Posted on 07/23/2016 9:19:23 AM PDT by Salvation
Eucharist in the creed?
Msgr. Charles Pope
Question: The true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is central to our Catholic faith, and many converts say it was essential to their conversion. If this is so, why is the true presence not mentioned at all in the Nicene or Apostles Creeds? Should it not be added at the end where we state things like our belief in the Communion of Saints, the resurrection of the body and so forth? — Jerry Roventini, via email
Answer: There are many things that are not mentioned in the Nicene Creed. There is no mention of the Ten Commandments or grace; neither are we told what books belong to the New Testament or that we should care for the poor, etc. The creed is not a catechism; it is a statement of certain key doctrines that were disputed at the time of its composition in the fourth century.
The creed was composed in response to debates about the divinity of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. While there are a few concluding statements related to ecclesiology and eschatology, the Nicene Creed remains preeminently a statement of faith in the one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The belief in the true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist was not widely disputed at the time. And to the degree it was, the need to definitively teach on the divinity of Christ was an important foundation in order to establish his true presence in the Eucharist.
In the Sacred Liturgy, many signs and words indicate the Real Presence. The words of the consecration, which are Jesus’ own words, say, “This is my body … my blood.” The priest later says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” There are also signs of the Real Presence in our reverence of kneeling and genuflecting. And, as Communion is distributed, there is the simple creedal declaration and response: “The body of Christ. Amen.” Therefore, in the wider liturgy of the Mass and devotions such as adoration, the Church proclaims her belief in the True Presence.
While it would not intrinsically hurt to add to the Nicene Creed, one might wonder where it would stop. Further, since the creed is shared by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, adding to the ancient creed might harm attempts at unity.
Pope Paul VI wrote a longer “Credo of the People of God” which does speak to the Eucharistic presence, but it is too long to recite at Mass.
Well then: !חַג כָּשֵׁר וְשָׂמֵחַ
Well now you FINALLY get it. Deo gratias!
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Why do you capitalize "accurate" and "true"? They are adjectives, not proper nouns, nor are they the beginning of a sentence.
Are you a foreigner?
What is the damning different btwn providing a text web address to the source, as JesusIsLord did (WWW.thebible.net), which one should easily be able to copy, right click and go to (thus the mods could) and you providing a non-Internet address for material you present?
And just what would have happened to you; if you'd ignored the letter?
Isn't it what your chosen church does?
Claims to be 'accurate' and the only "true" church.
I did it to emphasize the hypocracy of it all.
Your church can NOT be 'accurate' (ref: Ref chap 2-3) and it can NOT be the ONLY (ref: John 10:16) church.
That’s REV not Ref
My apologies for unintentionally citing an inaccurate web address on the initial post.
My Mom and Dad would have been very disappointed in me.
My friend, respectfully, I don't think this is a good argument. Jesus touched lepers - against the law. Jesus healed on the Sabbath - against the law. Jesus did other things - against the law because the law was fulfilled in Him. Similarly, Christians, particularly gentile Christians, are not required to keep the law. I enjoy ham on Easter. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ - period! Cannibalism is not required.
John 6 is about BELIEF! I would argue that Jesus summarized John 6, not by requiring that we become cannibals but according to a passage you previously cited:
"Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this(eating his flesh & blood), Jesus said to them, “Does this (eating his flesh & blood) offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” - John 6:61-64
It is more than just a good argument, it is an excellent dividing point. Jesus would not feed blood or human flesh to His disciples even before He went to the cross to sacrifice same for us and for our salvation. He ‘used up’ the creature body and His soul and divinity remained alive and went to rectify the people who trusted in God’s Promise of the Deliverer. The body into which Jesus resurrected is a glorified body which does not use blood to carry The Life throughout the tissues. So the body catholics claim is brought down from heaven by the catholic priest would not be a sacrifice of the creature body and blood-life. The entire Catholic Mass is a farce.
I understand your point. Based on the Word, I believe that Jesus does not ask us to be cannibals. Based on the Word, I believe it's fair to say there is no blood in Jesus subsequent to his glorification. "Does a spirit have flesh and bone (no mention of blood) as you see me have.."
