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| Springsure, Queensland |
The following is excerpted from my (eBook) fictional novel “A Stick in Time”, briefly in Dublin, but set mainly in the Queensland town of Springsure.
Nundah: A
multilingual Australian Aborigine theologian.
Donald: A
Gaelic and English speaking Canadian geologist from Nova Scotia who is in Australia
with his daughter Isabel, a biologist. Both are doing scientific research in
Springsure.
APPENDIX 10
Modern Science & The Doctrine of
Transubstantiation
My dear traveller, the following is part of a deep
conversation Nundah and Donald were having: Nundah said, ‘Is faith built upon reason or is
reason built upon faith? That’s the problem! What we call “science” today used
to be called “natural science” – it is a philosophy, a way of thinking.
You can trace it all the way back to Aristotle and beyond, but it was mainly
through Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s that a stick was stuck into the spokes of
science, especially when scientific study began in earnest later with the
Reformation of the Church in the 1500’s. It was during the Dark Ages, around
the 1200’s, that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation began to really take hold
in the minds of men. When the Reformation brought the Scriptures to the people
in their own language they began to see that the Roman Church, that is, the
Church during the Dark Ages, had been asking them to go beyond the clear
teaching of the Bible. The people were being told to believe “by faith”, by
which was really meant “blind faith”, not by physical observance, that
the bread and the wine miraculously change into the actual body and
blood of Jesus. It was unlike in Scripture where whenever a miracle occurred,
everyone could see it – Jesus feeding the five thousand, turning water into
wine, healing lepers, raising the dead etc.’
‘Donald, with your scientific background and
credentials I know you can follow my line of reasoning. The subtlety of the
Doctrine of Transubstantiation is that it was a blind faith approach. It
was science turned on its head until it was put right side up by the
Reformation, the time when the Church returned to using Scripture alone. The
Doctrine of Transubstantiation is a case of putting reason before faith
– as Thomas Aquinas had taught. In other words, if the “science of the day”
says it, then you are to believe it, which is the same as saying that reason
comes before faith.’
Donald allowed Nundah to continue, ‘The trouble was
that when it came to science Thomas held to the views or philosophy of
Aristotle and not to the Bible. That’s why, for example, the Roman Catholic
Church held the view that the sun revolved around the earth and not the other
way around till Copernicus, and then Galileo with his telescope, demonstrated
otherwise! These two men believed that the Bible taught that the earth revolved
around the sun. So, as it was for the people who have become the New Catholics,
and as it was for you, so it now is for Isabel: she cannot believe in the
virgin birth because she has put reason before faith and not the other
way around as it should be. Modern science per se denies miracles.
‘Yes,’ said Donald. ‘Scripture says that our
understanding is darkened, that we cannot reason properly on account of our own
sin as part of the fallen human race. Therefore we must continue to pray that
God will shine the light of His Word into Isabel’s dark and stony heart just as
I shined the light and illuminated the Virgin Rock from the chopper!’
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| Virgin Rock, Springsure |
‘O Nundah, I can’t bear to think of my daughter not
living forever on the New Earth when the Lord renews it all and us with it. I
can’t bear the thought of her going to that other horrible place! I was
thinking as you were speaking. Before the Reformation the Church was ruled by
priests and popes. As you know, the word pope derives from Greek πάππας
meaning “Father”. The pope’s word was law. If he said the bread and wine became
Christ’s body and blood, then that was what you were to believe – on pain of
death, as those who suffered martyrdom for denying it attest. As Isabel’s
father I taught her a great error for which I am as every bit as guilty as
those papal “fathers” who taught Transubstantiation. I taught her to reject
Christ on account of things like the Romish Mass! How many have thrown the baby
out with the bathwater because of this impossible and unbiblical teaching of
the Church? Everyone knows that the bread and the wine do not change their physical
properties no matter how many papal encyclicals are written to defend it! It is
because of this false doctrine that most of the science community rejects the
miracles recorded in the Bible. If a major doctrine like Transubstantiation can
be falsified then it very much weakens, no, it annihilates the miracles claimed
in the pages of Scripture – so goes the reasoning of today’s science. No
miracle of Transubstantiation, no other miracles!’
‘That’s exactly what the Reformers rescued the
Church and science along with it from!’ interjected Nundah. ‘Yes, it all
started with Luther’s Ninety Five Theses, but the battle of the Reformation
soon raged around the Doctrine of the Mass. The Bible doesn’t say that the
bread and wine undergo change. To reason that they do is to be unscientific. True
science is based on the observable, the testable. And as such it is grounded in
Scripture. Miracles are observable – the withered arm became visibly whole
again, the dead person became visibly alive, the bread and the fish became
visibly multiplied. Miracles are supposed to be observed so that the observers
may see that they are miracles and praise God!’
‘So that’s where you’re coming from?’ said Donald.
‘Science is based on faith. If the bread and wine were to undergo a change as
to their physical properties then, for what it’s worth, science could easily
verify the miracle simply because the laws of creation are fixed, and if the
bread and wine were to exhibit the least abnormality, it would immediately be
detected. In other words, all is faith that is grounded in the fixed laws of
creation. Whether the scientist is Christian or Atheist, both act first and
foremost according to faith, as the great Augustine of Hippo attests, nay, as
Scripture attests!’
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