One reason I don't believe in the real presence is because I couldn't believe it even if I wanted to. And that's because I don't know what it means. And I'm not alone in that. No one knows what it means.





I know what a human body is. I know what a male human body is. What does it mean to say a wafer or liquid (communion wine) is a human body?





I know what it would mean to consume human flesh. I know what cannibalism means. But proponents assure us that consuming the communion elements isn't cannibalism.





Okay, that tells me what it's not. But that doesn't tell me what it is?





Is the body of Jesus miniaturized, so that you eat duplicate microscopic bodies of Jesus when you take communion? I have some idea of what that means. But proponents assure me that that's not what the real presence means.





So the dogma of the real presence is a piece of apophatic theology. We're supposed to believe it, but there's no intelligible idea corresponding to the words. It's just a conceptual blank. It isn't possible to believe something if you can't form an idea of what that something is.





Christian theology allows for mystery, but it can't be mystery through-and-through. To believe what the real presence is not doesn't tell you what it is. When you peel back the label, there's nothing underneath. At best, it's labels all the way down. Proponents use word like true body and true blood, but to avert the specter of cannibalism, they strip away what makes blood bloody or bodies bodily. You chase an ever-receding will-o'-wisp.





This has nothing to do with skepticism or lack of faith. Rather, there's nothing to believe. The claim has no positive content, once we start asking what the words stand for. To avert the specter of cannibalism, proponents must abstract away anything recognizably physical.



