When Assumption Becomes Evidence
Part two
Michael Müller, Corpus Christi, Luther, and the circular argument for the Real Presence
Part One exposed a recurring problem in Michael Müller’s argument: he repeatedly moved beyond the words of Scripture, supplied explanations Christ never gave, attributed beliefs to the apostles that they never recorded, and then treated those additions as though they belonged to the Gospel itself. Chapter IV does not correct that problem. It enlarges it. Müller now begins using later Catholic ceremonies, historical claims, grammatical arguments, analogies from nature, personal conversion stories and assertions about the hidden purposes of God to reinforce a doctrine whose central mechanism has still not been demonstrated from Scripture.
The question throughout this examination must remain the same. It is not whether God could change bread into Christ’s body, whether God could work through a priest, whether an elaborate Eucharistic procession can inspire devotion, or whether someone can experience an overwhelming conviction during such a procession. God’s power is not disputed. Human sincerity is not disputed. The question is whether these things constitute evidence that God actually instituted the doctrine Müller says He instituted. Possibility is not proof; conviction is not revelation; ceremony is not evidence of the proposition the ceremony was created to celebrate.
That distinction becomes especially important in this chapter because Müller repeatedly reverses the normal order of proof. Instead of establishing the doctrine and then describing its devotional consequences, he often points to the devotional system that grew around the doctrine and treats that system as confirmation that the doctrine must be true.
The Good Shepherd and a historical claim that immediately goes wrong
Müller begins with Christ as the Good Shepherd and quickly moves from the Gospel into a remarkable reconstruction of divine history:
“This Good Shepherd foresaw that Luther and other ravenous wolves, would enter in and carry off many of His sheep: that they would kill them by preventing them from eating the ‘Bread of Life’ — the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in holy communion.”
He later claims that the doctrine of the Real Presence “was never so fiercely attacked by any heretic as by Luther and his companions.”
Before examining the theology, there is a serious historical problem. Martin Luther did not deny what is ordinarily meant by the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Supper. Luther’s own Small Catechism defines the sacrament as “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine.” His Smalcald Articles likewise affirm that the bread and wine in the Supper are Christ’s true body and blood while expressly rejecting the Roman explanation of transubstantiation—the claim that the natural substance of bread ceases to remain. Book of Concord
That distinction matters enormously. Müller is entitled to reject Luther’s Eucharistic theology, but he is not entitled to collapse rejection of transubstantiation into rejection of the Real Presence and then build his historical narrative upon the confusion. Luther actually attacked those who reduced the Supper to mere bread and wine, and later Lutheran confessional writings explicitly appealed to his extensive defence of the true presence of Christ’s body and blood.
The irony is considerable. Müller accuses Luther of undermining belief in the Real Presence while Luther himself wrote that the sacrament contains “the true body and blood” of Christ. What Luther rejected was the Roman philosophical explanation that the bread loses its substance while retaining its appearances. Indeed, Luther argued from Paul’s continuing use of the word bread:
“The bread which we break.”
and:
“Let him so eat of that bread.”
The historical controversy is therefore more complicated than Müller allows. There were Christians who rejected any bodily presence, certainly, but Luther himself cannot accurately be made the representative of that position. Müller’s argument begins by turning a dispute over how Christ is present into a supposed denial that Christ is present at all.
That is not a minor error. It allows Müller to portray the entire dispute as Christ and His faithful sheep on one side and men refusing Christ’s presence on the other. The actual history does not permit so simple a division.
Müller then tells the reader that Christ foresaw the coming attack and provided a remedy:
“So to prove Himself a Good Shepherd to His flock, He made use of a wonderful means to awaken their faith in the Blessed Sacrament. This means was the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi.”
He adds:
“it was instituted by divine inspiration in order that the Catholic doctrine might be strengthened…”
Again the language moves far beyond demonstrable evidence. Where does Christ say He would institute Corpus Christi to defend Eucharistic doctrine centuries later? Where does an apostle command such a feast? Where does Scripture identify its eventual institution as an act of divine inspiration?
