catholic Church says that just as Jesus turned water into wine so he can change bread into his body. Protestants agree. But the Catholic Church says he can do it without making the bread seem to undergo any change. Protestants deny that bit. The notion of the change is based on the idea that God made all things out nothing for only then might God have the power to perform the change of bread and wine into Jesus. But the Bible does not clearly teach that doctrine. If Jesus did not turn water into wine, he could have used his power not to transform the water but to replace it with wine. That would still be referred to as changing it for in a sense it is. It is the rule that we interpret the Bible by the Bible for if we don't we can make it mean anything we want. It is safe then to conclude that there is no evidence in favour of the Catholic understanding of the changed bread and wine in the Bible. It's heresy.
 
The Church decided to officially adopt the notion that substance and accidents are not the same thing in 1215 Substance means what something is. Accidents are its physical components. So the Church argued that the substance of bread and wine can change into Jesus without any change being perceptible. When you touch the bread you touch the appearance of bread not Jesus though the bread is Jesus. The distinction between substance and accidents was first made by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. But he never stated it was possible for say gold to be actually a frog! Aristotle only meant that substance is the stuff we don't detect in an object. For example, if you hold a pebble your senses only tell you so much about it. You can't keep seeing what is underneath. Transubstantiation say of a pebble into gold for Aristotle would have to mean say gold being covered with the surface of a pebble and otherwise seeming to be a pebble and weighing like it and all. The chemistry or stuff would change. Aristotle rejected the notion that substance can change without the matter changing which is supposed to happen at the Catholic Mass: "A substance is generated (destroyed) by having matter take on (lose) form." http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/zeta17.htm
 
Given the rule of reason that no book should be interpreted in an unreasonable way, it follows that if the Bible does say the bread is Jesus it means it metaphorically. Catholics deny this. If the world at the time of Christ made a difference between substance and accidents and imagined one changing without the other changing and this teaching made sense it would be different. But it didn't.

Even if substance and accidents are distinct they are not separate. Nor can they be separated.
 
If substance causes the accidents then transubstantiation is untrue and impossible.

If the substance may cause the accidents then transubstantiation may be untrue and impossible. The doctrine then isn't much of an explanation. You don't solve a mathematical mystery by suggesting that maybe 2 and 2 are not always 4. What you do is destroy any right you have to claim to be offering an explanation. What you are offering is nonsense wearing the explanation disguise.
 
Catholics are really pretending that a change of bread and wine into Jesus is really a change. So they are consciously adoring bread and wine not Jesus Christ. It is extreme idolatry and marks that faith as crude paganism despite all the Christian accretions. If Christianity is the true faith then Roman Catholicism is Satan, the great counterfeiter's, masterpiece. Their claim that the bread and wine are Jesus Christ is just refusing to admit that no change has taken place. They are like the Emperor, from The Emperor's New Clothes, who was wearing nothing and still thought he had an invisible suit on.
 
If bread can look exactly the same after being turned into Jesus then clearly a man can be turned into a piece of iron without the iron changing in appearances. The Church says that Jesus doesn't disappear in Heaven. He is still there looking like a man but is able to be in the bread at the same time. But God could surely make him vanish if he wished. If he can turn bread into Jesus without Jesus leaving Heaven then he can turn it into Jesus in such a way that Jesus's body seems to have ceased to exist and so that the ex-bread is now the only body of Jesus there is. God can make the iron no longer iron but the man with the man disappearing as well. So what cannot be alive can be alive according to the ridiculous Romish doctrine of the Mass. The doctrine of the change into Jesus is so mad that nobody can believe in it in their minds. The idolatry is conscious.
 
God can turn marble into a seeing eye with the accidents of the eye disappearing but with the accidents of the marble remaining. So how could it be a seeing eye anymore? It needs the accidents to see. Its substance was that of a seeing eye. The change of the marble's substance into its substance turned the seeing eye into something else, another substance. So it follows that it is just a marble now. It follows that a marble cannot be turned into a seeing eye. If so, bread and wine cannot become Jesus Christ.
 
The bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus but the accidents or the appearances of bread and wine still exist but the ghostly intangible thing, substance, that makes them bread and wine disappears and is replaced with what makes Jesus Jesus. But the appearances of Jesus are not involved just the substance of what makes Jesus Jesus. In other words, the wafer doesn't become six feet tall like Jesus may be.
 
At this point we must ask what is the most important? The substance or the accidents. It must be the accidents because if I am transubstantiated physically into a door but retain my accidents it will be like nothing has changed. It will feel the same for my mental processes can still run if the substance of my brain is changed for there is no physical difference. The communion wafer shows no difference after becoming Jesus so neither will I. I will see feel like me and be me in a sense though I am a door! What if Jesus’ body has been transubstantiated into the moon? If bread is transubstantiated into the result then is communion Jesus or the moon or both? Transubstantiation is outrageously ridiculous. The view that substance not accidents make something what it is, is nonsense. Commonsense says that if all tests show something is cheese then it is cheese.
 
Many believe that God cannot perform the miracle of transubstantiation for it is like making a square circle. For example, if I have a circle and transubstantiate it into a square then is it a square or a circle or both? Christians deny that God can do what is logically impossible. Believers in God assert that it is possible for him to make a stone out of nothing but he cannot make a stone that is impossible for him to lift. They say that if God can do the logically impossible he can do nonsense and he can program a person to do good or force a person to be good and that person could still have free will!
 
