What transubstantiation means

Almost four years ago I claimed to know what transubstantiation means. It strikes me that I haven't demonstrated that gnosis, at least not on this blog. Earlier this week I stumbled onto CS Lewis who refused Tolkien's Church precisely because Lewis thought he knew and, famously, rejected it. Lewis published this in one of his "letters to Malcolm", a Pastoral if you will.

Lewis doesn't present an argument, as such. He presents, rather, an Agnosticism. He has chosen not to understand, in his case likely because the topic disgusts him. I'll interject here, to "steelman", that we all have priorities on what to ponder and what to avoid. I for one have chosen not to believe in Faster Than Light travel, because that topic terrifies me. (Plus: math.) So I'll raise transubstantiation as if I were addressing Don Lewis.

Our bedrock is the Real Presence. Christians may not avoid this. Paul already notes this in his letter to the Corinthians which he treats as a shared custom between him and them. I can conjecture it was uttered around the Passover Seder as a Christian overlay and, thereform, spread to the Saturday evening service; but the history need not detain us. The point is that either Christ is present at the Eucharist or else whatever is going on in front of that table is not a Eucharist.

As the Eucharistic Miracle goes, I hazard that most Catholics and Orthodox have not experienced this directly. Bread and wine remains bread and wine usually. Some exceptions apply but, even here, most such cases are mystical experiences not subject to independent verification. In short, it's faith. As such... let's turn this around to Dr Lewis. Is Lewis going to contend against all such experiences? If so he's a better skeptic than me and I've been dropping evolutionist content on here, not to mention heliocentrism.

As to why the Catho/-dox communion(s) insist on what looks like ritual cannibalism, I propose that's why it is sacralised. The hunter or the herder implores the spirits of life over a sacrifice to offer respect to what gives its life that he and his may live. The Neolithic farmer observes how a crop must die upon a fallow field before being reënriched with nutrients, for another crop. The Eucharist pulls from this imagery. It carries a deep connexion with the human past and the human condition. Lewis may deem all this more pagan than Biblical. I'd answer that the theology had been worked out long before Lewis (or Tolkien), featuring in John 6.

To sum up: transubstantiation represents the "Circle Of Life", which the Orthodox communions including Rome play out in our central ritual. Further - speaking for my part - I do not mind if the Eucharistic Miracle is not always clearly manifest for every parishioner every Sunday morning, including those in a state of Grace. I can conclude that of all the axioms which various Christian churches would have us accept, transubstantiation is not one worth this blog's efforts to contest. I doubt it should have been a problem for Lewis either.