I think we agree on these (2) points. Nevertheless, I also believe that arguing Jesus would never disobey the law of Moses is a position that can be refuted.
Peace!
That is a VERY good argument.
Jesus would not have eaten blood.
The prohibition against eating blood predates the Law.
Many Christians are not familiar with Genesis, with the vagaries of Cain and Abel and the blood prohibitions origins in Leviticus.
No, that is not a fact, but is what remains to be the problem, that of the LS meaning that the NT church was offering the LS as a sacrifice for sin to be consumed in order to obtain spiritual life, as the central sacrament of the church. Which is simply not what we see in the life of the NT church, as shown, which is interpretive of the gospels. And only the figurative understanding easily conflates with totality of Scripture. Nor was the Catholic position of transubstantiation even settled in the post-apostolic church, despite its accretion of errors. And if you want to insistent that a literal interpretation is required, then you must take the Lord's words purely literal, that the consecrated bread has becomes the actual body and blood of the Lord, and thus would look, taste and scientifically test as such, rather than somehow "really" being the Lord's body and blood, even though it would not scientifically test as such, which requires resorting to neoplatonic Neoplatonic thought and Aristotelian philosophic metaphysics to explain.
In Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship, Bernhard Lang argues that, “When in late antiquity the religious elite of the Roman Empire rethought religion and ritual, the choice was not one between Mithraism and Christianity (as Ernest Renan suggested in the 19th century) but between pagan Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic Christianity.”
“In the third century CE, under the leadership of Plotinus, Plato’s philosophy enjoyed a renaissance that was to continue throughout late antiquity. This school of thought had much in common with Christianity: it believed in one God (the “One”), in the necessity of ritual, and in the saving contact with deities that were distinct from the ineffable One and stood closer to humanity. Like Judaism and Christianity, it also had its sacred books–the writings of Plato, and, in its later phase, also the Chaldean Oracles. In fact, major early Christian theologians–Origen, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysus–can at the same time be considered major representatives of the Neoplatonic school of thought.” - (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2014/04/08/early-churchs-choice-between-neoplatonism)
From a RC monk and defender:
Neoplatonic thought or at least conceptual terms are clearly interwoven with Christian theology long before the 13th century...
The doctrine of transubstantiation completely reverses the usual distinction between being and appearance, where being is held to be unchanging and appearance is constantly changing. Transubstantiation maintains instead that being or substance changes while appearance remains unchanged. Such reversals in the order of things are affronts to reason and require much, not little, to affirm philosophically. Moreover, transubstantiation seem to go far beyond the simple distinction between appearance and reality. It would be one thing if the body and blood of Christ simply appeared to be bread and wine. But I don’t think that is what is claimed with “transubstantiation.”
Aristotle picked up just such common-sense concepts as “what-it-is-to-be-X” and tried to explain rather complex philosophical problems with them. Thus, to take a “common-sense” concept like substance–even if one could maintain that it were somehow purified of Aristotelian provenance—and have it do paradoxical conceptual gymnastics in order to explain transubstantiation seems not to be not so anti-Aristotelian in spirit after all...
That the bread and wine are somehow really the body and blood of Christ is an ancient Christian belief—but using the concept of “substance” to talk about this necessarily involves Greek philosophy (Br. Dennis Beach, OSB, monk of St. John’s Abbey; doctorate in philosophy from Penn State; http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/05/30/transubstantiation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy)
Edwin Hatch:
...it is among the Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr. But at the same time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them on their travels. (Hatch, Edwin, 1835-1889, "The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian church;" pp. 308-09 https://archive.org/stream/influenceofgreek00hatc/influenceofgreek00hatc_djvu.txt) ^
A final note here is that Eucharistic theology is not wrong simply because it is hard to explain, and borrows from philosophic concepts of pagans in attempting to do so, which can also be the case with explaining the doctrine of the Trinity. But unlike the Trinity, which is demanded due to the lack of any other logical alternative in the light of the manifest deity of Christ and the Father and Spirit, the language used in Lord's supper accounts and John 6 is easily shown to be metaphorical, being consistent with the metaphorical language of Scripture, and with the means of obtaining spiritual life, and the place of the Lord's supper in the life of the NT church. And which evidence simply does not support the Catholic doctrine and place and practice of the Lord's supper.
