Arguments against John 6

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donadei:
No such arguments. Those who think they have are mistaken.

Which gives us really a deep sense of awareness and reverence each time we receive HIM in Holy Communion!

O how must we praise the LORD for his kindness and humility, that He should take the form of a bread to be our food! The beginning phrases each time the Mass is said over at EWTN should really make us stand in awe before God.
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Thought I’d post St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer before mass for those who haven’t heard it…

Let the whole of mankind tremble,
the whole world shake and the heavens
exult, when Christ, the Son of the
living God, is present on the altar
in the hands of a priest.

O admirable heights and sublime
lowliness! O sublime humility! O
humble sublimity!

That the Lord of the universe, God
and the Son of God, so humbles Himself
that for our salvation He hides
Himself under the little form of bread!

Look, brothers, at the humility of God
and pour out your hearts before Him!
Humble yourselves, as well, that you
may be exalted by Him.

Therefore, hold back nothing of
yourselves for yourselves so that He Who
gives Himself totally to you may receive
you totally.

AMEN
 
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matthew1624:
Thought I’d post St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer before mass for those who haven’t heard it…

Let the whole of mankind tremble,
the whole world shake and the heavens
exult, when Christ, the Son of the
living God, is present on the altar
in the hands of a priest.

O admirable heights and sublime
lowliness! O sublime humility! O
humble sublimity!

That the Lord of the universe, God
and the Son of God, so humbles Himself
that for our salvation He hides
Himself under the little form of bread!

Look, brothers, at the humility of God
and pour out your hearts before Him!
Humble yourselves, as well, that you
may be exalted by Him.

Therefore, hold back nothing of
yourselves for yourselves so that He Who
gives Himself totally to you may receive
you totally.

AMEN
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Thank you for that post, Matthew.

But did you notice that they replaced it now with ‘preparation before Holy Communion’ which I think is really timely and appropriate.

God bless.
 
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Cephas:
Would like to hear some of the arguments against John 6.
If Jesus was speaking “symbolically”, what ‘proof’ can be shown to support that?
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To me, the Protestants I’ve spoken with about this give a pretty simplistic rationale, that Jesus was testing their faith and was willing to let those who showed they lacked faith in Him walk away without clarification. I just don’t think the majority of them really give much thought about it and why should they, it’s not real to them. I think they are just satisfied with what their pastor tells them about John 6, which usually isn’t much.
 
John 6:66 describes the first known Protestants…interesting number that…666

😛
 
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sabrinaofmn:
Gen. 6:4 prohibits eating flesh and blood together. “But flesh with the life thereof, [which is] the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”

This is the best that I can come up with. Noah and his son’s are being told what they can and can’t eat, so it appears to be more of a food safety issue. I don’t really know . . . does anyone have a comment?

I am a Protestant and I am considering converting. It was the Eucharist that drew me in, and after reading John 6 with an unbiased state of mind, I am increasingly convinced that transubstantiation is real.
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Gods peace be with you Theophilus,

I see that the ‘Holy Spirit’ is alive in you and the scales are comming off your eyes too! Good luck and welcome Home to Rome!:dancing:

Don’t forget to look at:Lk 22:19-20, 1 Cor 10:16-17, 11:23-29. Corinthians was written to correct people who lost site of what the Body and Blood were. If ‘symbolic’ there would be no reason to correct?:hmmm:

If Christ can turn a few loafs of bread into enough to feed thousands then a little miracle like Transubstantiation is easy. He blessed the bread and it feed thousands. He blessed the bread at the last supper and it became His flesh! Thats why Catholics give thanks to God at meals for the food but ask the blessing for themselfs.

Study also in history that Catholics/Christians were considered cannabals by Rome! Why? Because Christians claimed they ate ‘Real’ flesh and and it was not ‘symbolic’ at all. This was before the Catholic Church wrote the Bible and assembled it in the 4th century.

