Spreingfield Reformer: Which as you can see is not even remotely about me going for an allegorical explanation without warrant.
You perceive a contradiction in my words? The virgin birth, and the resurrection are miracles that the Church believes are not allegory of something but facts. Likewise the manna, likewise the five loaves and two fish feeding thousands, likewise the consecrated bread and wine becoming not allegorical Jesus but substantially Jesus. That is supported by the Holy Scripture because the language describing all these miracles is plain and direct and not indicative of allegory. Any kind of hermeneutics that looks at something contrary to nature described in the Bible and dashes for the allegory is flawed beyond repair.
If, in the public discourses of Jesus, we meet a saying that is not ordinarily possible the way it was said, we have God Himself telling us to look for an analogy of meaning
Yup; that is how I understood you the first time. It is wrong. Resurrection and virgin birth, and all the miracles in the Gospel are "not ordinarily possible" the way anyone would describe them. Ordinarily, sexual acts precede birth, dead people stay dead, bread stays bread.
God is telling us to look for analogy in the public teaching ministry of Jesus
Good grief. Seriously? Whatever He said I should then seek a hidden (*) meaning? By the way, there is no parable of Jesus that a half-way attentive reader would not understand the meaning of; parables are teaching tools, not obfuscation tools.
why Augustine gets away with saying that but Protestant's don't
What do you mean by "gets away"? That quote is plain contrary to the Catholic doctrine. St. Augustine is not inerrant; this would not be the only opinion of his that is held as error by the Church; I listed another, about predestination being an equivalent of grace.
Anathemas are issued not to teach a doctrine but to point out a falsehood that is endangering souls. Augustine's writing on the "figure" was not creating a schism in the Church till 15 Century; when it became a movement scattering the Church, it was condemned. Of course, Trent did not have an effect on Augustine's person because he was dead already.
Jesus did NOT mean, and I think we can actually agree on this, that they should try to eat his body and blood right there on the spot.
Right, but we don't have to reach for non-existent allegories to apprehend that. He said that the bread will be His body; the entire conversation in John 6 is in future tense, and the references to life eternal, divinity of Jesus, and the spirit that would profit throughout the discourse point to something miraculous that will happen but has not happened. It actually happened at the Last Supper, when the phrase is present tense and terse, and a statement of fact: "this is my body".
There is no mention of the Passover celebration here
Nor should there be. The Mass is prefigured in the Passover episode which is also reflected in the Seder. However, the Mass is the Golgotha hill, not the Seder. The bitter herbs and the sweets, the multiple cups and the rest of the Passover meal are not present in the Mass and they were not spoken about by Jesus. There are many semantic connections here, but not the actual commingling of the Jewish rite and the Catholic rite.
he says here plainly, is where we find our life [...]
Yes, He does, but that -- and the rest of your post there, -- does not negate His previous speech. Of course with the Eucharist we also consume the entirety of the Christian doctrine, -- both by conscious learning at the Liturgy of the word and by turning to the Savior in spirit, letting Him in physically to abide in us. The Mass is entirely consistent with the dual meaning of Christ as the Word (John 1:1).
Perhaps the confusion begins with seeing the Holy Mass as ceremony, when in fact it is encounter with the Word Entire.
(*) On that score. Observe that after the Resurrection Christ spends 40 days "speaking of the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). You don't think the doctrine was given the nascent Church then?
We are having a fundamental communication problem. It's like you're not actually reading what I'm saying. Seriously. I don't get it. The literal hermeneutic, as I explained before, has no trouble picking up supernatural events described in ordinary language. I am so confused at your response here I'm going to just let this go for now. I've said what I wanted to say, you didn't interact with it in a way I could , so OK, there it is.
But I do note you once again avoided interacting with those three Scriptures that specifically indicate we should expect pretty much everything Jesus says in His public teaching ministry to be analogical (parable). I'd understand if you didn't want to deal with them.
That's how Scripture is. God doesn't play favorites. We all find things in there that challenge our fixed beliefs. It's just a part of Christian growth to be able recognize when God is telling us something we never expected to hear. Like Paul when he hit that commandment about not coveting. Ouch. But dealing with it changed his life for the better. Just sayin ...
the entire conversation in John 6 is in future tense,
Patently untrue. Go back to your Greek Bible and review the tense in each of these verses:
John 6:41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
John 6:42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?
John 6:43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves.
John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
John 6:45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
John 6:46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.
John 6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
John 6:48 I am that bread of life.
John 6:49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
John 6:50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
John 6:52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
John 6:53 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.
John 6:54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
John 6:55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
John 6:56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
John 6:57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. John 6:58 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.
Look at all the occurrences of the verb of being. They are uniformly present tense IF talking about consuming nourishment from Christ as either the heavenly bread or as true food and true drink etc. They are future tense in describing either his crucifixion (verse 51) which was still future, or the eternal benefits of this consuming of Christ, which is perfectly natural when you are talking about the eternal future.
But the act of actually eating Christ here is always put in the immediate, right now sense. Which is why it is important to notice that No one really thought, OK, so lets start the meal now. It didn't happen, yet Jesus posed it grammatically as though it COULD happen right then and there, and as we know from verse 63, because the referent is living on His words, living on his person in spiritual and not fleshly terms, IS something they could do right then and there, and Peter picks up on this, to cap off the dialogue, by showing he really understood what Christ was saying:
John 6:67-69 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.