Replies

1. About Prophets.

I reject any prophet, Protestant, Catholic or otherwise, whose message fails the twofold test given under Moses.

First the prophet must have a perfect track record. Everything prophesied must come true. Else they are not a prophet of God.

Second, even if everything came true, the prophet’s message must point is toward the one and only true God. Any prophet whose message takes us away from what God has already said to us must therefore be a false prophet.

There are NT admonitions for prophets as well. Jesus told us to steer clear of false prophets, false Christs, false teachers, etc. Paul in Galatians goes to the extreme of saying that even if an angel from Heaven should appear, if he brings a different Gospel, or a different Jesus, he is to be rejected. because we know that even Lucifer can appear as an angel of light to deceive the unwary.

What then is the way to avoid false prophet, false teachers, alternative Christs? John tells believers, all of them, not just the leadership, to “try the spirits,” to test them against known doctrinal guidelines. See 1 John 4:1. That’s what the Bible is for, and that’s how we Sola Scriptura folks use it.

2. About Transubstantiation.

First, I wonder about your reference to John 6, as the phrase “this is my body” does not appear there. Instead it occurs in Matt 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, and 1Cor 11:24, all from one event, the Last Supper.

In any event, there is absolutely no basis for launching from the simple “is” in the foregoing passages to the complex quasi-Aristotelian doctrine of transubstantiation. It just isn’t there. The wine and matzo were already figures of the events of the Israeli exodus from Egypt, and Jesus is revealing to his disciples that they also represent him as their Savior, giving his body and spilling his blood, so that they could have eternal life.

But the notion of a literal but undetectable corporeal presence of his physical body in the elements based on Aristotelian categories is utterly alien to the standard usage of the verbs of being in Hebrew. More typically, such verbs are used for symbols or figures. For example, Jesus says I am the vine, and you are the branches. See John 15:5. He certainly does not mean he is literally a vine, but merely looks like a human. Or the time he said. “I am the door.” No one thinks he is really a door (and a vine), that merely looks human, whose inner reality (Greek “substance”) of “doorness” or “vineness” is unreachably hidden behind his appearance (Greek “accidents”) of being human.

But, you say, what about John 6 (which, after all, is the passage you mentioned)?

Fair enough. Let’s see what it says:

John 6:53-58 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. [54] Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [56] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. [57] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. [58] This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

Well, that’s the big passage that everyone fights over, but it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Earlier in the same chapter we have Christ making some other very controversial statements. Jesus had just fed the 5000 with loaves and fishes. Yet he rebuked those who followed him after the miracle, because they were thinking carnally, food for the belly. He warns them they should be working for the food that leads to eternal life. So they asked him, how do we do the works of God?

John 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

So you see that from the beginning of this passage, Christ is trying to redirect their attention from physical foods that satisfy physical hunger to the spiritual food that satisfies spiritual hunger. He even tells them they are being clueless, that because they are still seeking physical food from him, they don’t get it. And in fact he tells them the only way they’ll ever “get it” is if the Father makes it happen:

John 6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

So he presents the with a make or break challenge. In John 6:53-58 he tells them if they don’t satisfy their hunger by consuming him, his flesh, his blood, they have no life; but those who do so feed on him will have eternal life.

So they thought they had a free miracle meal ticket, but he tells them he is their true food from Heaven. Because they were stuck in the mud of materialism, they couldn’t grasp his meaning. They scratched their heads, said they didn’t get it, and left off following him.

And how does Jesus explain this? “They couldn’t take transubstantiation, so they left me?” No! What he says is this:

Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

So he underscores it at the end. This is about the spirit, NOT the flesh. He fed the 5000, and they loved the meal. But they didn’t love him. They were materialists. They couldn’t see past the physical to the spiritual. The reason they couldn’t see was because God the Father had not drawn them to Jesus. So when Jesus offers himself as the spiritual food that can, through faith, satisfy all their needs, they get confused and leave him. It could not be more clear that Jesus here is not only not speaking of himself as literal food, he is specifically rejecting that idea, and asserting himself as the only possible spiritual food for those who would have spiritual life through faith in him.

Transubstantiation? Nowhere in sight.

And the Fathers agree (look for “figure of” or “represents” or “symbolizes”, any of which deny transubstantiation):

“Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly elements” of the Creator.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book 1, Chapter 14).

