.
>> “How can you receive a “cultural idiom” unworthily?” <<
By being an unbelieving shill.
You’re really weak on Biblical understanding.
There is no Eucharist; that is pagan hooey.
The eating of the Barley loaf and wine was commanded by Yeshua to be done in remembrance of him. That means being conscious of his sacrifice, and it means every time that the loaf and wine are consumed, not under the direction of some pagan nicolaitan.
.
1 Corinthians 12:27 (ESV)
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
“Cultural idiom” just means familiar expressions used among a particular group of people. Were it not for “cultural idioms,” no human communication could occur at all.
The ‘real’ problem is what does ‘real’ mean. Physical? Not necessarily. Love is real. Agreed? God is Spirit. God is real. I know astute Catholics who recognize that ‘real presence’ does not mean physical. ‘Real presence’ is a Catholic “cultural idiom.” No one seems to know what it ‘really’ means. As I have watched these debates, for many years now, it seems mainly to be used as a way for Catholics to divide themselves from other followers of Jesus Christ. I believe this is grave error.
So the entire argument begins from a position of weakness, because the definition of the most contested term is unclear. But the idea that the communion meal could not be abused unless the elements were this special, undefined sort of ‘real’ is defeated by well known principles that all ordinary Catholics would probably accept.
Take for example the Ark of the Covenant. It contained the tablets of the law, and the budding branch of Aaron. It could not be touched, lest one die, and Uzzah did die for touching it. So what was the ark? It was real wood, real gold. But it was not God. God’s word established what it was, and how it served His purposes. But it was only a physical representation of a spiritual reality. Yet what power God gave it, by the power of His command.
Furthermore, we do not have this by guesswork. We know from the writer of Hebrews that the earthly pattern of things given to Moses for the worship of God were but copies and shadows of the Heavenly pattern. This is the apostolic view, and it supports the idea that even these copies may be a cause of great offense to God when they are abused and disrespected.
In fact, Christ spent the bulk of His earthly ministry revealing the spiritual realities that lay behind all the formalities of worship that Israel had come to take for granted. All of the law and the prophets hang on the entirely spiritual principle of love. Everything tangible in the worship of God in Israel was grounded in intangible love.
So reaching a conclusion that John 6 is a continuation of that pattern of showing spiritual truth through physical representations is entirely consistent with how God spoke to us every other place in His revealed word to us.
This does not discount physical things. God did institute the physical temple, did command the construction of the physical Ark of the Covenant, did physically kill Uzzah for touching it, and did come to us as the God-man, a physical and spiritual reality, did physically rise from the dead, and will come in His physical person on the last day such that every eye will see Him. All of this every Christian accepts.
But God has nowhere commanded anyone to act as His agent by infusing the bread and wine of the communion meal with a form of ‘realness’ that has no affirmative definition, but is mainly defined by NOT being a metaphor, and therefore a cause of division among those who should be brothers and sisters to each other. God is not the author of confusion. The clear command we DO have from Jesus is to take the bread and wine as a remembrance of the sacrifice He made on our behalf. The love we have for Jesus at the moment of that remembrance is more real than anything ever contemplated by medieval alchemists, and it will outlast the memory of any of the naïve theories men have imagined about it. The love of God in Christ for us is as real as anything will ever get for all time and eternity.
Peace,
SR