Posted on 03/29/2015 2:11:17 PM PDT by RnMomof7
Funny, that's exactly what the pagans accused the Christians of doing, 1200 years before your reformation. Where do you suppose they got that idea?
But you and they are both wrong, because cannibalism is killing someone in order to eat his dead body. Jesus isn't dead. "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you."
Thank you Jesus, for replacing the empty symbols of the old covenant with the "Living Bread come down from heaven" of the New.
Your last paragraph nails it.
I will say it again. Examine the miracles surrounding the Holy Eucharist and you will be converted. You want to argue “logic” but God sees your logic and raises you one with Eucharistic miracles. Argue all you want, you cannot deny the facts of miracles.
Good work mom.
Answer: He didn't. This is why no-one celebrates such a sacrament today.
But He did institute a sacrament of His Body and Blood. He spoke in metaphor about living water - but he spoke literally about His body and blood.
He commands us to eat His Body and Blood. His words are unmistakeable.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
Christ literally gives Himself to us as real food and real drink. There's nothing to misinterpret here. There's no room for manoeuvre.
Moreover when we consider the language used in the Gospel of John, the literal interpretation becomes undeniable.
In John 6:50-53 we encounter various forms of the Greek verb phago, 'eating.' . As in 'Sarcophagus'.
However after the Jews begin to express incredulity at the idea of eating Christ’s flesh, His language intensifies.
In verse 54, John begins to use trogo instead of phago. Trogo is a decidedly more graphic term, meaning 'to chew on' or to 'gnaw on'—as when an animal is ripping apart its prey. The text is closer to:
Whoever gnaws on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
If anything more needed to be said: St Paul is also abundantly clear
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
All this: not to mention Christ's insitutution of what we now call the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
From Luke:
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."
If any corroborating evidence were needed, St Paul speaks about the Eucharist in Corinthians.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
I quote these to show that Christ's Body and Blood were eaten and drunk in the very early Church.
You can post a hundred times a day - and I don't doubt that you intend to do so - yet you cannot efface the words of Christ.
It's midnight here. I am off to bed. I daresay that another attack thread exactly like this one will be along tomorrow - so to all, good night and God Bless.
I have to say that as a 50-year old Baptist (44 years old in Christ), this is news to me.
I'd be interested in seeing a doctrinal statement from a non-Catholic Christian denomination or even a local independent church of <30 members that said anything like it.
The problem of interpreting Jesus words rests with the Apostles and their successors, and they aren’t biting on the “symbol only” theory.
1. Apostle Paul — partaking of Communion unworthily is to be “guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord” (I Cor 11:27). In what way does a symbol entail personal examination (vs. 28) to avoid guilt? A symbol in itself doesn’t command that level of personal scrutiny and the consequence of sin — unless it is the sign of Jesus Christ’s real presence in the bread and wine.
2. Ignatius of Antioch (as a child, heard Apostle John) — “they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”
3. Justin Martyr (150 AD) — “For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”
4. See many more here — http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/a5.html
Conclusion: No argument for the “symbol only” theory gained any following among Christians for a 1000 years, and then only after an individualistic interpretation theory took hold in Germany under Luther that ran counter to Scripture: “The Church is the pillar of the truth.” (I Tim 3:15)
I like to see this kind of fire-spewing anti-Eucharist rant. That was me a few a years ago, before I converted. “To be deep into history is to cease to be Protestant” — John Henry Newman
I'm not sure even Martin Luther, the rebel Catholic priest, believed this business.
I was born and raised RC..Catholic school through college ..I know the doctrine and it is a lie from the pit of hell
Do you ever get thirsty?? So much for a literal reading
So since you must hold to this as an absolute unequivocal imperative like other "verily verily" statements are, then why are you not consistent and disallow all those who reject the literalistic interpretation from obtaining spiritual life?
You do hold that consuming the flesh of Christ is how one obtains spiritual life, like the verse says don't you?
And you know this how?? Why was He not literal as the water or the door of the sheep gate or a Grape vine?
Could you please provide the infallible magisterium teaching on JOHN 6 referring to communion bread and the others as metaphors
And when you let me know where the document or statement that contains the interpretation is stated to be infallible.