It does not.
Even Catholic historical accounts trace the feast not to an apostolic command but to the thirteenth century. Juliana of Liège advocated a special Eucharistic feast following mystical experiences in which she believed the absence of such a feast had been revealed. The Bishop of Liège introduced it locally in the 1240s, and Pope Urban IV extended it to the universal Western Church in 1264. Catholic sources themselves describe this development. New Advent
Urban’s own bull Transiturus de hoc mundo refers to reports that God had revealed the need for such a feast to certain Catholics. That tells us what Urban believed concerning its inspiration. It does not turn a thirteenth-century private revelation into apostolic evidence for what happened at the Last Supper. Vatican
This distinction is essential. A feast instituted because people already believe in the Real Presence cannot subsequently be used as independent evidence that the Real Presence must therefore be true. It is the public celebration of a conclusion already accepted.
2 Corinthians 11:14–15, KJV:
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
Müller writes of the great procession as though its splendour itself confirms its object. He describes Christ being:
“borne in triumph through the church and open streets”
and says:
“Jesus Himself… is now, in the Blessed Sacrament, raised aloft to impart His benediction to His kneeling and adoring people.”
But “Jesus Himself” is precisely the proposition needing demonstration. If the consecrated Host is Christ substantially present, then Müller’s description follows naturally from his theology. If that premise has not yet been established, however, carrying the Host through the streets cannot prove it.
The ceremony presupposes the doctrine.
The doctrine cannot then be proved by the ceremony.
Müller describes flowers replacing the crown of thorns, magistrates replacing Roman soldiers, songs of praise replacing blasphemy and the Host being carried triumphantly where Christ had once been led to judgment. It is powerful devotional imagery. But pageantry, however beautiful, cannot establish ontology. A procession may deepen belief in those who already accept the doctrine, which is precisely what Müller says the feast was designed to do. It cannot establish that the object being carried has undergone an invisible change of substance.
In fact, Müller almost admits the actual function of the feast when he calls it:
“a most powerful means of awakening the faith in the Real Presence.”
That is not proof of the Real Presence. It is a means of strengthening belief in it.
Those are entirely different things.
The chapter then becomes even more speculative. Müller condemns lukewarm Catholics in severe language and says their condition became so dangerous that Christ effectively resorted to spiritual surgery:
“our divine Shepherd had recourse, as it were, to amputation.”
He continues:
“He permitted Protestantism, one of the greatest evils in the world, to arise.”
and then makes the extraordinary claim:
“One good, fervent Catholic is dearer to His Heart than a thousand who are lukewarm and indifferent. Protestantism was the instrument of amputation to separate the lukewarm and dead of the mystic body of Christ from the living members.”
Where did God reveal this explanation of sixteenth-century history?
There is no Scripture saying that Christ deliberately raised up the Reformation as an “amputation” through which spiritually dead members would be severed from the Roman Church. Nor is there Scripture quantifying divine affection according to Müller’s formula that one fervent Catholic is “dearer” to Christ than one thousand lukewarm Catholics. Müller may believe this to be a providential interpretation of history, but it remains Müller’s interpretation of providence.
This is another form of the same problem encountered in Part One. There Müller told us what the apostles thought without an apostolic record. Here he tells us what Christ intended in permitting enormous historical events without any revelation explaining those events in that manner.
There is a difference between saying:
Perhaps God providentially used this controversy for good
and declaring:
Christ permitted Protestantism specifically as an amputation to cut dead members from His body.
The first is theological reflection. The second presents an unknowable divine motive as though it were revealed history.
Müller then says that God permits heresies because conflict causes Catholic doctrine to be defined more clearly:
“In fighting heresies, the Church defines her own doctrines in clear terms, and sets forth solid arguments in confirmation.”
There is a genuine historical observation buried here. Doctrinal controversies often force institutions to define their positions more precisely. But definition under pressure does not prove apostolic origin. A doctrine becoming more precisely formulated because it has been challenged tells us when and why the formulation became sharper; it does not by itself establish that the apostles possessed that exact formulation.