“Now it is evident, that in this prophecy [allusion is made] to the bread which our Christ gave us to eat, in remembrance of His being made flesh for the sake of His believers, for whom also He suffered; and to the cup which He gave us to drink, in remembrance of His own blood, with giving of thanks.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 70).

“Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 40.)

“For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book III, Chapter 19.)

“But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.”. . .It seemed unto them hard that He said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you:” they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, “This is a hard saying.”. . .But He instructed them, and saith unto them, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.” (Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 99, Section 8).

“’Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,’ says Christ, ‘and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.’ This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 16, 24).

“But at the present time, after that the proof of our liberty has shone forth so clearly in the resurrection of our Lord, we are not oppressed with the heavy burden of attending even to those signs which we now understand, but our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many, and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being misled by error.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 9, 13).

“For since He no more was to take pleasure in bloody sacrifices, or those ordained by Moses in the slaughter of animals of various kinds, and was to give them bread to use as the symbol of His Body, He taught the purity and brightness of such food by saying, ‘And his teeth are white as milk.’ This also another prophet has recorded, where he says, ‘Sacrifice and offering hast thou not required, but a body hast thou prepared for me.’” (Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, Chapter 1).

“Wherefore with full assurance let us partake as of the Body and Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Wine His Blood; that thou by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mayest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him.” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture 22, Section 3).

“As then in the case of the Jews, so here also He hath bound up the memorial of the benefit with the mystery, by this again stopping the mouths of heretics. For when they say, Whence is it manifest that Christ was sacrificed? together with the other arguments we stop their mouths from the mysteries also. For if Jesus did not die, of what are the rites the symbols?” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 82, Section 1).

“Orthodoxos. — But our Savior changed the names, and to His body gave the name of the symbol and to the symbol that of his body. So, after calling himself a vine, he spoke of the symbol as blood.
“Eranistes. — True. But I am desirous of knowing the reason of the change of names.
“Orthodoxos. — To them that are initiated in divine things the intention is plain. For be wished the partakers in the divine mysteries not to give heed to the nature of the visible objects, but, by means of the variation of the names, to believe the change wrought of grace. For He, we know, who spoke of his natural body as corn and bread, and, again, called Himself a vine, dignified the visible symbols by the appellation of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace.” (Theodoret, Dialogues, Dialogue 1, PNF 2.03, pp. 326-327).

“Eranistes. — As, then, the symbols of the Lord’s body and blood are one thing before the priestly invocation, and after the invocation are changed and become another thing; so the Lord’s body after the assumption is changed into the divine substance.
Orthodoxos. — You are caught in the net you have woven yourself. For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance, figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they are become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be. Compare then the image with the archetype, and you will see the likeness, for the type must be like the reality.” (Theodoret, Dialogues, Dialogue 2, PNF 2.03, pp. 401-402).

**** IMPORTANT ****

All the foregoing quotes are direct denials of one or more key aspects of transubstantiation. Therefore, according to Trent, they are all anathema! Even Augustine!

Oops!

So I stand by my assertion that transubstantiation is a late doctrine with no Scripture to support it whatsoever, and many witnesses against it both in Scripture and in the Fathers. If it were not for the false doctrine of Sola Ecclesia, it would never have happened. Realize then, that Sola Scriptura is the best defense against the tendency of sinners, even saved sinners, to imagine they know better than the written record of truth God bequeathed to us in behalf of Christ and his Apostles.

3. About Private Judgment

2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. [21] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

If you will look at verse 21 above, you will note this pertains to how we got Scripture, not how we read Scripture. No prophet sat around doing his own interpretation of events and writing at his own whimsy. Rather, God was the author of the Biblical text, and so it may be relied on, unlike the rambling of fallible man, including certain personages in Italy.

To verify this, take a look at verse 19:

2 Peter 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

Peter just got done telling his readers about hearing the voice of God directly in the Transfiguration. You would think that would trump any other form of revelation. Not so, says Peter, because the word of prophecy in Scripture trumps even Peter’s personal experience of the Transfiguration.

And what gives us this confidence in Scripture, that we treat it as a “light shining in a dark place” while we tread this mortal life? The fact that Scripture is “theopneustos,” God speaking to us, and not the mere private ramblings of mortal man. It all fits.

Don’t feel bad. It’s a common mistake of interpretation. That’s why we keep learning. We can always do better.

Peace,