Is the Lutheran View of Holy Communion the Same as the Roman Catholic One?

The Roman Catholic view and Lutheran view are similar in some ways, and not in others. The Roman Catholics believe in transubstantiation, which is the teaching that the bread and wine are transformed into Christ’s body and blood. Though the appearance and taste of bread and wine are there, they are no longer present. This is done using the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle made a distinction between substance and accidents. A “substance” is what a thing is. The “accidents” are the outward qualities of that thing. So for instance, if I had a pet dog, his substance would be that of a dog, it defines what it is. It’s accidents would be the fact that it has four legs, a tail, fur, it barks, etc. The accidents could change while still retaining the substance. For example, if I shaved off all of the dogs hair, it would still be a dog. So in normal reality, the accidents of something can change, while the substance cannot. However, in the Eucharist, the opposite occurs. The substance of the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood, but the accidents remain the same. Even though it still has the look, taste, smell, and feel of bread and wine, it has actually changed into Christ’s body and blood.

The problem with all this, in the Lutheran view, is that it makes things much too complicated, and attempts to use human philosophy to explain divine truth. God does not give us any explanation in his Word of how exactly we recieve Christ’s body and blood through bread and wine, but simply that it happens. We need to accept this mysterious reality without trying to speculate about the mechanics of it all. The Roman view here is also problematic because Paul speaks about eating bread when talking to the Corinthians which demonstrates that he believed bread to remain present when taking communion:

“he cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” ( 1 Cor. 10:16)

The Roman Catholics also refer to communion as an “unbloody sacrifice” where Christ is offered from the priest to God as a sacrifice for sins. Though Roman Catholics are careful to say that this Eucharistic sacrifice is not a separate sacrifice from the one on Calvary, the view of communion as a sacrifice of Christ (re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice is a common way of phrasing it), displaces the uniqueness and efficacy of the cross. Through communion, the benefits that Christ won on the cross are certainly given to us, such as spiritual life and the forgiveness of sins; however, to speak of Holy Communion as a sacrifice in this sense goes beyond the testimony of Scripture, and thus we reject it.