John Calvin was merely a man who read the Bible and understood it and commented upon it, by the will of God. Calvin took Matthew 23:9 to his heart -- "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."
He knelt to none but Christ.
"So Calvin was persuaded to stay and he began to preach in Geneva. Not long after this the Roman Catholic priests of the nearby city of Lausanne were challenged to a public debate by the Reformers. Of 337 priests only 174 arrived and only 4 had any ability to defend their doctrine. Farel and Viret, a foremost Swiss Reformer of those times, were the spokesmen for the Bible. They took Calvin with them as an observer as he had no experience of these debates. The debate went on for several days. One priest in defence of transubstantiation started to quote from the Early Church Fathers. Farel and Viret were unable to handle this and looked to Calvin for help. Standing up, the (Calvin) proceeded to quote from memory passages from the Early Church Fathers, giving the exact source in each case. It was an amazing display of learning and had an electrifying effect on the assembly. The opposition was completely confounded. One priest was converted immediately. As a result of this astonishing performance not only did Lausanne turn Protestant but 200 priests renounced the Roman Catholic Church."
Pity you and I weren't there.
Regardless, "early church fathers" are not Scripture, and Scripture is what determines our (and Calvin's) understanding of the Lord's Supper. I like this Q & A from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church website...
So, in the final analysis it is not possible to arrive at final answers by going back to the "church fathers." It is interesting to do this. But final answers can only be found in the inspired foundational writings of the apostles and prophets. In this way, alone, can we really decide which views are really in accord with the Scriptures.""Jesus promised to lead his church into all truth (John 16:13). But it is clear, from the entire history of the Church, that this was accomplished through a process of study, controversy, and trial. The results of this process have been the great creeds and confessions of the church, such as the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed (these three are often called the Ecumenical Creeds of early church history) and such Reformation creeds as the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Westminster Standards. These later creeds were an urgently needed answer to the growing body of doctrines in the Roman Catholic Church that were not in line with the Bible as the early ecumenical creeds were.
The reply then goes on to cite the Westminster Confession's declaration of what constitutes the Lord's Supper which I think is 100% Scriptural and sound.
For emphasis, please read the remarks of Calvin's brave student, John Knox, which further explain how the Roman mass errs in presuming to continually offer a sacrifice to God that has already been performed, accomplished and accepted by God, once for all the sins of His flock.
Disobedience to God's voice is not only when man does wickedly contrary to the precepts of God, but also when of good zeal, or good intent (as we commonly speak), man does anything to the honour or service of God not commanded by the express word of God... I know you will say, it is no other sacrifice, but the selfsame, save that it is iterated [repeated] and renewed. But the words of Paul bind you more straightly than that so you may escape. For in his whole disputation, he contends not only that there is no other sacrifice for sin, but also that the selfsame sacrifice, once offered, is sufficient, and never may be offered again. For otherwise of no greater price, value, nor extenuation, should the death of Christ be, than the death of those beasts which were offered under the law which are proved to be of none effect, nor strength, because it behooved them often times to be iterated. The apostle, by comparing Jesus Christ to the Levitical priests, and his sacrifice unto theirs, makes the matter plain that Christ might be offered but once. First, the Levitical priests were mortal, and therefore it behooved them to have successors; but Christ is an eternal priest, and therefore is alone, and needs no successor. The Levitical priests offered the blood of beasts; but Jesus Christ offered his own body and blood. The Levitical priests, for impotence of their sacrifice, did iterate the same; but the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, having in itself all perfection, needs not to be iterated. Yea, to affirm that it ought (or may be) iterated, is extreme blasphemy; for that were to impute imperfection thereupon, contrary to the whole religion, and the plain words of Paul, saying, "Such is our High Priest, holy, just, unpolluted, separate from sinners, and higher than the heavens; to whom it is not necessary every day to offer, as did those priests first offer for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people: for that he hath done once, when he offered himself" (Heb. 7:26-27). What words can be more plain? Here Paul shows all causes, wherefore it needs not Christ to be offered again; and would conclude, that he may not be offered again...""...The Mass is Idolatry. All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment, is idolatry. The Mass is invented by the brain of man, without any commandment of God; therefore it is idolatry...
Knox continues, every word Bible-based and true.
According to a couple of things I've read, there really wasn't this monolithic agreement on the real presence in the early church. Hermann Sasse devotes a bit of time disussing this in a book of his essays called The Lonely Way. I would post excerpts, but copyright laws forbid it.