Sorry I did not add to the ‘symbolic’ nature of this forum but non of the arguments I knew as a protestant can’t hold up. They require complete ignorance/avoidance/denial/missinterpretation of Scripture and history.:eek: I will look for some though.

A prisoner of Christ
 
Gods peace be with you Theophilus,

I shall use the NAB so we can all understand it and not the KJV which is very confusing to those who only speak English and not the obsolete ‘Old’ English:

Proof Jesus was speaking ‘symbolic’:

Jn 6:63 “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

The flesh of Jesus is of no avail.

Contradicts ‘hope’ for salvation and proves ‘assurance’:

Jn 6:53 “54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”

So this proves the RCC teachings on salvation wrong.

Proves manna does not bring life:

Jn 6:49 “49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;”

To sum it up, about verse Jn 6:33 Jesus starts talking in ‘symbols’ and this carries through the chapter?

Boy this feels horrible stating that point of view above? Anyway, this is “THEIR” argument and “I DO NOT BELIEVE IT!”:bounce: I put it up so you could see the other view which is easily proven wrong. Just read John and 1 Cor 10 and 11 without any preconceptions. Do not read it to prove your point, read it to discover Gods Word. Also if this junk was true, why did it take 1,500 for anyone to believe it?:whistle: (In other then a fad) Read the Church “FATHERS” to see what they believed, it is solid Catholic dogma!

Sorry I couldn’t stomach any more of their ‘opinions’ and self-(miss)interpretations any longer so I shall stop here before I get too sick on it.:bigyikes:

A prisoner of Christ
 
Wow!

Before I joined the Catholic Church, my Baptist pastor argued with me about the Gospel of John, chapter 6. He argued that Jesus was speaking symbolically, not literally. His argument was that we can only sustain a spiritual life with a right relationship with Jesus Christ. Since, bread must be eaten to sustain life, Christ must be invited into our lives daily to sustain spiritual life. He also said that the other disciples left, because they were taking Jesus literally, not symbolically like the remaining disciples did.

Ironically, it was the Eucharist that drew me to the Catholic faith. I was so sad that I couldn’t take Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity when I was protestant. I believe that God gave me the grace to have faith that the bread that Catholics receive at Holy Communion is truly Our Lord Jesus!

Peace to you all!
journey
 
Much is also made of the episode between Jesus and the Samaratan woman in John 4. In discussing whether John 6 is literal or figurative Protestants often take the words “worship in spirit and truth” as justification to equate spirit WITH truth then substituting the spiritual as the figurative. They now have spiritual worship as the true worship and set spiritual “bread” opposed to bread being the literal body of Christ.

In this way the Protestant dispute over John 6 becomes a dispute over Catholic Hermeneutics. An example of these arguments (made by a Mr. Muke Gendron) can be found at:
conservativeonline.org/journals/03_10_journal/1999v3n10_id02.htm

A published response to this article is currently being formulated here:

projectdominic.org/projects.php

Volunteers are always welcome!
 
I had this discussion with a Mennonite friend of mine who is very educated in regards to Christianity and more specifically the Gospels. After 5 or 6 long emails back and forth I came to the conclusion that he refused, consciously or otherwise, to accept the clear meaning of the words. Even the most talented contortionist cannot twist their way out of John 6, but he gave it his best effort. We have since stopped communicating on the subject because he proved to me that he is not as sincere in seeking the truth as I had first thought.
 
My mother would love to answer this question. She might say, in defense of her Protestant view of John Chp. 6, that I must interpret the scripture in light of other scripture; otherwise I risk taking the scripture out of context. In response to John chapter 6, she would open her bible and read something like Matthew 13:10-16
Matt 13:10-16 KJV:
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

"For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

"Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

"And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive;

For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.’

