It’s symbolic and not literal. And it’s not required for salvation. That couldn’t be more clear.
It’s symbolic and not literal. And it’s not required for salvation. That couldn’t be more clear.
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Getting warmer. Thanks for the best answer so far.
60 Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?
62 Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before?
63 It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
[Vs 63 is a contrast between the Spirit's ability to enlighten our minds (14:26) and human reason's inability to comprehend revealed truths apart from faith (8:15). It is this earthbound perspective that is profitless in the face of divine mysteries. Note that Jesus is not speaking of his own "flesh", which does in fact give life to the world as stated in vs. 51. (see also Eph 2:13-16 and Heb 10:10)]
64 But there are some of you that do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that should betray him.
65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
Jesus didn’t do all that he did merely to replace one set of symbols with a different set, sorry.
Wrong. It is not merely symbolic. The transformation of literal bread and literal wine into the body and blood of Christ, or transubstantiation, is a miraculous occurrence. For the Roman Catholic, to deny the transformation is to deny the miraculous, and to place limitations on the power of God. To “consume” the body of Christ is to become a part of the body of Christ spiritually.