No, that is not at all what happened. Finding Christ in the Eucharist and kneeling before Him was a complete surprise that did not match any prior experience.
in Scripture, we are not given over to a model of blind submission to human authority
Correct. If any Protestant read the Holy Scripture for what is written, rather than seeking what part of the faith to amputate, he would come to Christ, too:
"Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me."This is not a "human authority" speaking; a human authority instead is trying to rationalize this as symbolic. Run from these teachers: they teach death.
I have a response, but must leave for work. Talk to you later.
So now you disclaim volition? You made no decision to become a Christian? You just woke up one day and you *were* one?
rather than seeking what part of the faith to amputate
Here you attribute motive where you have no evidence of the same. As we have discussed before, every Scripture you have presented as an alleged proof text for a uniquely Roman Catholic doctrine is able to be read under normal Protestant interpretation. No amputation is necessary, nor is any such thing desired. You wrong us to say we have such evil intent. I promise you we do not.
For example, regarding the Eucharist, no human authority, other than ordinary God-given reason, is necessary to read a word in its ordinary meaning and context. The passage you cite does not occur in a vacuum. but on the heels of miraculously feeding the multitudes. It is in that setting that Jesus begins to redirect their attention from mere physical food to spiritual food, by the most striking and seemingly impossible language:
John 6:53 Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.
How do we know this is spiritual food and NOT corporeal? Because Jesus, the only authority needed for this question, clearly says so:
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
This teaching, directly from the inspired word of God, is contrary to the bizarre and late-appearing novelty doctrine of transubstantiation. To accept transubstantiation is to amputate the logical exclusion Jesus is creating here, as he not only says he should be understood spiritually, but He specifically excludes corporeality as part of the answer. So there can be no clever synthesis, not part spiritual and part corporeal, no Aristotelian game of accidents and substance, both of which are mere excuses for retaining corporeality where Jesus specifically excluded it.
How then could this be done, this eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, if not in some corporeal way? This is exactly the same point of confusion experienced by His audience in those moments when he first said these words. Yet this confusion is inexcusable, because Jesus had already established how, by spiritual means, we may find life in him:
John 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.
Could it really be that simple? Believing in Him? Impossible. There must be something more to it. Yet coming to belief in Jesus is no small thing, for earlier in the same passage, Jesus has said it is not possible to believe in Him without being drawn to Him by God Himself:
John 6:44-45 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.
But what about when He says, This is my body, this is my blood? (Matthew 26:26,28 et al). Again, no greater authority is needed than the common sense God gave us all:
Joh 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
When Jesus says he is the door, does he invoke Aristotelian categories of accidence and substance? Or would any ordinary reader understand his words as figurative? Wouldn’t throwing transubstantiation in here be ludicrous? Yes, it would. Just as it would be in Matthew 26:26 & 28.
Instead, it now becomes clear that “eime”, the verb of being (“to be”), can have legitimate figurative use, which no less an authority that Jesus Himself has demonstrated by example.
For another excellent example, look at Matthew 13:38:
“The field (’agros’) is (’estin’) the world (’kosmos’); the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;”
Estin is the same word (“to be”) in the same form (“is”) as the passage in Matthew 26:26 & 28.
This is a particularly good case, because it is impossible to take the subject of the analogy as literal; it is a parable, by definition establishing a figurative or symbolic relationship between the analogue and the underlying reality it describes.
To put a finer point on it, Jesus cannot here be teaching that one literal farmer’s field really is the entirety of the world. The farm field can only be a representation because it lacks all the literal the attributes of the kosmos as a whole. It is merely a tool used to teach the disciples about the spiritual dimension to Gospel evangelism. Jesus selected a part of the kosmos to represent the whole, and said part was chosen for its ability to teach, not because it had some Dr. Who Tardis-like capacity to fully contain the reality of the kosmos.
And various key fathers also testify to this figurative sense:
But at the present time, after that the proof of our liberty has shone forth so clearly in the resurrection of our Lord, we are not oppressed with the heavy burden of attending even to those signs which we now understand, but our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many, and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being misled by error.
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book III, Chapter 9.
See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm for full context.
Is Augustine a teacher of death? Should you also run away from him? But what does he say it is to confuse the sign for the thing it signifies? Weakness.
Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure.Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 40
See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03124.htm for full context
Is Tertullian outside the camp as well? I should hope not. And there are many others. But it is late and I have to wrap this up for now.
So I’m asking you, with all sincerity, please reconsider your position. Protestants came by this figurative sense of the Eucharist honestly, from ancient and reliable sources. We didn’t invent it, and we were definitely not the first to have this understanding concerning the Eucharist. Its figurative quality emerges very naturally from the teaching of Jesus Himself, our mutually agreed highest authority, and does not at all diminish what He has done for us, but rather magnifies it to the greatest glory.
It grieves me to think we have so much in common, and yet must part ways on this, all because Trent anathematized dissent from the Aristotelian alchemy of Aquinas, a formulation that has no basis in Scripture, nor in any of the early fathers, but is actually refuted by the same. Real sigh …