A controversy can occasion a definition.
It cannot manufacture evidence that the definition was always apostolic.
Forty-five possible words do not prove what Christ meant by “is”
Müller returns to the words of institution and asks why Christ did not simply say “This represents My Body.” He writes:
“There are in the Syro-Chaldaic, the language our Saviour spoke, at least forty-five words which mean, to signify, to represent. Why did He not use one of those words? Why did He say — ‘This is?’”
Even if the numerical claim about forty-five possible expressions were accepted, the argument still does not follow. The fact that a speaker could employ an explicit word meaning “represents” does not mean that the verb is can never occur in figurative, symbolic or representative speech.
Scripture itself makes that impossible.
Christ says:
“I am the door.”—John 10:9, KJV
and:
“I am the true vine.”—John 15:1, KJV
Paul writes:
“that Rock was Christ.”—1 Corinthians 10:4, KJV
None of these statements requires us to conclude that Christ possesses the substance of timber, botanical vine tissue or geological stone. The verb is does not cease to function in metaphor simply because another expression meaning “represents” could theoretically have been chosen.
Even more damaging is Müller’s next assertion:
“bread bears no resemblance to the human body, and consequently never was and never can be a figure of it. I defy anyone to show me a single expression, in any language, in which bread is taken as a figure or symbol of the human body.”
Paul answers that challenge inside the very Eucharistic discussion Müller is attempting to interpret:
“For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.”—1 Corinthians 10:17, KJV
There it is.
In a Eucharistic context, Paul explicitly relates one bread to one body.
Whatever further sacramental meaning one may attribute to the passage, Müller’s absolute claim that bread “never was and never can be a figure” associated with a body cannot stand. Scripture itself uses precisely that imagery.
Müller next attempts a grammatical argument:
“our Lord does not say: This bread is My Body, but He says: ‘This is.’ Now in Greek… the demonstrative pronoun ‘This’ is neuter and cannot agree with the word ‘bread,’ which is masculine; but with the word ‘body,’ which is neuter. It is the same as if our Saviour said: ‘My Body is this.’ Now that which is our Lord’s Body, cannot at the same time be a piece of bread.”
The Greek text does indeed use the neuter demonstrative touto with the neuter noun sōma, “body.” The Greek text of Matthew 26:26 reads essentially, “Take, eat; this is my body.” NETBible
What does not follow is Müller’s theological conclusion that grammatical gender proves the substance of bread has ceased to exist.
The pronoun “this” is functioning demonstratively; it points to what Christ has just taken, blessed, broken and given. The narrative itself has identified that object as bread. A pronoun’s grammatical gender within the predicate statement is not an ontological analysis of what substance remains after the sentence has been spoken. Greek grammar does not contain a hidden doctrine saying, Because touto is neuter, bread has ceased to exist.
Paul makes the danger of that inference obvious because after recounting the institution he continues to write:
“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup…”—1 Corinthians 11:26, KJV
and then:
“But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.”—1 Corinthians 11:28, KJV
If the grammatical gender of touto proved that bread had ontologically disappeared, Paul’s continuing description of the consecrated element as bread becomes exceedingly difficult to explain.
Luther noticed precisely this point while simultaneously affirming Christ’s body and blood in the Supper. He rejected the Roman claim that bread must lose its natural substance because Paul continued to call it bread.
The dispute therefore cannot be settled by the gender of a Greek demonstrative pronoun. Müller is attempting to make grammar carry a metaphysical conclusion that grammar does not establish.
Müller continues:
“Our divine Saviour came on earth to put an end to the figures of the Old Law and to give us instead their reality.”
From this he reasons—a significant step, because human reasoning is not itself revelation; that Christ could not have left bread and wine as figures because this would merely substitute “one figure for another.”
But fulfillment of Old Testament types does not mean that the New Covenant contains no signs, memorials, figures or symbolic actions. Scripture itself says otherwise.
