Real Food, Real Drink
Today I’d like to talk a little bit about Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist.
A little a while ago I was conversing via email with a non-Catholic called Gerry. We spoke briefly about the Eucharist and he graciously agreed to allow me to post some of our conversation here. Here’s what he said:
“And the mother of it all, in my opinion, is the Eucharist. Transubstantiation. Utterly abominable. Christ was a “victim” once and it was sufficient forever!
The mass is as unholy as a thing can be. We eat His flesh and drink His blood in the spiritual sense, not literal. And to think they even bow down and worship and kiss that cracker because it is (supposedly) Christ in the flesh. And God won’t judge these abominations?!” – Gerry, Email #2
I’m not going to offer a complete defense of the Eucharist here, many other more capable than I have done that already. Instead, today I’d just like to ask a couple of questions concerning one Scripture passage and then on Friday to take a brief look at Christian history.
Below is part of the “Bread of Life” discourse given by Jesus in John’s Gospel:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh….Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. – John 6:51-54
There are two main questions I’d like to raise here:
1. How did Jesus’ audience understand Him?
After giving this sermon, many people who had been following Jesus left Him. Why did they leave? It’s because they took Him at His word! They believed that He was saying that they had to actually eat His flesh and drink His blood.They took his words literally!
Souls were lost that day because they assumed Jesus wasn’t speaking metaphorically. This begs the question: if Jesus was speaking figuratively, why did He allow so many to leave Him over a something that was just a misunderstanding? Would God really be that cruel?
2. What would He have had to say if He wanted to speak literally?
When speaking with people who interpret John 6 figuratively, I propose the following thought experiment. Firstly, I assume that they are correct in their interpretation of John 6. Jesus was speaking figuratively. However, I then offer the following challenge: if you wanted to go back and alter John 6 to make Jesus speak literally about His flesh, what would you change? Or, put another way, if Jesus had wanted to speak of his flesh literally, what could He have said to convince you that he was speaking literally and not figuratively? I mean, how could His language have been any more extreme than “my flesh is real food“?
So that’s an extremely brief look at John 6. On Friday we’ll look at the Christian witness of the Eucharist in the first two centuries.
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How did the universal Church understand Jesus?
This is what St Cyril of Alexandria said against Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus:
“Proclaiming the death, according to the flesh, of the Only-begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, confessing his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, we offer the Unbloody Sacrifice in the churches, and so go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are sanctified, having received his Holy Flesh and the Precious Blood of Christ the Saviour of us all. And not as common flesh do we receive it; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the Life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. For he is the Life according to his nature as God, and when he became united to his Flesh, he made it also to be Life-giving, as also he said to us: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood.“ – Source
Look at what is affirmed here:
1) The Mass is a Sacrifice.
2) Jesus is substantially present.
3) John 6 was seen as the Eucharist.
This is the Third Ecumenical Council, which even Protestants generally say they accept. From a Protestant point of view, what was said here is unBiblical and very blasphemous and not part of true Christianity.
Thanks for the value-add Nick. There’ll be more from the Early Church Fathers on Saturday 🙂
BTW, I like your new logizomai challenge website 🙂
Hi Pilgrim,
You asked: How did Jesus’ audience understand Him?
After giving this sermon, many people who had been following Jesus left Him. Why did they leave? It’s because they took Him at His word! They believed that He was saying that they had to actually eat His flesh and drink His blood.They took his words literally! Souls were lost that day because they assumed Jesus wasn’t speaking metaphorically. This begs the question: if Jesus was speaking figuratively, why did He allow so many to leave Him over a something that was just a misunderstanding? Would God really be that cruel?
That's a fairly loaded question at the end. (e.g., When did you stop beating your wife?) As I read John, I would say it has nothing to do with God's cruelty, and everything to do with man's preference for darkness. Your assumption that Jesus would have to explain himself or correct misunderstandings needs to be justified by more than another assumption that it would be cruel of God not to have corrected their misunderstanding.
I wonder how you would read a passage such as John 12:36b-43? Clearly it is not "the will of God" (John 1:14) that everyone come to faith in Jesus. In fact, it is quite obvious that there is a sense in which God does not desire everyone's repentance (see especially John 12:40).
In any event, I think you need to offer a better argument for why Jesus would have been obliged to correct their misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, it would be perfectly in line with his practice not to have corrected their misunderstanding, especially given the way irony and misunderstanding feature in John's gospel.
MT
Hey Michael,
Sorry for the delay. My latest post, which also refers to John 6, reminded me of this article, which caused me to reread it and to come across your comment.
I don’t think the two questions are really comparable. If Jesus was speaking figuratively, it would have been pretty easy to clear up the (quite reasonable) misunderstanding… yet He does not do so. As I see it, that leaves two options: (a) He didn’t care that they misunderstood His words and were going to walk away as a result (b) They understood Him in the way He intended.
Is that really grounded in the text though? It certainly doesn’t explicitly say that their hearts were hardened or imply that they were digging their heels in. Rather, it just appears that the Rabbi said something pretty shocking and they didn’t really know how to make sense of it.
Well, if you consider the parables, Jesus always at least offered an explanation to the Twelve, even if He didn’t give it to the crow,. However, Jesus doesn’t do that in this case. He simply asks them “Are you leaving too?”
In a typical Arminian-esque fashion 🙂 However, like I said, John 6 doesn’t point to this kind of a response. The text shows that they’re just genuinely bewildered by His words.
I’m not quite sure what that reference is meant to demonstrate, but with regards to God’s will, it seems to me that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4)
In a certain sense…but that’d take a solid post to dig into it 🙂
Obliged? No. However, it is what we might expect, and it is consistent with Jesus’ behaviour elsewhere in the Bible when encountering confusion, especially in regards to the Twelve, the ones who would become the teachers in the New Covenant.