Transubstantiation

Transubstantiation, in Christian theology, dogma that in the Eucharist the bread and wine to be administered become, upon consecration, the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ, even though the external manifestations of the bread and wine—shape, color, flavor, and odor—remain. It is thus opposed to other doctrines, such as the Lutheran doctrine that the body and blood of Christ coexist in and with the bread and wine, which remain unchanged. See Consubstantiation.

The term transubstantiation was adopted into the phraseology of the church in 1215, when it was employed by the Fourth Lateran Council. The dogma was reconfirmed (1551) by the Council of Trent, as follows: “If any one shall say that, in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the species of bread and wine alone remaining, which conversion the Catholic Church most fittingly calls Transubstantiation, let him be anathema” (Session 13, Canon 2).

In his encyclical Mysterium Fidei (Mystery of Faith, 1965), Pope Paul VI restated the traditional teaching to correct the views of some modern Roman Catholic theologians that the change consists merely in a new religious finality (“transfinalization”) or significance (“transignification”), resulting in either case in little more than a symbolic divine presence.

Transubstantiation is a doctrine not only of the Roman Catholic church but also of the Orthodox church. At the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), the doctrine was confirmed as essential to the faith of the entire Orthodox church. The dogma was repudiated by the Church of England.