The Lord’s Supper is expressly commanded:
“this do in remembrance of me.”—Luke 22:19, KJV
Paul says the repeated eating and drinking:
“do shew the Lord’s death till he come.”—1 Corinthians 11:26, KJV
Baptism itself is described in the KJV with figurative language:
“The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us…”—1 Peter 3:21, KJV
The New Covenant does not cease to contain visible acts carrying spiritual meaning merely because earlier types have been fulfilled.
More fundamentally, Müller again establishes a false choice. The alternatives need not be:
either the bread is nothing but a meaningless piece of food, or its entire substance becomes Christ.
Paul’s word is communion:
“The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”—1 Corinthians 10:16, KJV
Whatever one understands that communion to involve, Scripture itself provides a richer category than Müller’s repeated caricature of “only a piece of bread.”
Müller next argues:
“to say that our Saviour gave us only a piece of bread, is to assert that a piece of bread is the cause of our redemption.”
Regarding the cup he makes the parallel claim:
“If it was only wine, then a cup of wine was the cause of our Redemption.”
This does not follow at all.
A symbol or sacramental sign can refer to the reality represented without becoming the causal agent of that reality. Paul writes:
“that Rock was Christ.”—1 Corinthians 10:4, KJV
No one therefore concludes that a geological rock became incarnate or accomplished redemption.
Christ is called:
“Christ our passover”—1 Corinthians 5:7, KJV
but this does not turn every Passover lamb retrospectively into the ontological substance of Christ.
Most damaging of all to Müller’s rigid literalism is Christ’s own statement about the cup:
“This cup is the new testament in my blood.”—Luke 22:20, KJV
If Müller’s rule were applied mechanically, the physical cup would literally be the New Testament.
Yet no one believes that the drinking vessel itself underwent an ontological transformation into a covenant.
“This cup” plainly employs metonymy: the vessel stands for what it contains and for the covenantal act associated with it. The very institution narrative Müller insists must contain no figurative expression contains language that cannot reasonably be interpreted according to his own rule.
This leads into one of the weakest arguments in the chapter. Müller says:
“In a law, the words must be always clear, precise, expressive, without metaphor, or figure of any kind, and must always be taken in their natural and literal meaning.”
Therefore, he concludes, “This is My Body” must be literal because “Do this” makes the institution a law.
But Müller has invented a rule of legal interpretation and then imposed it upon Scripture.
Biblical covenants repeatedly employ signs and symbolic acts. Circumcision is called:
“a token of the covenant”—Genesis 17:11, KJV.
The rainbow is given as:
“a token of a covenant”—Genesis 9:13, KJV.
At Passover God says of the blood:
“the blood shall be to you for a token”—Exodus 12:13, KJV.
The presence of clear covenant obligations does not abolish symbolism. A covenant may be binding and its signs profoundly meaningful without every statement concerning the sign becoming a literal identity of substance.
Müller’s own text defeats his supposed rule because Christ says:
“This cup is the new testament in my blood.”
If a “testament” permits no figure or metonymy, then Müller must explain how a cup can literally be a covenant.
He cannot have it both ways. He cannot insist that covenantal language excludes all figurative expression when the covenant formula itself contains an obvious figure.
The irony becomes extraordinary when Müller compares the Last Supper with a legal will. He writes:
“It would be a grievous crime to add to it any gloss or explanation.”
He insists:
“No one has the right to change it, or to reform it. Every word is respected.”
That principle is excellent.
It should now be applied to Müller.
Within the same argument Müller tells the reader that Christ’s testament effectively says:
“I bequeath to you My body and My blood.”
Christ never uttered those words.
Müller then writes:
“Thou hast promised with a solemn oath to give us Thy body and blood in Thy testament…”
Again, that is Müller’s theological construction, not a quotation from the institution narrative.
This is the precise problem Part One uncovered. Müller condemns others for supposedly altering Christ’s testament while repeatedly inserting explanatory language into it himself. He has already changed:
“Do this in remembrance of me”
into:
“to you I give the power… to change bread and wine into My Flesh and Blood.”