If the following quote is truly attributable to St. Augustine, then it would seem he probably would be more Calvinian in his understanding of the Eucharist that Aquinian:
"Why prepare teeth and gums? Believe and you have already eaten."
Certainly, the early church took the celebration of the Eucharist very seriously, and there must have been some definite understanding that Christians viewed it as partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, or they wouldn't have been accused of cannibalism. I don't think the usual and customary Scripture of John 6 is an effective exposition of the real presence because it does tie in with the thought attributed to Augustine. It is, when all is said and done about trusting the word of The Word, and that's what those that departed from him in John 6 were not capable of doing.
One of the best verses that illuminate and presage Jesus' words in John 6 can be found in 1 Samuel:21, with use of the term the Bread of the Presence. But before I go on, I want to say how disgraceful I think it is that the Eucharist became at the hands of men, a bludgeon. How fitting for a race decended from blessed Adam (sin and all) who just couldn't stand the fact that he wasn't God.
I'm going to post the entire piece on Calvinian Presence because it's worth the read, and I don't think it overly long-winded.
The gentleman who wrote it is Joel Garver, a Calvinist (I think anyway, based on his blog) and who appears to be a loving kind of guy. His site name is Sacra Doctrina. He holds the position of Assistant professor of Philosophy at La Salle University. And while you may disagree with him, he's no dilettante. Anyway, here's his piece:
Calvinian real presence? The topic of the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist has surfaced in several recent discussions, particularly whether one could speak of a Calvinian understanding of that presence. After all, it is assumed, the historic catholic teaching of the church is that of the Real Presence and so a Calvinian doctrine of the Real Presence might have important ecumenical implications.
It seems to me that this topic needs some careful thought, along with a significant degree of historical and philosophical awareness. Unfortunately, I lack much of the requisite expertise to address the topic adequately. Still, I have a few initial (and likely controversial) thoughts on the topic.
I think the first thing to note is terminological. Whatever the shape of Patristic and earlier medieval teaching, nobody believed in the "Real Presence" prior to the late middle ages (note the quotation marks). The terminology of "Real Presence" simply was not in use and when it did come into use--particularly the use of the term "real"--it did so in connection with various shifts in ecclesiology and ontology so that what came to be termed "Real Presence" was not in fact identical with the Patristic and earlier medieval understandings of the eucharist, even if there were points of continuity.
Thus, when Calvin avoids using the terminology of "Real Presence" he does so as a humanist theologian, attempting to retrieve what he understands to be more authentic ways of expressing catholic belief regarding the eucharist, with a greater focus on "true partaking" of Christ's flesh and blood in the contextof the eucharistic action, though inextricably tied up with partaking of the elements themselves. In this project Augustine and the Eastern Fathers are Calvin's primary sources of reflection.
A number of studies of Calvin's eucharistic doctrine have been published over the years, attempting to explicate his views. In particular J.W. Nevin's The Mystical Presence, B.A. Gerrish's Grace and Gratitude, and Keith Mathison's Given for You come to mind, each providing an important perspective on Calvin's doctrine. On the specific issue of Calvin's use of terminology and rejection of the language of "Real Presence," however, one should consult Joseph N. Tylenda, "Calvin and Christ's Presence in the Supper--True or Real" in Scottish Journal of Theology 27 (1974) 65-75. Tylenda examines all the revelant texts where Calvin uses the term "real" in relation to the partaking of Christ's body in the Supper and demonstrates that Calvin prefered the older terminology of "true" over the more recent introduction of "real" and the ontological baggage that he perceived as coming with it (though "true" has its own history of problems in connection with eucharist as de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum demonstrates).
Moreover, with regard to the notion of the "real" and the shifts in ontology that are behind it, there are a number important texts that need to be taken into account, several from within the perspective of Radical Orthodoxy.
First among these is Catherine Pickstock's After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Blackwell 1997), where she sets out how shifts in late medieval ontology from Scotus onward led to a "spatialization" of knowledge and reality (what she terms a "mathesis"). Her work on this builds in important ways upon Michel de Certeau's The Mystic Fable. The idea here is that the "real" requires placement upon a manipulable grid of absolute presence.