From there, her argument would center around a hard heart. All of Jesus’s disciples left him because their hearts were harden and therefore unable to receive the free gift of Jesus Christ. The lesson in this scripture is not that Jesus is offering his flesh as ‘bread’, but that Jesus first demands humility, and this first starts with giving up on our own ability to understand God and his awesome plans. She would then incorporate Isaiah 55:8-9.

At this point, she would say that I need to repent, and trust entirely on God. and to not trust myself when trying to understand God, or his word. God only desires a humble contrite heart. Those who are not humble and contrite can not see the truth.

So you can imagine how sadden she was when I became Catholic in 1999.
 
Cephas, another argument that I have come across related to the symbolic interpretation of Jn 6 is the fact that there is no observable miracle at the last supper, nor at the Consecration of the Mass. This objection is addressed well by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, III, q. 75).
 
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DougL:
The shocking fact expressed in John 6 is that the Eucharist is Incarnate God feeding his human/divine flesh, blood, soul, and divinity to human disciples in a mystical rite. This Food is the sole source of Life in us, the summit of our faith.

I don’t think there’s anything in Judaism to prepare people to receive this teaching. It’s more akin to some primitive animistic, cannabalistic religion in which the eater somehow ingests the spirit or life force of his adversary. Such a need for unity with the spirit world has to run deep in the human religious imagination. Since it involves killing, it also resonates with the idea of sacrifice. Of course many such primitive religious practices were an abomination to the Jews, who had been painstakingly weaned from gods like Moloch.

So the Eucharist fulfills beyond our wildest hopes the deepest human needs. In the unbloody re-presentation of Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice of himself for us we have the privilege of receiving God within us in the most intimate physical/spiritual way. What an unspeakable gift to us! What humility and condescension on the part of God!

If the Jews were taken aback by Jesus’ offer of his flesh, how much more are modern people with our skepticism of all that is not verifiable, scientific. The truth is that we cannot take in this mystery, whether we believe it or not. I am so grateful that God has given me the grace to believe in the Eucharist. I wish it upon everyone. I pray that all will awaken to their hunger for Christ.
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Just a question. The Jews routinely ate the flesh of the sarificed animals didn’t they? I think it was commanded. In that case John 6 is contextually, for the Jews, another reminder of Jesus own death as a sacrifice, a sin offering.
I have marvelled, since becoming Catholic, at the continuity of our faith with the Old covenant. It just makes so much more sense, the sacrifice of the mass, than any sort of worship that I experienced as a protestant.
 
Great posts by everyone here! Some other arguments I have heard from Protestants involve the fact that Jesus spoke in the present tense during John 6. “This is my body.” They interpret that to mean it was his body then at that moment at the Last Supper. He never said that the priests of his Church would be able to transform bread into his body in the future. Therefore, the statement was made as a one-time sacrifice, and Roman priests have no place trying to make that sacrifice occur again. They believe that they symbolically partake in the flesh and blood of Christ because they believe and have faith in him. They often ask, “Where in Scripture (in John 6 specifically) are Roman Catholic priests given the power by Christ to transubstantiate common bread on an altar daily? Did Jesus say the bread becomes the body?” etc.

I believe that if you can prove and establish the fact that Jesus was not addressing the diciples symbolically then the “present tense/can-never-transform-again” argument goes out the window. If their main contention is arguing the authority by which priests make the sacrifice, then the topic of the reality of the Holy Eucharist must be granted anyway Once one grants that the Eucharist can indeed be the body and blood of Christ, then the further authority by which it is done can be shown (using Scripture of course). From there one can explain why our beloved priests can so perform such a miracle and why common bread can become the tangible presense of our savior every day. 👍

Shamus:)
 
quote=centuri0n The rest of the NT speaks of the Eucharist as a proclamation of Christ’s death & resurrection, not a re-presentation.

[/quote]

I do not believe your statement is accurate. The NT speaks of the Eucharist as much more than just a proclamation of Christ’s death & resurrection. Paul says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16) . In a similar vein, Paul says, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (1 Cor 11:27-29).

