Posted on 03/28/2015 7:24:04 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, John 6:51-58
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. […] Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. […] Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Most, though not all, Protestants wiggle and fidget as they come to the Bread of Life Discourse in the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John; and they have good reason to be disturbed! Our Savior speaks quite plainly of the Eucharist when he states, For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed (John 6:56).
The common solution for many modern Protestants (following the path set out by Zwingli) is to call upon the words which follow toward the end of the discourse: It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life (John 6:64). Appealing to these words, which reference the spirit as opposed to the flesh, these Protestants will claim that the Bread of Life Discourse is an extended metaphor.
There are four reasons why our Savior’s words in John 6:26-72 cannot be understood as an analogy or a metaphor. Among these, the second is perhaps rather unknown. [all four reasons come from Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma]
1) From the nature of the words used One specially notes the realistic expressions “true” and “real” referring to the “food” and “drink” which is our Savior’s body and blood. Likewise, we note the concrete expressions employed to denote the reception of this Sacrament: the Greek word commonly translated as “to eat” is more literally “to gnaw upon” or “to chew”. The bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. […] For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed (John 6:52,56).
2) From the biblical usage of the figure “to eat one’s flesh” In the language of the Bible, to eat another’s flesh or to drink his blood in the metaphorical sense is to persecute him, to bring him to ruin and to destroy him. Thus, if Christ tells the Jews that we all must eat his flesh and drink his blood, and if he means this metaphorically, we would be led to conclude (following the witness of Sacred Scripture) that our Savior intends us to reject him.
Consider how the metaphor of eating flesh and drinking blood functions in the Scriptures: Whilst the wicked draw near against me, to eat my flesh. My enemies that trouble me, have themselves been weakened, and have fallen. (Psalm 26:2)
By the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is troubled, and the people shall be as fuel for the fire: no man shall spare his brother. And he shall turn to the right hand, and shall be hungry: and shall eat on the left hand, and shall not be filled: every one shall eat the flesh of his own arm: Manasses Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasses, and they together shall be against Juda. (Isaiah 9:19-20)
And I will feed thy enemies with their own flesh: and they shall be made drunk with their own blood, as with new wine. (Isaiah 49:26)
You that hate good, and love evil: that violently pluck off their skins from them, and their flesh from their bones? Who have eaten the flesh of my people, and have flayed their skin from off them: and have broken, and chopped their bones as for the kettle, and as flesh in the midst of the pot. (Micah 3:2-3)
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. […] Your gold and silver is cankered: and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh like fire. (James 5:1,3)
And the ten horns which thou sawest in the beast: these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. (Revelation 17:16)
3) From the reactions of the listeners The listeners understand Jesus to be speaking in literal truth – How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (John 6:53) – and Jesus does not correct them, as he had done previously in the case of misunderstandings (cf. John 3,3; 4:32; Matthew 16:6). In this case, on the contrary, he confirms their literal acceptance of his words at the rist that his disciples and his apostles might desert him. Indeed, our Savior is willing to test his apostles on this point: Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? (John 6:68)
4) From the interpretation of the Fathers and the Magisterium Finally, we can recognize that this text is not to be understood as a metaphor from the interpretation of the Fathers, who ordinarily take the last section of the Bread of Life Discourse as referring to the Eucharist (e.g. St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexander, St. Augustine, et al.). Moreover, the interpretation of the Council of Trent confirms this. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life In John 6:64, Jesus does not reject the literal interpretation, but only the grossly sensual interpretation. Our Savior insists that the Eucharist is spirit and life insofar as it gives life. For the body we receive in the Eucharist is not dead flesh, but profits us unto eternal life.
So St. Augustine says, “This Flesh alone profiteth not, but let the Spirit be joined to the Flesh, and It profiteth greatly. For if the Flesh profiteth nothing, the Word would not have become Flesh.” The same (lib. 10, de. Civit. Dei) says, “The Flesh of itself cleanseth not, but through the Word by which it hath been assumed.” And S. Cyril, “If the Flesh be understood alone, it is by no means able to quicken, forasmuch as it needs a Quickener, but because it is conjoined with the life-giving Word, the whole is made life-giving. For the Word of God being joined to the corruptible nature does not lose Its virtue, but the Flesh itself is lifted up to the power of the higher nature. Therefore, although the nature of flesh as flesh cannot quicken; still it doth this because it hath received the whole operation of the Word.”
Hence, we do well to pray: May the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ guard my soul unto everlasting life. Amen.
What was it specifically, in the article that you felt denigrates everyone else?
So, if this is correct, then He can be killed again, correct? Flesh and Blood deteriorates and grows old and dies. Flesh and Blood do poorly against a bullet. You have portrayed a weak Jesus. I do not.
How about because he also said “I am the door”.
How about that for starters. Do Catholics wiggle and fidget when Protestants quote verses they don't like or Catholic History they'd just as soon forget?
According to whose authority? Why do you say that?
But he ate food with them. He talked with them, walked with them on the Road to Emmaus.
That takes a physical body.
But, yes, he was able to pass through locked doors, remember he is still God.
Catholics must also believe He is stone as well.
Are you unable able to discuss the article on it’s merits?
By whose authority did you use to say it was an excellent article?