A second text is John Milbank and C. Pickstock's Truth in Aquinas (Routledge 2001), particularly the fourth and last chapter, "Truth and Language," which treats eucharistic doctrine and issues of presence and absence in the context of both patristic/medieval theology and postmodern discussions (e.g., Derrida, though there are problems with their account ofDerrida, I think). They do a good job of suggesting the ways in which earlier eucharistic theology was grounded in an ecclesial and relational context of human action. This discussion is well-supplemented by Graham Ward's Cities of God (Routledge 2000), where he interacts with Calvin's view in connection with questions of ontology and, especially, the ascension of Christ, which Calvin so emphasizes, though Ward's attempt to build a theology of Christ's ascension is not without problems.
Finally, behind these various discussions still stands Henri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum (Aubier 1944), though it's still only available in French (Ward has an English translation coming out soon, hopefully). De Lubac traces the reversals and shifts in the relationship and meaning of the terms "true body" and "mystical body" in medieval theology, particular their reversal as the term "true body" migrates from referring to the gathered ecclesial Body of Christ to the presence of Christ in the eucharist.
The upshot of these writings is that for earlier medieval and Patristic theology, notions such as" substance" and "presence" and "body of Christ" were embedded within an ontology that granted them a certain kind of dynamism and relationality, connected with actions and events (so that "eucharist" was more a liturgical event than a fetishizable thing), and irreduceably attached to signs, without giving into spatialized notions of absolute presence and absence. In the late medieval period, however, and into the early modern, there were shifts in ontology that moved in the direction of defining "real" and "substance" in terms of a spatialized presence, definitively localized, thought of in terms of absolute arrival, more static, and in a different, more problematic relationship with signs.
While these shifts occurred in the west, it is arguable that the Christian East maintained something much closer to the overall shape of various Patristic approaches. Some Eastern Orthodox manuals and theologians, of course, in a polemical response to their western counterparts, did fall into some western patterns (e.g., identifying the epiclesis as the moment of Christ's absolute arrival, in response tothe high medieval western identification of specific words of the institution narrative as properly consecratory). Nevertheless, a number of Eastern theologians (e.g., Alexander Schmemman in recent years) still maintained and retrieved a eucharistic doctrine that has more in common with the Fathers than with the problematics of the medieval west.
Returning to the notion of the "Real Presence," one could suggest, of course, that it may be the case that in the past century or so, the terminology of "real" has shifted so as not to be quite so tied up withthese kinds of later medieval and early modern notions and, instead, meaning something more like "authentic"or "true" rather than "false" or "illusory." Calvin himself allowed that if by "real" one meant "true" (reali pro vero) in opposition to fallacious or imaginary (fallaci vel imaginario), then that language was permissible (see his first reply to Westphal). On this basis, we might speak of a Calvinian doctrine ofthe "Real Presence" and perhaps there are good ecumenical reasons for doing so in terms of western theology. But I hardly think the terminology of "Real Presence," given its historical contingency and late origins, is necessary for confessing a common catholic faith.
Calvin himself, however, isn't entirely without problems. Personally, my reading of Calvin is that he was attempting to retrieve a more Patristic understanding of the eucharistic partaking of Christ's flesh and blood, trying to do an end run around his Roman Catholic and Lutheran interlocutors. And I think that, to a large degree, Calvin was successful.
On the other hand, Calvin is a mixed bag. He recognizes the problems of the notion of "Real Presence" that had arisen in his day, but he himself, it seems to me, falls prey to just the kinds of problems that he is objecting to in his opponents. Thus, we find Calvin continually speaking of the ascended Christ, in his humanity, as "far off" or "at great distance from us in space" (and so on) as if the ascension were some kind of spiritual mode of space travel. While at his more reflective moments, Calvin seems to recognize that such language is inadequate, it is still pervasive in the way in which he frames his eucharistic doctrine and, in many regards, strikes me as the equal and opposite error from that which he was opposing (i.e., a notion of Real Presence that seemed to definitively and spatially localize Christ's body as enclosed within the eucharistic elements).
It is just this kind of spatialization within Calvin to which Graham Ward objects in his Cities of God, though, it seems to me, that Ward's own theorization of the ascension is at least as problematic as Calvin's (not to mention what seems to me an implicit gnosticism). To my mind, a helpful correction to bothWard and Calvin is Douglas Farrow's Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of Ascension (Eerdmans 1999), which looks at the ascension along more eschatological-temporal dimensions and rethinks how we might conceive of the "heaven" to which Christ has ascended in relation to us.
