But the means of acquiring it is not to eat His flesh as men understand that, but to feed on His words, that is, to have faith in Him, and what he has done for us. That is where I began to disagree. If Jesus meant in John 6 what you impute to Him in the above assertion, then the repeated statements that "my flesh I food indeed" would be not necessary, for the objection is about "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?". The objection is precisely the Protestant objection about cannibalism, yet Jesus never resolves it in the proposed Protestant fashion that the Eucharist is metaphorical.
Further, the scene of the Last Supper repeats the same direct, violating the common sense claim that "this is my body and blood". St Paul reinforces this direct meaning in his discourse in 1 Cor. 11. Seeing the passages in the Holy Scripture as a whole does not leave a room for Protestant reductionism.
No one, of course, disputes that these words of Jesus are "the words of eternal life"; we Catholic just take them as such. You don't.
No one, of course, disputes that these words of Jesus are "the words of eternal life"; we Catholic just take them as such. You don't.
You have an internal contradiction in this statement. We do not dispute these words are eternal life. That means we do "take them as such," contrary to your assertion. You seem to be saying the same thing twice, but in the first instance we are non-disputers, and in the second instance we are disputers. This is not logical. You have some sort of unresolved ambiguity buried in there. I'm sure you meant the two to be different, only logically they don't come out that way. At least not the way I am reading them.
Or perhaps this is what you meant: We both take them as words of eternal life, only you require the additional step of dismissing the metaphor and substituting in it's place the hypothetical category invented by Thomas, a category of non-physical non-metaphor non-spiritual something, sufficiently real to warrant worshiping the physical form of it's appearance, but not sufficiently physical to warrant the charge of cannibalism.
But none of that is what Jesus said. Those things He
did say we hold dear as the words of eternal life. We further claim that the invented categories of Thomas are not at all necessary to acceptance of the words of Jesus, and in fact tend to be an impediment to true faith, flying in the face of the simplicity of faith Peter expressed at the end. His confession in response to this teaching was not that he believed something about the transformed nature of bread and wine, but that he believed something about Jesus, that He was in fact the Messiah.
And that is where this whole thing gets off track. The focus is changed. In the Catholic version, the focus of John 6 shifts to something Jesus was not even discussing. In the pre-Catholic version, the focus is where Peter puts it, on the person of Jesus, what we believe about Him. We all accept that He could do anything He pleases with the bread and wine, make it into anything He wants, within the scope of real things as He has made them. We just don't see evidence in the text, either here or anywhere else in the NT, that Thomas' invented category of being is the subject of discussion. It's simply not there. What is there is the question, what do you believe about Jesus.
For example, you argue that if faith in Him is the primary object of the teaching, why would Jesus emphasize that his flesh and blood are real food. But this is circular reasoning. The implied assumption is that "real" can only mean transubstantively real. But spiritual is real, physical is real, even the metaphor of consuming Him by having faith in Him is real. Everything that is true is real, by definition. How is this not the most real thing Jesus is teaching?
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
(John 6:35)
Coming to him permanently resolves hunger, as only true food could. Believing on Him permanently resolves thirst, as only true drink could. This verse is the Rosetta Stone of the passage. It shows the indisputable nexus between the food metaphor and the direct fulfillment of that metaphor by having faith in Jesus.
As for whether Jesus resolved the implied charge of cannibalism, Jesus first doubled down on the truthfulness of what He was saying, and when they continued to grumble about it, took them to task for missing the point, that once He was physically gone from them, it will be by the spirit, and not by the flesh, that they will be made alive. That is the context that takes us to the passage we are disputing. It is the very resolution you seem to be saying is missing. Yet there it is, exactly where it belongs in the exchange. There is no cannibalism because it is not the physical flesh of Jesus that must be consumed. It is the spirit that give life, not the flesh. Objection answered.
And nothing elsewhere in the NT gives evidence of anything beyond a sacred metaphor in the bread and wine, specifically designated a remembrance, a spiritual event that could not be reduced to a loveless food orgy without bringing dire consequences to the congregation, and which will serve as an object lesson portraying the death of Christ until He returns.
Peace,
SR