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which is clearly not His body

ah, seen the natural man it clearly is not his body.

a muslim, Mormon and Jehovah Witness will all agree with you the Eucharist is just bread.

Paul, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyril, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, the Orthodox, the Copts and the Catholics would all beg to disagree.

there is the little matter of faith.

if someone saw Jesus hanging on the cross and said he was just a man, the Muslim et al would agree.

to the Christian who has faith, they would see the Son of God.

faith my friend makes all the difference.

As I read all the murmurings in the Eucharist threads, I'm reminded of:

Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no. And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel, At even, then ye shall know that the Lord hath brought you out from the land of Egypt: And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the Lord; for that he heareth your murmurings against the Lord: and what are we, that ye murmur against us?
Exodus, Catholic chapter sixteen, Protestant verses four to seven,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James

What then? Do you say they saw His body instead of bread? I was sure transubstantiation at least allowed that the accidents of bread were still there.

Because by "clearly not His body" I do not mean to invoke the conclusion of the analysis, but it's beginning, which starts with what they saw, and we should be agreeing they did see bread, and that bread would have stood in stark contrast to the reality of His natural body, also before them. In this context, the natural use of language demands a metaphor, because there most certainly is a contrast of conceptual domains being held up for comparison.

I believe that, BTW, is why they didn't even question Him on this. Not because they believed some novel theory of Aristotelian substances that hadn't been invented yet, but because they quite naturally understood they were being presented with a new metaphor. The unleavened bread had long been a metaphor for their hasty escape from Egypt, and now Jesus was giving a new covenant meaning to that metaphor. They had no problem spotting that metaphor because it's just how God programmed our minds to work.

As for their faith, it was still quite weak. They hadn't even really accepted He was going to die. Later that night Peter will be running around during the arrest in the garden cutting off ears, effectively trying to prevent Jesus' death. No, these men had the seedlings of faith, and would be restored to full faith after the resurrection. But they were ordinary Jewish men, well accustomed to the traditional Passover metaphors, and willing to learn new metaphors from Jesus, albeit they were a little slow in the uptake. Not their fault, BTW. None of us would have done any better.

Peace,

SR