Real Presence: Real or Not

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that when the priest says the words of consecration, the bread and wine transform into the physical body and blood of Jesus. This is known as the Real Presence of Christ in the communion gifts.

The Roman Catholic church dogmatizes this process under the rubric of transubstantiation. It is expressed in terms of outdated Aristotelian metaphysics that utilizes the concepts of accidence and substance. We understand biology and physics much better now than in centuries past when the archaic understanding using Aristotelian concepts.

The Roman Catholic mass and the Orthodox Divine Liturgy are occasions of sin and idolatry. Christ is not present physically in the gifts of communion. When He says He is the Bread of Life, Christ is speaking of a spiritual reality. The bread and wine remain bread and wine. At no point do they become Christ’s flesh and blood.

As a result of this idolatry, Roman Catholics and Orthodox worship bread and wine. The Roman Catholics even have adoration of the communion wafer. This is utter blasphemy and idolatry.

Roman Catholics and Orthodox interpret Jesus’ statements in John 6 in a literal sense. It is clear He is speaking metaphorically. They say they are participating in an unbloody manner in Christ’s once and for all sacrifice at Calvary, but none of this is biblical.

It is the height of hubris to presume man has the power to call Christ down and have Him reside in bread and wine.

Christ was crucified once for our sins. Scripture in no way says that we can, 2,000 years later, participate in that sacrifice again. Nor does Scripture say we can call Him down and have Him appear under the guise of bread and wine, at the behest of man (the priest) who says an incantation (the consecration).

Thus we see that the so-called Real Presence of Christ is a major heresy. And the mass or Divine Service is an abomination and an occasion of blasphemy and idolatry.