Todd
 
DVIN CKS:
If Jesus’ whole teaching in chptr 6 is suppose to be symbolic then why didn’t the crowd get disgusted and leave in Chapter 5? Jesus would have been teaching similar stuff if we are to believe that “eating flesh” and “drinking blood” are symbolic for “believing”.
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I’ve always understood it is a linguistic problem. The words Jesus used in Aramaic cannot be taken symbolically. On the other hand, when he calls himself the gate, or the door, etc. the he is using common symbols of the time.

This is just my :twocents: :twocents:
 
Another argument against the symbolic interpretation is that a symbolic Lord’s Supper is, then, an inferior fulfillment of its Old Testament prefigurement. I mean, the Jews actually ate the Passover lamb and the manna in the desert, not mere symbols. I think Protestants forget that the Jews were to eat the Passover lamb, not just sprinkle the blood on the doorpost. If their interpretation is correct, then the prefigurement in the OT, the “real thing” that they could bite into, is fulfilled in the NT with a lousy symbol.
 
This seems an easy one but no one seems to have posted a common Protestant response. In fact, I’ve never seen a Catholic apologist respond to it anywhere. The answer is that Christ was in NO WISE referring to the last supper in the discourse in John 6: He was simply making an oblique claim to Deity. A direct claim would have been blasphemous and given his hearers opportunity to destroy Him before His time had come. The most interesting aspect of the discourse is it’s resemblance to the Living Water discourse of John 4–where the Samaritans accepted His claims of Messiahship while the Jews in John 6 rejected Him.

If one totally resists any temptation to draw an untoward parallel between John 6 and the last supper, and if one does not presuppose that communion is the central act of Christian worship, what I have just said falls into place. Catholics value the service of communion so highly however that it is difficult for them do do so, in my opinion. What I mostly hear when I raise this point are irrelevant and emotion-laden responses: “Oh my goodness! If John 6 isn’t about the Eucharist then the Gospel of John never mentions the Eucharist!!!” Yes, and the Gospels differ from one another on a great many other things as well. Some items appear in one Gospel, some in two, some in three and some in all four. Not only is such a comment not germaine to whether the Catholic or Protestant understanding of communion is correct, it clearly indicates that the Catholic is presupposing something which Protestants may not.

One other thing apologists–Protestants sometimes as well as Catholics–get wrong on this topic, I’m told. I forget the Protestant who outlined the dominant Protestant view on the communion. But–as i understand it–he technically never denied what Catholics call the ‘real presence of Christ’ in some sort of special way in communion. He simply denied that the bread and wine themselves actually become Christ: he denied transubstantiation, in other words, as an explanation of how Christ is made present in communion. Catholics reduce this to a claim that for Protestants Christ is ‘symbollically present’, which I am told is extremely inexact. Unfortunately, the subtleties of the fellow get lost upon some Protestants as well, and they will defend unto the death the notion that ‘communion is symbollic’. I can neither recall the name of the Reformer I am expounding on–I’ve worked all night and my brain is feeding me false answers like ‘Erasmus’ and ‘Diderot’, neither of which sound right–nor can I recollect the Roman Catholic ecumenist who is my actual source for this paragraph.

Which means someone is going to blast me out of the water like a stick of dynamite in a fishbowl. Oh well. It was my two cents’ worth. Enjoy!
 
Wow: no dynamite yet? I must’ve found an especially resilient fishbowl. Or everyone is taking Sunday off from Apologetics stuff . . .
 
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flameburns623:
If one totally resists any temptation to draw an untoward parallel between John 6 and the last supper,
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Fresh out of dynamite. Only MHO.
The parallels are far from subtle. When Jesus hands the apostles the bread, He says it is his body. "While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is %between%my %between%body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood of the[4[/color] "
Matt 26:26-28 (NRSV)
This parallel does not come from a temptation, it come right out and hits you.
 
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