Posted on 07/09/2015 9:33:36 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Leviticus 3:17 'It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings: you shall not eat any fat or any blood.' That wording is PERPETUAL STATUTE. As far as we know, Jesus IS in the generations of those descended from Abraham, so this statute is upon Him also.Leviticus 7:26 And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal.
Leviticus 17:10 'I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people.
In the first great church council the issue of drinking blood was specifically addressed, and we know this refers to the Laws of Moses because James states: Acts 15:21 "For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath."
Acts 15:20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 "For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath."
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
That is not the reaction to a metaphor. This is the stark, amazed, horrified reaction to Christ's command that His disciples must eat His Body and drink His Blood.
Many of His disciples could not bear this hard teaching. They demurred: but Christ stood by His words. He did not retract or clarify them.
And then they left Him, unable to reconcile themselves to His stark and obvious meaning. Again, why would they do that if the command to eat His Body and drink His Blood was mere metaphor?
Right or wrong, they believed that Christ wasn't speaking in metaphor. His teaching shocked them into leaving. They could not accept it.
Do you believe that Christ was somehow hinting at metaphor?
If that were true, why then did so many disciples leave? Did Christ just not do a very good job of explaining His meaning?
Let's look at His words. Remember that He responds to the stark unbelief of his audience not once but twice.
Christ said this to the disciples:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
And the Jews argued among themselves saying:
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Then Jesus said to them
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.
Does that sound like metaphor? For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink?
Carrying on to the second statement of unbelief:
On hearing it, many of his disciples said,
This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them,
Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words that I have spoken unto you, they are Spirit, and they are Life
Christ backs up His words by saying that they are Spirit and they are Life.
At this point his audience could only have understood that Christ was standing behind his earlier words. Jesus made no changes to His words, no clarifications - because none were needed.
Are you saying that his faithful disciples were able to parse Christ's words - realizing that when He stated that His words were 'Spirit and Life' and that "His flesh was real food and His blood was real drink" that this meant that they didn't have to take them seriously?
But the unfaithful disciples left - because why? Because they didn't understand that He was speaking metaphorically? Did Christ let them walk away without explaining His meaning?
I hope that this is not what you believe. That would be insane. Christ is not some kind of divine Clinton whose words are not supposed to be taken literally, especially when He most insists on them.
Christ stood by His words. He declared them to be Spirit and Life. He declared that His flesh was real food and His blood was real drink.
No-one who heard Him was in any doubt that He meant what He said. His disciples left Him because He wasn't speaking metaphorically.
There are simply no other ways to take the John 6 narrative. Like those people in Capernaum we must accept that Christ literally means for us to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood.
And again - how could it be possibly against the Levitical law for Christ to perfectly fulfill the Passover? Christ is the Passover Lamb.
He is what all those centuries of Passovers and sacrifice were all about - they reached towards His Death and His Resurrection - His Living Sacrifice - at the center of all history.
When God commands you to eat His Body and Blood, how is it cannibalism?
Is God a corpse? Is His body mere dead flesh?
Or is He Life itself?
Try to look at what Jesus told His disciples, the real disciples who did not leave when he used sarcasm on them, what He told them when He actually instituted the Communion of remembrance. If you insist on seeing only the John 6 scene, you will affirm the cannibalizing and be in spiritual violation of the Levitical command to NEVER eat the blood. If you look at the Upper Room scene you will read that Jesus called the contents of the REMEMBRANCE CUP wine, wine to be consumed in REMEMBRANCE of His blood to be shed for them the next day on the cross.
The Mosaic Law forbade unclean foods.
But Christ's Body and Blood is not an unclean food.
Christ is both God and Man. He is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. When we eat His Body and drink His Blood we are nourished by the living God Himself.
God is not to be likened to some ritually unclean meat. Being nourished by and upon God Himself is neither unclean nor evil.
Think of a baby with his mother. Is a baby nourished at the breast unclean, because he eats and drinks of his own mother?
We wouldn't equate breast-feeding with cannibalism or ritual uncleanness - why then would anyone condemn God's gift of Himself as unclean?
Finally - and most importantly - God commands us to eat of Him.
Christ the Son of God instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist - the Bread and Wine becoming His Body and Blood - at the Last Supper.
Just to remind the thread about the institution of the Eucharist, and to show its provenance in the early Church.
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.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
Which I quote at length because it shows that the Eucharist was celebrated in the extremely early Church.
In summary: Christ commanded us to eat His Body and drink His Blood: He also commanded us to re-enact the Eucharist.
Let us do as He commanded - not take refuge in a misapplied nostrum of the Mosaic Law.
You could find the answer to the questions you raise by looking at what wen t out of Adam and Eve when they sinned. Did they die immediately a physical death? No, but their once alive spirits realize they were suddenly dead and exposed in unrighteousness.
Where’s the twist?
I wasn’t defending the dogma. Not here. I already have a life. Im not going to spend too much of it on people who don’t know the difference between what a thing is and what it is made of.
I would add that to the person with a limited acquaintance with Euclid, Lobachevsky might seem to suffer from severely twisted logic. A person who can’t give a coherent account of what Trent means by “substance” can’t argue against the idea of transubstantiation. Not “shouldn’t”, can’t.
That’s not disrespectful. It’s just that if you’re going to play contract bridge, it’s not going to go well if you don’t know any bidding conventions.
True Christians have a real High Priest, and He is not placing His flesh and blood in your mouth for you to have His Life in you, He is sending His life into your dead soul by His Power of Spiritual Life. This is clearly illustrated at Pentecost and in the house of Cornelius. God's Life was placed in the believers not via transubstantiated break and wine, but B the ARRIVAL OF HIS HOLY SPIRIT!
Dear Lord.
You actually believe that Christ was speaking sarcastically when He spoke of His Body and Blood?
He just said all that to drive away unfaithful Disciples, those who didn't understand that He didn't mean it?
But his true Disciples were the ones given the grace to see through his little subterfuge?
That's insane. Think what you are saying!
Christ is not Clinton. The Holy One of God is Truth itself: He does not lie.
Please give up these ... gymnastics. The Truth stares you in the face.
+ May Christ lead us into all truth +
Amen.
Did Jesus and the apostles eat the real actual body of Christ at the last supper??
I see written that many walked away mumbling over what He said to them. NOT ONE left when He instituted the Communion of bread and wine IN REMEMBRANCE of His body to be sacrificed the next day and His blood to be shed the next day for us all. But if catholics want to focus upon the John 6 discourse, WHICH IS NOT THE INSTITUTING OF THE REMEMBRANCE, then their eucharist be upon them.
I don't know who this "who" is to whom you refer, but Thomas Aquinas says no such thing and even explains (by implication) why the doctrine does not say that. You are arguing against something we do not teach.
... said the Disciple of the Sarcastic Christ.
Christ commands us to eat His Body and Blood.
He instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
St Paul speaks of this same Eucharist, making it very plain what it is:
Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?
And also:
For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.
These are what lead us to the Eucharist: the Words of Christ and the inspired words of His Apostles.
It's late, and I must go home. Come, let us make this pact, in all charity to pray for one another this evening.
+ May Jesus Christ lead us into all truth +
Amen.
What’s the game?
I already said I’m not defending the dogma. I don’t recall referring to it as a “fact.” I argued not FOR the dogma but against the article.
It’s a waste of time to argue against something we don’t teach and insist we do teach it. If that’s a word game, let it be so.
I don’t know what “actual” means.
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