I'm still looking for your explanation as to how the Lord's body is a local assembly but the blood of the Lord is not, did you post it and I missed it, or do you hold the blood of Messiah is an assembly too ?
"Your explanation about discerning the Lord's body in poorer brethren, though well intentioned, does not fit. One who sins in unworthy communion is also guilty of the blood of the Lord, as well as the body. Surely you don't mean to imply the local church is the blood of Christ, or do you ?"
I'm still looking for your explanation as to how the Lord's body is a local assembly but the blood of the Lord is not, did you post it and I missed it, or do you hold the blood of Messiah is an assembly too ?
"Your explanation about discerning the Lord's body in poorer brethren, though well intentioned, does not fit. One who sins in unworthy communion is also guilty of the blood of the Lord, as well as the body. Surely you don't mean to imply the local church is the blood of Christ, or do you ?"
I have set myself to answer that a number of times, and have been unable to post it for days now, for one reason or another. I think part of that is the belief on my part that if the answers already offered have not been persuasive for you, I sincerely wonder whether it is worth any further discourse. But because you have asked specifically, I will give it a shot.
I think the main thing is this: We really have a major disconnect on what the Ecclesia is. Paul uses "body" repeatedly in the section in question, 1 Corinthians 10-12, to describe the fellowship of Christians. He never makes analogy, as far as I know, to the community of the Christian faithful as "the body and blood." It's actually one of the key tip-offs that the "discerning of the body" has nothing to do with the physical elements of the paschal meal. Look again at the critical line:
1 Corinthians 11:29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
Throughout the broader passage the criterion of "unworthiness" is established as this unloving behavior toward one's fellow believers. But the condemnation comes in singular focus of failing to judge correctly (διακρίνω) the body of the Lord. Not "judge or discern the body AND the blood."
Just the body. That asymmetry is jarringly out of place if the fault of the Corinthians is their failure to have a mystical experience wherein the realize they are eating literal flesh and drinking literal blood. Because then we would expect Paul to say they were unworthy because they failed to discern
both body and blood.
But nothing in this passage up to this point or after it is at all concerned with having a gnosis of hidden substances of body and blood in contrast to a supposed illusory bread and wine. That is a radically artificial imposition on the sense of the text. The whole thrust is brotherly love, the dynamic of how hypocrisy among believers is a true assault on the body of Christ as the spiritual community of believers, and how such hypocrisy demeans the sacrifice of unselfish love He made for us.
So the overarching doctrinal target in these three chapters is to separate the Corinthians from the unloving habits of their pagan background, and get them to see their fundamental unity as the body of Christ. To achieve this, he goes through a number of illustrative issues. In Chapter 10 we are placed in analogy to the loaf. Just the loaf, not the blood. We are to Christ His body true and proper, as much as the one in which He was incarnated. This is spiritually discerned, but it is as real as a heart attack.
As a result of this real body we are, in Chapter 11 we told we need to be aware of (discern, judge rightly) that body (not the blood) of the Lord so we can be worthy of the memorial of Christ's sacrificial love for that body, and in Chapter 12, we are reminded that all around us in the body of Christ we will find precious people whom the Holy Spirit has gifted for our mutual edification, and we should give them the respect that is due a fellow member of the body of our Lord.
But the grand crescendo of this life we have as the body of Christ is love, and in Chapter 13, Paul strikes that climax with amazing power and grandeur, as he walks us through the beauty of Christ-like love. It is the capstone to his discourse on our life together in Christ and with each other. It's about the love.
So really, I have a genuinely hard time going from that inspiring vision of who we are supposed to be to each other in this wondrous spiritual community of divine love, to this senseless detour into Aristotelian substance versus accidence. It is totally, and I mean as 180 degrees, out of sync with the overarching sense of the passage. It is an alien imposition.
But as I said at the beginning, this is not news to either you or annalex. If you have not believed our report up to this point, will you believe it if we repeat it another 100 times? I have a life outside FR. I could, if unencumbered by the necessities of life, write about the love of Christ and us His body thousands of times over. But I am so encumbered. I have other things I must do. So don't take it personally if I can't respond to your every inquiry. I have to make best use of the time God gives me. One never knows when the last grain of sand will drop.
Peace,
SR