He has inserted “priests” into the scene, described a metaphysical change Christ never describes, and reconstructed apostolic beliefs never recorded in Scripture. He now tells his readers that adding “a single word” to a human will is punishable by law and asks whether altering Christ’s testament should not be punished by God.
The question is far more uncomfortable for Müller than he seems to realize.
If Christ’s words must be guarded so jealously, then no theologian should place words inside His testament that He never spoke.
The most serious danger is not asking whether a later interpretation has been proved. The danger is attaching later explanation to Christ’s words and then presenting the combined statement as though Christ Himself delivered the whole thing.
Müller’s appeal to 1 Corinthians 10–11 deserves more careful treatment because this is much stronger evidence than his imagined speeches or processions. Paul unquestionably treats the Lord’s Supper with profound seriousness. He writes:
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”—1 Corinthians 10:16, KJV
And regarding unworthy reception:
“whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”—1 Corinthians 11:27, KJV
Müller reasonably asks how someone can become guilty of the body and blood of Christ if the Supper is treated casually or profanely. That is a serious question, and the passage certainly refuses any interpretation that makes the Supper trivial.
What it does not do is explain the mechanism as transubstantiation.
Paul never says:
The substance of bread has ceased.
He never says:
The accidents alone remain.
He never says:
A priest has changed the elements by consecratory power.
He never says:
Christ exists entire beneath every divided particle.
In fact, throughout the warning Paul continues calling the element bread:
“eat this bread” — verse 26“eat of that bread” — verse 28.
The passage establishes sacred participation and grave accountability. It does not automatically establish the later Roman philosophical explanation of how that participation works.
That distinction is essential to a fair argument. One need not reduce Paul’s language to “just a snack” in order to reject Müller’s conclusion. Müller repeatedly pretends the only alternatives are Roman transubstantiation or meaningless bread. Paul himself gives another category: communion of the body of Christ.
Müller also says Paul was personally instructed by the risen Christ “concerning the doctrine of the Eucharist.” Paul certainly writes:
“For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you…”—1 Corinthians 11:23, KJV
But Müller again stretches the evidence. Paul says he received the institution tradition from the Lord; he does not then supply Müller’s doctrine of species, substance, sacerdotal power or transubstantiation. Müller cannot place those later definitions inside the phrase “received of the Lord” without proving that Paul received them.
Faith is not the suspension of evidence
Müller next answers objections based upon reason and the senses. This section initially sounds impressive because he compares transubstantiation with unseen truths such as God, the Trinity, heaven, grace and the soul. His argument is essentially that if Christians believe only what their senses can detect, they must deny the entire supernatural order.
But this again attacks the wrong objection.
Biblical faith does not mean believing only what can be seen. Neither does biblical faith mean accepting any invisible proposition merely because somebody says God could do it.
Faith rests upon what God has revealed.
The Trinity cannot be seen with the eyes, but Christians believe the doctrine because Scripture supplies the revelation from which it is derived. Resurrection cannot be reproduced in a laboratory, but Scripture testifies to it. Angels are ordinarily invisible, yet Scripture explicitly identifies them.
The relevant question concerning transubstantiation is therefore not:
Can my eyes see it?
The question is:
Where has God revealed that it happened?
Müller repeatedly substitutes the first question for the second.
A person may believe every miracle Christ actually performed while declining to believe a miracle that no inspired writer says occurred. That is not rationalism; it is the refusal to confuse divine possibility with divine testimony.
Müller then introduces inherited guilt and baptism as another analogy. He asks how a child born in his own day can be:
“charged with the crime of Adam’s disobedience”
and insists that one must accept this despite its apparent conflict with ordinary reasoning.
But this only compounds the problem because Müller is now using another disputed theological formulation to prove transubstantiation.
Scripture certainly teaches catastrophic consequences flowing from Adam’s sin, but Müller’s formulation that an infant is personally “charged with the crime” of Adam is not something he can simply assume as an uncontested premise. Ezekiel states:
“The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”—Ezekiel 18:20, KJV
Whatever theological synthesis someone subsequently constructs between Ezekiel, Romans 5 and other passages, Müller cannot use one complicated doctrinal question as self-evident proof of another.