Not all cannibals:
Alpers and Lindenbaum’s research conclusively demonstrated that kuru [neurological disorder] spread easily and rapidly in the Fore people due to their endocannibalistic funeral practices, in which relatives consumed the bodies of the deceased to return the “life force” of the deceased to the hamlet, a Fore societal subunit. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%...9#Transmission
he custom of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was practised by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards."
The May ceremony is thus described by the historian Acosta: “The Mexicans in the month of May made their principal feast to their god Vitzilipuztli, and two days before this feast, the virgins whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in the same temple and were as it were religious women) did mingle a quantity of the seed of beets with roasted maize, and then they did mould it with honey, making an idol...all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing pieces of paste compounded of beets and roasted maize, which was of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the young men, who carried them up and laid them at the idol’s feet, wherewith they filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these morsels of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli.
...then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god....then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god...
And this should be eaten at the point of day, and they should drink no water nor any other thing till after noon: they held it for an ill sign, yea, for sacrilege to do the contrary:...and then they gave them to the people in manner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eat the flesh and bones of God, where-with they were grieved. Such as had any sick folks demanded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration.”
...They believed that by consecrating bread their priests could turn it into the very body of their god, so that all who thereupon partook of the consecrated bread entered into a mystic communion with the deity by receiving a portion of his divine substance into themselves.
The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the magical conversion of bread into flesh, was also familiar to the Aryans of ancient India long before the spread and even the rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that the rice-cakes offered in sacrifice were substitutes for human beings, and that they were actually converted into the real bodies of men by the manipulation of the priest.
...At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. - http://www.bartleby.com/196/121.html
There are some differences, but these have far more in common with the Cath idea of the Eucharist than anything seen in Scripture interpretive of the words of the last supper.
In conclusion, as with Roman Catholicism as a whole, the Cath Eucharist is not, as shown by God's grace, that which the Holy Spirit reveals in the Scriptural testimony of of the NT church, but it is part of the progressive deformation of the NT church, thus requiring the specious art of "development of doctrine." as testified to before.
Actually, the elitist cult of Mormonism was basically banned from promoting its heresies here, and if liberal Prots were elitists and or were promoting themselves in particular then you would see them targeted. And the reason why Catholicism has been and is targeted has been and is due to the incessant promotion of this elitist heretical sect but certain devotees, some of whom oppose FR allowing reproof of her. How American.
That is moving the goal posts. For that God can do miracles is not the issue that what must be proved by you, but that He is doing the miracle your make Him out to be doing. Based upon your "nothing is impossible with God = whatever Rome says God does" hermeneutic, you could teach that Mary split the Red Sea, feed 5,000 souls with bread crumbs, and is ruling a distant planet. But sound theology, and binding beliefs cannot be based upon what God could do, but upon what His wholly inspired revelation teaches. Upon which core Christians beliefs have clear and substantial testimony in Scripture, even with theological exposition for basic salvific doctrine.
Thus the Holy Spirit would not fail to describe the Catholic priesthood in the life of the NT church offering the LS as a sacrifice for sin to be consumed in order to obtain spiritual life, as the central sacrament of the church. But not only is this utterly absent, but the only priesthood is that of all believers, who are all called to sacrifice, and spiritual life is obtained and nourished via preaching of the word, which is spirit and life, and which is the primary active function of NT pastors.
Of course, such is only part of the absence of Catholicism in Scripture, the substantially "invisible church."
Which central sacrificial sacrament at the hands of priests is utterly absent in the life of the NT church, which writings are interpretative of the gospels. See post 55 and 73 and 117 here by the grace of God before you try to respond.
Thus, if taken plainly literally as Caths pretend they take it, then you must hold that no one who holds to the metaphorical position has spiritual life in them, since partaking of the Lord's supper is the means to obtaining essential spiritual life.
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