[Brian Kopp DPM]

Curiously, the pagan Romans accused the early Christians of cannibalism, precisely because the earliest Christians did not think it was metaphorical. No one questioned the Real Presence for the first 800 years of Christianity. The early Christians were unanimous that it was not metaphorical.

[the_doc]

If even pagan Romans argued that Christians should have understood it as metaphorical--on the grounds (which you mentioned) that it would otherwise be cannibalism--then we have confirmation of Jesus's statement to the effect that "the children of this world are sometimes wiser than the children of light." (Ah, pagans do understand what cannibalism is even if they don't understand much else. We ought to listen to them about this!)

And remember: Jesus specifically warned us about His use of metaphor. It is not more spiritual to take Him literally when anyone can see that He was being metaphorical.

Understanding it as metaphor does not diminish its spirituality. In fact, it sharpens the ceremony's spirituality--by forcing us to think about what it does mean. What it means is that unless you are in a supernatural union with Christ through regeneration, by which regeneration you will once and for all appreciate His true humanity (flesh like yours) and his Godhood (the Life of His Blood), you are lost.

And of course, a lot of people who desperately try to affirm the RC dogma are not regenerate. They are trying to affirm what they do not really believe concerning the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ any more than they believe that the elements are magically transformed into literal flesh and literal blood.

My point is that affirming something does not make it true and does not even mean that one really believes it. In fact, desperately affirming something which a person does not, indeed, cannot believe just makes that person a hypocrite.

As a doctor, I assure you that the bread is just bread and the wine is just wine. The issues of interest are in the soul of the partaker, not in the hocus-pocus of RC dogma. And I have enough respect for podiatrists to know that at some level below your stubbornness, you already realize that I am correct.

[Wrigley]

I think you may be misreading history. What I have read is that the Romans thought it was canabalism, not necessarily the early Christians. It was a opportunity to seek and destroy and put them well out of the mainstream. I've always seen those verses as metaphorical myself.