Transubstantiation is allegedly related to the absurd doctrine of creation out of nothing. The Catholics believe that once there was nothing but God commanded it to become the universe and the angels and it did. The Church says God did not make anything out of his power for that is not creation out of nothing. But if that is true then the creation just popped out of nothing by itself and if God was there then he still had nothing to do with it. The Catholics reason that if God can make things out of nothing then he make bread become Jesus without the bread physically changing. But creation is impossible. And even if it were possible, it still does not mean that this change can be done. The change cannot happen for creation cannot happen and even if it could that still has nothing to do with making transubstantiation possible.
 
The Church says the big bang was when nothing exploded to become the universe. This is contradictory for if there really was nothing then an explosion is impossible. Something can explode. Nothing cannot for there is nothing there to explode.

Transubstantiation is illogical. It is dangerous to say that God will do useless or useful but unnecessary miracles for then you can be sure of nothing and not know what to expect. Many people have not recognised Jesus in the form of bread and wine so they have been deceived without need. The doctrine makes God untrustworthy. He could be tricking you all the time. Your father could have been transubstantiated into the front door last week if God does this miracle. You just have no way of knowing what anything is.
 
The apostles taught that they could trust their senses, which ones physical or non-physical it does not matter - for they said they saw and heard Jesus after he came back from the dead. By implication, they opposed miracles that were just arbitrary experiences of supernatural power and beyond the senses.
 
Take a piece of bread. Take a piece of meat. Take a piece of lead. What have they in common? They are all matter. They are all material things. They are different according to the tests of the senses. For example, they look different. But they are just different forms of matter. Suppose substance is what the Catholics say it is, a non-material thing. Then how do we know that we don't just have the same substance, matter, manifesting as things that seem different? Perhaps bread is a substance appearing as bread, and lead is the same substance as that one? Perhaps bread, meat and lead are all the same substance in different forms? Even bread can take many forms. So why not? Perhaps bread and meat are just names for different kinds of lead? Perhaps there is no difference as regards substance? If there isn't then it is nonsense to speak of substances changing as in the Mass.
 
I am surer that I exist than I am of anything else. Therefore I cannot be as sure that bread is really Jesus as I am that my friend is a person. So the friend comes first and it is immoral of religion to ask me to revere a wafer or any idol as my God or supreme being or supreme concern. If Jesus promised to do this wonder then he was a fraudulent prophet. The Eucharist is evil. It reviles human dignity and reason by setting itself over what my own individual reason and perception tell me. It is not communion. It is the reversal of communion. It is geared towards the implementation of artificial unity and equally artificial reverence for human dignity.
 
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that bread can be turned into Jesus without any perceptible physical change taking place. It is no longer bread but Jesus. This change takes place in the Mass by the power of the priest. The Church says that what makes bread bread turns into whatever it is that makes Jesus Jesus. So the taste and appearance and weight etc of the bread remain but whatever makes it bread is turned into whatever it is that makes it Jesus. Whatever makes bread bread and whatever makes Jesus Jesus is something non-physical or immaterial. This is clearly turning Jesus into a spirit not a real body. Rome says Jesus can exist as a man without having his eyes, ears, smell, sense of touch and taste. The real Jesus, his substance, his nature, have nothing to do with these senses. He cannot look at you from the communion wafer he turns into. This doctrine is even more non-Christian than the notion that the antichrist heretics condemned in John 1 had that Jesus had senses but was not a man but a ghostly being or was a spirit with senses possessing a man.
 
Whatever Jesus meant when he said we must gnaw his flesh as food it certainly was not anything like the Catholic doctrine which claims that bread turns into Jesus' flesh but doesn't claim it in any meaningful sense or in a way that makes any sense. An eye sees. If the eye disappears and is turned into a marble in the way the Catholic Church says it can happen it is not an eye anymore. End of. And if the eye is like Jesus and doesn't disappear but a marble is turned into it there is no difference. What happened to the eye's power to see which was part of itself? Gone. An eye is for seeing and a true eye can see. If it cannot see anymore it is not an eye for a marble cannot see. The Jesus of Catholicism that it worships in the form of the wafer is not Jesus. We all at least subconsciously know that a marble which has been transubstantiated into an eye is not an eye and it makes no sense to say it is. Catholic worship of the wafer is really just worship of a wafer and on some level they know it.
 
John Henry Newman said he could accept that the bread and wine turn into Jesus because nobody really understands matter or substance anyway. But as a methodology, we have to call bread bread. And the fact that we may not understand matter and substance that well means we have no chance of understanding them if we start saying that bread is really a man. He was wrong to reason as he did.

Folmar was a Catholic who insisted that the wine was just the blood of Jesus and the bread was his flesh minus the blood and the bones! St Alphonsus alludes to him in his History of Heresies.  Folmar had a point - what else would you expect when the Bible only speaks of Jesus' flesh and his blood?
 
I was once so keen to turn bread into God that I celebrated imitation services of the Eucharist. Little did I know that even the real Mass had about as much divine power! Even if transubstantiation is possible it never happens.