berbercarpet’s guide to christian theology: transubstantiation.

humble_servant asks:

Is the bread and wine/juice that we take for communion only a symbol, or does it actually become the body and blood of Jesus?

Please give reasons why.

i never understood how it could possibly be “literal”

the body and blood of jesus died, and according to the gospels, rose from the dead in a physical form that had holes in it within which the apostle known as thomas could stick some fingers.

one would assume that either the resurrection process cauterized these wounds or the authors forgot to tell us what a bloody mess the new and improved body that jesus had was, what with it’s constantly dripping nail and spear wounds.

i digress.

as the gospels didn’t mention bloody wounds, we’ll assume they weren’t bleeding, and therefore jesus must have a blood supply much like anyone else with a body: constantly replenishing, but at a fixed rate.

if some grape juice and/or wine on earth were to become the actual blood of the resurrected jesus, then it must either:

a) be taken from his body
b) be heading for use IN his body

either way, the physics are mind-boggling.

if it’s being taken from his body, how much blood can jesus’ body produce?

all over the world there are likely hundreds of thousands of christians taking communion at any given moment: this is thousands upon thousands of gallons of blood that they’re requiring god move from jesus’ body and into their cups (or stomaches: i myself have never taken communion and actually tasted blood so, at least in my personal experience, the transubstantiation must have taken place post-swallow.

if the option is (b) then after i swallow some grape juice (i grew up protestant) and god transported the half tablespoon of juice i swallowed out of my body and into jesus’ body where it could be used as blood, then jesus’ body must constantly taking on, rather than losing, thousands of gallons of blood every minute.

either way, this is way too much blood being replaced at once: any given blood molecule would be replaced before it could go about carrying oxygen to jesus fancy body: and if every molecule fails in this job, no molecules succeed, and jesus’s organs go O2 starved, and he dies: except he probably can’t die anymore, cause he’s, you know, already post-dead.

un dead?

something.

and that’s just the wine!

what about the host?

some churches eat tiny lil wafers, and i always thought that i couldn’t get full on them, no matter how many i took because they had no real food value, but it makes more sense in light of this new theory that god might have been moving the food beyond my stomach and into another world.

or: it might just be a symbolic reminder.

the text is, admittedly, vague on this point.

(originally posted at yotr)