A disputed doctrine does not become evidence merely because it is already accepted within the same theological system.
Müller then turns to nature:
“a certain kind of transubstantiation, or change of one substance into another, is going on continually in nature.”
He points to food becoming flesh and blood, the creation of Adam from the earth and Eve from Adam’s rib. He concludes:
“God has wished thereby to prepare us for the miraculous and infinitely more stupendous change of substance which is wrought in the Holy Eucharist.”
There are two different arguments concealed here.
The first is perfectly reasonable: God is capable of changing matter.
No Christian needs persuading of that.
The second is entirely unsupported: therefore God intended ordinary natural transformations as preparation for belief in transubstantiation.
Where does Scripture say that?
Nowhere.
Moreover, Müller is using the word transubstantiation so broadly that it ceases to describe the very doctrine he is defending. Digestion does not leave the outward accidents of bread intact while the bread’s substance becomes a human body. The food is physically broken down, altered, absorbed and incorporated. Its appearances do not remain unchanged on a plate while its substance secretly becomes flesh.
Likewise the forming of Adam from the dust is presented in Genesis as an act of divine creation:
“the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground”—Genesis 2:7, KJV.
The text does not say that God preserved all the outward appearances of dust while its underlying substance invisibly became Adam.
Müller has taken the general concept things can change and given every such change the technical name transubstantiation. But proving that God changes things does not prove the specific Roman doctrine that the underlying substance disappears while the sensible properties of bread and wine remain.
The analogy therefore proves far less than Müller requires.
Müller then reaches one of the most revealing comparisons in the chapter:
“Moses changed a rod into a serpent and a serpent into a rod; he changed water into blood, and blood into water, by the power of the word of God. If a man in the Old Law changed water into blood by the power of the word of God, cannot a man in the New Law change wine into blood by the same power — the word of God?”
Again, the question is framed around ability when the actual issue is authorization.
God could certainly empower a man to perform such an act.
But where did He do so?
When Moses performs signs, Scripture gives explicit divine authorization. God tells him what sign is to occur and what action is to be performed. In the plague of blood, God specifically commands Moses concerning the act, and Moses is instructed to direct Aaron to stretch the rod over the waters. The miraculous sign does not arise because Moses possesses an independent priestly power to convert substances at will.
This actually makes Müller’s analogy self-defeating.
With Moses we can point to the verse in which God commands the miracle.
Where is the corresponding verse in which Christ says to Christian priests:
I give you power to change the substance of bread into My body and wine into My blood?
Müller attempted to manufacture precisely that sentence in the previous chapter by expanding:
“Do this in remembrance of me”
into:
“to you I give the power… to change bread and wine into My Flesh and Blood.”
But that expanded sentence was Müller's explanation, not Christ’s.
Moses therefore does not solve Müller’s problem. Moses exposes it. The Old Testament miracle comes with explicit divine authorization. The sacerdotal power Müller compares with it does not.
Coal, gas and a congregation of frogs
Müller then offers an extraordinary nineteenth-century physical analogy involving coal passing through a gasometer. He says the same piece of matter becomes hard, liquid, gaseous, visible, invisible, heavy, light, opaque and transparent, and asks why Christ’s glorified body could not similarly possess whatever form of existence He chooses.
Once again: Christ’s ability is not in question.
More importantly, the analogy does not establish the doctrine. Matter undergoing physical or chemical changes at different stages does not demonstrate that one underlying substance can disappear while all the sensory properties of another substance remain exactly as before. Nor are Müller’s supposed “contradictory properties” possessed simultaneously in the same respect. The coal or its products possess different properties under different physical conditions.
Even if the analogy were perfect, it would establish only possibility.
It would not establish institution.
Müller then abandons argument for ridicule, comparing rejection of transubstantiation to:
“a congregation of frogs” denying “algebra, astronomy, or photography.”