In any case, there's considerable work to be done on this topic by those from within the Reformed tradition as a matter of renewing Calvin's own eucharistic doctrine, placing it in its proper historical context, developing it today, and bringing it into conversation with the wider faith of the church catholic. What I've done here is the merest gesture towards the issues at stake and resources necessary for such a Calvinistic renewal.
You have chosen John Calvin over ALL the Saints and ALL the Early Church Fathers over 2000 years of History.
Every SINGLE Saint and Early Single Church Father(Not a Single exception)believed in the Real Presence,ALL of them.
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/a5.html
You trust the Church Fathers enough to say they were guided by the Holy Spirit to give you Bible Canon but you trust John Calvin and John Knox to give you the correct interpretations of the Eucharist
So is it correct for me to say that you believe that the Saints and the Early Fathers were guided by an evil spirit in how they interpreted the Eucharist?ALL of them!
This is exactly what your saying.
you said...
“”Regardless, “early church fathers” are not Scripture, and Scripture is what determines our (and Calvin’s) understanding of the Lord’s Supper””
So lets look at Scripture,it is very clear that Jesus was NOT speaking metaphorically
“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat and not die. I AM THE LIVING BREAD which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world. Then the Jews started arguing with one another. Did they understand Him correctly? Was He actually telling them He would give His own flesh for food? “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” they asked. Instead of reassuring them that he did not mean to be taken literally, Christ went on:
“I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is REAL food and my blood is REAL drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; not like the bread that your ancestors ate; they are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:48-58).
The evangelist explains that Christ taught this doctrine in the synagogue, but that hearing it “many of his followers said, ‘This is intolerable language, How could anyone accept it?’” Jesus was fully aware that His followers were complaining and, in fact, asked them, “does this upset you?” But He took nothing back. Rather He insisted, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” At the same time He explained that such faith is not of man’s making, since “no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.”
Following this animated dialogue, we are prepared for the statement, “After this, many of His disciples left Him and stopped going with Him.” Then, to make absolutely certain there was no mistaking what He was saying, Jesus said to the Twelve, “What about you, do you want to go away too?” To which Simon Peter replied, “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe” (John 6:59-68).
Jesus says “You have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” FOUR TIMES,He meant what He said LITERALLY.
The Church’s decisive revelation on the Real Presence is in the words of the consecration, “This is my body; this is my blood,” whose literal meaning has been defended through the ages. They were thus understood by St. Paul when he told the first Christians that those who approached the Eucharist unworthily would be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. There could be no question of a grievous offense against Christ Himself, unless Paul assumed that the true Body and the true Blood of Christ are really present in the Eucharist.
Let take a look at a few of the Early Church Fathers ,some who were DIRECT Disciple of the Apostles.
St. Ignatius became the third bishop of Antioch, succeeding St. Evodius, who was the immediate successor of St. Peter. He heard St. John preach when he was a boy and knew St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna who was a Disiple of Saint John
“I have no taste for the food that perishes nor for the pleasures of this life. I want the Bread of God which is the Flesh of Christ, who was the seed of David; and for drink I desire His Blood which is love that cannot be destroyed.”
-”Letter to the Romans”, paragraph 7, circa 80-110 A.D
St. Irenaeus succeeded St. Pothinus to become the second bishop of Lyons in 177 A.D. Earlier in his life he studied under St. Polycarp. Considered, one of the greatest theologians of the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus is best known for refuting the Gnostic heresies.
[Christ] has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own Blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own Body, from which he gives increase to our bodies.”
Source: St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 180 A.D.:
Now lets take a look at What Saint Anthansis says, he was was the first to give us the complete listing of New Testament Books.
“’The great Athanasius in his sermon to the newly baptized says this:’ You shall see the Levites bringing loaves and a cup of wine, and placing them on the table. So long as the prayers of supplication and entreaties have not been made, there is only bread and wine. But after the great and wonderful prayers have been completed, then the bread is become the Body, and the wine the Blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘And again:’ Let us approach the celebration of the mysteries. This bread and this wine, so long as the prayers and supplications have not taken place, remain simply what they are. But after the great prayers and holy supplications have been sent forth, the Word comes down into the bread and wine - and thus His Body is confected.”,
-”Sermon to the Newly Baptized” ante 373 A.D.,
Certainly Saint Athanasius MUST have known the Correct Interpretations regarding the Eucharist.
Not according to you and John Calvin and John Knox!