I find no merits in the article. If there were any, I'd certainly give it a go.
You want the real truth?
Today Protestantism and Episcopalianism as are many mainline Evangelical denominations in a state of evil rut by claiming scriptural warrant for the ordination of married gays and lesbian pastors. But the rot had its inception from the very beginnings of Protestantism where it soon collapsed into warring offshoots and factions.
Thus one can hopscotch across town through half a dozen corner street Bible-Christian churches: a First Baptist; a First AME; a First Presbyterian; a First Methodist; a First Unitarian; a first Emmanuel (Please no “Seconds”) until one settles in a congregation that is more in line with her/her interpretations of scripture. In short, every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their “milkmaid” (a term used by Luther himself) gets a freelance hand to know the Word of God and ironically from a Bible whose canonical texts were first infallibly authenticated under Petrine authority in the Synod of Rome AD 382.
Protestants should at least concede a point which Martin Luther, their religion’s founder, also conceded, namely, that the Catholic Church safeguarded and identified the Bible: He wrote: “We are obliged to yield many things to the Catholics – (for example), that they possess the Word of God, which we received from them; otherwise, we should have known nothing at all about it.”
That infallibility and the authority to teach ONE truth as Christ commanded in His Great Commission to “go Forth and TEACH all nations” This is to teach ONE truth and assured to Peter:
“And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”
However, here in the US and elsewhere we have low-information shallow Bible Christians flooding the pews of the Joel Osteens and Moonies of this world, all lapping up the vapid rubbish spewed by these charlatans while they make a nice living for themselves and their families. We have seen this with the Rev. Schullers and Billy Grahams preaching their own vapid nonsense.
For example, Easter Service becomes a sunrise picnic on the beach holding hands and doing an early morning Kumabaya. At the times Protestant Churches borrow Catholic ritual like Stations of the Cross and imitate the display of the Creche, a practice started by St. Francis.
In the meantime while prominent Protestant theologians convert to Catholicism, shallow Bible Christians are left stranded in the pews while the more educated among them converted to Catholicism. A few examples of note will suffice.
1. Ulf Ekman, the founder of Scandinavia’s biggest Bible school, with a congregation of some 4000 individuals, converted to Catholicism because his theological inquiry confirmed for him the indispensability of the Catholic sacraments.
2. Francis J. Beckwith, a “born-again” evangelical, a tenured professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex, was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians resigned and joined the Catholic Church. One blogger likened it to Hulk Hogan’s defection from the World Wrestling Federation to the rival World Championship Wrestling league.
3. Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, was a pre-eminent Lutheran theologian in America. He knew his Bible-text and history like no other Protestant. When he converted to Catholicism he said, “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time.”
The Bible Christians here on FR are reduced playing neophyte “internet” theologian by telling us how Paul tried to “correct” Peter etc., or this or that, or attacking the Eucharist, or the Sacraments; or Marian devotions with incoherent and out-of-context reference to scripture.
This is the shallow nonsense of Bible Christians and why now scores of Protestant theologians have decamped at great personal sacrifice and consider Protestantism awash in sheer rubbish.
Thus the early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes,
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
Don’t take my word. Here’s one original source. St. Irenaeus:
“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
St. Paul in his letters also warns the faithful to hold fast to the tradition they received: “We command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to avoid any brother who wanders from the straight path and does not follow the tradition you received from us” (2 Th 3, 6).
In short, there is Catholicism and every other form of heretical belief under the sun.
For a comprehensive treatise on the Bible and its various Protestant variations for those seeking an escape from the shallow prison of Bible Christians,
See Graham Green and a convert to Catholicism:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm
Nope, not when they make up easily dismissed lies and falsehoods, mislead, obfuscate or ignore logic and reason. Nope no fidgeting aTall.
It is a glorified body but a body nonetheless. It was the same body (flesh and blood) that was in the tomb that was resurrected. If not, why was the tomb empty? It is a body that ate food, contains the nail marks and can be touched by others. I am unaware of anyone who believes in the Resurrection who denied that the resurrected Body was flesh and blood.
What did you expect Him to do? He wished to meet with them. He did so in a way that was not disconcerting to them and wanted them to recognize Him. What other way would you expect for Him to do this??? Catholics make so much out of so little and miss the MAIN message. Sort of like straining for a gnat and swallowing a camel, but I guess that was literal as well.
Then why do you feel compelled to make such comments?
“Romanists can’t write an article about their interpretations without at the exact same time denigrating everyone else.”
The first word you typed, “Romanists”, is a denigration of Catholics.
There is so many half truths to that posting it would take far more time to unknot it than I wish to invest.
I feel compelled to meet error with truth. The better question is why do you feel compelled to accept Salvations assessment of the article and reject mine?
Yes, when the Books in the Bible were authenticated as the true written Word of God based upon infallible Petrine Authority in AD 382 in he Synod of Rome (these books did not fall from the skies and self assemble themselves), apparently up until the Protestant Reformation ELEVEN centuries later, the Catholic Church’s teaching was less than infallible. Somehow that infallibility for teaching ONE truth suddenly disappeared along the way.
“No, and He’s not made of flesh and blood anymore. He is Spirit.”
As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. - Luke 24
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