This follows the same rhetorical pattern already seen throughout the book. Müller repeatedly labels his opponents blind, perverse, absurd, blasphemous, foolish or animal-like precisely where the contested conclusion has not been demonstrated.
Ridicule cannot close an evidentiary gap.
The fact that a frog does not understand algebra has no bearing whatsoever upon whether Christ instituted transubstantiation.
Müller creates another theological scheme and calls its conclusion necessary
The chapter then presents a four-stage history of humanity. Müller describes a patriarchal state, a Jewish state of figures and veils, a Christian state in which God is hidden but really present, and the final heavenly state in which God is seen face to face. From this scheme he reasons:
“as the New Law is the fulfilment and perfection of the Old, God must still remain, really present on earth in the midst of His chosen people.”
Then comes the conclusion:
“This is Catholic belief. We believe most firmly that the Lord of heaven and earth… dwells amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament on our altars.”
But the word must conceals another leap.
The New Testament certainly teaches that God remains present among His people. What Müller has not shown is that this truth requires transubstantiation.
The apostles explicitly describe God’s presence in other ways:
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”—1 Corinthians 3:16, KJV
Paul similarly teaches that believers are:
“builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”—Ephesians 2:22, KJV
Christ Himself says:
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”—Matthew 18:20, KJV
Therefore the premise God remains with His people does not yield the conclusion therefore Christ’s bodily substance must exist beneath Eucharistic appearances on Catholic altars.
Scripture expressly supplies divine presence through the Holy Ghost and within the gathered body of believers. Müller simply decides that the progress from Old Covenant to New requires a hidden substantial presence in the Host.
Again, that is theology added between premise and conclusion.
Müller now states:
“This was the belief and the doctrine of the Apostles, of all the Councils and Fathers of the Church.”
That is an enormous historical proposition.
It requires enormous evidence.
Yet within the chapter Müller has still not produced an apostle explaining transubstantiation. He has not produced an apostolic statement that bread ceases substantially to be bread. He has not produced an apostolic statement conferring ontological power upon priests. He has not produced an apostolic statement describing Christ’s entire body, blood, soul and divinity beneath every particle.
Saying “the Apostles believed it” cannot substitute for showing where the apostles taught it.
Nor can “all the Councils and Fathers” solve that problem. Later testimony may be historically important. It may demonstrate how certain Christians eventually interpreted the Supper. But a fourth-century writer cannot tell us what an apostle taught unless that apostolic teaching can itself be traced.
Ancient repetition is not the same thing as apostolic evidence.
Müller then appeals to sacrifice and martyrdom:
“hundreds of popes and bishops and priests fought, and laid down their lives”
and says millions of Catholics would still sacrifice their lives for the doctrine.
That demonstrates conviction.
It does not demonstrate truth.
History contains innumerable examples of human beings suffering and dying for beliefs they sincerely regarded as true. Sincerity tells us something important about the believer. It tells us nothing conclusive about the objective truth of the proposition believed.
A doctrine does not become apostolic because someone is willing to die for it.
Marie Bernard Bauer: overwhelming conviction is still not revelation
Müller concludes this section with the conversion story of Marie Bernard Bauer. Bauer, raised Jewish, had Catholic influences, wore a medal of the Immaculate Conception at the request of Catholics close to him, received instruction in the Catholic faith, and later watched a Corpus Christi procession from a balcony. Müller tells us that when the Host passed beneath him:
“The change at that moment was lightning-like.”
He says Bauer experienced:
“a conviction of the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament so absolute that it made itself felt throughout his whole being.”
According to Müller, Bauer felt he saw the Lord in the sacrament “more distinctly” than if Christ had appeared visibly.
There is no reason to deny that Bauer experienced an overwhelming religious conviction. But an overwhelming conviction is not an independent verification of transubstantiation. Neither did centuries of belief make the Donation of Constantine authentic, nor does calling Constantine’s vision Christian settle the awkward evidence surrounding Apollo and the solar imagery of his earlier career. A claim does not become true because enough people believe it—or because an institution later builds theology around it.