Calvin Knox and others failed to understand typology of the Scriptures
Here are a few ground rules regarding symbolism that must be mastered before anyone makes an attempt for serious Bible study.
1. You have probably heard the quotation by Saint Augustine:
“The New Testament lies hidden in the Old Testament and the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament”.
2. The New Testament is hidden in the Old by a plethora of symbolism called typology.
3. Old Testament types (symbols) and even New Testament symbolism always point to New Testament realities as I will show soon.
4. An Old Testament type never points to a New Testament symbol.
This is such an important point, that I will reword it for emphasis. A symbol of the O.T. never points to a N.T. symbol but always to the reality of what the symbol represents.
5. A symbol of itself has no power to save. All power is reserved for the much greater reality.
6. Here are some other terms, some of which are in Holy Scripture, which are sometimes used as substitutions for symbolism:
shadow, foreshadow, badge, emblem, figure, template, pattern, token, foretoken, prefigurement, prefiguration, gesture, label, picture, hint, sign, blueprint, image. As you can readily see, none are the reality of what they represent.
We are made in the image of GOD (Genesis 1:26-27) but we are certainly not divine as is GOD.
Here are some examples of symbolism versus reality...
*The Sabbath:
Colossians 2:16-17, the Jewish Sabbath is but a shadow of good things to come. This is a foreshadowing of the Christian Sunday worship. How much power does a shadow have compared to what causes it to begin with?
Exodus 31:16-17, the Sabbath is a sign or a token (the word used depends on the Bible) and it is for the children of Israel.
*The Law:
Hebrews 10:1, the Law (the first five books of the Old Testament) is but a shadow of good things to come.
The “good things to come” is the New Covenant of Jesus Christ which has obsoleted the Law, Hebrews 8:13.
*Animal sacrifice:
Hebrews 10:4, the blood of oxen and goats cannot take away sins. Animal sacrifices were symbolic of the New Testament reality of the Blood of Christ which could wash away the sins of the world.
Ephesians 1:7, through the blood of His Son, we are set free from our sins.
*The Holy Eucharist:
The manna in the desert (the O.T. type) fed the body, but it could never feed the soul, John 6:49.
The manna is the symbol for the Holy Eucharist.
The only thing that could feed the soul is the Body and Blood of Christ, the Holy Eucharist (the N.T. reality), John 6:47-58.
The basic rules of typology,
“An Old Testament type never points to a New Testament symbol, but to its reality.”
“A symbol of itself has no power to save anyone. All power to save is reserved for the much greater reality.”
Now why do Protestants and Fundamentalists and other non-Catholics bend and break the rules of typology by taking the whole Bible literally except for chapter six of the Gospel of John for which they say is symbolic? Doesn’t it sound strange to you that all books of the Bible are taken literally by them except for that one chapter in the Gospel of John?
Isn’t it reminiscent of Martin Luther who wanted to remove entire books from the Bible simply because they were opposed to HIS teaching?
The answer to why is simply because none of them have a valid authorized priesthood which is able to perform sacrifice as commanded by Holy Scripture that we must do on a continuous daily basis. So, for them IT IS ONLY A SYMBOL!
However, they have no right to say for the Catholic Holy Eucharist, that it is only a symbolic gesture also.
For those who deny the true presence in the Catholic Holy Eucharist, I must point out two Bible references which fit all of the scoffers perfectly. I have listed each of the two from different Bibles for emphasis:
“But these people, like irrational animals born by nature for capture and destruction, revile things that they do not understand, and in their destruction they will also be destroyed, suffering wrong as payment for wrongdoing.
2Peter 2:12-13
“These false teachers insult what they don’t understand. They are like animals, which are creatures of instinct that are born to be caught and killed. So they will be destroyed like animals and lose what their wrongdoing earned them. These false teachers are stains and blemishes.”
2Peter 2:12-13
“But these people revile what they do not understand and are destroyed by what they know by nature like irrational animals. Woe to them! They followed the way of Cain, abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.”
Jude 1:10-11
“Whatever these people don’t understand, they insult. Like animals, which are creatures of instinct, they use whatever they know to destroy themselves. How horrible it will be for them! They have followed the path of Cain. They have rushed into Balaam’s error to make a profit. They have rebelled like Korah and destroyed themselves.”
Jude 1:10-11
Dear Sister, I think it is possible that John Calvin and John Knox may have committed unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit.
This is only my opinion