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Hi ya' Dave!

Hi yourself. :-)

OK, back to the metaphors. I had written: If one takes this statement ("This is My body") literally, other OBVIOUS metaphors could also be taken literally, such as "I am the Vine; you are the branches."

You replied: This amended statement of yours hinges on the word "obvious." To you, Jesus at the Last Supper is obviously speaking metaphorically. Not so to me.

Oh, but it IS obviously a figure of speech! For one thing, interpreting His words ("This is My body") as being figurative is the logical way to interpret it.

To you. If we look at the simple semantics of the statement "this is x," I guess it all depends on what "is" means. Seriously. One would normally read this type of sentence to equate "this" and "x."

This becomes as "obvious" metaphor to you when we let "this" equal a hunk of bread and "x" equal "Jesus' body." This is not dictated by the language itself, but only by the seeming impossibility of the statement to be true.

So, conceiving no manner of making the statement literally true, you read it as an "obvious" metaphor. I know how the statement is true and take it that way.

Besides, there is NO precedence anywhere in Scripture for equating an inanimate object, such as bread, with a living being.

John 6 is a precedent. And even if it weren't, are we bound to only believe things that occur in the Bible twice? Jesus only rose from the dead once, there is no precedent for that, yet you take it literally.

Do this "in remembrance" of Me. (Even if the bread and wine COULD become His actual flesh and His actual blood, the partaking of it would be redundant, because His sacrificial and propitiatory work on the cross is a FINISHED work!!)

The Greek word used for "in remembrance" has some ramifications. It speaks to making present the effects of a past event. Doesn't sound like strictly a "remembrance"s ervice to me.