Acts 15 and the Eucharist

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Silyosha

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If Acts 15 condemns consuming blood, what is there to be said about the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist? I’m trying to explain this to someone.
 
“You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals.” They’re not talking about the body and blood of Christ.
 
Laudetur Iesus Christus.

One approach is to note that this prohibition is an echo of the Old Testament prohibition against eating blood:

Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Genesis (RSV) 9:4.)

But make sure that you do not partake of the blood; for blood is life, and you shall not consume this seat of life with the flesh. (Deuteronomy (NAB) 12:23.)

The equation of blood with life suggests that it is precisely in anticipation of and deference to the Blessed Sacrament that these prohibitions are directed.

We are forbidden to take up the bestial life of animals. But, we are commanded to drink the Sacred Blood, so as to ingest the divine life of Christ.

It might also be worth noting that this prohibition was temporary. The need for this symbolic emphasis of this point became unnecessary, as the teaching that divine life requires the rejection of bestial life became well understood.

Pax.

John Hiner
 
Laudetur Iesus Christus.

One approach is to note that this prohibition is an echo of the Old Testament prohibition against eating blood:

Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Genesis (RSV) 9:4.)

But make sure that you do not partake of the blood; for blood is life, and you shall not consume this seat of life with the flesh. (Deuteronomy (NAB) 12:23.)

The equation of blood with life suggests that it is precisely in anticipation of and deference to the Blessed Sacrament that these prohibitions are directed.

We are forbidden to take up the bestial life of animals. But, we are commanded to drink the Sacred Blood, so as to ingest the divine life of Christ.

It might also be worth noting that this prohibition was temporary. The need for this symbolic emphasis of this point became unnecessary, as the teaching that divine life requires the rejection of bestial life became well understood.

Pax.

John Hiner
A fellow Delawarian? Greetings!
 
Thank you all a bunch for your responses, they are very helpful.
One thing, though: It’s been said that OT has been “fulfilled”. How did we come to that conclusion? I’m not saying I disagree–in fact, I think it makes a lot of sense–but what brought us there?
 
Jesus’ last words on the Cross just before he expired, “It is finished” which is the summation of all his teaching, beginning with his proclamation that the words of Isaiah the prophet are fulfilled in him and that he comes to bring the kingdom, his frequent declaration that he comes to do the will of His Father and establish the kingdom, and specifically his declaration at the last supper, “I shall not drink again with you until I drink it with you in the kingdom.” All this unmistakebly indicates the establishment of the new Kingdom wherein the temporary laws of the old are rendered redundant and voided (except those which predate those laws and are part of unchanging moral law, such as the decalog) but the old covenant has been fulfilled in the new, so its temporary laws are no longer necessary.

The passage you refer to is one of several in Acts that goes on to explain this, and why, and how Christians should conduct themselves.
 
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