"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
“The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
– G.K. Chesterton
The article Depends what you mean by “good”… first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
In my random atheist encounter last weekend we spent some time talking about faith and science. I spoke about the limits of science (the material world) and the philosophical presuppositions which science must assume to be true:
1. A world outside our minds must exist
2. We must be able to attain true knowledge of this world
3. Logic must be operable
4. Our sense must give us trustworthy data
5. Nature must be orderly and constant
(I didn’t make up this list, I read it a while ago on Soul Device)
On Saturday evening preparing for the glory of Sunday, Arsenius would turn his back on the sun and stretch out his hands in prayer towards heaven till once again the sun shone on his face
– Sayings, Aresnius 30
The article Waiting for the glory of Sunday first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
So bad…so, so bad…and more than a little racist… Why do Christians try so hard to be cool?
The article Rappin’ for Jesus first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
On Thursday I wrote a little bit about John 6 and the Eucharist in response to a conversation I had with Gerry, a non-Catholic. Today I would to take a very brief tour of the belief in the Eucharist in Early Church.
The problem with saying that Jesus is only symbolically present in the Eucharist is that apparently nobody told this to the Early Church. Below are a collection of quotations from Christian documents of the 1st and 2nd Century. These demonstrate without a doubt that Christians have, from the earliest times, understood the Eucharist to be a sacrifice performed by priests in which Jesus Christ is truly present:
The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist will be in tonight’s season finale of American Bible Challenge. You can catch it on the Game Show Network at 9pm Eastern:
The article Who says Catholics don’t know their Bible? first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
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.
The article Real Food, Real Drink first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net