You are welcome, to be sure. I would suggest you also attempt to address the points spmb raises, which are the background to which I referred in extreme compression.
Like that commentator, I firmly believe that the Church is both Apostolic and Catholic precisely because she has remained under the godly rule and admonition of her Apostolic bishops. Wherever the bishops have gone wrong, they have taken people into heresy and schism. Also, whenever 'prophets' have proclaimed a new revelation (or at best unknowingly repeated an already-ancient one, which is what this article does), they also lead people into heresy and schism. I need only mention the names Montanus, Nestorius, Paul of Samosata among Church elders who developed a novel understanding of Scripture and inaugurated heresies both long-lasting (that is, right up to today) and divisive. To reject the Holy Catholic Church in all her parts is equally divisive, no matter how much Scripture is cited in the process.
I only have two additional points to make:
The Eucharist is the mystical communion of the faithful, believing partaker with Christ, who is mystically present in the bread and wine. He told us to eat of His flesh and to drink His blood. I take that as a direct order which I humbly obey. My basic difficulty in this is how to find bread and wine which are mystically His Body and Blood. Our Lord consecrated bread and wine at the Last Supper, broke the bread and gave it to His Apostles and told them to do likewise. He did not say 'this is a memory of Me'. He said 'This is an anamnesis of Me', that is, the bringing into the present of that which existed in the past. At the end of His earthly ministry, He then ordained the Apostles, laying His hands upon them and breathing the Holy Spirit into them and directed them to go into the world, baptizing all people and teaching them to follow all of His commandmenets. That He comannded them to celebrate the Eucharist must certainly be one of those commandments. That He ordained them AND NO OTHERS to do this meant that they were empowered through Him to do this. That we must always do this is why we inferred that the authority to do so could be passed on, SO LONG AS IT WAS PASSED ON IN THE SAME WAY AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY GRANTED. The Apostolic ministry in the Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican Church has always done this. And so there is today an access to the Body and Blood, so long as faithful Christians partake of bread and wine consecrated by authentically consecrated bishops or their delegate presbyters. There is no other way to obey this command. We sin if we wilfully disobey what cannot be taken as other than a direct order from our Lord and Savior.
Is the Eucharist also a memorial? Yes, but that is the least important facet of this holy mystery. As I say, the Eucharist is an anamnesis rather than a memory, despite many faulty translations suggesting the two words are synonyms. They are not.
The other point relates to the Canon of Scripture. You have stated that God canonized Scripture long before men did. This probably has significant analysis behind it, but for humans to know that a given text is canonized or not, some human or group of humans is going to have to say that the text is canonized, so everybody else will know. That group is going to have to have authority to say that this text is canonized while that one is not and the Church as a whole is going to have to then ratify that the decision is valid.
This all happened, but it happened in historic time by humans we can name. It was generally ratified at Councils we can also name and date. Now, does this eliminate God's authority? I suppose it could, if the humans performing the canonization ever suggested they were trying to personally take credit for having identified canonical text. They never did and no one has ever accepted a text as canonical that has not been repeatedly validated and authenticated by a wide variety of Church bodies. So the Body has spoken under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as to what constitutes the true Word of God as written for our salvation and edification.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that someone, somewhere had a special revelation that made them personally the witness of God in these matters. Do you have such a candidate to advance? If not, then the authority must have been the various Apostolic witnesses, Church councils and Church Fathers who have attested that they agree that the books we receive as the Old and the New Testament are indeed all that is necessary for salvation and the Canon of Scripture for all time.
Thanks again for the discussion and may God bless you in all your ways and may His Holy Spirit lead you into all truth and to final salvation.
Thank you and I extend the same prayer for you. I'll try to respond a little later tonight. I'll be leaving soon to attend sabbath services.
I really don't want to rehash this subject and take the thread off course. I understand what you're saying and I agree completely. However, that's a long way from the concept of transubstantiation no matter how you define anamesis.
My point was that the symbols of wine and bread WERE established on Passover, a festival of God. God had a reason for creating the days he considers holy. Traditional Christianity, by bypassing the example of Christ, has lost the meaning and purpose of these days.
The other point relates to the Canon of Scripture. You have stated that God canonized Scripture long before men did. This probably has significant analysis behind it, but for humans to know that a given text is canonized or not, some human or group of humans is going to have to say that the text is canonized, so everybody else will know. That group is going to have to have authority to say that this text is canonized while that one is not and the Church as a whole is going to have to then ratify that the decision is valid.
Again, I want to address this but only so far as it pertains to the point of the article.
My view, based upon scripture, is that the books that became the new testament were compiled by the first disciples and deemed authoritative. Since the disciples actually personally knew Christ while in the flesh, and/or were taught by him after the resurrection, there was no question that they had the authority to deem what was God breathed AND to be used for the future edification of the church. The canon was closed after that.
By insisting on the view that men 300 years later "canonized" scripture a subtle subverting of the authority of scripture and of the teaching of the original disciples began to creep into theology.