The sequence itself matters. Bauer had already encountered Catholic influence, Catholic instruction and Catholic Eucharistic teaching. He was watching the central Catholic procession designed specifically to dramatize belief in the Real Presence. He then experienced an intense conviction consistent with that theological environment.
This may be evidence concerning Bauer’s conversion.
It is not evidence concerning the chemical, physical or metaphysical state of the Host.
Müller again moves from subjective certainty to objective doctrine. But certainty can be absolute in the person experiencing it and still require external grounds before it can bind the conscience of somebody else.
A man saying I became completely convinced that this is true does not establish:
Therefore Christ instituted transubstantiation.
It establishes that the man became completely convinced.
Those propositions must not be confused.
The chapter repeatedly proves everything except the thing it needs to prove
By the end of Chapter IV, Müller has accumulated an extraordinary range of arguments. Christ supposedly instituted Corpus Christi through divine providence centuries after the apostles; a magnificent procession reinforces Eucharistic belief; Protestantism is portrayed as a divinely permitted amputation of dead members; Luther is made into the great destroyer of Real Presence despite Luther’s explicit confession of Christ’s true body and blood in the Supper; the verb “is” is made incapable of metaphor; bread is declared incapable of representing a body despite Paul writing “one bread, and one body”; Greek grammatical gender is made to carry an ontological doctrine; legal and testamentary language is said to exclude figures even though Christ Himself says “This cup is the new testament”; Paul’s warning against unworthy reception is expanded into transubstantiation; invisible doctrines such as the Trinity are invoked to silence questions about an invisible Eucharistic change; digestion and creation are renamed “transubstantiation”; Moses’ explicitly commanded miracles are transferred by analogy to a priestly power for which no equivalent command has been produced; coal and gas are offered as physical illustrations; and finally a nineteenth-century convert’s personal experience is presented as confirmation.
What remains missing is the one thing that would render most of these arguments unnecessary:
a scriptural statement that actually says what Müller says happened.
Where does Christ say:
The substance of bread shall cease to exist?
Where does He say:
Only the appearances shall remain?
Where does He say:
I confer upon priests power to effect this change?
Where does an apostle explain that this is what “Do this” means?
Where does Paul call the Christian table a sacrificial altar upon which Christ is offered by a sacerdotal minister?
Where does Scripture teach that every particle contains the whole body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ?
These are not sceptical tricks. They are the propositions Müller requires his reader to believe.
And they still have not been produced from Scripture.
Perhaps the most remarkable sentence in this entire chapter is Müller’s own statement concerning a human testament:
“It would be a grievous crime to add to it any gloss or explanation.”
That principle should govern this entire investigation.
If Müller believes it would be a grave offence to alter the final testament of an ordinary man, then how much more carefully should the words of Christ be guarded?
Yet Müller repeatedly inserts into Christ’s words the very “gloss or explanation” he warns others never to add. He rewrites “Do this in remembrance of me” as a grant of power to transform substances; he turns “This is my body” into an invisible philosophical mechanism; he turns “This cup is the new testament” into an argument that testamentary language can contain no figure while the word cup itself is functioning figuratively; and he condemns those who refuse his interpretation as though they were refusing Christ rather than refusing Müller’s additions.
That is the central issue of Part Two. Faith does not mean believing whatever a theologian tells us God could have done. Faith means believing what God has revealed. God could transform bread. God could place Christ bodily in a thousand places. God could empower a priest to perform a miracle. God could institute a feast thirteen centuries after Christ. None of those possibilities proves that He actually did those things.
For that we require revelation.
The deeper we read Müller, the more the argument seems to depend not upon a clear apostolic statement but upon accumulated inference: ceremony confirms tradition, tradition interprets Scripture, later authority confirms tradition, personal experience confirms authority, and anyone who asks for the missing apostolic statement is accused of blindness or blasphemy.
But no amount of accumulated confidence can replace the missing words.
Christ’s power is unlimited. Man’s authority to say what Christ instituted is not.
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