Just to correct the first sentence:
| "On taking John 6 literally, Western (Latin) Catholics, Alexandrian Catholics (Coptic, Eritrean and Ethiopian), West Syrian (Maronite, Syriac, Syro-Malankara), Armenian Catholic. Byzantine (Albanian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, the Catholics of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Greek Catholics, Hungarian, Italo-Albanian, Macedonian, Melkite, Romanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Slovak, Ukrainian, East Syrian, Chaldean, and Syro-Malabar Catholics, *plus" Eastern Orthodox: Church of Constantinople, Greek Church of Alexandria, of Antioch, of Jerusalem, Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Church of Greece, Churches of Georgia, of Serbia, of Romania, of Bulgaria, of Cyprus, of Albania, of Poland, Church of Slovakia and the Czech Lands, Church of Sinai (Jerusalem Patriarchate), (Ecumenical Patriarchate) Church of Crete, of Finland, of Estonia, (Moscow Patriarchate) Church of Japan, of Ukraine, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Church of Ukraine (Kyiv Patriarchate), Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Macedonian Orthodox Church, *plus* the Oriental Orthodox Churches: Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Jacobite Syrian Church, Indian Orthodox Church, Coptic Orthodox Church, Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, *plus* others I may have failed to mention, almost all of them founded 1,000 years earlier than the Reformation, many of them reading the Scriptures in the original languages, many founded by the Apostles themselves--- claim to take Jn 6 literally..." |
Excuse the catalogue approach. It's not mere pedantry. It's illustrative of the most ancient Christian communities with the most ancient understandings of Scripture, many of whom know Greek, Western Syriac and Aramaic very well, some of whom are not under the direct jurisdiction of Rome OR Constantinople --- who don't understand why the German and English-speaking innovators just don't get it.
If we're going to talk about the meaning of words, I would personally go back to the people who have the longest continuous lexical familiarity with those words --- as well as being much closer to the cultural contexts.
You won't find any ancient church which does *not* believe that the elements of the Eucharist, under the appearance of bread and wine, become the true Body and Blood of Christ.
It's the seminary-scribes of the West, I think, who have substituted spurious innovations for the continuous, lived understanding of the oldest Christian communities on the planet.
It's probably because of the impoverished concept of "Sola Scriptura" -- a doctrine not found in Scripture, and which turns out to mean "All hail the Magisterium of the Seminary Professors," "All power to the guy who learned Greek yesterday" --- which simply spurns the wisdom of the Church.
Those communities you speak of didn't have any scriptures to understand...What information they got came from the hierarchy of the religion...
The reason the German and English speaking people didn't get it was because they got their hands on the scriptures they could understand...And found out the truth...