[Refuting Romanism: A Logical & Scriptural Treatise is a short book I intend to publish through Nook publishers. I aim to show that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (or CCC) is self-contradictory, contradicts the Scriptures, and therefore cannot be the Word of God.]
Transubstantiation, Christology & Anthropology
The CCC’s contradictions also find articulation in its doctrine of transubstantiation, a doctrine which stands in contradiction to the CCC’s anthropology. For according to the CCC,1 death came into the world through sin. “Man’s sins,” it says elsewhere, “following on original sin, are punishable by death.”2 In paragraph 1008, the CCC states further that “death is a consequence of sin.” Finally, the CCC explains that
Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage…when “the single course of our earthly life” is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives: “It is appointed for men to die once.”3
These statements make it clear that death is a punishment for sins and is irrepeatable. Hence, we are told elsewhere that “in his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only ‘die for our sins’ but should also ‘taste death,’ experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead.”4 Christ, in other words, was sacrificed for our sins, dying upon the tree of Calvary and tasting death in our place. For the CCC teaches, “by sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God ‘made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’”5
Yet if “death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage,”6 and “when ‘the single course of our earthly life’ is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives,”7 how can it be “that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood”8? If Christ “by his death…has conquered death,”9 then how can Christ be said to offer himself through the sacramental ministry of Rome’s priests?10 For the sacrifice of Christ was of his flesh and blood through crucifixion for our sins, his death for ours, and death, according to the CCC, occurs only once, after which a man’s earthly pilgrimage is over. How is Christ’s earthly pilgrimage over if he is literally present in the transubstantiated bread and wine? And how is the Eucharist a literal sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ when we know that Christ died once and, thereby, conquered death?
If Christ is true man and true God, then he cannot be said to be sacrificed in the Roman mass. For the sacrifice of Christ is the death of Christ for sinners, and “death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage…when ‘the single course of our earthly life’ is completed.”11 Therefore, either (a.)Christ is truly sacrificed in the mass (and his earthly pilgrimages have not yet ended) or (b.)death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage (and Christ is not, because he cannot be, sacrificed in the mass). One cannot hold to both propositions as true simultaneously. To summarize our arguments, therefore, we give the following syllogisms.
a.
1. All death is punishment from God. 2. Christ died for our sins. 3. Therefore, Christ was punished by God.b.
1. All men end their earthly pilgrimage at death. 2. Christ died for our sins. 3. Therefore, Christ ended his earthly pilgrimage at the cross.c.
1. If Christ has ended his earthly pilgrimage, then transubstantiation is false. 2. Christ has ended his earthly pilgrimage. 3. Therefore, transubstantiation is false.And now consider the concluding syllogism:
1.No self-contradictory system of propositions is the Word of God. 2.The Traditions of Rome, by affirming that man’s pilgrimage ends with his death, and yet simultaneously affirming that Jesus Christ’s body and blood are sacrificed in the mass, constitute a self-contradictory system of propositions. 3.Therefore, the Traditions of Rome are not the Word of God.Soli Deo Gloria
-h.
Reblogged this on This Blog is Rated PG for Prophetic Guidance and commented:
This is a little post I enjoyed. One could also argue legitimately that transsubtantiation is a denial of Christ coming in the flesh because how could His physical human body (I’m not talking about His deity) be in many places at the same time? He would not truly be human in His humanity.
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