imardmd1: Are you ready, Vlad, for that kind of spirituality? It's not the surface things that count, FRiend. Spirituality is not visible or tangible.
Post #265
In your confused natural response, deflecting attention away from the issue of your own spirituality, you substituted the issue of the Memorial Supper, instituted by Jesus:
Vlad: JESUS IS PHYSICAL. He is "visible". He is "tangible". Are you denying He is spiritual? Post #273
For the moment neglecting many of the side-aspects this brings up, only the first are refuted, directly and without question. All of the bodily manifestation of Jesus, including His Blood, since His Ascension into the Heavenly realm, have been and currently remain there. No part of his bodily manifestation has ever appeared to you or to me in this natural earthly realm, nor to any other human. In this realm, He is not here, He is not visible, and He is not tangible, and He is not present in any physical way. He is in Heaven, all of Him, at the right hand of God The Father; and we are here. Period. End of that erroneous claim of yours. But you continued:
Vlad: Finishing a thought: You deny the real Christ when you deny Him as He really is and how He really manifests Himself spiritually to His people. Post #274
As shown, He really is in the Heavenly sphere and not here in the earthly sphere. We really are here in the earthly sphere and not in the heavenly sphere. Our physical faculties cannot pierce the veil between the two spheres, and therefore He does not manifest Himself to His selected subjects through any of our sensory faculties, audible, visual, or tangible. Bread may be a token by which to effect the Remenbrance Menorial Supper, but it is bread, and cannot be His flesh, or His Body would long ago have been eaten up. Likewise, His Incorruptoble Blood, all of it, still remains spread on the True Mercy Seat in Heaven, continually visible to the Father. None of it has transited to Earth to appear in the fruit of the vine, the physical token to remind us of the shedding of /his Blood whilst we repeatedly observe the Memorial till He returns to fetch us out of this realm. So I said:
imardmd1: Which is? Let me guess . . . physically, in a piece of embossed flour? Post #277
To which your riposte was:
Vlad: And you think the Eucharist isn’t spiritual? Again, your logic is not logical at all. Post #282
This embodies several errors if a few words: (1) you claim to be reading my mind and imputing what I am thinking; (2) you suggest that the physical objects used as memory aids are at the same time of spiritual substance; (3) that my statements do not flow logically one from another (an irrational blindness to reality); and (4) that this is a repetitive futile device that I employ to advance my points.
Furthermore, your ideation shows that your focus for the conduct of the Remembrance is on idolizing the material tokens of His Passion, rather than on the details of His Person as He submitted Himself for execution in the place of each one of the regenerated particiupants, that we may be judicially declared "Not Guilty!" by the Judge of Souls of men.
Your distraction by the soulless, spiritless elements is indeed pathetic. Your excuse for this misplaced emphasis of importance is the nebulous, irrational invisible, intangible, unexplainable, illogical theory of "transubstantiation," the transformation of the grown, harvested, and prepared substance of comestibles into human flesh and blood with the life still in it.
What a silly notion! It is not logical. And it is not Scriptural, because your system takes the words spoken by Jesus as clearly figurative-literal illustrations of Spiritual truths, and turn them into an illogical utterance of literal impossibility, both on physical and on moral principles.
Now, how much more illogical and unintelligible can that be? Yet it becomes a central postulation of a religious system that is opposite to the Testimony, the Covenant, the Will of the Person it claims as its founder. It comprises yet another logical fallacy: mistranslation and misinterpretation of the words of the Scripture to lend an illegitimate authority to your proposition.
So I reply:
imardmd1: And transubstantiation is logical? It is certainly not Scriptural. Post #294
To which your illogical response is:
Vlad: It’s as logical as the virgin birth, or creation out of nothing, or the resurrection of the dead. Post #298
Well, let's see now. Neglecting the inexplicability of the operations, but considering the scientifically provable observations of the outcomes,
(1) the birth of a child by a female that has not had generative participation of the male of the species, a male child who is seen by humans and angels, develops through maturing and training stages, and becomes both a carpenter and a teacher/trainer of Bible students--to me, that is a logical outcome. Then:
(2) For some reason, dimensions, mass, and light come into play, a system populated by interrelated and interdependent objects and substances is made, and certain assemblies of parts and processes appear that have the ability to communicate and propagate, with a wealth and logical organization of these components--well, that is entirely logical to me as an outcome of the prime cause, eh? Going on:
(3) that a self-motivated object for some reason loses the power to self-boot itself, and even after a period of such inactivity is able to respond to the application of restoration by an external source, both physically, mentally, and spiritually, then go on fubctioning as before; moreover seen and evaluated in the scientific sense; well, that is not illogical to me, especially since I have not only heard of it in reports, but have seen it in both animate and inanimate entities. Resurrection is a logical process with a logical result.
What makes these Biblically-reported accounts illogical, Vlad? I don't follow your reasoning. But then, according to your report,
(4) A piece of bread and cup of grape juice are mumbled over, and become . . . voila! a piece of bread and a cup of wine, able to be ingested, digested, decomposed into various chemicals, some to be incorporated, some to burn and supply heat, and the remainder to be excreted as waste. Now, that is logical. But to be turned into human flesh and blood without any change in composition, appearance, taste, or digestibility, isn't that a bit . . . illogical?
But as for the appearance and usefulness of the bread and expressed liquid from the vine-grapes--being commonly available elements--to deliberately use them as visual reminders to refresh one's mind of the occasion of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth on the basis of His substitutionary death in the place of the true criminals who have naturally and willfully disobeyed the will of their Creator . . . is this not a completely logical and reasonable employment of these elements in assisting in the mental focus on the recorded report, that prompts a spiritual response of joy anf thanks for a Savior and Redeemer?
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18 AV).
You cited this, but you don't seem to understand it as applying to you and your deviation from God's ways. Come on, Vlad, you need to start making sense rather than making nonsense.
Otherwise, I'm not interested in wasting time instigating you to keep running your windmill.
If the Eucharist is what Eastern Orthodox say it is, is it then spiritual or physical or both?