I await your infallible source
So you really buy the lie that SS means that the individual alone is the supreme authority on what Truth is, as if he were a pope, versus Scripture being supreme, and that they must also reject the Biblical magisterium?
Or that deciding what conclusions the Scriptures and other evidences warrant makes one the infallible supreme authority?
Some RCs cannot be reasoned with but i trust you can do better, despite your affirmation of that fallacy.
Christ would never break any of the OT laws even though we are no longer bound to them.
So much for the heresy of Self and Self Alone and the insane lengths such Self Worshipers will go to in order to avoid the clear teaching of Scripture.
Five and six year old kids can understand the difference between the two verses but for some reason those who insist their Self is superior to the Holy Spirit just can't grasp the difference. A sure sign that such folks are under a strong delusion.
So, which Watchtower Russelite argument is next?
and new ones keep springing up whenever protestants attempt to justify their abandonment of Christ's Catholic church....sad
Christ would never break any of the OT laws even though we are no longer bound to them.Then obviously Christ had no siblings since leaving His mother in the care of someone not a family member would have been breaking Old Testament Law.
I tend to think it's because "Roman Catholic" is some sort of talismanic boogie man to a large part of the evangelical Protestant world, and that's really what this is all about.
I would guess it's because the other religions you mentioned aren't dumb enough to claim they are the one true church that Jesus founded...And that no one can attain eternal life except that they believe the fables your religion invented...
Rather than the practice of this principal and prevalent practice being manifest as such in the life and epistles of the NT church, (outside of Jude 1:12 referring to a “feast of charity”) it is only manifestly described in one epistle, in 1Co. 10 and 11...
in which Paul reproves Corinthian church for coming together to eat the Lord's supper, as he charges them with not actually doing so because they were eating what is supposed to be a communal meal, the “feast of charity,” (Jude 1:12) independently of each other, so that “in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken,” and thus what they were doing was to “shame them that have not.” (1Co. 11:20-22)
Therefore Paul proceeds to reiterates the words of Christ at the institution of the Lord's supper, ending with “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew [kataggellō=preach/declare] the Lord's death till he come.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
For while they were supposed to be showing/declaring the Lord's unselfish sacrificial death for the body by unselfishly sharing food with other members of the body of Christ, whom Christ purchased it with His own sinless shed blood, (Acts 20:28) instead they were both eating independently and selfishly. And thus were effectively treating other members as lepers, and as if the body was not a body, and as if others were not part of the body for whom Christ died. This lack of effectual recognition is what is being referred to as “not discerning the Lord's body,” that of the body in which the members are to treat each as blood-bought beloved brethren, as Christ did. Because they were presuming to show the Lord's death for the body while acting contrary to it, therefore they were eating this bread and drinking the cup of the Lord unworthily, hypocritically, and were chastised for it, some unto death. (1Co. 11:27-32)
Because this was the case and cause of condemnation — that of not recognizing the nature of the corporate body of Christ in independently selfishly eating — versus not recognizing the elements eaten as being the body of Christ — then the apostle's solution was, “Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.” (1 Corinthians 11:33-34)
And which leads into the next chapter in which Christ-like love is described. Paul himself was asked of the Lord, “why persecutest thou me” (Acts 9:4) as Paul was attacking the church, thus showing His identification with the church.
While silently consuming a piece of bread and a sip of wine as is done today may not be that of ignoring others and their needs, yet it hardly corresponds in form to the communal feast of charity referred to here, and misses how we are to show the Lord's death by this supper, and instead it often results in seeing the Lord's death as simply being for individuals and abstract from the corporate body.
And to “take communion” by yourself (unseen in Scripture) is a contradiction in terms to its manifest description of communion. And the Catholic focus upon the elements which are consumed, and in which service many Catholics sees interaction with others as an intrusion, and with man with hastening to leave the service afterward, misses the meaning even more.
While the superficial observance of this ordinance may not always result in manifest chastening (which judgment is relative to light given) unto death, yet “not discerning the Lord's body” as described does result in the corporate body being “weak and sickly” a compared to the NT church. And I must repent of being selfish sometimes myself.
Don't hold your breath, but while we are told we cannot tell RCs what they believe, they presume their closet of strawmen must be accepted as valid, despite having seen them burn up here many times already. Bless God.
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