Alastair on substantiations and other aspects of the Lord’s Supper in Protestantism

It is popularly supposed in certain quarters that the general denial of transubstantiation among Protestants and particularly by the Reformers was occasioned by a resistance to the ideas of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist, or to the notion of our participation in the substance of his flesh and blood in the sacrament. Having recently responded to this assumption, and being very surprised by the fact that the person in question held it, I thought that I would repost an edited version of my response here. While I am fairly certain that for the significant majority of the followers of this blog, the following is olde hatte, experience is teaching me that there are certain facts whose knowledge one shouldn’t take for granted. There are ideas that have a lot of popular currency, despite their utter lack of historical support. For those whose impressions of Protestantism are derived from the experience of independent evangelicalism, with its low view of the church, sacraments, and the liturgy, it can come as some shock to discover that the Reformers generally held quite different visions. As I appreciate that the following post may be completely familiar to you, I beg your indulgence for the sake of those for whom this really is new.

via Protestantism, Eucharistic Participation in Christ’s Flesh, and Transubstantiation | Alastair’s Adversaria.

Please go read the entire article. It is a great one-stop-shop resource on the entire issue.

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